Chapter 79

"Oh my, this is... Well." Vanessa Vega turned to regard me warmly. "This is certainly far more than I was expecting on such short notice, or... really, at all. These are quarters fit for a real king."

I shrugged. "I fuck around on a scale you cannot fathom," I said, standing in the center of her personal penthouse apartment. "If you find yourself wanting something strange or interesting, you have my permission to ask me directly about it, in case it's enough to get my attention."

Vanessa Vega was obnoxiously hot, in a way that managed to bypass my burnt out libido's acclimation to all of the busty babes that seemed to be everywhere on this fucking planet. It wasn't just that she was built like Nicky, except noticeably shorter and curvier, it was also in the presentation. Her pale white hair, rather than hanging straight down or being tied back, had been carefully and expertly curled and teased to give it a magnificent amount of volume, drawing the eye towards a face that, while already quite pretty, made expert use of makeup to inflame the viewer's passion even further.

Her dress was cut from some sort of silk satin, which caught the light and shone like a mirror at the right angles, drawing the eye to the dress, and then to the figure it so lovingly, artfully hugged and framed, baring just enough skin to somehow be more scandalous than walking around naked. Around her neck, she wore a big, fancy choker of shining silver and big glittering gems, paired with a more understated necklace of silver chain and a single jeweled pendant that, naturally, hung just at the top edge of her cleavage.

When she was in motion, she didn't walk, but strutted, her legs tracing an arc with each step that was calculated to sway her hips and jiggle her ass in the most pleasing way. From the sides and front, one could see the gentle sway and bob of her hair, paired with the far less gentle sway, bob, and jiggle of her tits, whose movement made it clear that she was not wearing anything that could be considered a supporting garment, let alone anything so pedestrian as a bra.

She was, in short, more of an artfully-crafted representation of the ideal of a young beta exemplar princess than she was an ordinary person who simply happened to be built like that.

"Well, in that case... How much time do you have currently?" Vanessa asked.

"...Go on?" I prompted. I was mildly surprised that she hadn't yet done something obnoxious; Nicky had said she was insufferable in the way only aristocrats could be, but... well, maybe Vanessa was behaving herself differently because she was a guest in my home, and the rules of hospitality go both ways.

Whatever the case may be, though, I wasn't expecting to have to resist the urge to fuck Nicky's sister quite this hard.

"I'm sure Mother has ranted and raved about how the throne of Vega was stolen from her by her younger sister," Vanessa said dryly. "It is, quite frankly, the only thing she'll talk about, for any length of time. And while, being her direct heir, the idea of literally living like a king is an appealing prospect for me, I would still appreciate it if she were to, somehow, get over it. So, your grace... do you think she could be furnished with a hobby?"

"...I'll see what I can do," I said. "Although, depending on how stubborn she is, it may well be that the only practical way to shut her up is to declare war on Vega."

"Truly, your grace's indulgence knows no bounds," she said with the dry sarcasm of 'and we both know that's not happening, but nonetheless, thanks for any amount of trying you do.'

"Indeed," I said, in the tone of 'you do not yet know that I am the Red Prince and can in fact launch an army into the Kingdom of Vega and take its throne for myself, to distribute to whomsoever I see fit.' "Well, will you be needing anything else while I'm here?"

"I would like to know who to talk to regarding going out and about, and entertaining myself," Vanessa said.

"Ah, that," I said. "Well, as it so happens, right now, New Shanghelm is an overbuilt ghost town. Barely a hundred people live here. However, I am going to be addressing the population problem soon enough. So... Ask me again in a week or so, and in the meantime, I must regretfully inform you that you'll have to catch up on your reading."

"Fair enough, I suppose," Vanessa said, shrugging. "May I ask what you do intend to do about the population problem?"

"Well..."

"Did you hear? They're rebuilding Shanghelm, and they'll take you there and give you a year's rent on an apartment for only ten silver!"

"Hell's bells, I'm paying five silver every month for my apartment! They must be desperate!"

"So it turns out," Rebecca Dorn said casually, as we watched people line up to buy tickets for the bus to New Shanghelm through a crystal ball, "that, due to the laws of Dorn, it is illegal to impede traffic on the roads of Dorn. The only exception is that cities are allowed, but not required, to ban carts, horses, and other such contrivances during daylight hours."

"Meaning, of course, that offering people cheap transportation to New Shanghelm is perfectly legal for me to do, and the other aristocrats I'm poaching peasants from don't have much recourse besides trying to make staying a more appealing option," I said.

"Mhm," Rebecca said, nodding. "Of course, it certainly helps that you have the official backing of the Crown, in both people and credibility."

"Indeed," I said. I simply did not have enough people to drive all those goddamn buses, and as it turned out, Rebecca did, in fact, have a standing army of soldiers who could be ordered to train in the operation of a motor vehicle, and then to, well, operate a motor vehicle. As far as credibility went, people had to actually believe that moving to the Glass Desert was a good idea, and for that... well, I needed a Royal Guarantee that each and every ticket sold was, in fact, a two way ticket, which could be redeemed at any time, even if the Glass Desert Resettlement Project went under, because the guarantee was backed by the King, whose fortunes were not completely tied up in the Glass Desert; if New Shanghelm collapsed, then Rebecca would still have soldiers capable of driving buses back from New Shanghelm to anywhere else in Dorn.

