Chapter 231 Unending Paperwork
Edited by: Kanaa-senpai
It’s been 3 days since I woke up.
I thought I’d finally found my true starting point as a human being, free from my inner doubts…
”Ugh, it’s just another day of staring at a mountain of paperwork…”
But despite my personal growth, my surroundings haven’t changed a bit. I’m still stuck in this daily routine of being overwhelmed by a massive amount of paperwork.
There’s a reason why my workload has suddenly increased, but I’ll explain it from the beginning, starting from the 3 days I was out of commission.
The fact that the monster horde that attacked the frontier settlement was defeated spread like wildfire throughout the empire, along with the massive amount of monster materials that flooded the market.
At first, no one believed the absurd story that the frontier settlement had repelled an army of over 500 monsters without a scratch. However, the large quantity of monster materials sent from the frontier settlement later proved that they had indeed defeated an enormous horde.
The next day, news arrived from the people who returned to the frontier settlement that the town’s buildings were still intact, and the story of the “frontier settlement’s impregnable defense against the monster horde” spread.
Once it was confirmed that the buildings were undamaged, the people who had abandoned the frontier settlement and fled returned. However, a problem arose here.
During the evacuation, the merchants had sold off the buildings’ deeds, but I lost consciousness before I could process all of them, leaving the transactions in limbo.
The merchants who still owned the unsold buildings requested that the transactions be nullified, but Lucena-san refused, saying that it wouldn’t be fair to those who had stayed behind and trusted the town. Still, that those who had fled the settlement for fear of risk would be allowed to come back with a blank face. So, she told them that if they wanted to continue doing business in the frontier settlement, they would have to repurchase the buildings they had sold.
However, since the transactions were still pending, the buildings couldn’t be resold, and Lucena-san, as the person in charge, couldn’t proceed with the transactions on her own. So, she contacted my father, and he took care of the frontier settlement’s paperwork in my place while I was out.
When I regained consciousness, most of the buildings in the settlement had already been sold, and the remaining few were bought at a price more than 5 times their original value after a fierce bidding war.
Thinking back to the stagnant situation in the settlement just a little while ago, I thought that even if the buildings were safe, many people would withdraw from the settlement’s business and leave. But this turn of events was completely unexpected for me.
The reason was the existence of people who missed the initial rush to enter the settlement.
Those who wanted to do business in the settlement thought that, due to the limited land, it would be difficult to build new buildings, and new entrants would find it hard to join.
However, with many people giving up their building rights due to the recent uproar, those who missed the initial entry timing thought they could make up for it and participated in the building auction.
And it wasn’t just those people who participated in the auction; others who had been observing the settlement’s defense capabilities with anxiety also decided to join, convinced by the settlement’s proven defense power. Moreover, there were people who wanted to enter the settlement for another reason.
They were after the rare materials obtained from monsters in the settlement, which were gathered from all over during the recent attack. Even monsters that didn’t originally inhabit the area around the settlement, and were extremely rare and hard to find, joined the attack.
Those monster materials were circulated in the market through the Spear of Shouhyou, but transporting the massive amount of materials by horse-drawn carriage was extremely inefficient, so many materials were sent to various locations via item boxes.
However, due to the size limitations of item boxes, the materials had to be divided into smaller sizes, which would decrease their value.
People who couldn’t tolerate the decrease in material value decided to set up shops in the settlement, buying the materials directly on the spot and processing them into products.
That’s how the settlement was flooded with people who had escaped and returned, those who had missed the initial entry, those who were anxious about the defense capabilities, and those after rare materials — 4 types of people who competed fiercely for building rights.
Newcomers, of course, need to file an application to start a business in the settlement. But even those who have returned also need to submit an application to resume their business, which had been put on hold.
However, the documents I had to process yesterday were already taken care of, and the ones piled up in front of me were a different matter altogether. They could be broadly categorized into 2 types. One type was applications for rebuilding or renovating buildings, which required buying the rights to the building from a different firm. Since it was a different company that built the original structure, it was a hassle to deal with, and many people wanted to renovate.
Next, there were many applications for “special businesses.” While basic store operations didn’t usually get rejected by the lord or others, there were cases where additional permits or licenses were required due to various reasons.
Now, let’s get back to the topic of defense. With the settlement’s defense capabilities proven, it wasn’t just a few individuals who felt relieved. Those who had been hesitant to invest in the settlement, fearing that their stores might be destroyed by monster attacks at any moment, were now more confident in doing business there. As a result, there were many requests to allow them to do so, with people saying things like, “I want to do this, so please give me permission.”
”I’ve got a lot to confirm after hearing Momoka’s story, but… sigh, it looks like I’ll be stuck in the office all week.”
As I let out a sigh, staring at the mountain of documents in front of me, the office door was knocked on.
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Edited by Kanaa-senpai.
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