Chapter 800: Preparations & Oversight
Instead of a simple single town waygate, Damian installed access to all three. Edgeheaven was a small city, and Damian didn’t mind having an extra market. Before his trade towns, Edgeheaven was providing the same middle ground that was accessible to all.
By just using unique Sanctum IDs for people of Edgeheaven, Damian could stop others from trying to access this exclusive benefit of being an Edgeheaven native. If people use the locals to do their business, like most trade town merchants do for the Sanctuary, he could add a restriction on travelling. Like one ID could only visit one trade town in a day.
After discussing how to operate and control the waygates, along with the registration process for the island locals, Damian and Lucian returned to Sanctuary. The Highsword members, willing to join the research or the academy, could come to Sanctum anytime they wanted to, with the waygates installed.
In total, five waygates were installed by him on the island of Edgeheaven. Four for the common people, connected to all three trade towns and the second biggest city of Sanctuary. The fifth one, connected to the city of Sanctuary, was placed inside the half-built bastion. Only accessed by the Highsword members.
He could see Land-breaker and Voidshaper getting overwhelmed by his unconditional act of giving them these unique runic machines. Damian himself needed these markets and even the Highswords, though, so doing this was a small investment. It would also help in strengthening relations between the two groups.
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Four days before the event, the Sanctuary was packed with people. The Sanctum had received confirmation of a visit from both the Emperor and the Faerunian royal family. They both had sent word of using the Sanctuary waygate a day before the event. The Eldorians didn’t send any word, but their representation was covered by Vidalia and Ilvanya.
In fact, Damian suspected that the presence of those two in Sanctuary was the catalyst that had brought both the emperor and the Faerunians to his doorstep. His invitation was very last-minute and not very detailed.
The shop set up on the New Dawn island was all done. They had even built many Sanctuary-operated inns and lodgings there in the last minute for the excess of people crowding the streets of Sanctuary cities.
Damian had built the town near the beach on one side of the island, then, at some distance, he had built a massive colosseum out of stone and Blazor alloy. The stonemason and other craftsmen were hired for it. Damian made most of the things with spells, but the design and several little methods and techniques were used for fine-tuning the big structure.
On the other side of the island, they had built a massive open area paved with stones and well-lit with runic lamps. This was the place Damian was going to place the hundred waygates to connect the hundred dungeons.
There was a clear paved stone path connecting the three places. And Damian had planned to let the horses and mana-beast-drawn carriages carry people to and fro. Another job opportunity for his people. He had even put up advanced and simple runic carriages in the Sanctum shop for people to buy and do this. Damian had even introduced the payment in installments method for his Sanctum shops using the Sanctum ID as identity proof.
The carriages had top runic features ranging from a simple suspension system to internal temperature control and even a little weight adjustment spell. The base model had fewer features but was much cheaper; buying a horse would take more than the carriage. Sanctum loaned money for small businesses; it was one of the first things Damian had introduced in the House of Lords after the registration process had completed.
He was called a lot of names for that, giving money to people like that, but when the honest, hard-working men and women, who had taken the loan, paid back, all voices had been drowned. Some men had even paid three months’ or more advanced installments in just a single month, with their business taking off.
Some had even paid in full, seeing the trust Sanctum had put in its people and the return on trust, the lordlings who shouted how bad this idea was had their mouths shut.
He wasn’t selling or renting the land on New Dawn yet, and still, he was receiving major offers from several merchants and guilds to rent and even buy the land on the island. The plan was not a secret, and some nobles and merchants had connections in the House of Lords, so information was flowing full force.
Damian knew about it and had even taken advantage of that at times.
He didn’t put anything up for the rent yet, but they did give light promises to major deals offered by big players. Damian had planned to split the land equally among major businesses, small individual businesses, and Sanctum-managed businesses and future project plans.
After the flying ships started the simple transportation, connecting major cities, and even the two islands, the number of people arriving in the city had seen a significant growth. He had underestimated the craze people had for these flying machines. More than travelling, people were treating it like a tourist activity.
It did help a lot with transportation; large items that couldn’t be transported by spatial storage were transported using the service in large numbers every day.
The hundred dungeons were checked by them thoroughly. Guides for starting floors had already been made by them. Damian had planned to release them both in paper form and to the receiver channels. The library channel would have the information, which was not included in the base model receiver, so the challengers would have a reason to buy these more premium receivers.
They were still working on the system that would control the entry and exit of the dungeon challengers, check the spatial storage for the material to take their share, and stop people from having anything too dangerous.
It needed to be detailed and well thought out. But they would only need that after the event ended. He was going to announce the public entry, but it will only come into effect after 3-4 days of the event.