Ch.63Ace in the Hole

If anyone with even a bit of sense were thinking, they might question my response.

‘No matter what wrong they’ve done, aren’t they a nation of 10 million? What makes this tiny country with not even a million people act so boldly?’

….

Well, that’s correct. But only ‘half’ correct.

First, we need to understand Fahrenheit’s economic structure.

To begin with, it’s well known that Fahrenheit has no seas or lakes.

There are irrigation ponds and waterways for agriculture, as well as natural rivers, but it doesn’t rain often, and the soil isn’t particularly fertile. If you farm diligently, you can barely put bread on the table and occasionally cut into a steak.

But here’s a question: why did I use the qualifiers “barely” and “occasionally”?

It’s not like Fahrenheit doesn’t know proper farming techniques, and its population is much larger than Amurtat’s. So they should have enough territory to feed all their people.

The reason is “dungeons.”

Obviously, dungeons are like massive nightmares formed by the fusion of buried thoughts materializing into reality. Since they barely avoid the influence of the earth’s core, once a dungeon appears, that area becomes unusable as farmland.

Well, it’s not because of toxic energy or anything like that. It’s simply because setting up facilities for adventurers is more profitable than farming.

And I must have mentioned that Fahrenheit has a “very large” number of dungeons… didn’t I? Well, I’ve said it now, so let’s move on.

What happens when farmers only grow cash crops for profit and neglect staple food crops?

Naturally, food supply becomes difficult.

For the same reason, while dungeons are certainly beneficial to adventurers, when there are too many of them, the story changes somewhat.

Have you ever heard the term “resource curse”?

It refers to how countries with abundant valuable resources like oil become so fixated on those resources that growth in other sectors slows down. In severe cases, the entire nation becomes dependent on exporting that resource, causing the country’s future to fluctuate like a stock graph whenever international resource prices change. Fahrenheit suffered from a similar “dungeon curse.”

From a macroeconomic perspective, if the benefits from increased transient population due to dungeon development outweigh the food security provided by agriculture, then agriculture will inevitably be abandoned.

Small amounts of food can be found in dungeons, and while food can be sourced from various places, the valuable items from dungeons cannot be obtained elsewhere.

For example, magic stones that make wizards drool or parchment that can hold mana are primarily created by wizards, but they also frequently drop in dungeons. Thus, wizards looking to make money often work as appraisers near dungeons.

So far, so good.

They haven’t completely neglected agriculture, and they produce enough to feed their 10 million people.

However, when this “selection and concentration” continues for 300 years… the story changes somewhat.

As everyone knows, when you continuously invest time and effort into one thing, even when things go wrong, you tend to make inefficient moves out of the sentiment, “Do you know how much I’ve invested in this?!”

And now, Fahrenheit was simply passing time aimlessly, having lost any meaningful growth engine.

Typically, small countries begin to collapse slowly when they lose their growth engines.

This is because having no growth engine means either the country has completed its growth or there’s nothing left to develop. Unfortunately, for most countries, it’s the latter.

When future growth engines are cut off due to failed industrial development or other reasons, they can no longer attract investment funds. As available funds decrease, the thinking becomes “we need to save what’s currently working,” leading to overinvestment in already well-funded sectors rather than in declining areas.

Obviously, production capacity won’t improve dramatically just by adding a few more machines, so they end up selling the same things and doing the same things in an endless cycle, gradually stagnating… but countries with substantial size like Fahrenheit were in a somewhat different situation.

They could nurture industries with just their internal funds, so they could maintain steady investment regardless of external investment. As a result, Fahrenheit had become a country completely dependent on dungeons.

Dungeons and inns were everywhere, along with appraisers and adventurer parties.

Naturally, after 300 years of such investment, the business should have either thrived or collapsed, but the problem was that Fahrenheit’s business was dungeon exploration.

There was no guarantee that pouring money into it would yield good results, so the only meaningful way to increase rewards was to increase the number of people entering dungeons to bring back treasures.

In fact, Fahrenheit was attracting an enormous number of adventurers with things like “Novice Adventurer Subsidies.”

Weren’t the councilors who established the Amurtat branch also from Fahrenheit?

The problem is that no matter how many people they recruit, only those with the fortitude to fight monsters can enter dungeons, regardless of age or gender.

Those who enter without knowing better often return with severed limbs, become incapacitated due to PTSD, or simply die. To put it bluntly, they were “grinding through people.”

Now, this is the important part.

Although people of all ages and genders enter, young men form the backbone of adventurers due to physical conditions and social norms. And these adventurers return as disabled, incapacitated, or corpses?

Even someone with no relevant knowledge would start to sweat when hearing that “the youth population is being ground away.”

Unlike modern times, industries in this era that operated 100% on manpower naturally needed the vigor of young people, but Fahrenheit’s industrial complexes were now filled with middle-aged and elderly workers.

If the most populous industrial complex was like this, what about the farmlands?

With young children and hunched-over elderly tending the fields, agricultural production inevitably declined. Currently, Fahrenheit barely maintains enough agricultural production to meet demand.

What’s the problem with that, you ask? Think a bit harder. Even modern Korea, despite its rice surplus, would face riots if imports were cut off.

Merchants are quick to notice. When imports start to be cut off, they’ll soon raise prices under the pretext of limited supply, and other merchants will follow suit, subtly raising prices with excuses like “labor cost burden,” “rising raw material costs,” or “distribution fees.”

Just as there are countries with cheap food, but no country where “only” food is cheap. If food imports from dozens of countries are cut off, how will Marcus respond?

*

“What do you think? Quite a plausible strategy, isn’t it?”

“Truly… remarkable. How did you figure all this out?”

“Well… because I am a ruler.”

I can’t tell my aide the source of my information.

That Fahrenheit and Elisia are always the large and small nations generated near users, and accordingly, how users compete in internet communities over creative ways to take down Fahrenheit or how quickly they can destroy it.

In fact, even if I told him, he wouldn’t understand, so it was a needless worry.

“You sent the letter as I instructed, right?”

“Of course, Your Majesty. I entrusted it to the Adventurer’s Guild messenger, so you should receive a reply soon.”

“Hehehe…”

On my favorite website, Fahrenheit’s nickname was “That Country.” Grand Duke Marcus’s nickname was “Mr. Likeable.”

The country’s nickname came from so many beginners posting questions about how to defeat Fahrenheit, while “Mr. Likeable” was an ironic term used to indirectly refer to regular users whose behavior was off-putting in the community.

Setting aside the country’s nickname, once the Grand Duke earned the nickname “Mr. Likeable,” he couldn’t escape what’s commonly called the “goroshi angle.”

This term, derived from Japanese meaning “to kill someone,” was slang for capturing a user’s inappropriate behavior and reporting it to administrators for permanent banning.

Well then… let’s see how long Grand Duke Marcus can hold out.