Chapter 230: The Outsiders’ Amazement

Baron Redmaple’s territory, located near the Green Cloak Forest, was constantly visited by adventurers who went into the forest to seek treasures and hunt. Every year, they brought considerable additional income to Redmaple Town.
However, dangerous animals in the forest would occasionally invade Redmaple Town and its surrounding villages—so, as with any advantage, there were also disadvantages.
Donald’s territory, Dalarn, was even more remote than Redmaple Town. To develop it, he not only had to create its own unique products but also compete with Redmaple Town for the adventurers’ business.
What Donald lacked the least were various potions, items, and equipment. With the Book of Truth at his disposal and an ample supply of energy, even if a group of alchemists worked day and night, their output couldn’t compare to what he could produce in just one meal’s time.
At first, Donald held auctions to promote his territory’s reputation. But as his industries grew, the profits from each unique product far exceeded those from potions and equipment. There was no longer a need for extensive promotion—merchants and nobles flocked to him on their own. Thus, Donald no longer relied on the Green Cloak Forest to attract adventurers, as forest resources were always limited.
Dalarn had become a highly prosperous commercial hub, rivaling even Leighton Port as the kingdom’s leading city. Many merchant caravans hired mercenaries and adventurers from Dalarn’s Adventurer’s Guild to ensure their safety during travel. These individuals and their abilities had been verified, and since they were under the guild’s oversight, hiring them was far safer and more reliable than relying on scattered adventurers elsewhere. With the regulation of a formal organization, as long as the guild assigned a task, the adventurers and mercenary teams wouldn’t neglect their duties or abandon their employers in danger, avoiding negative reputations that could affect their earnings.
If robbery or even murder of an employer occurred, the Adventurer’s Guild would take responsibility for pursuing those guilty adventurers or mercenaries.
Behind the Dalarn Adventurer’s Guild stood the official power of a territory and the support of many strong individuals. Those adventurers or mercenaries who broke the rules would surely be pursued everywhere unless they intended to stay hidden in the country of Selt—eventually, they would be caught.

Of course, when assigning tasks, employers must also clarify the specific circumstances and must not deliberately hide certain details. Otherwise, adventurers and mercenaries who face extremely dangerous or even life-threatening tasks would refuse them. In such cases, they have the right to abandon the task without any punishment.

Since there is a constant stream of tasks in the Adventurers’ Guild, ranging in difficulty and suitable for most adventurers and mercenaries, the rewards from these tasks are much more lucrative and safer than risking their lives in the forests to hunt monsters or gather herbs. Therefore, after Dalaran issued laws restricting forest resources, adventurers and mercenaries were not as dissatisfied as outsiders had expected.

After Donald publicly introduced the theory of natural balance and laws to improve territorial policies, Dalaran immediately embarked on vigorous construction. This time, it wasn’t about building farms, houses, or workshops, but rather roads, which Donald had long wanted to construct.

In his past life, he had heard and seen the saying “To get rich, build roads first” and the proverb “All roads lead to Rome.” He had long been dissatisfied with the dirt and gravel roads in the territory. Especially during rainy days, horse wheels would get stuck in mud or caught in cracks between stones. As a result, he mostly traveled by flight or teleportation, using carriages only when necessary, and hadn’t ridden one for a long time.

Previously, he lacked the strength and conditions, but now that everything in the territory was on track, Donald decided to renovate all the roads.

This massive project mobilized all the mages in the territory, and some external mages were also hired. With the help of mountain giants and several war puppets, and without any human labor, the work was completed in just one month. The main roads from Twilight Town to Windbell Village, and then to Giantstone City and Redmaple Town, were all paved with five-meter-wide stone slabs. First, the mountain giants leveled and compacted the roadbeds. Then, craftsmen from Twilight Town made molds and shaped clay blocks, which were then given to the mages to cast into stone using spells. Thus, hard stone slabs, each one square meter in size and half a foot thick, were created. Finally, the war puppets transported these slabs and laid them on the roadbeds, completing the new roads.

The sturdy stone roads were smooth with few gaps, and drainage channels were built alongside them. Elves from the Druid tribe were hired to plant deep-rooted, tall trees on both sides of the roads to prevent the soil from loosening and causing road collapses. In addition to the residential areas in the town, street lamps were also installed on all roads leading to Dalaran, ensuring no risk of collisions when traveling at night.

