Chapter 639

Countermeasures for Empty Return Loads
Because of Young Lady Kou’s rather forceful request, we’ve ended up handling magic tools from the Darshe Principality.
On top of that, we now need to create a research and development division, meaning we must start recruiting for it as well.
I’m having the Kiblinki Saltas assist as our company’s “recruitment officers,” but… the number of spies is unbelievable.
If they’re that desperate, why don’t they just buy a magic tool themselves and study it?
Not that Lord Sazaby and the others would make anything easy to analyze in the first place, of course.

Anyway, I’ll leave the research team in Alizée’s care for now and focus on solving the other big problem:
What do we load the carts with on the way back?

Even though we call it the Saltas Company, the loading points vary, and what we load changes depending on the location.
And because our partners are mainly villages in depopulated regions, they rarely have valuable goods that can function as useful trade items.
We buy animal pelts from them, but even those aren’t particularly high-quality.
It’s basically pure charity work.

So… how do we fill the carts on the return trip?

“Return cargo, is it…? It varies by season and region, but I suppose it will mostly be animal pelts. If processed properly, they’ll last several months even without final treatment. Other than that… there is nothing those villages produce that our trading company could handle.”

“‘Our trading company’? Does that mean other companies do have something?”

“Informal brokerage for ‘those types of people.’ In most cases, young women end up in brothels, and the men are sent to mines they can never escape from.”

That’s horrible!
And the reason no one stops it is because, according to the Trade Guild’s rules, recommending other types of business is allowed, and once a contract is signed, it’s considered a matter strictly between the contractor and the other company.
Everyone just pretends they don’t know.
It leaves a really bad taste.

“I understand why you’re angry, Lady Lily. In the Old Kingdom, that practice was illegal until a few decades ago. The one who nullified that law was the former king.”

He really never did anything good, did he?
For now, they’ve confirmed that no current laws touch on this issue.
However, I also can’t just march up to the king and demand legal reform.
They don’t want to create a precedent where a Platinum-ranked merchant pressures the king into changing commercial laws—that would be bad for the world overall.

So, what are we going to do?
It seems Alba and the others have a plan.
In exchange, they want a small-scale apartment complex in Vardmoi as an experimental facility.
That much is easy to arrange.

Now then… what are they planning?

What do you think about this chapter?