This made all the representatives straighten their backs. Even Leez appeared there, coming out of her room and joining the discussion, likely to represent the Merchant guild as well.
"First of all, we’d need to buy new area that would be covered with the barrier. As you can see...that would not be cheap.
"I might need to require you to cover this expansion cost. It will be separate from the costs you’d incur later, but I will definitely add a lot of discounts.
" Further, you will have exclusive use of that area during the lease period. This meant that you’d be able to decide which areas could be used as easements for fighting, camping areas, and so on.
"We’re willing!" The adventurer elder nodded immediately. The mercenaries bellowed with a higher volume a second later, as if it somehow made his offer more important. Leez, though calmer, nodded as well.
The guilds were naturally agreeable to this. This meant that a new area would be opened up for them, specifically.
Even better, they would be able to control the easements on their sides so their people could fight the monsters even better and at their own ’territory’!
"It is the same with us!" the mercenaries said, and Leez nodded.
One of the sources of conflicts between the two groups had been the location of their fighting spots. Not all fighting spots protected by the barrier was created equal. Some could allow for better movements, some for better momentum, some made it easy to trap monsters, and so on.
Other areas, on the other hand, tend to limit movements of those who depend on close-range fighting. They were not allowed to damage the trees within the barrier, according to the rules, so some areas were just a bit of a challenge to go berserk in.
"If we can get a larger and clear training area, it’d be worth it!"
Finn smiled. That was what he wanted to hear.
He still had a hundreds of expansion slots he could build—the duplicable limit at his level was at 1000, after all— and Pang hinted that there’d be a lot more when the Inn upgraded. As long as he could afford it, he could buy it.
One module cost around 100 gold and a thousand hearth points. Finn, a businessman, decided to ’lease’ twice that amount.
With this, not only would he get the funding he needed to expand without using his own money, but the land was still his in the end, and he’d still receive payment whenever they renewed it every five years or so.
"We can create a 1 meter by 1 meter module for 250 gold," he said, directly quoting a marked-up price. "The minimum is 100 square meters per branch, but it is also alright if you want to go higher than that. Max would be 200 per guild, at least for now."
He needed to expand the extensions too, after all. With this, he could get more funding for those expansions as well.
"As for renewal. It will be once every five years," he said. "And the price would be 1/10th if the guild who paid initially renewed, but 100% if it was a new organization taking over."
That was to say, if they did not renew, the other team who would takeover would not get any advantages.
They nodded, thinking it was fair.
Finn assigned the front area as the expansion and where the three guilds would be built. This way, if he wanted to expand the inn lot itself, he could just expand any of the three sides and not cause confusion or conflicts.
The three guild branches would not be side by side though, but still tens of meters away from each other.
He used the expansion to make ’ears’ instead of a simple shape lot to add surface area for the barrier.
The adventurer team received the corner heading Southeast, while the mercenary team got the corner Southwest. The merchant guild received the area between them. The lot was a bit elongated, so to allow for bigger gaps between the guilds, so they could use the place to fight monsters from more sides, and the shape would restrict the monsters’ movements passively.
Using the extra money he received as markup, he also started expanding his own place.
He had been wanting to expand the barrier to one of the tributaries so he could get easier access to water for his growing farms. This was also for the guests not staying inside the buildings.
It was fortunate that they lined up decently in the toilets, but with more people coming in, it could be troublesome. Now, the tributaries would pass through within the Inn lots, making it easier for them to harvest water.
There was no separate building for toilets in the system, so they were doing it manually. Fortunately, this world did have some plumbing knowledge, so he just hired some artisans under Leez to do this. They placed this at the other side of the inn opposite of the streams, of course.
Other than those, most expansion would be on the farm side. Although he had already purchased the max limit for his level for [Gardens], nothing was stopping him from farming manually.
With earth user Micc on his team, he could aerate and prepare the soil properly, and the essence in the danger zone was higher too, so the plants should be healthier than in the safe zone.
He’d also expand to the side for formalized camping areas. He added better markings and numbers, as well as facilities like barbecue grills.
Interestingly, as he expanded the lot, the excited adventurers and mercenaries lured in more and more monsters, taking advantage of the new barrier to kill as much as they could.
The Elders might’ve asked them to contribute to the branch costs. That would not be a small amount after all.
What he did not expect was for him to receive an upgrade notification thanks to this in the same day.
[One hundred thousand (100,000) accumulated barrier damage met and total of fife hundred (500) expansion modules active.]
[The barrier can now be upgraded!]