'Til Kingdom Comes - The Banished Prince Vol 3: The Prophecy

Maricel

"Marcel, honey, could you come and validate the orders of these items that are being needed in this town by Her Majesty for me, please?"

"I just want to make sure I got the list of ingredients right along with the quantity required."

"Also please take a look at the corresponding letter here for Burgh Island. It would be sent to Barmston and then make its way to London before it reaches South Devon, am I right?"

"I'm not sure if it's alright to mention the prices for the grown dwarf green and yellow coconut trees, the young fruits, matured fruits as well as those old, brown and withered one."

"The prices you offer are according to the currency rate outside of this town right? So the coins inside this pouch would be used to pay for the coconut trees and its fruits along with the labour of shipping it back to this town, is that right?"

Maricel was calling out from one of the bedrooms on the second floor since we had converted it to a study room instead.

I was resting in the living room and having some tea when my dear wife had been calling for me and rattling all the things that were required to do.

The other bedrooms upstairs were left bare as we had moved the two beds, armoire, wooden chest et cetera back to the furniture shop so it would be used for other homes for the time being.

Since the storks had not been visiting and keeping tabs with us if we wanted to have a baby or not, we kept the current house to its bare minimum.

Besides, the master bedroom on the ground floor would suit just nice for the both of us and the dainty little kitchenette would be good to serve light meals as both of us does not want to start burning down the house with our inexperiences in the kitchen. Hahaha...!

I placed the teacup down at the side table and bounded upstairs where Maricel was still dressed in her nightie and would only wear proper clothes if we wanted to be out to dine at the Greasy Spoon.

"Yes, my dear lovely wife, the one that still hadn't washed after she wakes up and starts burrowing her face into the books early this morning. Hahahaha... What can I do to be of your assistance?" I greeted Maricel as I gave her a peck on her cheeks and held her tenderly from behind.

"Look at yourself too, you big dummy. Luckily we do not have any visitors here and you are still in your knickers with the dangling dong. HAH... We two are like peas in a pod. We don't look alike but we sure do work ourselves to have the best of revenue for our own wealth. Hahaha."

What Maricel had mentioned is true. We work for our future and also to build our own wealth.

I had rejected a fixed salary from Our Majesty before and decided to have my own set of flexible income as I visit the rest of those towns I used to service before with the rest of my own fleet of merchants.

With a flexible income, I would get fluctuated income if I'm lazy and if I'm super hardworking. At the moment, I could say that we are comfortable enough to live as nobles but due to the nature of our work, we had totally dismissed our hereditary peerage.

After taking a look at the orders for the olive oil, salt of Hartshorn and the corresponding letter to Burgh Island, I find that there's nothing wrong with it. The figures that need to be ordered was accurate and all seems to be in order, right down to the coins that we had used for the purchases.

As usual, once the purchases had been made, an official receipt would be given to Our Majesty to make the settlements.

Since I do have my own treasury of gold coins, it would be better utilise my own first and then produce the receipts to claim afterwards.

Our Majesty is not the kind of person who would be into this little gritty nitty matters and the coins would be the least of worry in his mind, after all.

"All seems to be in order, my dear little honey bunny. You can send them out now. I believe the midday would be pretty soon for the delivery guys to head to Corral. Just delegate the task to them. They all could be trusted with letters and coins as well."

I concluded to Maricel as we called to our helper (since we do not wish to dirty the kitchen and burn the house down due to our cooking experiments) that had been recently employed to keep the house spick and span, we handed the correspondences to our helper and specifically told her that some of the correspondences would go to Corral while the other would be towards Barmston.

At least we had our own little helper to perform such menial tasks so we could concentrate on other major things in mind, such as how to generate more income for the town and ourselves.

We had a large-scaled map that we had secured on the wall of our study. On the map, we had those little markers to represent all those towns that had been serviced by this town alone that formed the first conglomerate deal.

It was of a single coloured marker and a piece of paper was stuck to the wall to indicate all the town's names. Next would be the second and third conglomerate deal that we had with the 15 cities and their immediate satellite towns that had been serviced by us.

The first 10 cities assured by Richard Rich had been a part of the conglomerate deal for a year which would end by this December. Another 5 cities by one of Richard Rich's subordinates was marked with a different coloured marker, would also end in December too since it was on a 6 months conglomerate deal.

These two deals were not based in the auto-renewal system and would only be renewed through a formal contract.

Once these 15 cities had ended their conglomerate's deals, the demand for the products would decline and it would also bring about the downfall of the economy of the town.

So in order to renew or enhance these deals once again, more products would need to be produced and introduced so the remaining products would follow suit.

"You know what, Marcel, we need to ensure these 15 cities and numerous satellite towns would be able to continue their support to us."

"If not, we won't have enough for ourselves and to the town as well. As middlemen in business, we do reap a higher profit margin with these cities and towns."