Now, carriages traveling on the roads to Dalaran moved as steadily as if they were on their own homes, much to the delight of merchants and travelers alike.

However, Dalaran introduced a new tax law—road maintenance tax—specifically for caravans carrying heavy loads. Although it added a few gold sols, Dalaran’s taxes were already lower than in other places, so merchants found it reasonable.

The revenue from this tax was used to hire mages to repair damaged stone roads, and damaged stones could be replaced promptly when discovered.

Yet, Donald’s growing fame also brought unexpected troubles.

One month after his theory of natural balance was made public and after a series of constructions in Dalaran were completed, two strangers wrapped in cloaks set off on their journey to Dalaran.

The carriage moved smoothly along the wide stone roads, without the bumpy and uncomfortable sensations of previous journeys. This relieved the two passengers inside.

As they rarely used carriages and had constitutions different from ordinary people, they were more prone to motion sickness.

“These stone roads are quite good, right? It’s said they were built by several powerful mages working together. Only a baron could afford to use such mages to build roads. Now I travel back and forth between Giantstone City and Dusk Town every day. The wide and smooth stone roads here make me reluctant to travel elsewhere. Even the better roads in other territories are just gravel roads—extremely bumpy, and you need to spend money on new wheels after just a few trips. As for dirt roads, once it rains, you’re basically crawling through mud!”

“Speaking of that baron in Dalaran, he can be considered the greatest noble among our Selthians in a hundred years. In less than two years, he transformed this place from a wasteland into a wonderful area that even the powerful figures in the capital envy. Here, ordinary people live more comfortably than some minor nobles elsewhere, and the environment is as beautiful as the paradise realms desired by the gods’ worshippers in other parts of the continent. It’s a pity that Dalaran has very strict requirements for admitting new residents; otherwise, my family would have come here to settle even if we had to stop farming. After all, the land is meant for those nobles, and the income from farming isn’t much…”
Listening to the coachman’s endless chatter, the two outsiders gained a lot of firsthand knowledge about Dalaran, and the more they learned, the more interested they became in this land.
Soon, the carriage crossed the stone bridge outside Windchime Village, which also served as the entrance to Dalaran.
Once inside Dalaran, the scenery around them changed dramatically.
There were bustling villages, neatly arranged farms and crops, and the land was full of vitality—completely free from the messy conditions found in other human villages.
Without stopping in Windchime Village, at the request of the two guests, the coachman skillfully drove the carriage to the entrance of Dusk Town.
It was a prosperous and tidy town, with clean cobblestone roads, well-planned streets and buildings. The town also incorporated natural vegetation in a clever way, which surprised them with its beauty.
Although these were just ordinary facilities without any deliberate beautification, together they created a highly harmonious aesthetic.
As soon as they stepped into Dusk Town, the two were overwhelmed by the sights. Yet their expressions didn’t show it much, as many who came to Dalaran for the first time had similar reactions.
Over the past month, in addition to road repairs, Donald had also carried out other construction projects.
First, he initiated greening efforts in Dusk Town—flower beds and lawns appeared along the streets, in alleyways, and outside households. He also built parks, benches, public toilets, trash bins, and other public facilities in the reserved areas of the town.
Thanks to the natural barrier, these green plants grew very lushly. Donald also introduced a program for sanitation workers, who were mostly idle women and elderly people from the local community. Their tasks included maintaining the greenery, keeping the environment clean, and removing accumulated trash.

As for the final destination of all that trash, it was the purification spell array that Donald had spent a fortune to set up; all waste items without recycling value, including the byproducts generated by mages in their laboratories, were banished to some place in the outer realm. In addition, there were public carriages running twice a day, morning and evening, providing routes to Redmaple Town, Giantstone City, Ashwood Village, and Orc Valley. The latter was temporarily open only to those within the territory to prevent outsiders from discovering information about its mineral resources. After years of construction, Dalaran had completely transformed, becoming more and more like a modern residential area that was peaceful, comfortable, and convenient, just as in its previous life. However, it lacked the drawbacks of a crowded and noisy population from that past life. Anyone who visited Dalaran afterward couldn’t help but think of settling there for life. Word of Dalaran’s prosperity and beauty spread quickly, making it the most beautiful and desirable land in Thelos.