Chapter 422 Iver: I Know Everything"...I understand."
Iver took a deep breath and held Little Crow, who was curled up in his arms, with both hands.
He lowered his head and extended his index finger to tease the crow's head, speaking casually as he did. "You gave the Stibnite people a huge number of orders. Alchemists had never seen anything like it... They thought a huge opportunity had arrived, so they kept expanding their apprentice recruitment and production capacity.
"And the king of Stibium, 'Valentine VII,' did not realize there was a problem at first, either. He blindly increased the nation's sponsorship of alchemists, training large numbers of extraordinary people to become alchemists.
"—Before long, the alchemists were overloaded. The market saturated quickly... Or rather, the orders you gave them had already reached saturation.
"More and more alchemists kept graduating from academies, and the state had to keep providing huge subsidies to these young alchemists. A Third Level alchemist could receive two hundred gold coins in funding every month. But the market was already saturated, causing an excess of alchemical products within Stibium.
"Experimenting with and developing alchemical products required massive investment. But when there were enough competitors at similar stages of research, it was entirely possible for someone else to finish production before you had even completed your research. Their research would either be scrapped outright, or they would be forced to release an unfinished product onto the market... Am I right?"
"—You are indeed unimaginably wise, Minister."
Grandet acknowledged it calmly, even taking the initiative to add, "With too much supply and declining quality, we naturally had to lower our purchase prices. You should understand that this was not our fault. It was His Majesty the King's mistake for acting too rashly. It was not our place to