Russell was not the only one silently cursing the Xinfei Merchant Guild's greed. In the Lampari Kingdom, more than three thousand kilometers from where he and Leslie had spoken, countless people were doing exactly the same.
Just one week after news broke of Her Majesty Queen Servini's child's birth, the Xinfei Merchant Guild suddenly announced that, to celebrate the birth, it would make a crucial technology publicly available in the Lampari Kingdom as a gift to Her Majesty the Queen.
The announcement immediately caused a sensation throughout the Lampari Kingdom and drew close attention from the surrounding countries.
Everyone knew that the Xinfei Merchant Guild's technological expertise in magic machinery far surpassed that of every other magic machinery merchant guild, giving it an absolute lead in the field.
Other merchant guilds could certainly invest effort and money into research and development to catch up, but how could conducting their own research possibly be as quick and convenient as obtaining mature technology directly from the Xinfei Merchant Guild?
Had the Xinfei Merchant Guild not voluntarily transferred a series of technologies relating to household magic machinery, it would probably still have had the entire magic machinery field to itself, leaving everyone else to pick up the scraps.
Naturally, its announcement that it would once again make a crucial technology available attracted everyone's attention.
And the Xinfei Merchant Guild certainly did not disappoint. The importance of the technology it unveiled at its press conference in Bunta City exceeded everyone's expectations.
That technology was none other than steelmaking!
Magic machinery came in all shapes and sizes, from pocket-sized magic lamps to the large cargo mana-powered ships the Xinfei Merchant Guild had developed six months earlier. Their functions, performance, and construction were all completely different.
But every kind of magic machinery invariably required one crucial