Chapter 15
Several days later.
The territory was thriving.
He continued to expand his territory the whole time.
At this point, he has 300 draconian laborers, 30 draconian soldiers, 100 skeleton soldiers, 107 goblins, and over 500 gold saved up.
Warehouses, stone walls, stone houses, farms, etc.
All the buildings were constantly being put up.
These buildings all give various bonuses. While making the territory look more developed, they also improve the various functions within his territory.
At this moment, another piece of good news arrived.
The goblin farms are about to yield their first harvest.
Zhang Nu made some quick calculations. It's been less than five days since the giga potatoes were planted, but they're all already fully grown.
This speed really is unbelievable!
Giga potatoes normally take at least three months to grow!
This is definitely an enormously good piece of news for Zhang Nu!
After the past few days of constant development and growth, Zhang Nu had already realized that his gains have been slowing down as his population increases.
Back when Zhang Nu only had a hundred draconians under him, the draconians could keep up with the food costs via hunting and foraging. Whatever is left could be sold for additional income.
However, after the draconian population broke 300, the situation has changed.
Those powerful but extremely hungry fellows require a lot of food every day. Thus, the draconians have recently been forced to limit their activities, which directly translates to a decrease in their hunting effectiveness. This means that the formerly plentiful food supplies have started seeing shortages.
It isn't a hard thing to see.
The main factor limiting the sizes of one's territory and army is the food supply.
That the farms have yielded a major harvest is unquestionably a great piece of news that came at just the right moment for Zhang Nu. This allowed him to breathe a major sigh of relief.
Zhang Nu personally headed to the farms.
The goblins were currently digging up the potatoes.
Flower Fey Chen Guoguo wasn't making idle boasts about the giga potatoes. Each potato is indeed about 10 pounds, and each potato plant weighs over 500 pounds.
The 2000 giga potato plants basically all grew to maturity, so this particular harvest got him a massive harvest weighing at about a million pounds of food!
Nice!
This really is a huge harvest!
Zhang Nu also personally tasted a roasted potato.
Giga potatoes are saltier and more delicious than normal potatoes. Plus, they're much more nutritious, also having the effect of quickly recovering the consumer's stamina and energy.
"Very good!"
"With such crops!"
"With such a patch of Spirit Fields!"
"There's no need to worry about food shortages in the short term!"
A goblin will need to take several days just to finish eating a single potato. A draconian eats much more, but they'll be completely full with two or three potatoes a day.
In other words, the massive food surplus can all be sold off for money or other materials.
This will greatly boost the development speed of the territory!
Zhang Nu immediately gave the orders, "Construct more warehouses near the farms. Have the goblins prepare to plant the next round of crops."
A draconian soldier came up to report, "We did a new count of the goblins and we discovered that two goblins have disappeared!"
"What? They ran away?"
"Please punish us as you see fit!"
Zhang Nu frowned. This is a bit strange.
In this period of time, the goblins' loyalty values have generally been increasing.
Why did they run away? There really are a lot of variances still here!
Goblins are skilled at planting, making them excellent farmers. Right now, he's actually short on farmers, but he didn't imagine that there would be escapes.
However, this is unavoidable.
Subordinates recruited by force are just this way.
Zhang Nu decided that he needed to increase his armed forces.
Besides the 100 mindless skeleton soldiers, he only has 30 draconian soldiers. That does make it quite difficult to monitor and protect the entire valley.
He scanned through the statuses of the rest of the goblins.
Due to the huge harvest today, these goblins were in high morale.
Their loyalty value also grew by quite a bit. They've all reached around 80% or so, so the chances of runaways is quite unlikely. Those two should just be exceptions.
Zhang Nu spoke, "No matter. Just two doesn't have much of an effect. Increase the guards over the canyon. Do not allow this kind of thing to happen a second time!"
The draconian soldier hurriedly responded, "Yes!"
Zhang Nu didn't think much more of this minor loss. He was in a great mood as he watched the enormous pile of potatoes constantly being dug up, and so he opened up the chat menu.
"Selling mass amounts of food. Suitable for subordinates to eat. 10 gold per batch!"
By now, the Demon Kings generally won't lack food for themselves anymore. However, they do need to keep their subordinates fed and so they'll require food supplies to maintain their troops.
Giga potatoes are unquestionably an ideal choice.
Zhang Nu also wasn't stupid enough to directly drop hundreds of thousand of pounds right into the market.
He divided them up into a hundred pounds per batch. Each batch was set to cost 10 gold and he placed 500 batches into the market. This number isn't actually all that large for him, but it did end up causing a major commotion among the other Demon Kings.
"Holy shit!"
"Everyone, look quickly!"
"Someone's selling 50k pounds of food!"
"What's up with this bigshot. This move is scarily huge!"
"So much food. How many minions can this all support, but he just brought it out to sell in one go... It's just that the price is way too expensive!"
Although there were a lot of people complaining about the price, right now, there is no lack of Demon Kings who are currently short on food.
[Trade successful, you gained 10 gold!]
[Trade successful, you gained 10 gold!]
[Trade successful, you gained 10 gold!]
[...]
Messages like this filled Zhang Nu's player menu. 50k pounds of food were rapidly consumed at a terrifying rate.
Based on the current look of things, he'll sell out within maybe a dozen minutes or so.
This is an enormous sale valued at around 5000 gold here!
Even when taking into account the transaction fees, he'll still end up getting at least 4700 to 4800 gold. This was only a small portion of the food that Zhang Nu currently has, too.
With a single batch of Spirit Fields.
A group of goblin farmers.
And then a few hundred gold to purchase the seeds.
The final profit was terrifyingly huge. This is unquestionably an extremely profitable business, easily allowing him to fill up his wallet to the brim!