He couldn't be blamed at all as he had definitely noticed how much more advanced Nicks territory was compared to the rest of the world. Hell many foreign powers who saw how things were going for the english isles started imitating Nick with some of their own people to great effect. For example there was now at least twelve different organizations like the adventurers guild that Nick started that operated nearly the same way. That didn't sound like a lot but keep in mind that most places around the globe have congregated into singular large entities instead of a bunch of small ones.-
Rather than dozens of small powers on each continent the vast majority of people everywhere all grouped up in "supercities" for safety whether they liked it or not. Death was a rather good motivator to unite for people after all. And that was what the rest of the land that had been taken back by the beasts and plantlife was , death. Everything was now much more powerful or dangerous for other reasons like magical toxins and diseases and even the plants that were once known to be safe for consumption were now questionable at best or inedible now.-
Potatoes for example had become dangerous to eat as one in ten plants mutated to have magical toxins within the whole plant. Tomatoes on the other hand were downright lethal to consume now which was a great loss to culinary arts as a whole. The inverse was also true however in that many things that had been inedible were now safe to eat. An example was the manchineel tree that went from horribly deadly to literal candy creation. The sap and fruits that were very harmful previously had done a full three sixty after the mana surge and were now perfectly safe and super sweet like the purest honey.-
Anyway Nick skipped the awkward experimental stage with determining what was and was not safe to eat and directly created a magical plant that used the ambient mana as fuel to rapidly produce highly nutritious fruit. The plant itself was a tree with blue bark and the fruit it produced was the size of a coconut and was bright green with a thin rind around the bland but filling flesh. The tree produced about five hundred fruits a day and Nick had ten of them at the moment.-
The only reason he was even able to make the things however was that he exerted his power as a daedric lord and forcefully spawned the plants from his realm before transplanting them into the real world. Five thousand fruits a day wasn't nearly enough to feed the nearly twenty million people in Nicks territory but thankfully most animals had grown much larger in size so hunting and the remaining edible plants being grown on the farms in the territory kept their heads above water with a limit to two meals a day.-
It wasn't ideal by any means but it was enough to survive and even thrive as Nick was always working on creating more fruit trees. The Zanpakuto really helped with the food as there was a few that had abilities to accelerate or enlarge plant growth. The most powerful of which was a weapon Zanpakuto however that turned the surrounding plantlife into the wielders absolute control. This meant that they could revert the previously edible plants back to that state which was a VERY valuable ability. Nick and the governing body of the territory all made sure that person was paid well for their services.-
This didn't mean that the person wasn't sent off to places that needed help with their food issues such as to Dumbledore and Flammel. It was rather funny how many people tried to poach the person from Nick while they were helping abroad but got harshly shot down with reality. The fact was that even getting a kings treatment was a fools bargain if it meant leaving Nicks territory. Even an idiot could see that the place wasn't just going to stagnate and let everywhere else catch up but was going to continue advancing further and further ahead of the rest.-
Even more so Hephaestus's status as a goddess was no longer a secret after Hestia and Zeus made it clear that the gods had returned. There was simply no reason why Nick or Hephaestus should keep it hidden at this point so she had been seen and felt within his territory. Despite this though it was obvious that the goddess was close to Nick as she rarely left the island for any reason besides to observe the Zanpakuto in action. With two powerhouses like that backing the territory and the great advancements it made it would be stupid to leave such a place.