“……”

A short silence ensued as Raven thought of all the other territories he had crossed while traveling back home.

There were many things he could think of that the Pendragon Duchy was lacking.

Raven answered in a somber voice.

“Population. We do not have enough people.”

“That’s accurate. Compared to the vast territory of the Pendragon Duchy, it is absolutely underpopulated. A land of this size should have at least over 100,000 people, but the Pendragon Duchy borders on 30,000. That’s considering the recent influx of people as well.”

“Hm…”

“If you consider that many other territories, which are only half as large as the Pendragon territory, have a population of over 100,000, then we are sorely lacking. Even our neighboring territory, the Seyrod territory, has roughly around 70,000 or 80,000 people.”

“Hmm…”

Vincent continued.

“I have heard that even Lowpool had a population of over 10,000 in the past. But now, it is not even half of what it used to be. We are lacking in scale to properly develop commerce. At the least, we need to be able to keep Conrad Castle operational with just the tax collected from Lowpool.”

“Then why don’t we take the poor from outside...