Inheritor Of Magic: The Magi King

Chapter 1003: 1003 Gormana’s Gardens

Wolfe considered how to best deal with their request. Garden Charms required a bit more upkeep than a power plant, as optimally you wanted to tweak them every growing season for the crops that you were planting.

Proper crop rotation lessened the burden on the spell, and produced the best results, but Wolfe didn’t know much about it beyond the name of the technique.

“I can have the witches set it up for you, but you will need to send Fae around once a year to ensure that the spell is still properly calibrated for optimal growth. Well, either that or follow their crop rotation recommendations exactly so that everything stays in balance.

The charms are affordable at the lower ranks, and you’re trying to grow on previously fertile fields, not on barren sand and clay, so it should be possible to do while I travel to do the power plants.

How many people are you needing to feed? I will have to call in the witches for this, and it helps to have all the information ready for them.”

The Finance Minister nodded. “Anything from a few farms around the capital to subsistence for ten million, depending on the price. The goal is to make food more affordable by taking the strain off the farms, who can’t keep up.

Of course, a large part of that has been the lack of fuel, which we are slowly solving with the help of the witches in Morgana Coven, growing oil crops and refining them for us. It’s just too expensive and logistically impossible to change every tractor and piece of equipment in the nation to stop using it, but they can make it from renewable fuels.”

Wolfe nodded. “So, you need more yield per acre, so you get more food for the amount of fuel you have to burn. Alright, I think that we can likely help you on both counts. Many of the Morgana Coven villages are linked by an underground highway, and the Fortress City is rebuilding their port. If you can get a tanker constructed, then we can work out the infrastructure to get oil to it.

Not a supertanker, mind you. We don’t produce that much. But they can still get you more than is easily shipped by truck or helicopter, as I know you did for a while.”

The Finance Minister laughed at the memory. Those were dark days for them, flying in fuel to keep essential government services open. Now, the Gormana Farmers Cooperative had an agreement to prepurchase huge amounts of fuel from the Morgana Witches, and it was all down to logistics.

“So, you can help us with garden charms and our fuel supply issues? I take it that means you’ve been working with the Morgana Witches as well?” The Finance Minister asked, while doing his best to hide his excitement.

“Not only them, many of the villages in Sylvan Coven territory are expanding their fields for next spring, and they might be interested in helping with the shortage. It affects the entire eastern coast of the continent, after all, and a hundred million or more people.

Sylvan City already has a deep water port functional, and we have the technology to send large amounts of crops for processing. Do you have refineries in your nation?” Karl asked.

The Minister nodded. “To refine anything that we could conceivably get oil from. I don’t think that you fully understand the level of desperation that the shortage has driven us to, and that was much of what cause the food shortage as well.

The farmers grew oil crops, instead of food crops, so that they would have the oil to harvest the food, but we didn’t have enough land to do both, and now we need the garden charms to be able to do one or the other.”

Khalifa nodded to herself. This man was definitely bad at negotiation. But Wolfe wasn’t interested in making him sweat, as the Magi Saint wanted him as an ally.

“Would we be able to claim priority on the Sylvan fuel supplies as well? We will pay extra.” He asked hopefully.

“That seems unlikely. Ofingenia and Funho have both already had emissaries in Sylvan City to plead their case for fuel and food. Mostly food, though. Their plan was a bit different, they wanted to get the food directly from the Sylvan Coven, as their civil wars have caused heavy damage to their farmlands.

I don’t know what they offered in return, but there is a chance that the Sylvan City leadership has already made a deal with them to supply their people as well.” Wolfe explained.

The Finance Minister sighed. He had forgotten that the others might just sail around them now that they could go into the deep ocean.

Wolfe looked back at Risa, who nodded, while her two followers for the morning laughed quietly. The way that they just knew what the other needed was hilarious to them, but they didn’t realize that Risa could hear not only the conversation in the room, but mental directions from Wolfe, who had asked her to open the door and let Cassie’s group in.

“Finance Minister, meet Cassie Noxus. Cassie, the Finance Minister is wondering about the feasibility of adding a large number of Garden Charms to the farms of Gormana, to help reduce their food prices.” Wolfe explained.

Cassie looked as if she were considering it. “Well, if I cast them at Rank One over entire sections of land, then crop outputs would improve by fifty percent, and it would help regulate the weather patterns in the area to produce more reliable rainfalls.

That might be an affordable and sensible option for a government initiative.”

The Finance Minister’s eyes went blank for a few seconds as he mentally calculated whether that would be enough.

“How large of an area do you mean? Sections as in 660 acres, or possibly entire counties, fifty kilometres to a side.”

Cassie smiled. “Now, that’s a matter of finance, isn’t it? I am capable of either, and I’m certain that you can work out a deal with Saint Noxus for the annual upkeep of the garden charms.”

The Finance Minister cussed under his breath. First it was a percentage of all the power sold, now it was an annual fee based on acreage of cropland, scaling with the power of the charm cast.

If the leadership had been less proud and begged the Demons who were working as the Guardians of Gormana to come here in his place, they might have managed to negotiate a better deal.

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