The Rise of the Black Plain

After discovering the high-level resources coming from the Black Plain and the approval of sending troops to the Brown Kingdom by the Counter-Revolutionary Statute, the regional states had not stood idly by without imposing sanctions on Minos' territory.

With all the information about this area and Minos' regional enemy status, five of the six royal families had forbidden their vassals from doing business with the Black Plain.

With that, as much as Minos had trade agreements with families of the Cromwell Kingdom and the Kingdom of the Waves, these sanctions had made it very difficult to import resources through those families.

With the sanctions, the royal families watched the departure of ships and wagons from their major cities, from the sale of strategic resources, those needed to produce pills, arrays, and weapons.

In addition, the leading regional banks were monitoring the status of the accounts of the prominent noble families and the exchange of spiritual crystals of different qualities.

With this, the exchange of resources, crystals, etc., between the Black Plain and its partners had been considerably hampered in this period.

Consequently, professionals such as blacksmiths, array masters, alchemists could soon be facing price increases in the products necessary for their professions!

And suppose this was to be passed on to consumers, as it usually happened. In that case, the results could be pretty damaging for Dry City.

Anyway, hearing Dillian's comment, Abby nodded and said. "Well, that's frankly worrying."

"But for now, we still have resources that were purchased by the local government months ago. So, the prices can be maintained for a while longer."

"Yes, but what will we do after that? Our reserve of items will not support more than two months. After that, we will have to decrease the supply of resources to local professionals..." Dillian said.

Hearing this, Minos sighed deeply because of this problem caused by the economic pressure of the regional states against them. "Well, we will try to buy as many resources through Stone Island as possible."

"Even if they are suffering from the sanctions as well, I believe that with this, we will get the minimum to ensure that the local prices of artifacts are maintained."

"As for the medicines needed in the making of the pills, we will try to work with whatever we can get through the Cohen and Stokes families."

"In any case, we should start limiting the production of certain pills and other items produced by specialists from the spiritual professions." He suggested, looking at Joey and Dillian.

"We can decrease the production of recovery pill to population and temporarily lower the prices of medical treatments."

"At the same time, we need to be more selective about the resources collected."

"All right, young master." The two men said simultaneously.

Minos then continued. "On the other hand, this trade war, while annoying, we can't do anything about it for the moment."

The trade war he referred to concerned the lowering of the cost of food products sold on Stone Island by outside organizations in that state.

Unfortunately, Stone Island never produced enough food to suppress its own demand. But, on the other hand, Black Plain was also far from the point where it could do the same.

Consequently, Stone Island continued to import this kind of resource from other states.

And because of this, food prices on that island depended on families that were enemies of Minos, as in the case of the three noble houses in the Farmland region.

Despite the sanctions against that state, it was still managing to obtain food resources since those measures by the regional families targeted other areas, those with higher aggregate values.

Because of this, the importation of resources by that state had continued.

But not only this, the price per kilogram of various foods in that state had strangely decreased!

That seemed to make no sense, considering that such a state was going against regional interests and should suffer from sanctions that would hinder the economic life of its citizens.

However, even though those regional organizations had come to a disagreement with House Stone, they knew that the enemy to be fought was Minos.

If he fell, they could naturally deal with the Stones later.

And so, the agricultural families had lowered the prices of their products to the people on that island to increase competition to the products sold by the Black Plain.

Previously the prices of items from Minos had the exact cost as those sold by families from the Farmland region. Consequently, when someone went to buy food for their family, they preferred those more cost-effective foods.

At that time, these were the items coming from the Black Plain, which had large amounts of energy.

But by lowering their food prices considerably, the enemy families of Minos had decreased the demand for the products of the Black Plain!

That was the point of this action that at first seemed illogical.

Ordinary citizens wanted to become stronger, but buying energy-rich food was not always possible. On the other hand, the effects of these foods became less noticeable, as cultivation required more and more energy over the levels.

As they were faced with resources of lesser quality but for values well below those of good quality, many people had decreased their consumption of the resources from the Black Plain.

And since the crystals that empowered the Black Plain Army came from exporting these foods, a decrease in demand would naturally hurt Minos.

That's what they wanted!

To stop the steady advance of Minos' forces, to diminish the financial power of these regional enemies until the Counter-Revolutionary Statute troops arrived on the Black Plain to resolve the rebellion.

Anyway, this had already had repercussions on the local economy, something that had diminished the financial power of the local government.

As such, Minos was concerned about this.

Unfortunately, there was not much he could do about it other than winning the war, of course...

"Hmm, that's truly a shame," Abby commented. "We can only count on the actions of the Nash family to make us face a less complicated situation in that state."

"I agree with Abby." Minos nodded and said as he looked at his girl. "Let's ask Elen to increase the number of Nash family posts around that state."

"That won't make the target audience of the enemy action start buying more of our resources, but it might reach a larger portion of the Stone Island population."

"Maybe that would at least lessen our problems."

Hearing these things, Dillian agreed to do so, leaving a mental note on this subject for him to talk to Mia later.

After that, a few minutes passed, and the five individuals in that office continued to talk about the army and the Black Plain's matters.

And so, it was not long before they got to the last subject of that meeting, something that involved some of the army allies.

"Abby, how are your parents? And the other elders of the Miller family?" Minos asked as he looked into his girlfriend's eyes.

"My mother is still striving to reach level 52, but my father got a breakthrough recently, having reached level 56." She said as she had a proud smile on her face.

"Level 56, huh?" Minos smiled upon hearing that.

Recently he was constantly traveling and fighting around the Black Plain. Because of this, and because his father-in-law also fought around this territory, young Stuart did not have this information beforehand.

"As for the other eight elders who were in Dry City recently, only three of them were able to advance since they arrived here."

"I see..."

"Well, your family was lucky that we were in the middle of the war of independence, and they were able to send so many of their members here."

"Otherwise, my agreement with them wouldn't have brought so many of them here in such a short time..."

"Anyway, considering that, let's not talk about fulfilling that one-year clause that these members had to stay here in Dry City."

"The opposite of that, let us deal only with matters concerning the exchange of personnel by that family of the Cromwell Kingdom."

"Does the young master want to ask for something specific for that family?" Joey asked about that, as he understood what Minos was asking.

...