By mid-June, Bunta City was already growing rather hot. Bright sunlight beat down on its streets, now paved throughout with cement roads, sending heat rising from their surfaces. Before long, anyone walking outside would be covered in a fine layer of foul-smelling sweat. It was hardly pleasant.
Yet this did nothing to thin the crowds in Bunta City. It remained as bustling and prosperous as ever.
As the birthplace of the Xinfei Merchant Guild, the origin of the continent's magic industry sector, and a cargo transfer station serving the Lampari Kingdom, the Rulson Kingdom, and the Stantin Duchy, Bunta City had become one of the most prosperous cities not only in the Lampari Kingdom, but also among all the countries in the continent's southwest.
After several expansions, Bunta City's urban area alone was now more than twenty times the size of Old Bunta City. Its permanent population, once a mere fifty thousand or so, had surpassed six hundred thousand the year before last, making it the most populous city in the Lampari Kingdom-even exceeding the royal capital, Anvilmar City, by a hundred thousand.
If the large transient population that stayed here year-round was included, Bunta City's total population might even exceed a million.
A city with so many people naturally seemed extraordinarily lively and prosperous at any hour.
Today, however, that bustle and prosperity were even more apparent than usual.
In particular, the streets around Bunta City's Old City District had more than twice their usual number of pedestrians. Crowds filled every street in the Old City District, packed almost shoulder to shoulder until there was scarcely any room to move.
This was undoubtedly a strange sight.
Ever since Bunta City's New District had expanded, the city administration had deliberately guided new magic industries and incoming residents toward it. Even