Chapter 73

There was only one person that sold salt in Sedona City. His name was Jeffrey, and he would carry a bag of salt around with him all day long. According to him, it was top top quality fine salt refined from salt piles by the best workers.

"The commoners' lives are really improving. In the last few days, I've sold as much salt as it would have previously taken me months to sell. This is a good sign for my business." Jeffrey said as he sat by the gate and observed the workers carrying wood around to make houses.

"All of you, hurry up and work hard and earn money. Otherwise, how would you be able to afford salt?" Jeffrey said, smiling. In the past, there was pretty much no one on this street. After Lucas came here and closed the main street and demolished the houses, people started using the other streets, including the one that his store was on. Now people would use that street often.

Jeffrey had gone and took a look at the main street a few days ago. During that time, the houses were pretty much finished and just needed some decorating on the inside of the houses. The houses in the residential community had almost finished construction.

The cement, however, confused him, because it looked like mud to him, and in his mind, no mud could turn hard. It became even harder the next day. Jeffrey didn't understand anything, but that didn't matter to him. All he had to know was that the commoners were able to work for Lucas, which allowed them to save quite a bit of copper coins, which allowed them to buy more salt from him. It was him who was getting more benefit from all this.

'Should I increase the price of salt from sixty copper coins per kilogram of salt to sixty-two copper coins per kilogram of salt?' Jeffrey had thought about it for a few days already. Raising prices was a very normal thing for merchants; plotting to murder a noble wasn't normal. He had gone to the public execution of the food merchants and thought of them as idiots. Who would think about murdering a noble?

"It costs 5 copper coins for every half a kilogram of salt in Goldleaf City. Including the cost of transportation to Sedona City, it would cost about 10 copper coins per half a kilogram of salt in total, so I would only earn 20 copper coins per half a kilogram of salt. Nobody's going to earn enough retirement money with that. It seems that I have to raise the price to earn some more money." Jeffrey thought aloud.

Goldleaf City was a port city. It was one of the largest cities in the kingdom and was filled with salt. Countless amounts of sea salt get transported out of the Goldleaf City every year. There were tons of salt merchants that got salt from the Goldleaf City to go to other places to sell it.

Jeffrey really wanted to buy a store in the Shopping Mall as it was the place with the most traffic in Sedona City. Unfortunately for him, the stores were only rented out, not sold. He also didn't want to be there and pay taxes. 

'Taxes? Unacceptable. I only earn 20 copper coins per half kilogram of salt. That's already very little. And you want me to pay taxes? I am not doing that. I'm the only salt seller in this city anyways. I don't need to be in the Shopping Mall to sell the salt. People would automatically come to my shop to purchase salt.'

"Clip-clop. Clip-clop. Clip-clop." 

The sound of horse hooves ran out, interrupting Jeffrey from his thoughts. He looked at the streets and saw a few horses pulling 5 carriages loaded with something.

'Isn't that Butler Ben? Why is he here? Did something happen?' Jeffrey knew about Ben. He knew that Ben only went outside the City Lord's Mansion when something important happened, so he was curious about what made Ben come outside the mansion.

'The items in the carriages must be very precious for Butler Ben to be the one to escort them.' Jeffrey got up and tried to look at the stuff in the carriages, but unfortunately for him, the items in the carriages were covered with wheat straw mat.

Ben looked at Jeffrey with a strange expression on his face and mentally shook his head. 'Before long, this salt merchant would probably have to do a clearance sale and sell the salt he has at a painfully low price. Either that or he would have to go to another city to sell his salt or he'll go bankrupt.'

Jeffrey scratched his head. The business intuition built up from years of being a merchant gave him a bad feeling. 'Is the City Lord trying to remove me? No way, right? Isn't he afraid of scaring away the other merchants?'

"Clip-clop. Clip-clop. Clip-clop." 

"Thud." 

As the carriages went away, Jeffrey saw something fall down from the carriage, so he hurriedly picked it up after the carriages went toward the City Lord's Mansion.

"A stone? Could it be an ore? For Butler Ben to be personally escorting these ores, it must be a gemstone." Jeffrey said, his eyes glowing. He immediately hid the stone in his arms, ran back into his store, and closed it.

Ben had no idea that he had lost a piece of salt ore and that it was being treated like a treasure. He was currently taking the carriages into the Military Camp which has a branch of the Scientific Research Department in it.

Extracting edible salt from salt ores was a precious process. As such, it was in their best interest to conduct it in a heavily guarded place like the Military Department of Scientific Research.

When Lucas arrived all the salt ores were all unloaded and piled into a small mountain.

"Young master, is this enough? If not, I'll tell people to go and get more." Ben asked. It was obvious how much he valued salt.

"It's enough. This amount of salt ores can be made into salt enough to last a few days for thousands of people. Next time, just roughly refine the salt ores in the place they are found before shifting it in another place." Lucas said, nodding with satisfaction. There were a few things that he couldn't make public yet, or he would become a tool for other nobles to make money. He wanted to be the one to conduct the productions. That way, he would get a good reputation, produce things others couldn't think of, and prevent the other nobles from earning money or using him.

"I'll send someone to keep an eye on it." Ben said. He wasn't a saint, and he didn't believe that Lucas was someone who would be blinded by money. After all, in his mind, Lucas could earn thousands of gold coins just by selling one of the items he had, whether it was the watch, the crystal glass, the compound hunting bow, or something else.

Yet, Lucas didn't do so. Not only that, but Lucas also gave them the objects, which made Ben and the others more sure of their loyalty to Lucas, as in their minds, no other person would be so generous to their subordinates.

"Don't worry," Lucas said, smiling. "I'll keep the salt at a low price so that everyone would be able to afford it."

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