- What are we doing now?
- Bones, we're doing it at the duchy level! And I'm taking the big one. So much trouble with just our village? Imagine if there was a whole kingdom! Can you imagine the level of trouble?
The sitting vampire's stomach twitched.
- It's a lot of trouble, I agree. But I've never been a fan of the "clean shoulder straps, clear conscience" idea. We have to take responsibility for the world we live in. Not necessarily to make it better, but not to shit in it!
- I'm not arguing with that, Kostya. But you'll never persuade me to become the ruler of the kingdom!
- You're taking a big swing. We should order a lip-rolling machine for Masha! You and I aren't even knights yet! And you're thinking about the crown.
- I'm calculating in advance!
- You better calculate in advance what will happen tomorrow, not a hundred years from now! Did you hear about the mithril problem?
- Of course I have!
- How are we gonna solve it?
The Triumvirs have fallen silent.
Happiness seemed so close. Five tons of mithril ore. The best weapons and armor in the world. Leonid's deputy even drew a drawing of what a weapon designed specifically for vampires should look like. All the details were settled with Mikhail, who, as a blacksmith, was supposed to realize all the drawn splendor. And then it turned out that five tons of ore was only fifty kilograms of myfril.
At first they started to accuse Michael that he had messed up and made a mistake, spoiling good ore. When the blacksmith managed to justify himself and convince everyone of his innocence, which of course was done instantly, with the help of a couple drops of blood, everyone began to blame the scouts for the mistake. They stole the wrong thing. But Sergey and his charges managed to get away with it easily. Had to investigate more thoroughly and revealed amazing things.
The Uzmer Empire, heir to a single state that once existed in the north of the continent and united not only all the lands of humans, but also elves and dwarves, conducted a very, very cunning trade policy. Being the world's financial center, the empire could almost freely dictate its will to other countries. What and used, especially with regard to such an important metal as mithril, which was not mined in the south.
The right to trade mithril and its products in the territory of the empire, had to be earned. The main requirement that existed for this was simple - the ore from which the myfril was obtained, had to be "original". That is, as extracted, so in the smelting furnace and put, and from it immediately on the anvil. Allegedly, this is how mithril does not lose quality.
And to make everything good for themselves, high customs duties were imposed on mithril products. Which did not apply at all if imported into the Empire, of course, the "original" mithril ore. And it turned out that it was more profitable to trade with the Empire was ore, in which myfril was no more than two percent, and not products made of it. The Northern Kingdoms of course fought against such fraudulent ways of doing business and set high export duties on mithril ore, but could not achieve much.
Four-fifths of all mined mithril was bought by the Uzmer Empire. Naturally, it made the rules. Elur in general was the only kingdom that traded in myfril products, all the others have long since reconciled and domestic production was aimed only at the demand within the country, only the "original" ore was exported. But Elur had its own mines of lunar silver and gold, and could afford to pursue an independent trade policy from the Empire. The rest of the "weight categories" were not equal.
I've got more interesting stuff on patreon
patreon.com/Chill76