Marcel pondered a bit and hoped for the samples to be made first for the approval and once the samples had been approved the construction for the factories would commence and the cities concerned would then be introduced with more wonderful health and beauty products from our town.

This would further continue their conglomerates deal from the 6 months one to a year. At least there would be a continuity of income tricking into the treasury as well to their own personal wealth.

"I think Our Majesty do have some things up their sleeves and would be announcing their plans once the first few samples were being produced."

"I am sure that even the food products such as the peanut butter and fruit jams, with the exclusion for the king of spreads, would hit a record time high the moment the products rolled out from this town."

Maricel looked at the map on the wall, even though there are lots of cities and towns that are being unmarked at the moment since the map is not updated, she hoped that the Adventurers would be able to bring in some good updates.

Once unmarked cities and towns had been annotated on the large-scaled map, it would be high time for them to launch a massive advertising and marketing campaign that would be able to boost the overall sales.

That's what Maricel had on the mind as the pivotal influence point would be our town and not other cities like London et cetera.

If our town is formidable enough to supply to the demands of such cities, she is sure that this town would be the most influential town in the lands...!

"What about we make use of the Adventurers to go round and make some advertisements for us. But wait... Aren't they actually moving along to all the 8 navigational directions as well for their current tasks?"

.

"If we discuss with the Adventurers Guild to issue a task with a certain reward system, would they be able to send this information to those towns not under our influence?"

"It might be a swell idea, Maricel... How about this, you think of the plan, while I talk to Our Majesty later on after the wrestling match tonight and then we can haul in those parties involved and see what we could come up with in the future."

"Besides, these people outside the town are 90% illiterate so getting someone to print some informational pamphlets for them to read would be near impossible."

"Even most nobles out there do not know how to read much less write...! My goodness, I could feel the pressure coming to my head right now... Here it's this head up here not the head down there...! "

I called out to Maricel in alarm who happened to reach out and massage the head of my dong due to the immense pressure of thinking too much early in the morning.

Maricel released her hands when she heard me call out in alarm and she asked, "The problem lies with the coins. How much do you think it would be sufficient for the Adventurers to help us promote the products of our town to the other towns and cities?"

I cleared my throat and straightened my knickers that were a bit crumpled and physically the head seemed to swell a bit down there. "It's one star to two-star rating tasks. I guess 5 silver coins per person would be the basic."

"They would be travelling light so what they need to do is to find the town's messenger to holler out and inform the residents. That would incur coins as well for the town's messenger to do his job."

"There are 8 navigational points, so it's 8 parties with 4 members each. That would be 32 members altogether."

"So we would be paying 5 silver per person once they had completed their task, which I think would be overlapping with the current tasks that others were doing right now."

"So a total investment of 160 silver coins need to be deposited to the Adventurers Guild. That's equivalent to 3 gold and 10 silvers over here based on the currency system here."

"Then... Hmm, let's say, they would be targeting the bigger towns, I mean those prosperous ones, then a minimum of 5 towns would be enough."

"A total of 40 new towns would be part of the new conglomerates, and by then, we would also need to have the contact details of the mayors or dukes and duchess who controls those towns."

"On top of that, we also need to arrange more horses and wagons if they agree the towns would be serviced by us."

"A dray horse would cost 10 silvers. The wagons could be produced over here. Then we would also have to consider the delivery guys since 2 people would be part of the delivering team."

"Since they would make up the structure of this towns economic structure, they would be paid 8 silvers a month."

"So a monthly payout of 640 silvers would be paid to the treasury if you wished to handle the income of the new town by us alone."

"If not, we would just concentrate on letting our town's management to handle the logistics, manpower and salary then."

"It is just a matter of investing 15 to 20 gold coins but we would be getting an income of at least 150 gold coins in return per town if we are lucky...! "

I finally wiped the spittle that had formed at the sides of my mouth for speaking too much and luckily Maricel is a smart girl and she had written down all the key notes that I hand mentioned into her own personal journal. At least I don't have to repeat what I said.

"Well done...! Let's do it...!" Maricel stood up and punched the air with her raised fist. Her ample bosom jiggled slightly before me and I wished I would be able to grab and suckle on those perky tips just a little bit to get the morning boost. Hahaha.

"Do what? The whole works would fall on our shoulders instead?" I inquired because my eyes were transfixed to the perky tips that were peeking underneath the loose and thin nightgown.

"Of course, Marcel... We are going to go all out in this project." She replied as I can't control myself anymore and I pulled her close to me and bit sensually on her neck before my tongue and lips travelled down the neckline and landed to you know where and you know what I would be doing by then. Hahaha.

It was a mid-morning romp and the house was filled with raucous laughter before it died down and ended with screams of ecstasy as I took my dong for a trip. Hahaha.