When we were designing the flavors for our ice cream, we made a lot of flavors, from slightly sour to sweet to even minty— grave robbing was never my thing but I'm weirdly good at it. — but in the end, Ifira and I decided that it was better if everything we made was sweet. And cheesy, of course.

  For her, I'm guessing she made that decision based on her own tastes, she liked the sweetness and decided that should be the flavors. I, on the other hand, agreed while viewing it through the lense of a business, and it did make sense, sweetness will attract customers more so than all the other flavors.

  That's just how the world works.

  How the world also works is that if someone eats something sweet then their teeth would begin to fall out, which would be bad most of the time but in this case, Ifira and I have a lot of influence over Flotol and Ghorise and using that, we can technically mitigate the side effects.

  And that brings me here, where I'm sitting in a round table with Wardcruncha, my father, Flutt, and some woman named Harina, who works for us as a type of PR person? I think that's her role, she manages the opinion across Flotol.

  Or in other words, she listens to gossip. She does have a wide range of "friends" telling her stories though so I can't really hate her or her job, Wardcruncha is apparently the one receiving the news so I hope he does something with it.

  "Okay, so, what are our thoughts on it so far?" Leaning back, my eyes go over everyone present. "I know this sounds insane but making Ghorise and Flotol into some kind of tourist spot would be a good idea, I think we'll have a full city in like, 4 years."

  "And that's your best estimate?" Wardcruncha asked, he was currently looking at the plans I made for Flotol, in its pages are the buildings and locations I think would be useful to attract more people.

  In the list are things like:

  *Cultivation rooks that utilize the leyline inside Misery Swamp

  *Cottages built on top of Misery Swamp itself

  *Offers to go on a tour— with a tour guide of course. — to explore the swamp and see its beauty, of course there will be pamphlets that can be bought

  *Unique restaurants that have cuisines that can only be found in this part of the world.

  *Stores that sell shirts made with materials taken from animals that only live in Misery Swamp, like shirts and hats made from Cudgi feathers, trinkets made from Anklak bones, and a few other things, maybe from aberrants? The ideas are still in progress right now.

  *A park that lets people observe Aberrant Crayfish in their natural habitat, and as a bonus, it also doubles as a wall to keep those things contained!

  *Stables with specialized transportation and carrier pigeons to make it easier for visitors to come and go, and while we're at it, I think paving and repairing roads should be a priority as well.

  And a few other things that I wrote down, Wardcruncha is most likely going to calculate the cost and all that fancy stuff before confirming which should be done and which one should get dismissed.

  Overall though, I think that most of them will be greenlit, I mean, why wouldn't they? They're such good ideas in my opinion, it would totally attract people from across the world to visit our little village.

  "What's tourism, anyway?" The woman... Harina, right, Harina's question shouldn't have surprised me, it did.

  "It's when people visit a place constantly, it's basically like the Day of Piling I guess? But it happens every day." I explain softly, hoping that would be enough.

  "That sounds exhausting, doesn't it? And what good would Flotol be if you do that? It feels like you're just having fun right now instead of actually leading." No one visibly reacted to what she said but I know that everyone is agreeing with her, they just think I want to turn Flotol into a personal amusement park.

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  "It's gonna be very profitable, and specializing in attracting tourists means there's a higher chance we get people who would want to stay here, increasing the population and by extension, manpower in Flotol." Does this make sense? Should I explain more? I should. "The people who come won't just take up space, they'll bring their own money and put it in our economy, increasing Flotol's worth."

  "Since they come from other places, who have their own economy, but used it to pay these people?" Flutt sounded confused, and he probably is, but he gets the point. Sort of.

  "Yep, they get paid, they come here, then they pay us." Though, I'd probably have to find a way to attract both the rich and the poor. "And the best part is, it won't just be normal people who will come here, but nobles as well."

  Nobles should be my main priority right now actually, because most of the populace usually follow along whatever whims those guys have. And if they think that our little part of the world is a "good vacation spot" then everyone else will naturally follow along that line of thought, attracting more people.

  And if more and more people come, then richer nobles would take notice and see what people are buzzing about, hopefully, when that time comes, we have enough stuff to truly grab their attention.

  And then they stay.

  "That's not a bad idea, I can see it succeeding, but the amount of cost it will take to make it even remotely possible is... Quite staggering." Wardcruncha murmured, he's the only one who seems to know what I'm talking about, everyone else is just lost. "Do we start with the walls built around the lifeless pool first?"

  "Hm? Maybe. That won't cost us money as well." Great, he's thinking about it seriously, I'm happy.

  "Why won't it cost us anything?" My father suddenly asks and everyone just looks at him strangely, including Harina. "What? Am I missing something?"

  "Your daughter can control nature like it's no different from her hands." Harina pointed out.

  Well, it takes a lot more effort than that but she's right.

  "Ahhhh..." Dad nodded numbly, his eyes briefly lost their luster. "Am I really cut out for this? I don't think I can be the leader you all expect me to be."

  "You're not." Flutt bluntly corrected him, the priest didn't even hesitate for a single second. "Rontress is supposed to be in that role but she didn't want it so we picked the closest person to her."

  "Right, but I'm not talking about Rontress, maybe my wife can take my spot?" Ah? Wait what? He didn't feel inferior but instead genuinely thought that he wasn't cut out? "She would be able to keep up with something like this."

  "Really? I'm barely understanding the exchange between your daughter and her mentor." Flutt admitted, Harina nodded. "I genuinely doubt she would be any better than you, look... We don't need to do anything, Rontress and Wardcruncha will plan and do everything themselves."

  "And us?" My father lifted his head.

  "We are here to help them deal with the citizens and manage the parts for Flotol they don't have time for, you are especially important, since you're the face that represents all of us." Wardcruncha reached out and patted my father on the back. "You need to keep yourself happy, convince everyone in this village that everything is under control and if they ask questions, just answer vaguely."

  "He's right." Everyone turned to me. "Just say that Flotol is being fixed if anyone asks, I'll provide proof by anchoring the raft with plants."

  "That also needs to be addressed doesn't it? Flotol getting fixed?" Wardcruncha put the conversation back on track. "We can't have visitors staring at the edges of our village and thinking it's ugly."

  "... Yes." I pinch the bridge of my nose. "Materials for new houses will be expensive, and not to mention will take the manpower we need to place on other projects."

  "Why not just repair the houses yourself?" Harina, of course, pointed out the obvious, but she didn't think it through properly.

  "It will make everyone restless, what do you think would happen if every time someone looks at their house they are reminded of me?" Instead of answering, I give her another question.

  "They'll think you're watching over them." She was also sharp huh? Great, another person to add in my growing list of who to watch out for.

  "Yes, they'll think that since I can control plants, it means I can use them to hear or sense things they are doing." Which is not even inaccurate, I can do all of that. "We are watching over them of course, every single thing they do gets marked down by us, but we don't want to make it too obvious."

  "Otherwise they'd rebel?"

  "Nope." I shake my head, Flutt really just thought of people rebelling huh? "They can't fight me, they know that, so they'll leave. And if they go to other towns and spread rumors about how I'm watching people after I "take over" Flotol by killing the previous leaders?.."

  "Not a good image, this place might as well be considered cursed, no one would come here, ever." Wardcruncha finished what I was going to say in my place.

  "Yes." And now everyone understands the risks every action we take has. "Now then, anyone have plans on what we should do to make Flotol beautiful for the time being? It doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to be good enough."

  And just like that, we began brainstorming.