I had to give it to Worick, the man knew how to get things done.

We hadn’t even been gone for that long, and yet the changes that he had implemented in Lofie was astonishing.

Gone was the shabby gate and fence that had surrounded the village, now replaced by a sturdy wall, and a pretty impressive gate for a village this small.

The amount of light that reflected outside indicated to me that he had clearly increased the amount of streetlamps.

But as soon as we went through the gate, my astonishment went through the roof.

The streets were alight with so many lamps that almost every corner of the village was visible.

The buildings that had previously been in pretty bad shape had been repaired and painted, now looking like brand new buildings.

The roads that had been only compacted dirt, were now neatly paved, and clean. I could even see proper drainage pipes along their sides for the rainy days.

The man had managed to implement almost every single suggestion I had made to him.

As we moved through the village I saw the elves he had hired as the basic service providers walk through the streets lighting the lamps, and loading the garbage bags that had been left out onto a carriage.

"This village seems pretty... organised." Erick said.

"It wasn’t always like this." Julia said, looking around at the improvements with a wide smile. "It used to be pretty ramshackle, this is what it turned into after the chief listened to some of Daniel’s suggestions."

I could see the men’s gazes become disbelieving in that moment.

"You mean an elf actually listened to the suggestions of a human?" One of the new recruits asked.

"The elves here had grown to respect, and like Daniel quite a bit." Julia smiled.

And just at that moment we started to see some of the first villagers.

The outer streets of the village always tended to be empty at that time of night, but the closer you came to the centre, and to the only inn, the more people you would see.

"Daniel’s back!" One of the kids called out, running toward the inn.

His friends on the other hand ran in our direction.

"How was your trip?"

"Who are your new friends?"

"Did you see any beasts?"

"Who’s the other pretty lady holding your hand?"

The children bombarded us with questions, as they skipped and played alongside us.

I tried to answer all of their questions, but they had a way of not giving me any chance to respond, simply asking the next question that popped into their minds.

I couldn’t help but smile down at the little ones.

I’ve always had a soft spot for children.

Dreaming of the day that I could have my own.

It wasn’t long before we arrived at the inn, and there stood almost the entire village waiting, with Worick standing right at the front.

The elderly elf had a bright smile on his face when he saw us approaching.

"You’re finally back," Worick said, extending a hand for a handshake.

"It’s good to be back," I smiled at the old man, shaking his hand.

"It’s good to see you again, Worick," Julia said with a smile. "I see you’ve achieved quite a bit in the short time we’ve been gone."

"It’s all thanks to Daniel’s suggestions," Worick answered, looking at all of the new people we brought with us. "Who are all of the new visitors to our little village you’ve brought along?"

So we spent some time introducing everyone to each other, which led to me receiving quite a few envious glares when I introduced Cat as my wife.

Somehow though, Erick was immediately popular with the elves, I don’t know if it was the way he carried himself, or the way he seemed to radiate a kind of calmness.

After finishing all of the introductions, we moved into the inn, where I booked a few more rooms for all of the mercenaries, that was part of their employment benefits after all.

Finally Worick, Julia, Cat, Erick and I were sitting at a table in the bar, I could see that all of the villagers wanted to have their chance to speak to us again, but first there were some things that I needed to discuss with Worick.

"So Worick," I started. "How’s the budget looking?"

"Pretty good actually, with your idea of having a provisional tax system, we had a pretty decent tax revenue, which we used to build the new wall and gate, and even had some money left in the coffers." Worick answered.

"And the property taxes we’ve been collecting each month meant that we could keep improving the roads and housing in the village."

"We’ve also sold a few more plots of land, the money of which also went into the village coffers, so financially we’re pretty strong at the moment."

I couldn’t believe it had been that easy to convince the villagers that they had to start paying taxes, and to actually get them to pay it.

Much less that they had actually started selling the land instead of simply giving it away.

"Did you follow the protocols for selling land that I told you about?" I asked.

That had been another one of my worries, if they still sold land randomly without determining what that land would be used for, then it would still make planning the layout extremely hard for them.

"We did," Worick nodded. "All of the land that was sold was simply for residential purposes."

"Okay, did you make sure that the houses built on that land would be easily serviceable by your service providers?" I asked.

"Yes I did." Worick nodded again.

I couldn’t help but smile, the man had really taken all of my advice very seriously.

"Good," I started. "Now on to defence, is there any money set aside in the budget for security and defence expenses?"

"Yes there is," Worick answered.

"Excellent! Because I just so happened to have started my own mercenary company, of which Erick is the captain." I gestured toward Erick with a smile.

"So if you’re interested, we can negotiate on a defence contract."

This was going to be the hardest thing to convince him of.

As you can imagine, no one would want their defence in the hands of private organisations.

Imagine a country, or kingdom, subcontracting their armies, that wouldn’t make any sense, which is why I believed that it would take some convincing from me to get Worick and the villagers to agree to give my mercenary the contract to defend the village.

"Sure, what were you thinking?" Worick answered.

For a moment I could only look at him with wide eyes and a slack jaw.

I couldn’t believe it.

Either the man trusted me completely.

Or he really wasn’t a very good leader.

Now I know that I’m a very charming person, and that I’m extremely trustworthy, but it was not supposed to be that easy.

"Uhhm, I was thinking for now with the limited budget of the village, we can have five guards on a rotating shift," I answered. "And for this to make any sort of financial sense to me, I would need to get at least twelve silver per guard per month."

That was actually a very discounted rate, I was paying the mercenaries a base salary of eight silver a month, and I had to pay for their rooms and meals, I would be lucky if I broke even on that contract.

But I also knew that the first contract was not about making money at all, it was to start building a reputation for the mercenary company, and our guards.

Worick was quiet for a few minutes.

Now some of you might be thinking that sixty silver a month shouldn’t be all that much, but you’d be forgetting that Lofie village itself had only been earning a revenue for a few months at that point, and it was by no measure a large revenue.

"I think we should be able to afford that," Worick finally said.

"Is it going to hurt developments?" I asked.

Worick’s brows creased in thought for a few moments, I assumed he was doing some mental math, trying to determine whether the sixty silver a month would harm the development of Lofie.

"It might slow it down some," Worick finally answered. "But it shouldn’t hurt us all that much."

This had been exactly what I didn’t want, if the development of Lofie slowed down too much, or stalled completely, that would mean that tourism and trade would continue to be almost nonexistent, which would not work for me at all.

That would lead to my businesses plateauing at the threshold of what the current villagers could afford, and with me finding out that I could live significantly longer than I had expected, I could not afford that.

"Then how about this," I started. "Instead of twelve silver per guard, we make it nine silver, and you provide me with a plot of land where I can build a base of operations for them?"

Building costs in this world were almost nothing after all, although the building I would need to serve as a barracks for the mercenaries would need to be rather large, they wouldn’t be only fifteen for very long after all.