Chapter 640 Contracting System
The King of Fareins was named Edward, but people generally called him His Majesty King Fareins, or His Majesty the King.
Edward, a fairly popular, common name for eighty thousand if not a hundred thousand people in the entire world, was not called that to his face anymore after he ascended the throne.
So when Roland called him His Majesty King Edward, he froze for quite a while, and only then did he remember that this was his name.
“It’s been twenty years, hasn’t it?” Edward clicked his tongue in irritation. “I’d almost forgotten I was called that.”
Roland shrugged; after all, it was Stephanie who said that the king’s name was Edward.
Although under normal circumstances, he should be referred to as His Majesty King Fareins, Stephanie was also a Fareins, so… it was easier to distinguish by simply calling him by his first name.
It was a family feast, and in a side room of the palace, His Majesty the King sat at the main table, and to his left sat Her Majesty the Queen, newly promoted for less than three years. Opposite the Queen sat Stephanie, and as for Roland, he sat opposite the King.
The king took a sip of fruit wine from a golden cup encrusted with fancy green gems and said, “Roland, I hear you want to talk about some business with me? What kind of business?”
“People.”
“Since when did you turn into a slave trader?” The king scratched his head, feeling somewhat awkward. “We forbid slave trade in Fareins, though this law is almost nonexistent for the great nobles, who still deal in slaves secretly. But you, a Mage… don’t have much influence here, only backed by the Association of Mages, as well as Stephanie. And talking about strength, you have a little but not enough to let you openly deal in slavery on my land.”
This king seemed to be a bit of a bigmouth. Was it appropriate to speak of the dark side of his own country to an outsider like him?
“It’s not slave-trading, we’re saving some humans from the Realm of Devils,” Roland said.
Now Edward was interested.
He put down his knife and fork and asked curiously, “Are you trying to say that you Golden Sons are ready to take on the Realm of Devils?”
“Indeed.”
The king pondered for a moment and laughed. “I know that you Golden Sons generally have a stronger sense of justice, so I can understand that you intend to save the humans who were taken captive by the devils in the past, but the question is… what benefits do we, Fareins, get from it!”
Roland said, “A large number of people.”
“That’s not enough.”
Not enough?
In this world, population was very important.
Because of the high premature death rate, even the population density of Fareins wasn’t high.
Another reason was that their country was super large. If a comparison had to be made, it was roughly America plus Australia. It was easy to accommodate a hundred or two hundred million people in such a country with a low population density.
And the people of this world were quite easy to support; just give them a piece of land and a house, and they would be able to feed themselves.
Of course, this was in the absence of natural or man-made disasters.
And a country that suddenly had an extra hundred or two hundred million people was bound to have access to an extremely high resource for as long as it could support them.
The population could also be converted into combat power.
The nobles everywhere were happy to recruit an extra group of tenant farmers to their empty territories.
And the king who had the substantial power to distribute the population could surely receive greater benefits with a little work. These are real benefits… Even so, he’s still not satisfied?
Roland frowned.
Looking at Roland’s puzzled expression, Edward clapped his hands and said, “Indeed, what you offer is very interesting and of great importance, worth many gold coins. But I am the king, I have enough gold coins; I do not need so many of these useless things, you understand? I need something more interesting, more pleasurable.”
Putting it that way, Roland understood immediately.
“Please, Your Majesty, build an expeditionary force to participate with us. Normally, they won’t need to fight, but we, the Golden Sons, will announce to the public that this expeditionary plan was made possible by His Majesty King Edward, and that it was you who provided the funds and intelligence so that we could enter the Realm of Devils and bring those miserable fellow humans back.”
“Hahahahahaha!”
Edward laughed heartily as he poured himself a glass of wine and downed it before continuing with a wide grin. “Smart, it’s a pleasure talking to someone like you.”
“You flatter me. It’s all because of your great foresight, Your Majesty King Edward.”
Roland had never been fond of bootlicking, but when he thought about the humans who were raised as pigs by the devils and were so miserable, Roland felt that it was not a bad idea to bootlick for the sake of justice.
Edward laughed again at this, looking quite happy. Stephanie looked at Roland, rather surprised. In her mind, Roland was an extremely arrogant person… arrogant to no end. She even had a feeling that Roland might think nothing of the gods.
