5 Chapter 5

Before occupying the Carmen viscounty, Roland had already built a Basic Miningbot and Transportation Line, the land version of the Basic Underwater Miningbot and Transport Line. There were many differences between them: the normal Miningbot looked like a Swordbot with drills instead of swords, it cost slightly less iron ore and its Battle Strength was equal to a Level 1 Knight. Now he ordered the Miningbot and the Builderbots to come over. The Miningbot went to one of his new iron ore mines and the Builderbots went on standby temporary. Roland's new viscounty was 3.5 times as large as the Rowe barony, it had Carmen City and Castle, the name of which he would soon change, Tiha Town, Orfe Village and Sol Village. On paper this equated to 154,697 people and a yearly tax of 7,500 gold coins.

After looking around Carmen City for some time, he came to the conclusion that the City wasn't run all that well. A quarter of the City were slums, a quarter were sloppily built houses for the better off citizens, a quarter for the craftsmen and the last quarter was for the well-off and the wealthy. This brought him an idea, he would build better and cheaper housing, getting more popular. It would be much harder to deny his claim of lordship, if he had the support of the populace.

In the Carmen treasury, Roland had found 37,000 gold coins. He went to the slums and bought all the houses and ground at a premium price, everyone sold because he offered multiple times the worth of the houses and said he would provide temporary housing. After basically buying the entire slums, the 37,000 gold coins shrunk to 31,000 gold coins. Roland then ordered his Builderbots and half of his Swordbots to start moving beds to a few of the bigger buildings, he would house the people there during the rebuilding. After that was done and the people were out of the way, he instructed his Builderbots to start demolishing the slums. After demolishing they would build several concrete apartement buildings, complete with electrical appliances and lights, courtesy of the Basic Great Solar Arrays. They would also build an automated and enclosed water and waste treatment plant at the edge of the City, like this, there would also be running water in the buildings. The AI chip calculated that it would take about 3 days to renovate the slums. After the renovation, everyone could be housed in the new buildings. Now that that issue was out of the way, he went to his mines.

He was planning to set up an automated Swordbot factory here. He ordered the last idle Builderbot to start setting up the factory and,at the same time, Roland linked the Miningbot with the factory. The mined resources would now automaticaly be converted to Simplified Basic Swordbots.

The last thing he needed to do at the moment was to inform his father. Roland wrote a letter to his father, detailing how he was the new viscount and his plan to renovate the slums. After the letter was sent, he went to rest inside his castle, which he renamed Phoenix Castle, because just like a Phoenix, he was reborn.

Three days passed quickly and his slum project was finally done. He told the people they could rent an apartment for 5 copper coins a month per person. This made him very popular, luxury housing for a very cheap price. Apart from that, his normal Miningbots increased to 3 and his Swordbots to 25. Increasing both his army and production capability.

Two days later Roland got an answer from the King. He was conferred viscount with the old Carmen family territory as his fief. The only thing he could do now was wait and train.

---Inside a castle somewhere in the Hildegard Kingdom---

"The Rowe family is more powerful than we thought." Someone said.

"Yes, we must curb them before they can grow more." Another person said.

"Agreed." The last person answered.

"We can move our troops and take them out in 2 months, at the earliest. I suggest each person contributes 750 troops and at least 25 Level 2 Knights." The fist person suggested.

"Agreed." "Agreed." The others agreed to the proposal.

"Then we shall attack the Rowe viscounty in 2 months."

Little did they know, that this would be the worst decision they had ever made.