General POV -
The weeks following the birth of his siblings, Asta took a long break and helped his mom. His was absolutely obsessed with having siblings and taking care of them. While Benjamin was a quieter baby, Abigail was loud and cried a lot. Though this didn't down the family's love for them. The whole estate of the Levathian family immediately celebrated their birth by donating the citizens a lot of food and clothing. Although theirs was a pretty good region, there will still a lot of people who had suffered during the war. This event made the citizens appreciate the Lords and subconsciously started being more loyal.
After a 2 months, Asta finally returned to his training of sensing mana around him and within a few months, he could feel mana really well. This shocked both the parents as his talent was more than they had expected. So his mother started teaching him how to coat his mana on his body to strengthen it and his father taught how to coat his sword. This continued for two 2½ years as manipulating mana to coat it was much difficult since he didn't outrageous amount of mana, though he was probably higher than most kids his age.
After he was 7 years old, Asta was getting bored of the repetitive training and decided to build up his power in different ways. You see while personal strength was important In a world might makes right, Asta would be damned if he didn't take advantage of being born in a rich household. So he saved all of his allowances ( being the eldest son ) and bought a few abandoned buildings around each other near the lower district area. Whenever he toured around the city, he'd noticed the divisions in the city, the richest region was the innermost region while a lot of space would be left for future subordinates who might become nobles. The next one was for the artisans, shopkeepers and middle class people. And the final one the lower district area, it had lot of density of people who basically just leached of the kindness of the Lord of opening a couple orphanages and food shelters. He knew this can't be avoided as people always find a way to take advantage of kindness.
One day when he visited his father in his office, his father had told him the importance of having his own people. And thats when it struck it, this kingdom or more importantly their viscounty didn't have an information circle which was efficient. So he immediately asked his father for the abandoned buildings in the lower district and explained he wanted a business there and how it could provide opportunities for poor people. His father was astonished and proud and gave it to him for free without his mother knowing, of course he'd regret doing that in the future.
After he obtained, one of his Father's trusted subordinate knight helped him in refurbishing and rebuilding all these places. Even though he had a lot of money, he couldn't flush it all in one go and that'd make his father suspicious as well though unlikely. That whole year after his 7th birthday, he spent money on this establishment. From his teacher he knew there were newspapers in this world, though it wasn't popular in this kingdom. It'd be stupid if it wasn't present since he was pretty sure, Loki an Influential figure was a transmigrator like himself.
He had asked William to meet multiple merchants who travelled around the country to trade. He offered them little incentives for information about the places they'd go to including rumors. He had explained it clearly to his butler to only meet middle to low level merchants so that he could get it for cheap. And since they lost nothing for giving information and earned a little pocket money, a lot of merchants agreed to the deal. For the first few months, it was difficult but after his mother learnt about his innovative idea, she immediately lent him all the extra maids and butlers from the mansion since now the babies were 3 years old and she liked taking care of them on her own. This decreased the burden a lot for the agencies people who were selected from the schools because they weren't talented enough to join the administration department of the territory. The information got organized sooner and the first batch was ready to be put out.
His father was was given harsh 'punishment' for giving away free estate to Asta as she thought he was spoiling him too much, however her anger quickly vanished when Asta gave them the 3 months report and how much money it actually took to set up everything, since he had asked a couple young mages from their mage training academy who were poor to help him with the printing. They had the wind affinity which helped them to cut trees and process them much faster than normal people, although they were given a lot of money. After that was done, the gathered wood would be provided to Mr. Thompson who was in charge of paper printing technology.
Meeting him was a stroke of dumb luck. He had 'drifted' into this region to look for opportunities to open a printing workshop but he didn't have any luck in the other regions. So when William approached him, he immediately agreed to be a subordinate in their agency. Although his behavior was entirely suspicious like he was running away from something, Asta still didn't care, since he was trying to hide, he might as well squeeze his talents out while training his own if he was a liability. Thompson and his family settled down in the middle region of the city and were paid for their services, so they were happy. After all the bases were covered, the agency was set up and Asta named it 'LH agency' - Levathian house agency. During the opening of the agency, his parents, multiple merchants who were being paid for their information, and even the rich merchants visited the agency and were surprised at how well it looked. Asta had gone all out to make it look good since it was going to be his base of operations in the light. When the merchants were invited they only came to give face to the Lord, but when they saw the information being provided for money and being paid for information, they immediately became interested. After all, merchants were the most sensitive to information and most of the rich ones were settled and didn't have access to information outside the region.
Asta looking at the enthusiastic merchants decided to strike when the iron was hot and announced that they could invest money to 'own' a part of their agency and how they could get insider information and special benefits when they become investors. He decided to make it a short term benefit of money returns for investments. The long term investments or share holders were only given to those his parents trusted. Asta owned 70% of the company and 10 percent each to his parents and 5% for 'rewarding' his subordinates and rest of the 5% was open to the merchants, there were around 10 trusted merchants who were interested in this venture. They were dissatisfied with the low percentage so 5 of them backed out. Asta himself had to negotiate with them and tell them that the prices would be low only now and would only be increased and they'd be increased later on, but he'd give them a head start for buying more. They finally relented and each of them paid 100,000 bucks for 1%. After the procedure was done, Asta told them about the newspapers and magazines and how they'd sell to different nobles while as share holders, they'd get it for free. They were surprised and understood that this information was only privy to them and this made them feel better. Of course Asta didn't lose anything at all, he just did it to please them.
After a few days, the first batch of newspapers were distributed all over the territory, although the poorer regions were avoided, for now. The first few days, it was silent however later it caused a huge sensation as the news immediately excited a lot of people, since the news about nobles of different regions including his own family's were published on it, of course nothing confidential. The rumors were also not published but was stored in order to give it to thr merchants and of course his father to better plan his moves since he needed it for his political motives. The most surprising however, was his mother, she wanted a section for women where they spoke about fashion trends and what not. Following her example his father wanted a section where his facilities to improve the lifestyle of people were highlighted. He really wondered if he had underestimated his parents' intellect.
This newspaper was made twice a week, since they still weren't that efficient but it still became a hit among the common populace. This is where the lower district came into play, Asta efficiently told William to utilize the 'cheap labor' here and got a lot of workers to spread the newspapers and information all over the territory. A lot of people immediately joined since they were provided with food and shelter. By the end of the year, the news paper had become a part of the daily of people in the territory.
_________________________________________________
A/N -
I know many would want the MC to grow strong immediately and control everything, but I'm trying to make this is a long game. He'll need everything in his arsenal for later. Do let me know your thoughts!