The Path of Ascension Chapter 375

Chapter 375

Returning back to Palustris, Matt immediately went to Liz and discussed Frederic’s request. In the end, they decided that it was a good idea for no other reason than to give themselves more political relevance.

Honestly, a major portion of that was interest in the Orders themselves. There really wasn’t anything like them in the Empire, and Matt was tremendously curious about what sorts of Knights they might make. He’d looked up some of the most notable historical Knights and had been quite impressed by what he found. The Orders had created many, many Pinnacle elites over their histories, and any amount of additional power was welcome.

Of course, he’d also found a lot of abuse and corruption in their past, but the political leeway the Orders were being given in this revival had more to do with allowing them to perform ‘untested magical experimentation’ on the children of the Order themselves, rather than allowance to let their Knights-apparent have free reign when it came to killing other children with their magical powers.

Their testing would also be very much restricted to that of their own children, with fairly strict controls for who was even allowed to become a Knight the typical way. Not many Orders had kidnapped or coerced random commoner families to become generational test subjects with what could only be assumed was horrific mortality rates, but that was unsurprisingly explicitly cut off. It was the first time Matt could safely say he was glad that only the children of nobles were allowed to do a given thing.

It had also been something of a long-held undercurrent of discontentment with the Sophrons that they’d effectively killed the Orders, thereby weakening the nobles who had been supported by them. Hopefully reviving them would come with a substantial amount of goodwill from the oldest and most powerful noble families across the Empire. It was amusing that giving them the opportunity to open their coffers and create super-soldiers for the Empire made them happy, but hey, he wasn’t complaining.

He was also glad to see that there were explicit outs for the children involved. They weren’t quite as robust as he would have liked, but no one would be going through with the awakening without a way out and a clear understanding of what they were signing up for.

A part of him knew that children raised to the life would be hard pressed to accept the outcome, but no method that relied on trying to breed pinnacle elites could get around the fact that the children were ultimately bred for that singular purpose.

This new version of the Orders was at least giving them a way to cut ties, which was better than the historical way the Orders dealt with prospective members who didn’t want to be their super soldiers.

Breeding farms were not a topic he wanted to read up on ever again, but that was all explicitly outlawed and came with incredibly harsh punishments for anyone even trying to restart such practices.

It was with that in mind that he and Liz started really looking at their duchy and the resources that lay within.

They had nearly eighty percent of their allocated planets delivered, which would put them at only half of the typical duchy size, but they had some real gems in their allocation. First and foremost was Palustris itself.

The resources on the planet were abundant and worth a lot, but they weren’t inexhaustible or free from normal operation costs.

In fact, most of the resources on Palustris needed a lot of investments to even show long term profit, which is where their first real issue came into play.

It was a first for Matt since he had joined the Path, but he was poor.

Really, really poor.

On an individual level, they were stupendously wealthy, exceptionally so for their Tier, but none of that could be used for the duchy. At least not effectively or without great risk.

First of all, which Cato didn’t hesitate to point out, all of the duchy’s accounts were public record, as were the dispensations they got from the Empire. If they spent more than what was accounted for, people would immediately know. And while they could use the excuse they were using their personal accounts for some things, that was only good for a minor project or two, which meant very little on the scale they needed before people started to get suspicious.

Secondly, even if they could get around that and disguise Matt’s mana as clean income, unless he wanted to fund the duchy forever, they needed to use monetary solvency as a metric of success. Which wasn’t easy when you had outside sources of income like that. Not that every project needed to directly pay for itself— social services such as free healing for civilians didn’t directly pay for itself, though a healthy population had a multitude of positive effects that more than paid for the initial costs in the long-run— but money was a good way to find pain points.

Thankfully, the Empire didn’t expect new planets and their nobles to become self-sufficient immediately. The level of dispensation depended on what kind of planet the noble got, but they had time and interest free loans at their disposal to help get their fief in order.

A typical low-Tier, fully settled world taken from another Great Power was often given a century or so of tax breaks because ultimately, they didn’t need much in the way of additional work. The planets were typically already fully subjugated, even if they weren’t fully settled, but they didn’t need large-scale work that would require Imperial assistance.

Middle-Tier words, Tier 10 to Tier 25, were given the same leniency but they typically had some greater dispensations. Most other Great Powers didn’t actively encourage large mortal populations, and planets in this range typically struggled to adapt to the expected influxes that would come with their relocation to the Empire.

High-Tier worlds, Tier 26 to Tier 35, were so rarely traded that there wasn’t really a standard set in place. Sometimes they required a complete overhaul to fall in line with Empire regulation, but that could mean a full demolition and rebuilding of the planet’s infrastructure, which was why they got even more leeway.

Tier 36 and higher worlds trading hands was so rare, it hadn’t happened in over three hundred thousand years, so there wasn’t really a set standard. Excluding the Monster Collective’s creation, but that hardly counted due to it being more a split of an existing power than anything else.

As Ascenders that had gotten an entire duchy of war spoils from all of the other Great Powers except the Guilds, they were given slightly more than the average exception, but not anything special either.

As a duchy getting new lands, they had a century before they needed to pay Imperial taxes, which was their greatest leniency. If they couldn’t become solvent before then, they would not only be shamed and have their public images ruined, they could possibly be held criminally responsible.

Thankfully, the typical Empire tax structure was more than enough to get them where they needed to be, but they were still responsible for the outcome.

They were, in fact, responsible for all of their nobles, though to a lesser degree. If there was a problem with a lower-rank noble and they willfully ignored the issue, they could be held just as responsible, but that was unlikely. Even the Junipers, the nobles who had been responsible for the rift breaks on Lilly, direct lieges hadn’t been charged for negligence.