But now he was bootlicking… not for money, not for power, but simply to resettle some rescued humans, and he was sucking up to her arrogant, conceited, and extremely clueless father!
It must’ve been hard for him.
And the queen, who was sitting on the side, was also a little surprised. It was the first time she had seen the king so happy.
Indeed… the more Edward looked at Roland now, the more pleasing he seemed.
He wasn’t very tolerant of alcohol and was already a little drunk after a few cups, and his mouth was even less controlled.
He spoke about everything.
For example, what kind of relationship he had with some noble family’s lady, and what kind of affair he had some time ago.
The military minister was actually impotent, and then the youngest son of General Biden and his sister-in-law had unspeakable secrets.
Roland crinkled his eyes at this and gave Stephanie a series of looks, telling her to mind her old man.
But the expression on Stephanie’s face was flat, as if she was not surprised. It was the queen who fidgeted a bit. Although a bit tipsy, Edward wasn’t truly drunk, and as he watched Roland give Stephanie the occasional wink, he laughed and said, “By the way, I heard that you and my eldest daughter have quite an ambiguous relationship!”
“No,” Roland denied flatly.
Stephanie also shook her head. “Roland keeps his hands clean; he only has two women!”
“Heh, who are you fooling.” Edward naturally didn’t believe it. “There is no such thing as pure friendship between a man and a woman. Besides, my daughter is so beautiful.”
Roland was slightly bummed out.
He suddenly felt that this king was not at all kingly.
Instead, he kind of seemed like a street punk.
“So Roland, do you think my daughter tastes good?” continued Edward.
Roland sighed. “I really don’t have that kind of relationship with Her Highness, the First Princess.”
“Heh!” Edward had a “just keep pretending” look. “My daughter is beautiful and has a great body, as beautiful as a goddess. How sexy and seductive! If she wasn’t my daughter, I’d…”
A glass of red fruit wine drizzled over Edward’s head.
The king was instantly almost fully sobered up from his tipsiness.
Stephanie said glumly, “Father, I hope your mouth would say less misleading things. It’s because you keep saying things like that that I have an extremely bad reputation in the capital.” Edward wiped his face. “It’s just that those people have dirty minds.” The queen covered her face with her hands, no longer having the face to watch.
Stephanie sat back in her chair and stopped talking
“All right. Let’s talk about some business,” King Edward said while wiping his hair and face with a white towel. “I will send an expeditionary force, but this expeditionary force is full of noble sons and daughters, so don’t expect them to go into battle. But if anyone dares to disobey you and mess around… you can teach them a lesson on my behalf, got it?”
Roland nodded. When it came to business, the king was still quite reliable.
“So Roland, I have a question I’ve been holding back for a long time that I want to ask you.”
“Your Majesty, please go ahead!”
“I heard that you stole the heart of the Queen of Hollevin, how did you do it?” Then he pointed to the queen beside him. “Try it on her. I want to see what you are capable of that makes a queen willing to go with a poor Mage like you.”
The queen’s face went ashen!
Roland felt that this king was f**king sick and almost flipped the table.
Then before Roland was about to lash out, Stephanie pulled Roland away.
The two of them left the palace and took a carriage to Stephanie’s estate. In the carriage, Stephanie said embarrassedly, “I’m sorry to have put you through that.”
“It’s fine. Although I do feel a bit like getting angry, it doesn’t seem to be a big deal to put up with it.” Roland waved his hand.
“My father, he’s a big kid.” Stephanie’s also had a rather helpless expression. “According to my grandfather, he’s been like that since he was a little boy. He likes to push people’s boundaries and also can’t keep his mouth shut and talks recklessly all the time.”
“Your father may be a bas*ard and act like a jerk, but he can be counted among the most powerful people in the world anyway.” Roland closed his eyes, feeling a bit of a headache. “This is a disaster.”
Stephanie rolled her eyes helplessly at Roland.
Although her father was indeed a bas*ard, it certainly sounded a little awkward to her when said by an outsider.
After all, it was her father!
When they reached the entrance to the manor, before getting out of the carriage, Stephanie asked, “Your floating city, how is it coming along?”
