AK - The Alchemy Kingdom

Chapter 148: Ministry of Governance

Omero enjoyed a sumptuous meal while hearing the reports from the department Heads. Recently, carrying meetings over a meal in one of the restaurants had become common amongst the Ministers. What better way to deal with a boring meeting than enjoying a good meal?

The Ministry of Governance had three departments working under it, responsible for transportation, regulation, and communication. The regulation department handled permits for businesses and workers to operate in specific areas, like hunting or opening a restaurant. The communication department dealt with communication amongst the departments and long-distance communication, the CC was under this department. Finally, the transportation department was responsible for establishing the trade lines and transporting goods between AK territories.

The Head of the regulation department presented the same old and annoying problems, hunters complaining from the test and asking to flexibilize the permit, business owners pleading to open their shop back, or even some very rare cases of tax evasion. Omero almost interrupted the man and jumped straight to discussing solutions since everybody already knew those problems. The man even repeated some complaints, word by word.

In the end, they could only increase the numbers in the department, to both keep a strict supervision over the businesses and educate people on the importance of the regulations. After all, the disrespect for regulations could easily spread, a couple of offenders would shortly become dozens.

The Minister savored a fresh piece of water meat, slowly appreciating its acidic taste, while the Head of transportation made his report.

So, the cost of transportation is our biggest challenge to increase the number of trips. Other than draining our resources, it also increases the value of imported goods

By imported goods, the Head was referring to the resources that came from AP and the crystal mine. Currently, AK was sending two caravans between the Capital and the Tunnel every month. Since the trip took roughly three weeks and the trading team was given one week to rest, the cargo would arrive monthly on both points. This speed of transportation was only possible because of the newly invented detoxifying potion created by the Ministry of Health.

The logistics and cost of maintaining the operations are very high, even so, the ores, crystals and materials gathered by the Adventurers in AP, are worth it. For the transportation itself, just a handful of people was enough, but the escorting and security team raised the cost by several multiples.

The security team was formed by three agents, one operator, and one health keeper, while the escorting was done by a shadow, who would bait the MQ beasts out of the way. Fortunately, for now, the Ministry of Defense agreed to cover the costs of the shadow escort because the shadows were still in training and needed the experience.

The first attempt to replace the shadows was the energy pulse, which was invented to simulate a stronger beast and scare the beasts away. However, for the energy pulse to be effective against MQ beasts they had to use a HQ energy crystal, which made the tool too expensive, so they continued looking for other solutions.

Omero asked Oliver, who had been invited to represent the Alchemy Department, to share his thoughts about the problem. The Alchemist cleared his throat before adding:

Transporting goods for more than 500 kilometers into a forest densely populated by beasts without high costs, isnt realistic However, the Alchemists have been discussing how to improve the movement between the city and the Tunnel. The Path is obviously our beast choice, but expanding it through this distance would require at least 20 MQ bubble crystals. Unless we improve our techniques, but we cant count on unpredictable advances Anyway, hunting the beasts isnt a good option either since we need them to keep our enemies from reaching here.

The upper management of the Ministry of Governance couldnt help but feel awkward by Olivers way of pointing a solution. Was he trying to say he didnt have a solution or just pointing out the problems to highlight his solution? In truth, he was doing neither. The methodology used, and largely spread, in the Alchemy Ministry was to consider everything and always build up from the basics. He continued:

So, we discussed other options to smooth the problem until we can build the Path, while also contributing to its steady construction. Our best idea, for now, is to construct functional bases for the future Path and use those to secure the transportation. From here to the Tunnel, we would need roughly 20 posts, so we could start building a post halfway, then another one midway to the latter post, and so on, always reducing the distance between posts. Of course, just building a post doesnt make a difference, and we cant station security there, or the cost would get even higher. So, we need to use these posts to secure the region without using people...

Everyone on the table had stopped eating and was unknowingly focused on Oliver waiting to hear the solution.

We dont have enough bubble crystals to secure the entire Path, but we have a couple of crystals waiting around Since we dont have enough for everything, we just need to use them in specific parts when theyre needed. After the posts are constructed, we could share the effect amongst them, but only activate it when needed. Instead of having the entire Path secured, we would activate a sector when there's a beast close to it. Of course, it would take some time to build the posts and connect them, but its much easier than extending the Path.

Since they didnt look uninterested in the technical details, Oliver decided to explain it better.

The challenge of extending our current Path, is transmitting the magic energy through the cables. Only a handful of Alchemists are strong enough to draw a line that can transmit this much energy. However, if were only talking about transmitting the protection barrier effect of the bubble crystal, the difficulty drops drastically. In this case, the posts would need their own power supply, three or five MQ crystals would do, but thats doable. Later, we could even install stand-alone locators to track the beasts along the away and avoid the need for an operator in the transportation team

After Oliver finished, they started to discuss the specifics to implement the idea. Although the costs for constructing the posts wouldnt be low, in the long run, it was worth the investment. Even more when they had the potential of replacing the operator to save on transportation cost. However, they still looked for ways of financing the project or making it more affordable.

Like when they had to update the communication system, the cost of exchanging all the communicators was too high, so they had to find ways of financing it. The solution actually came from a request sent to the Ministry by the Hunters Inc., they were asking to use the communication system during their hunts for tactical cooperation.

At that time, one of the secretaries suggested letting them use the communications on specific times in exchange for crystals. Omero invited Karl to discuss this, and found out that installing an extra pole attractor exclusively for their uses wouldn't be that difficult. Before, they had to save on metal ores, which was used to craft the poles, but after the mining operation found some ore deposits they could afford to spend a little more. The only requirement was that the private users would need capable operators on both ends to relay and interpret the messages.

What if we encourage the hunters to use the semi-Path to go to their expeditions and charge a fee for it? We could even offer a service of transportation to help them deal with their loot

The idea was actually very good. If they could share this financial burden, the construction would run much more smoothly. With that solved, they moved on to the communication problems. Currently, the biggest challenge of the department was having to place one operator on both ends of every communication. Although being able to maintain almost real time communications over long distances was already amazing, they couldnt stagnate.

Unfortunately, Oliver didnt have a feasible solution for the problem. Their last update already improved their communication by leaps and bounds, so they could afford to take more time to come up with the next improvement. In fact, implementing the key board on their communicators took almost a year since the idea was first proposed.

However, not all solutions had to come from Alchemy. One interesting and possible way of dealing with the challenge was training people to use the communicator by themselves. Of course, this would take quite some time, after all, besides training them to use the keys, they also needed to teach them how to read and write. But if the operators could learn, why couldnt the others?

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