CHAPTER 176: MAJOR SOUTHERN TERRITORY TRANSFORMATION

A few days later, Highgarden City, banquet hall.

Pretty much all the remaining living nobles from across the Southern Territory gathered together, watching the heir presenting his plans up front. Their expressions were pretty weird, but they didn’t dare object at all. Today in Highgarden City, they’d seen quite a few of those special troops who’d helped them solve all those War God Church problems a few days ago.

Just when everyone thought that after finishing these formalities, everyone would agree and pledge their loyalty, this heir—who was ridiculously young—suddenly changed direction: "In order to help our Southern Territory quickly recover to its peak, to better deal with crises that might come up next, and to support us in quickly fulfilling our ancestors’ wishes, I’ve decided to establish the Southern Territory Development and Trade Company... If any of you are interested, you can buy shares..."

???

Everyone couldn’t help but look suspicious, their eyes full of caution.

Everyone knew what the situation was like in the Southern Territory right now. Seven or eight out of ten lords had already been killed. The nobles left were just these people. Then lots of free citizens had been turned into those super-strong monsters, and even if they’d survived by luck, their bodies were seriously overtaxed—they might not even make it through this year.

Lots of land, few people. To properly use these areas, the traditional way would be to grant them to nobles and knights who performed well in this war. Because of the special nature of this war, if they weren’t given shares, that would be understandable. But at the very least, control should stay with the Highgarden Duke’s family, right? For future grants.

But nobody expected this young heir to want to establish an organization similar to a merchant guild, which he called a ’company,’ to manage everything, and then want them to donate their money to this ’company’ in exchange for so-called ’equity’ and get annual dividends.

The system sounded okay, but would the dividends actually be paid? Would it really work the way he said? Also, would Viscount Roster be involved? How much would belong to Viscount Roster? Would nobles from other places participate?

Question after question swirled in everyone’s minds, making them hesitant to commit. Some of them had already prepared themselves for their money to be like throwing gold into a well and never hearing it hit bottom—just considering it as handing over part of their wealth to the Highgarden Duke’s family. After all, everything they had came from that family anyway.

"Everyone, the company concept was actually something I came up with. Many of the factories in my Roster territory use this system. For example, the military factory that produces magic power bombs has over 130 nobles as shareholders..."

Just as everyone was hesitating, Viscount Roster’s voice rang out. "The reason for using this model is to get all the territories up and running efficiently as quickly as possible. The Month of Revival is almost over. If we plant now, there’s still time. Delay any longer and these regions will have zero harvest this year. Besides that, in the future, the Southern Territory Development Company can also build factories and other businesses in areas not suitable for farming to increase profits."

After explaining the general situation, Viscount Roster changed direction and stated directly that he would also become a small shareholder in the Southern Territory Development Company, and would sell tons of farming Magic Conductors to the Southern Territory at cost, so all regions could successfully complete planting.

People who’d been suspicious before, worried that Viscount Roster might want to seize power, couldn’t help but wonder after hearing about the farming Magic Conductors whether promoting those and druid potions might actually be Viscount Roster’s main goal. If that was the case, the risk seemed a lot lower.

"You don’t have to join if you don’t want to." The young heir, seeing the timing was about right, glanced at Viscount Roster and changed direction. "The Highgarden family has extraordinary financial resources, enough to establish the Southern Territory Development Company. The reason I’m inviting all of you is just like when the Southern Territory Duchy was first established—to let everyone profit from it..."

Viscount Roster’s understanding of these nobles went bone-deep. In the past, he’d already hosted several events like this, pulling tons of nobles of different ranks into the same company. Getting these few surviving Southern Territory nobles to join was naturally pretty easy.

In just half a day, this ’only’ heir signed agreements with all the nobles. From now on, pretty much all the Southern Territory could be developed, managed, and traded by the Southern Territory Development Company under unified control.

As soon as the news hit the Magic Net, it caused a huge uproar.

"???"

"I didn’t hear wrong, didn’t see wrong, did I?"

"The Southern Territory Duchy of the Kingdom of Dawn established a company to manage pretty much all the land?"

"Buying shares to become a shareholder and all that, I can understand that—it seems like Viscount Roster’s territory operated that way before. But incorporating such a huge chunk of territory into a company and developing it as a company, isn’t that going a bit far?"

"So it’s a project involving Viscount Roster. I’d like to ask, how can I buy shares? I want to invest in the Southern Territory Development Company too!"

"I’m not from the Southern Territory, not even from the Kingdom of Dawn, but I’m really bullish on this company. Can you give me a chance?"

"Who wouldn’t be bullish? The second-best land in the Kingdom of Dawn, climate perfect for planting, the grain produced every year must be astronomical!"

Actually handing over all the land of an entire duchy to a company for development, and this company says it’ll focus on planting in the early stages, then gradually open various Magic Conductor factories and establish trade networks, and has already reached cooperation agreements with Roster territory and the Golden Merchant Guild... Everyone on the Magic Net understood each individual word, but when put together, people either felt they didn’t understand or found it just too unbelievable.

Thought they’d read it wrong.

At the same time, quite a few people got ideas, wanting to become part of this company too. After all, this was a region bigger than the land controlled by most lords! Farmland, mines, Magic Conductors... unimaginable wealth.

Unfortunately, in this era, there were still only a few people who could see the core of this system. Most people just felt the whole thing was pretty unbelievable!

Just as they were going crazy discussing it, suddenly, a pop-up appeared on the Magic Net.

[Update Announcement:]

[Due to the widespread adoption of self-charging magic arrays, Magic Power Networks, and wireless transmission devices, bandwidth has increased in many regions and more information can be transmitted. Therefore, new features will be updated that can be used in more special regions.]