“These are the records for the Hearthstone Tavern’s latest revenue and expenses.”
Mrs. Melina handed the ledger to Joshua. Joshua opened the ledger and flipped over a couple pages.
Since the Hearthstone Tavern opened till now, all the income and expenses of the tavern has been recorded on the ledger. At the end of every month, they will be summed up.
Mrs. Melina financial management was excellent. After all, this old lady had saved a business in dire straits all on her own.
The total amount of card packs sold in the month was recorded on the originium lizard server.
Due to the fact that the Hearthstone Tavern has tripled in size and the amount of arcanotech devices containing the Hearthstone game increased a lot, that originium lizard gained two new companions.
That said, even with a greater number of them, their idle nature caused them to be hibernating with closed eyes on the regular.
Joshua verified the amount of profit from the card packs with the amount of card packs sold. He confirmed that there were no mistakes.
“Mister Joshua... I think that we need to hire a couple more servers.”
Mrs. Melina took out an ’employee registry.’
“That’s fine with me. But, I am curious as to where you found those servers.”
Joshua accepted the registry from Mrs. Melina. He turned the page and discovered that it was so detailed that it’s scary.
The registry not only recorded the servers’ basic information such as names and genders, it also recorded their previous work experience and home address.
If it wasn’t for the fact that the ‘lamp’ Joshua was using was an originium crystal inscribed with illumination runes, Joshua would suspect that he had returned to earth.
That registry was no different from a photo-less CV, a resume, at all.
“Norland is a city that respects contracts. Mister Joshua, there are some businesses here that specialize in providing workers,” explained Mrs. Melina.
“It’s not... slave trade, right?”
The first thing that popped up in Joshua’s mind was the slave market from the medieval times.
“I’m old now. My memories aren’t that good anymore. But, I believe that slave trade has been banned tens of years ago. Perhaps that’s something that exist in other countries but it is absolutely prohibited in Norland,” said Mrs. Melina.
“The world’s most prosperous city... right?”
Joshua cannot describe this city as being medieval. The arcanotech workshops across the Gear River have been in operation for over fifty years. The arcanotech devices produced by them were already showing early signs of modern technologies.
Take...’automobile’ for example. Joshua has seen a ‘car’ propelled by magic power passing by on the street not long ago. Many mages were attracted by that ‘car’ and stopped to check it out. Joshua believed that it would soon replace the carriages.
The First Industrial Revolution was already happening in Norland. With magic power as the catalysis, the gates to the Second Industrial Revolution were being opened.
As for Joshua, he pried open the gates to the Information Age for the citizens of Norland ahead of schedule.
“Mrs. Melina, the next time you go out to hire new servers, please bring me with you.”
Joshua handed the registry back to Mrs. Melina.
The humans of this world were climbing up the technology tree extremely fast; whether it be for civilian uses or military uses... But, according to Third Prince’s memory, the structure of the Demon Realm was still lingering in the ‘medieval times.’
Even though Joshua had no desire to participate in the power struggle of the Demon Realm, it remains that the Demon Realm was his home state. If the humans decided to use a ‘380mm artillery cannon’ to smash open the doors to the Demon Realm, the Demon Realm would be done for.
But, that was something that Joshua actually didn’t have to worry about. His older sister Cecily has been working hard on promoting change to the stubborn, inflexible and bewards Demon Realm. Hopefully, she would gain a greater understanding of the current human world after obtaining the magic network.
What Joshua needed to consider now was how to expand his ‘entertainment guild.’ Currently, he could only think of two ways to expand it.
First, he could ask Sir Weissenasche to help find suitable actors and actresses. As for the second, it would be to check out the ‘talent market’ Mrs. Melina mentioned.
“Mister Joshua, that’s not a problem at all. ...Apart from that, there’s the issue with the price of the Hearthstone card packs.”
Mrs. Melina didn’t know whether or not to bring her proposal up. At the beginning, Joshua had set the price of the card packs to three gold coins. But, later on, he decreased the price to a single gold coin.
“Is it too expensive?”
Joshua had guessed the issue Mrs. Melina would raise.
Even if the price of the card packs were to be deemed as a single gold coin, many customers would still complain about it being too expensive.
This was especially true for a certain impoverished inquisitor and online author, Cheryl. She would frequently post on the Mage Forum that she was so impoverished recently and would have to eat clay to survive. She would also make posts begging for charity people to give her 328 gold coins so she could enjoy a proper meal. Furthermore, she would mention she had no idea about any Hearthstone expansion card packs or Goblins vs Gnomes.
The expensive nature of the card packs led to the Hearthstone cards to be very expensive too. Currently, the most expensive card being traded in the Hearthstone Tavern was a Golden Ragnaros. It was listed with a price of four thousand gold coins. That was enough money to purchase an outstanding quality staff.
To the dwarves, rich fellows that made their fortune from extracting originium crystals, a single gold coin was something that they would not even bother to blink their eyes at. But, to some impoverished commoners or mages, a single gold coin was enough to feed them for an entire week.
Even though Joshua had set up a mission in the system where one will be able to obtain a new card pack every day by winning three matches, the majority of the players were still complaining about the price of the card packs. After the new expansion went live, this sort of complaints started appearing on the Mage Forum more frequently.
“Mister Joshua, I don’t believe that you need to decrease the price,” said Mrs. Melina.
Even though decreasing the price will satisfy the impoverished players, Hearthstone’s biggest customers, the whales, were the wealthy mages and dwarves. If they were to decrease the price, it will cause a psychological disequilibrium in the hearts of the players that had purchased a large amount of card packs already.
“While we shouldn’t decrease the price, we can do discount sales,” said Joshua.
“Discount sales...”
Joshua took out a white piece of paper and a pen. Then, he wrote a ‘50% OFF’ on the paper.
“I believe you know this too. It’s a method businesses frequently employ to sell their items. During certain special holidays, we can use 10 percent, 30 percent or even 50 percent off to sell the card packs.”
Regardless of which world it might be, giving a discount would always be the method that could stimulate intelligent creatures into a state of buy buy buy. It was the same for this world too.
In Norland, the ratio of gold coin and silver coin was set to 1:10. Thus, after giving it a discount, the card packs would be able to be sold in silver coins.
“These days, it’s a perfect opportunity to celebrate the release of the new expansion. Mrs. Melina, you can decide on how much discount we should give.”
Joshua handed the ‘50% OFF’ paper to Mrs. Melina. This female merchant knew much better than Joshua on how to earn more money through this method.