The second thing they were entitled to were loans backed by their royal liege. In their case, that was Manny himself, but it was a boilerplate loan that couldn’t be adjusted without undue scrutiny, so it couldn’t even act as a way to launder Matt’s mana.

With those two advantages, they wanted to get their duchy into a profitable place, not just a neutral one.

A lot of that was handled and delegated to their subjects.

If all of them could at least get their planets into the black, a lot of their issues would be solved, but that was wholly impossible. Inevitably, planets would have economic fluxes. And on low-Tier worlds, that often meant decades or centuries in a slight net negative. That was ok, as long as all of their worlds fluctuated at different times, allowing other worlds to make up the difference.

The second thing they needed to do was set up exports.

Almost every duchy specialized in at least one thing, if not more. It wasn’t like the Empire would suddenly run out of demand for weapons or armor, but that ran into one of the largest issues all nobles faced.

Tier.

Tier was king.

A single Tier 40 planet, even with its higher expenses, greater population, and higher taxes to the Imperial government, could out produce a dozen Tier 20 planets. Part of that was the larger costs involved, but higher-Tier products and goods also came with correspondingly higher taxes than lower-Tier stuff. Even at Tier 45, most taxes weren’t unduly high, but even a tenth of a percent of the sale price of a Tier 45 weapon could cover what an entire Tier 5 planet produced in a year, if not a full decade.

That meant most worlds, let alone most duchies, tried to increase their world’s Tier, but they focused most of their efforts on the highest Tier of goods they could sustainably produce.

The problem was that it took time.

High-Tier crafting, the type their duchy didn’t have access to, sometimes took decades to complete a project. More than that, it took crafters millennia to reach not only the requisite Tier, but level of skill to make themselves competitive in the high-Tier market.

They had some crafters thanks to the influx of planets, but most of the highest-Tier crafters had stayed in their home Great Powers, and those few who had remained were exclusive to the entity that had raised them, like the sects. Even if they could now sell their products outside their sect, few would deign to, and Matt and Liz couldn’t and wouldn’t force them.

They could poach some higher-Tier crafters from existing corporations, guilds, or noble houses, but that was usually exorbitantly expensive in direct costs of buying out their contracts, or in offering them incentives like tax breaks that were more attractive than their current places.

Thankfully, they had a few candidates who relished the fire environment of Palustris enough to move permanently. So far, they had thirty Tier 35 crafters, twenty seven smiths, and fifteen fire alchemy specialists who had requested permanent residency. There were a plethora of Tier 30 and lower crafters who wanted access to Palustris, but their planet’s Tier capped the Tier of the interested crafters fairly hard.

In an ironic twist of fate, they actually had Tier 40 or higher crafters wanting to buy a residency in Palustris, but they all were doing so without the intention to set up shop, which was what Matt and Liz wanted from them as it meant they got nothing out of them but any additional taxes they felt like imposing on higher Tiers.

Those numbers seemed firm unless they could tempt other crafters with unique opportunities.

The most audacious idea was a sky forge which used the entire planet’s mana system to help in the forging of special items, but even beyond the insane costs of creating the forge itself, the operating costs would bankrupt the entire duchy the first time it was used.

That proposal was tossed out with a laugh that got Liz interested enough to read it, where they were able to share in the mirth.

It wasn’t the only idea they were presented with.

A more realistic option to attract more Tier 35 and possibly even Tier 40 crafters was to create a De-Kelt Cycle. By carefully, very carefully, pulling a stream of magma from the molten core of the planet to a deeply buried crafting area, they could multiply the potency of the planet by tapping into the cultivation core of the planet itself. It was risky, as any fuck up in the creation of the De-Kelt Cycle could destabilize the planetary core, and it also slowed down the planet’s growth if not carefully controlled, but it could create a fire paradise.

Not just for smiths, but for alchemists and herbalists who could use the environment to make unique potions and grow rare herbs that needed extreme environments.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

He and Liz were incredibly hesitant to give the nod for such a project, but they didn’t reject it outright.

A similar but less impressive suggestion was to allow hyper-strong essence and mana formations that would work on the surface of Palustris.

That was disruptive to the local area, but with the Tier of crafter they were trying to attract, they could just shove them in the most dangerous locations on Palustris. But it also wasn’t anything more unique than they could make by creating an aspected area on any world, which meant it didn’t attract many Tier 35s or higher.

There were similar, smaller-scale efforts, but they weren’t noteworthy and could be done on a small enough scale that they just okayed everything that wouldn’t mess up the planet’s aspect.

Ultimately, they decided to wait a few years and see what happened. If they were still lagging behind in twenty or thirty years, they would reevaluate, but they hoped they had an answer to their higher-Tier crafter problem.

Titan’s Torch.

Matt’s guild wasn’t officially part of the duchy, but its headquarters’ moon was going to be orbiting Palustris in a short fifteen years when it arrived, which was when the operations of the guild would explode. The same went for Liz’s bloodline research organization once it was moved over as well, but that was smaller and more close-knit than Matt’s guild.

With an entire moon to expand into, Matt’s larger and larger mana pool as he Tiered up, and finally, the increased presence the guild had as it produced viable products, the more draw it had. They hoped to leverage that appeal into drawing in higher Tier crafters to Palustris. After all, if a few crafters decided to stay on Palustris once their contracts with the guild ended, who were they to stop them or shoo them away?

It was an idea which looked more and more plausible the more time passed.