Volume 5 Chapter 133 Giving books
Count Will looked over Banta City’s financial reports from last month in his hands and slightly knit his brows.
This didn’t mean that this report wasn’t good, rather the numbers were magnificent. If anyone else saw it, they would be shocked.
According to this financial report, Banta City had earned four hundred and sixty thousand gold coins last month. It had already surpa.s.sed Anvilmar City, becoming the city with the highest revenue in the entire Lampuri Kingdom.
It had to be known, Anvilmar City as the capital of the Lampuri Kingdom was a place that received special attention from the entire city. Adding in the fact that it gathered most of the large n.o.bles and large companies in the kingdom, its financial revenue was far above the other cities of the kingdom.
If this was eight years ago before the Frestech Chamber of Commerce had appeared, Banta City’s income would even be negative, having to take some subsidies from the kingdom each year just to stay afloat. Although they couldn’t be considered the worst city in the Lampuri Kingdom, they were at the bottom. They never would have thought that there would be a day where they would surpa.s.s Anvilmar City.
However, in just eight years, Banta City had achieved all this that they never would have imagined before. It was without a doubt that everyone in Banta City could be proud of.
As the current City Lord and the leader who had created this glory in Banta City over the years, Count Will was clearly qualified to feel happy and proud.
When he saw this financial report at first, Count Will had been happy and had felt deeply content.
But when he saw some numbers that should have been normal, his mood greatly changed.
These numbers were related to the statistics for Banta City’s monthly revenue.
According to the stats, Banta City had around four hundred and sixty thousand gold coins this month. Compared to the revenue of March which was four hundred and forty gold coins, this was an increase of around 4%.
For a city of the scale of Banta City, being able to increase it by 4% was already considered quite the accomplishment.
But Count Will clearly remembered that it was an increase of 6% in last month’s financial report. The month before that was 8% and the month before that was 9%.
If he looked at the financial reports from the last half a year, he would find that this statistic was decreasing with each month.
This meant that Banta City’s current revenue growth speed was slowing down.
With this trend, by the end of the year, Banta City’s financial revenue might not even grow by that much anymore.
It might even…..decrease!
“Impossible!” Count Will shook his head, denying the guess that came from the bottom of his heart.
But when he calmly thought about it, he had to admit that this was a fact that he had to face.
Banta City’s development had entered a bottleneck, it would be very hard for Banta City to quickly develop like before when the magic machine industry had just appeared.
To solve this problem, other than strengthening Banta City’s development directions, the most important thing was to put more power into the backbone of Banta City, the magic machine industry.
After walking around his office for half an hour, Count Will left the City Lord Manor. He sat in his personal Magic Sedan and headed west to the new district.
This was another new district that Banta City started developing last year.
According to Count Will’s plan, this new district would be a complete city. It would be like the previous new districts, with each district playing a different role.
In this completel city, there were already three hotels, many stores, different factories on both sides of the road, and a long row of houses built by the Amrit Chamber of Commerce.
These six houses that were over twenty meters high were the Amrit Chamber of Commerce’s new “apartment buildings”. Because there was a water system and a water heating system, as well as a perfect sewage system, it became one of the most convenient housing in Banta City.
At the same time, because it wasn’t that expensive, far less than the high cla.s.s villas, it was greatly welcomed when it was introduced.
Opposite of these apartment buildings, there was a large patch of land where construction was about to begin.
This land was part of Banta City’s magic machine industry vocational school, which was considered an expansion of the original school.
The reason why it could take such a large piece of land in such a good position was because of the support of Count Will.
Although the vocational school was started by the Frestech Chamber of Commerce, after they left Banta City and the Lampuri Kingdom, this vocational school was controlled by the City Lord Manor.
After Count Will took over the City Lord Manor, he didn’t put much importance on this in the first two years, but he had turned his eyes onto this vocational school starting last year. It wasn’t just land, he also invested a large amount of funds and recruited students from Banta City and the surrounding cities, making the school four to five times bigger than before.
Right now there were over eight thousand students at this school. Other than a large portion of them being focused on studying various skills related to magic machines, there were four hundred students that were directly studying magic mechanical engineering.
This was a subject specially established by order of Count Will. At the same time, Count Will had the Baron Rickto Magic Academy send their students here to further their magic mechanical engineering studies.
If this was before, there wouldn’t be students interested in learning this. However, now that the magic machines were the most popular thing in the Lampuri Kingdom and the surrounding kingdoms, not only the students of Baron Rickto Magic Academy were interested in learning magic mechanical engineering, even young magicians of the Lampuri Royal Academy were interested in enrolling.
Compared to the Lampuri Royal Academy, Banta City’s vocational school had a very important advantage. It was that it was founded by the Frestech Chamber of Commerce and even if it was under Banta City now, Xu Yi had always cared about this school. Not only did he provide skilled workers to provide training for the school, he also provided a large amount of magic mechanical engineering knowledge, allowing the students of the school to study it.
Count Will came here specially because he was here for a ceremony.
The Frestech Chamber of Commerce would be donating «Basic Magic Machine Theory» that was written by the magic research facility’s chief Evita, the manager of the magic machine development center Camby, and several researchers of the Frestech Chamber of Commerce.
This book was the first true book on magic mechanical engineering. According to what the Frestech Chamber of Commerce said, this contained the perfect foundation for magic mechanical engineering knowledge, letting someone who didn’t even know a thing about magic machines grasp a basic understanding towards magic machines.
This book wasn’t that important for the Frestech Chamber of Commerce, but it was a very important book for everyone other than the Frestech Chamber of Commerce who were a part of the magic machine industry.
Because before this, the Frestech Chamber of Commerce only gave technology to other companies. This was the first time that they were sharing their theories.
So this meant that not only did this book have a strong significance, it had a strong symbolic meaning.
The reason why the Frestech Chamber of Commerce could be so far ahead of other companies in terms of research was their absolute advantage in terms of fundamental knowledge.
The appearance of this book meant that the Frestech Chamber of Commerce was willing to share their knowledge, allowing the other companies some hope of catching up to the Frestech Chamber of Commerce.
According to what the Frestech Chamber of Commerce told Count Will, although the Frestech Chamber of Commerce would make this book available to the public in the future, they would allow Banta City to have it first and they wouldn’t publish it in the next half a year.
This meant that the other people and companies would have to wait half a year longer than Banta City.
This was clearly the Frestech Chamber of Commerce’s care for Banta City, so Count Will was very grateful to Xu Yi and personally came to this book giving ceremony.
But when Count Will arrived at the vocational school, he found that it wasn’t Xu Yi there, but rather his wife Still.
Seeing Still’s stomach that was clearly swelling a bit, Count Will suppressed the question in his heart. He congratulated Still first before asking about where Xu Yi was.
“I’m very sorry, Lord Count, Xu Yi is busy with other matters, so he couldn’t come to this book giving ceremony. But he specially told me to come and partic.i.p.ate on his behalf and to apologize to Lord Count for him.
“Busy? Is it serious?” Count Will knit his brows to ask.
With the Frestech Chamber of Commerce’s powerful influence on the surrounding countries, what matters would make Xu Yi unable to find free time to come?
“It isn’t serious, but he needs to personally take care of it.” Still replied with a shake of her head.
“It’s like this……” Count Will’s tone couldn’t help showing his disappointment, as well as a trace of worry.
Xu Yi was someone who always kept his words. He couldn’t think of any urgent matters that would make Xu Yi unable to come here, so that meant there was a very serious possibility.
For Xu Yi to not come to such a meaningful book giving ceremony, it meant that in his heart, Banta City might not be that important.