The next eight stops were more of the same. That was, in it's own right, impressive. The towering trees just seem to go on forever. I shouldn't have been surprised based on how things were described that this was the case. We'd make one stop in the morning, and usually hit a second one in the afternoon. The tenth stop in total was the first change we experienced. This city translated to 'River's End' and was the first city here that wasn't built only on the trees. A very large river meets the inland sea here, forming a delta where sediment builds up. While part of that delta is covered in trees, there are large areas that have regular buildings built.

The trees are still heavily built upon as well, making this a fairly large city, probably close to Ostark in population, though my estimate might be skewed because of the odd constructions. River's End has quite a few different races scattered about as well. From the ship I could tell it had humans, dwarves, elves, and dark elves all working in the same places.

Unlike all the other cities I've seen though, it doesn't seem to have much industry of it's own. The main channel from the river has a fort built on one side of it, protecting the inland waters. The city seems like a trade hub more than anything else. If I had to wager, I'd say this is probably one of the few places were a proper port can be built on the elven continent, and the river is more navigable than the gnarled forest floor, so it is probably quite vital to their flow of goods.

We gave our concerns about navigating the waters in our ship as an excuse for why we couldn't make it into the river to their port, and they bought it. Instead, of us having to use rowboats, however, they brought out small barges with goods that we transferred up onto our ship. Thankfully, that meant it only took us 2 days to get loaded up at this location. River's End was, unlike the other sites so far, actually a decent provider of goods, while I'm not the one in charge of the cargo manifest, I'd guess we loaded a few hundred tons of goods.

After River's End, we went back to smaller stops for another 11 locations. Each one was more of the same, massive trees and roots sprawling everywhere. There was, however, at least one new visual feature I noticed along the way. A singular downed tree that had fallen partially into the sea. Based on the way it looked, it had probably been dead for many years. One of the bulbs was partially open, revealing that they seem to be hollow. I doubt that it happened to rot in such a way as to just happen to be a nicely formed bowl shape, but it could be possible if the space was filled with a much softer material. In any account, those bulbs on the trees are probably some kind of specialized organ or space.

That jogged my memory about how redwood trees are pretty close to the maximum biological cap in height for trees back on earth. Something about the amount of water pressure that the volume of water exerts internally being an issue. Perhaps these bulbs act as a water reservoir and pressure reset to allow the tree to overcome that problem.

In any case, having seen so much of their coast, and realizing just how different this continent is, I think I understand a bit better why the elves seem so detached from the other races. They practically come from a different world. They live these very long lives surrounded by difficult terrain high up in the trees. Of course their culture and people think on a different timescale. Outside of the coast and river where you can at least take a boat, it probably takes ten times as long to navigate the forest floor to find even a nearby village up in the trees. It's worse when you consider that everything is this massive forest that basically blocks you from using either the stars or distant landmarks to figure out where you are.

The last six stops were actually a little different. The trees gradually got smaller at each of these stops. The last four didn't even have any houses built up on them, instead being comprised of houses carved down into the roots of the trees. The first two of the six were towns comprised of both elves and dark elves, while the latter four were only dark elves. Whether the dark elves damaging the roots caused stunted growth, or the stunted growth made it easier for the dark elves to make a home, I'm unsure of.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

Outside of what we got from River's End, most of the crates just contain food. Despite finishing the last pickup after only 15 days, we were actually on schedule. We'd anticipated 20 days before we headed back to Ostark, and that was true. The reason being that we took an extra five days heading back the way we came so that our trip would intercept a larger number of demon ships on the way. If we simply headed directly back to Ostark, we'd save three days of time, but would likely run into very few demon ships, since we'd be approaching the pass from closer to the human continent. After those five days of backtracking though, the trip back to Ostark will be a little bit shorter than what it was on the way out, with an anticipated return time of eight days.

The shorter return route and angle led to us only seeing and sinking 10 dinghies and 3 canoes. Ultimately, it made me question whether we should have even bothered with the five days of backtracking at all, since we probably only dealt with about 100 demons in total. In practice though, we're here to deal with demons, and the trade is just an added bonus, rather than the other way around.

Nevertheless, it was nice to be paid for the extra shipping we did. Further, it's shipments that otherwise wouldn't have existed, so it functions as something of a surplus for the army here, rather than us just undercutting existing merchants. We'll return to the island next, do maintenance, restock on our lubrication oils and other consumables that we use, and I'll stay behind while the ship heads out once again to do another pass. In practice, it'll be stopping at each location about every two months, so it probably will only pick up about half as many goods on the future passes.

I didn't really think about it before, but if the need arises, I might consider negotiating on bringing frozen food over. Of course, that won't make any sense to anyone there, but we could easily modify a cargo bay to be refrigerated, then we could transport uncured meats without much concern, as long as they're utilized shortly after we arrive. For the right price, I could teach them how to make their own freezers, though they'll need to find their own power source, since I don't want to unleash mana engines onto the world just yet.

Since I've been gone, they blew up two more clams, and apparently triggered another underwater landslide. This one was smaller than the last one, but it's still concerning. The upshot is that since we've been really loading the ship up with demons before each blast, there has been a pretty good rise in levels overall among the population. There is a priority of who gets to go on the ship that Zeb and Zaka decided on. One-third of the military goes on at a time, followed by up to a maximum of half the construction force, then there is a queue that people apply for at city hall to fill out the rest of the space.

While that system works well, one of the first changes I discussed with Zaka was about the public queue. In practice, almost everyone has applied for it. While that's fine, it does mean that we aren't maximizing the benefit to the country. His counter point was that it'd be too hard to determine who should or should not get to go on the ship each time without appearing to pick favorites.

So, I presented to him the solution that is part of the whole reason for having money in the first place. Money, first and foremost is used to allow exchange of value beyond what a simple trade can accomplish. It does have a second purpose, however. Those who contribute the most activity to developing things will amass more money. Those more productive members would probably be even more productive if they were higher level or had more prestiges. So, the solution is simple. You have a paid priority queue.

After some evaluation, we decided that the price should be set to a month's worth of living expenses for the average citizen. We'll still have the regular queue, but we'll divide the slots equally between the regular queue and the priority queue. Anyone who uses the priority queue will also have their name removed from the regular queue for fairness reasons. They can re-enter either queue after they've gone, however. Of course, some individuals will end up feeling slighted by this change, but on the other hand, it's far more effective for the prosperity of our nation long term to do this.

Individuals like our blacksmiths or laborers who choose to work every possible day will be able to purchase more levels, which could lead to them being even more effective at their jobs. We know firsthand that many of the traits acquired through prestige make individuals more than twice as effective at what they're working on. If that individual is already a workaholic, all the better for us that they become even more effective.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.