(One of the other things I was here in Dornhelm to do, aside from trying to drum up interest in immigration, was to lay claim to Dornhelm's collection of Dungeon Gates. I was not the first Dungeon Master that the Kingdom of Dorn had ever seen, but I most certainly was the second. The first Dungeon Master had been King Ashley Dorn, the fifth King of Dorn and the longest-lived monarch the kingdom had ever had; despite the resources poured into her, from the way she was carried up to Level 13 Wizard by top-level knights of the realm on her 18th birthday, and given four entire Class Slot Unlock items from the treasury, she still only managed, with all of the delvers in the kingdom, to reach Level 11 before croaking. She had, in the process, built a ton of Dungeon Gates in Dornhelm to support a proper Delver's Guild pipeline, which is why more than half the Dungeon Gates on the continent were in Dornhelm (and, thankfully, they were the more-used half of the Dungeon Gates), but the consensus of the royal family, afterwards, was that this had been an expensive endeavor that didn't get them what they wanted, and wasn't worth repeating until the population was another few orders of magnitude larger.)

(I had not received that memo, however, and so here I was, the first Dungeon Master that Dorn's had in like three hundred years. In the few hours since I marked the city's three Level 13 Dungeon Gates, that the city had in fact been built around, I had gotten enough XP from Delvers coming and going from those that I was now Level 5, and would likely be Level 10 by the end of the year. Of course, then leveling up would progress at an absolute crawl, but I'd live for a thousand years, and could afford to be patient.)

"I do have to say this, though," I continued, frowning. "I really, really want to replace the buses with a higher-capacity railroad network, but... well, that's going to get into questions of who has the authority to build new transportation infrastructure in Dorn. A railroad that connects every city and town is a railroad that's going to eat up some land around every city and town, both from the rails themselves, and from needing to build stations. There is the option of doing underground rail, but that still needs land for the stations, and... well, I'll admit my grounding in Dornish law isn't the greatest, and it may well be the case that property rights go down all the way to hell."

"It also gets into questions of funding such an endeavor," Rebecca pointed out. "Building new roads isn't free, after all."

"...Tell you what," I began, slowly. "If you can get me the right to build a railroad from New Shanghelm all the way up the coast to the northeast corner of Dorn, then I will handle the challenge of actually building it, and all of the costs of labor and material."

"A kingdom-scale transportation network would have to be the purview of the Crown," Rebecca said evenly. "If you just want to build a railroad, and you're fine with me actually controlling it, then I'll see what I can do. If you were hoping for a pork-barrel to finance your projects, though, I'm afraid you're out of luck."

"I'm fine with that, on one condition," I said. "Passengers ride for free, and the money is made by selling drinks and snacks, or by hauling freight, with passenger rail always taking priority over freight."

"Hrm..." Rebecca tapped her chin thoughtfully. "...Well. I get more personal taxpayers from people moving into Dornhelm for economic opportunity, so I suppose I also benefit from the free movement of Dornish citizens. Alright, it's a deal."

"Kinda wish we'd struck this deal before I built a fleet of buses and asked you for soldiers to drive them," I said. "This would be so much less of a pain in the ass if people could take a train to New Shanghelm."

"If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride."

"...That's an excellent name for a social program."

"So... explain this 'Beggar's Ride' program to me," Nicky said.

"Oh, that's easy," Ariel said. Apparently, she also had a deep interest in civic administration, and was an excellent work partner for figuring out how to get all this bullshit working properly. "So, market economies have advantages and disadvantages. The major advantage is that, in a properly-functioning market economy, the population at large pretty much takes care of itself. If people want nice furniture, then carpenters are gonna step up to provide that nice furniture, because that gets them money that they can in turn spend on the nice things that they want and don't personally produce."

"The major disadvantage, of course, is that in a market economy without social safety nets, anyone who doesn't make enough money lives in misery and squalor, and likely dies of illnesses we could've treated and simply didn't, because there wasn't a profit in it," I said.

"Hence why we started with a social safety net," Ariel said. "All throughout New Shanghelm, we've put vending machines that will dispense ration packs fit to feed someone for a whole day, simple robes, pairs of sandals, and basic health potions. Even someone who doesn't speak a word of Dornish, let alone read it, can use these vending machines, thanks to the pictures on the buttons. But, that being said, once we've ensured that it is as difficult as possible for someone to starve to death in the streets, inviting in a market economy to fill less essential demand is perfectly fine with us."

"Which does, however, bring us to a slight problem," I said. "For people to buy things in a market economy, they need to have money- which the poor and desperate we are enticing to come to New Shanghelm don't have much of- and there also needs to be someone who's selling shit. Which brings us to the Beggar's Ride program: every single citizen of New Shanghelm, no exceptions, gets ten silver a month to spend however they want. That right there solves the problem of nobody having any money, but there's the other problem that needs solving: there needs to be someone selling shit that people want to buy. So... in that vein, I've tasked the Purpleheart Collective, as well as some Dornish soldiers, with running 'starter' businesses, that are, uh... honestly, mostly going to be restaurants, street food stalls, and bakeries, just to get the ball rolling, because everyone's going to want food that's better than iron rations."

"Of course, to help kickstart the development of production, we'll be opening a number of public workshops where people can come and learn some craft or another, and decide that they want to make some extra money by making furniture," Ariel added. "The end result of this virtuous cycle of people buying and selling and making luxury goods is that, in the end, more luxury goods end up being made, and end up in the hands of more people."

Nicky nodded, slowly. "Alright, I can see the logic in that. I suppose that this plan can also be explained to the citizens, so they can more effectively play along with it."

I nodded.

"Now, you wanted to discuss the topic of my sister?"

"Ah, right, that. Yes, I have an idea."