Chapter 500: An Idol’s Dream of a Music Video.
“Stop.”
However, just when I thought we could move forward, two people immediately raised their arms, putting an end to any hope of a quick resolution. I looked over, seeing both Uncle Guyul and Sieg displeased.
“Ignoring the economic value this invention will bring, I must inquire something—how are you expecting this to be made in Frozen Nest?” Sieg asked.
Ah, he’s asking for the budget. Naturally, I got too hyped up after only persuading one person.
“I know a talented runesmith-slash-blacksmith and two rising artificers, with one of them specialized in making system-based manatech. They’ve all worked with the recorder before and, if we give them the time and funding, they can probably reverse engineer it so we can produce more of it,” I replied, but Sieg’s look just told me to “go on,” so I did. “Once we have the blueprint, I’ll have them train our artificers and then we can start producing them.”
Uncle Guyul sighed as the dragonewts all looked at each other with awkward smiles. Confused with this reception despite how captivated they were by the video, I looked around the room, only to see Mom smiling like always.
“Princess Hestia, I believe you have heard me give you an update on our artificer situation, correct?” Sieg continued. “We lack natural arcanuit deposits, meaning we must import mana batteries, raising the price we would need to sell at to make a profit. Besides, why would any artificer wish to live here, when it is more beneficial for them to be in Ankor-Nazta? Not to mention, wouldn’t it be better for you to have these products made there, instead of here? We do not have the facilities for mass production.”
… Ah. No, this wasn’t to talk about the budget. He’s actually trying to kill the dream.
Well, it wasn’t like I hadn’t expected this. I did just hear everything and could read it in the reports, but I also felt this was such a lacking argument to say otherwise. Here was the thing—Frozen Nest’s only important industry was the fishing industry. Everybody knew this but it also was clear nobody was willing to branch out of it. It didn’t help that the closest thing to a second profitable industry was still exporting raw goods as well; there was next to no manufacturing industry in Frozen Nest.