Konrad was on a tight schedule.
Eyna organized a meeting for him with the merchants and his vassals on the same day. Both were to take place in his makeshift office, which couldn't hold everyone all at once.
Given the number of people he'd expect to come, no building in Halaima was large enough.
Except one.
"I have a bad feeling about this," he noted, staring up at the religious symbol above the entrance of the church. Father Alastair and Sister Stella flanked him on one side, Eyna on the other.
"You spent much of your childhood in my temple, kid," the priest pointed out.
"But that was before I fought the Inquisitor," he shot back. "What if your saints strike me down the second I enter? Or the Church sends someone to reprimand me—"
"I didn't know Master was so superstitious," Eyna chuckled by his side.
"It's not superstition when the danger is real," Konrad said, rolling his eyes.
But no, in all fairness, it was only a strange feeling.
He knew as well as the girl that the Church didn't hold a grudge. Or, well, the Church might've, but the saints who ran the show made a pact with his haremettes.
They wanted Maou Midori gone as much as they did, so Konrad had a strange immunity.
And yet, seeing those symbols sent a chill down his spine.
"The peddlers will think I want to intimidate them, holding our meeting here," he complained.
"Or take it as you showing off your power," Alastair noted. "You sent the previous owner of this building packing, after all. And Otto was nothing short of a tyrant. Merchants didn't like him."
That was one way to put it. He couldn't help but take a glance at his former servant.
Stella wrung her hands, her face unreadable, but she didn't seem any more distressed than usual. No outbursts ever since; nobody turned into a zombie or froze to death.
But damn, that girl needed therapy.
She glanced back at him, then at the ground, blushing.
Right, she considered herself his haremette, too, for whatever reason. Mana transfer made girls crazy for him—although the only two he ever did it for were already crazy from the start.
"Problems for another day," Konrad muttered, forcing himself to focus.
He took a reluctant step inside, and the main hall of the temple opened up in front of him.
It reminded him of the church buildings of his previous life, but the symbols were different.
The layout was almost the same. It was much bigger than the small temple in Haiten, though.
In another world, this could've already been a cathedral; here, an average place of worship.
Their steps echoed in the large hall as they walked up to the pedestal between lines and lines of benches. Stained glass windows turned the light into the colors of the rainbow.
The robust columns holding the tall ceiling were all statues of saints, as far as Konrad could tell.
But everything was dusty and neglected.
"How long was this place empty?" he asked, his voice reverberating between the walls.
"I'd assume Otto didn't bother holding sermons or gathering the townsfolk," Alastair said. From his childhood, Konrad remembered a wretched but busy town, but not a religious one.
And by the time he had to face off against the Inquisitor, the business was long gone.
The population dropped below one-tenth of what it used to be. So, of course, everything seemed grandiose and empty now. The ceiling sure needed some work, too.
Stella didn't even dare to look up at it, her ice-boulders taking a number on the building.
Not as much as the church-annex that she destroyed completely, but still.
"It won't fall on our heads, right?" Konrad asked, his echoes responding, "won't fall, won't fall."
"Don't worry, kid, these places are the saints' fortresses. They're built to withstand a siege."
He took a mental note of that.
"All right then, sit down somewhere. You, at the back, someone in the middle, and at the front, too. I want to test the acoustics of this place," Konrad barked orders, climbing up the pedestal.
The sound engineering of this place was nothing short of amazing.
While the echoes were disorienting if he spoke in the hall, on the pedestal, they reinforced his voice. Whatever his companions said, he couldn't hear, but his words traveled loud and far.
He didn't need a microphone—not that this world had them, but he had the spell for it, now.
"What number am I saying? Three? Five. One." He couldn't help but do a classic mic test, and everything went better than expected. "Okay, this'll have to do. Eyna, bring them in."
The merchants arrived half an hour later.
They spent that time dusting off the benches and making the place presentable.
Compared to the rest of Halaima, at least.
"Sorry for the strange location, but I'm glad that so many of you came," Konrad began once everyone had settled. "I am happy to announce that with your help, we defeated the Inquisitor."
Never mind that it wasn't the economic victory he had hoped for.
In the end, he didn't even fight Otto. Rather, he tried to stop Stella from destroying everything. But all the traders needed to know was he was in charge—and he needed money.
His mining concessions got mixed receptions.
"We are peddlers, not miners," a merchant complained. "You want us to pay you to do a job we're not suited for?! I never heard of such nonsense."
Konrad had to be patient and keep his voice down, explaining his idea in detail.
"No, of course not," he started. "But salt is a valuable commodity, and I have two mines sitting idle. I don't have the workforce to operate them, but you do need the goods they can offer."
He couldn't give them a PowerPoint presentation, but he had something even better.
Illusions. He projected the image of the mine into the air while he talked.
"The idea is simple. You need salt, I give you salt, but you have to mine it out. The concession is for four-hour shifts, one silver florin per miner you register. You keep all the salt they dig out."
In market terms, all they had to do was bring a workforce and shoulder the expenses.
"Pay them fair wages, and you're still getting salt at half price," Konrad ran the math.
Even if that didn't convince everyone, the promises of profit did.
"This offer only lasts until I get my own workforce; then the salt prices will go back to normal."
Create scarcity, a classic negotiating tactic.
"Didn't you say that mine has a goblin problem?" a skeptic asked. They sure paid attention.
"One does—I'll take care of that within a week," Konrad admitted. "I sent scouts to investigate the other, and work could start there right away. I'll give you maps if you're interested."
"What about the silver mine?" an old merchant spoke up next, his eyes gleaming with greed.
Konrad chuckled.
"Let's stick to salt for now—I offer commodities for cheap, not free money," he clarified. The peddlers sounded disappointed. "I haven't investigated it yet, but it's in tribal territory anyway."
That tempered their interest.
While they were willing to work with tribes on his behalf, they didn't trust them. A decade of banditry didn't go away in a day, and not every tribe was under Konrad's influence, either.
Which made him wonder what Maple found in the mountains.