The elated servant’s report almost made Mjöllmile faint on the spot.
“R-Rimuru… Er, Sir Rimuru? Are you sure all this luxury is suitable for me?”
Hey, man, this all comes standard in Tempest.
Of course, given the servants he brought along, Mjöllmile was living in a larger mansion, not your normal kind of place. I had taken note of his residence in Blumund and made sure we had something similar for him here. There were ten individual apartments, rooms with small kitchens and toilets. These were linked by a large shared bath and a dining hall, allowing Mjöllmile to share this home with a decent number of servants.
“You needed this, right? This was cheaper than building separate homes for each of them, too. If anyone wants their own house, they’re free to save up for one.”
I couldn’t build homes for them all, so I kind of reused a building we had set up for an administrator-level resident, but everyone seemed happy enough with it. The house came at no charge, too—I mean, with all the money I had made off Mjöllmile, I really couldn’t charge him. And that money was gonna keep flowing, too. This was a necessary expense, you could say—a steal, even.
“Y-yes, true… But this is the standard you enjoy here? Then what about the more economical lodgings in the southwest?”
“Yeah, they don’t get individual baths in the rooms, but they do get toilets. There’s a low-cost public bath nearby, and some of the inns have their own baths for free.”
“I see… Yes, you did talk about making this town into a kind of health resort, didn’t you? Now it makes sense to me. So you offer this level of services to even the commoners, not just the nobility or well-funded areas? Yes, we certainly can expect some adventurers here!”
“Pretty easy living, huh?”
“Not just ‘pretty easy.’ This is the best you’d find all around the West. If adventurers can find a steady income in this town, we’re gonna have a lot of excitement pretty soon.”
“Hmm…”
“…?! Ah! Right! Yes, Sir Rimuru!”
Er, what? Mjöllmile was shouting at me again. I had no idea about what.
“That’s what the Dungeon is for! Well done, Sir Rimuru! I couldn’t be more in awe of you right now!”
“Oh. Um, yeah. Definitely.”
What’s he talking about?
“The adventurers can hunt the monsters in the labyrinth. I thought this was a bit of charity for adventurers short on work, now that the Forest of Jura is more stable…but heavens, you had thought that far ahead?”
Ch-charity?!
I mean, yeah, there aren’t as many wild monsters around Jura as there used to be, but…like, the Dungeon’s just a fun attraction, so…
“This can work. This can really work! We’re seeing more adventurers out of a job, what with monster counts dwindling and all. Perhaps some can use the Dungeon as their workplace. Plus, we’ll be selling healing potions and adventuring gear nearby, right? Picture this: What if this town isn’t just a tourist site or health spa, but someplace where they can permanently reside? With all these inns providing fantastic service, a coliseum attracting tourists, and a dungeon providing thrills and a potentially decent wage…”
Um…was that what we built the Dungeon for?
I did intend to offer money for whatever the adventurers earned in there, but that was kind of like offering buybacks on carnival prizes. But was Mjöllmile’s line of thinking worth hearing out?
“Wow, Mollie. You only just came here today, and you already worked it out?”
“Ah, of course, sir. If there’s money to be sniffed out, I’d never lose a single coin to you!”
“Heh-heh-heh… You’re incorrigible.”
“Ha-ha-ha! Ah, don’t be silly. It wouldn’t be possible without you!”
“But thinking and doing are different things, of course. I was hoping I could leave you to work out the rest of the plan…”
“Oh, would you? I’d be glad to help!”
I guess the plan was now to let adventurers “work” in the Dungeon, and Mjöllmile was kind enough to accept the job. He already had a ton on his plate, I knew. Talk about energetic.
But… Hmm. I didn’t think that far, but I totally overlooked the idea of adventurers living here. To me, the dungeon attraction was kind of a gamble—maybe some customers would make money off it, but the majority would leave with their wallets pretty thoroughly emptied. But have a permanent group of adventurers hunt monsters in there? There’s no stopping Mjöllmile’s imagination, huh? I love getting his insights.
Unlike forest creatures, there was no chance of overhunting and wrecking the ecosystem. Much better, really, to have the hunters cull the monsters’ numbers before they multiplied too much, then buy the materials they harvested from them. With Veldora around, there was no need to worry about where the magicules would come from—the monsters would be constantly replenished.
This actually might be a brilliant idea! It’d give adventurers money to go spend around the city and help fill Tempest’s coffers, which would allow us to provide more support to them. We could process the materials they hunted for us, and I suppose we could even export them to other countries. Magic crystals could be shipped off as is, although we wouldn’t export them all—we had our own uses for them.
Maybe this would be the tipping point that made the Free Guild build a post in town, too. We could give them exclusive rights to the dungeon business, so we weren’t in competition. And if they paid the adventurers directly, I thought, that would also open access to foreign capital for us—capital we could use to import goods from other nations. With imports cut off from Eurazania at the moment, I wasn’t sure the produce and grains we farmed would be enough to keep the adventurers full, so some imports might become necessary.
Besides, I wanted Tempest to become a trade hub; that was part of the idea from the start, and I needed to think of ways to move larger amounts