“The degree of completion is probably just one percent.”
“That’s a little slow.” Stephanie frowned.
She wanted to have a shelter in the floating city, so that in case something really happened, she would have a place and a chance to make a comeback.
This was important to her, and the sooner the floating city was built, the more peace of mind she would have.
“Everything is difficult at the beginning.” Roland thought about it and said, “I will slowly increase my strength soon, and the construction of the floating city will speed up drastically.”
Stephanie nodded. “I believe in what you say. I’ll just wait for your good news. By the way… I’ll keep an eye on that expeditionary force for you, and I’ll help you temper the people in that team beforehand to keep them from being so unruly.”
“Sorry to trouble you.”
“No problem. Come and take the expeditionary force in half a month.”
The two soon ended their conversation.
Roland teleported back to the Realm of Devils, found the vanguard meeting room, and found Solisa and the others.
“How did the talk go on your side?” When they saw Roland, they immediately gathered around.
The rescue was now proceeding in an orderly fashion. One-third of the people in the breeding city had been transferred to the main plane and then escorted to Wetland City by other players from Sisilia.
After being blessed by Detoxification and Healing, most of the bred humans were able to live in good health.
But there were still a small number of people that died.
Their bodies were dry and thin, and there were even writhing white maggots on the surface of their bodies.
There couldn’t possibly be a good environment and conditions in a breeding city.
Those bone devils and mind flayers only had to make sure that most of the humans didn’t die and didn’t develop diseases.
If a hundred or so frail humans died… they’d simply be thrown outside the city.
Regardless, people would be born, and soon there would be new human babies again.
The more rescues were made, and the more they cleared the central areas of the city, the more alarming the devastation.
Many white bones were piled up in the center of the city.
Based on the teeth marks on them, a picture of a raw human eater came to their minds.
And now… they had the intention of asking the succubi about the breeding cities.
It had been determined that there were three breeding cities within three to four hundred kilometers of this city.
After saving this one, there would be more saving to do.
That meant here would be at least three hundred thousand or four hundred thousand people to save down the road.
However, Wetland City would hold at most two hundred thousand more people; the city couldn’t handle any more than that.
Therefore, the cities or countries that could admit large populations had to be arranged as soon as possible.
This was also the reason why Solisa was anxious.
“It’s been negotiated,” Roland said with a nod, “but we now have a rather important problem. Even if Fareins were willing to take these people, it’s not very realistic to have them trek nearly two thousand kilometers to Fareins. A small number of people would be fine-just rent some carriages—but millions, tens of millions of people, how many carriages would that take, and how many people would die on the journey if they just walked?”
The group froze.
This question had not occurred to them before.
At this moment, someone was livestreaming, and the pop-ups that were roaming in the livestream died down because of these words.
“Are we just going to have to move them from one pit of fire to another?” asked Solisa, in a somewhat distressed mood.
“I have an idea that I need your cooperation with.”
Solisa’s eyes lit up. “Go ahead.”
“As you all know, I know the multiple teleportation magic array.”
The crowd nodded.
Roland continued, “But that teleportation cost is too expensive, so I’ll find a way to bring it down to a point where it’s affordable.”
“How long will it take?”
“At least a month.” Roland continued, “That is, if you rescue more people, then you will need to take care of their food for at least a month, and food for hundreds of thousands of people is not a good solution.”
The crowd was silent.
With two or three hundred people in one guild, they were under a lot of logistical pressure.
The difficulty of managing the necessities of hundreds of thousands of people was too much for them.
“They don’t eat much, two meals a day will do.” Solisa gritted her teeth. “Fifty thousand people, Phoenix Guild will take care of that many people.”
At this time, the chairmen of other guilds also stepped forward.
“I’ll cover thirty thousand.”
“I’ll cover forty-five thousand.”
“Forty-five thousand.”
Within a few moments, a dozen guilds had covered the population of half a million.
And in the livestream, more people were shouting
“We’re a small guild, but we can also cover three thousand.”
“We’ll cover five thousand.”
“Six thousand.”
“I will definitely work out the cheap version of the magic array in a month.”
With a swish of his cloak, Roland immediately disappeared in front of the crowd.
