The tide of the times rolls forward, and there are always some who make the right choices—just as Ren said.

Gray Fort Empire, Imperial Capital.

"Tricky Coin" Al looked at the long line snaking outside his shop, filled with noble ladies and young misses from the surrounding area. Every single one of them left his store loaded down with purchases, their faces growing brighter by the minute.

"Another successful investment, as expected!" Tricky Coin Al couldn't help but sigh. He felt that ever since the God of Technology appeared, every single one of his investments had been wildly successful.

"Yeah, but what I find even more incredible is that all these clothes actually come from Roster territory..." A middle-aged man dressed as a steward beside him couldn't help but marvel. "Of course, I don't mean anything bad about Roster territory—I'm not looking down on it at all."

"I'm just saying, Roster territory is so small, yet it's got tons of factories—steel mills, all kinds of Magic Conductor factories, and now textile mills and garment factories, probably loads more we don't even know about."

"Their textile and garment factories must be insanely efficient to produce so many of these new-style clothes that all these Golden Merchant Guild shops can sell them. I hear they're even selling them at the Church of Love and Beauty."

The speaker may not have meant much by it, but the listener took it to heart. Tricky Coin Al had just been making a casual comment, but after hearing his most trusted steward say this, his expression shifted slightly.

"So, is there any chance we could set up our own textile and garment factories?"

"A lot of those new-style clothes use that new material called nylon, which probably isn't something we can... wait, you mean?" The steward suddenly seemed to catch on.

"Obviously we can't make nylon, but can't we work with cotton and linen? Nylon's such an advanced new material—let the Golden Merchant Guild use it to make high-end new-style clothes for nobles. We'll use cotton to mass-produce regular clothes for everyday wear." The more Tricky Coin Al talked, the more feasible it seemed.

Even here in the imperial capital—the wealthiest human nation's capital—regular folks couldn't just casually change clothes. Why?

Was it because there wasn't enough cotton?

If it was just about not having enough cotton, people would've started planting tons of it ages ago.

The core issue was there weren't enough tailors. It took a single tailor several days to make one piece of clothing.

That meant labor costs were sky-high, which kept clothing prices through the roof. So people just had to wear their clothes until they literally fell apart—patching holes, darning tears, and passing garments down through the family until the fabric was too threadbare to salvage.

"Honestly... sir, I'm getting excited just thinking about it. If Roster territory really has Magic Conductors that can produce cotton cloth and finished garments way more efficiently, we could totally produce massive amounts of clothes to sell to regular folks."

The steward's eyes lit up. "And if the volume's big enough, we could even outfit slaves with... though if that's the case, we'd need to get way more people planting cotton, like, right now."

The Month of Revival was almost over—this was the last window for planting cotton.

If they planted now, they could harvest in 150 days. That'd be just enough time to buy all the machinery and equipment from Roster territory and get their factories set up.

If everything went smoothly, in less than 200 days they'd have a steady stream of clothes rolling off the line before the Frigid Moon arrived...

The catch was, right now they needed a ton of noble lords choosing to plant cotton so they could actually source it.

"...That is a real problem." Hearing the steward's words, Tricky Coin Al's expression grew a bit more serious.

The lords around the imperial capital mostly chose to plant grains and beans—staple food crops. Because, well, only those foods would keep people from starving to death.

Honestly, across the entire continent, most noble territories made the same choice. Getting them to plant cotton would be really tough.

"Got it!"

Tricky Coin Al had a brainstorming moment and quickly came up with a solution. "Why don't they dare plant other crops and stick almost entirely to grains?"

The steward was about to answer, but Al just answered his own question. "It's because grain is 100% edible, can definitely be sold, and will definitely make money!"

"They just don't want to take on the risk. So, if that's the case, I'll go find each lord ahead of time and sign agreements with them. As long as they can provide me with enough cotton, I'll pay premium prices to buy it. The more they give me, the more I'll pay."

Profit was absolutely the core lever for moving any noble.

If you wanted to change their minds, the best way was through profit.

Tricky Coin Al understood this perfectly.

Since you're worried that crops other than grain won't fetch good prices, I'll let you sell them in advance before you even plant. And the more you plant, the higher the price you'll get—let's see how you choose!

Anyway, after you plant cotton and sell it all to me, you can use the money from selling cotton to buy even more grain...

After a brief pause, Tricky Coin Al seemed to think of something else. "If necessary, we can pull more nobles into our textile and garment factories too."

"We obviously can't copy the Golden Merchant Guild's model, but we can definitely copy Roster territory's model. As long as everyone needs this cotton to make a profit, I think they'll make the better choice."

Make money once planting cotton, make money again when the factory buys the cotton and sells finished garments—that's a huge temptation for nobles.

As for the land owned by regular folks, that'd be even easier. Even if he didn't make a move, plenty of others would...

Tricky Coin Al's expression grew increasingly cheerful, as if he'd found a path straight to the heavens.

He took another long look at the scene in his Golden Merchant Guild shop, then quickly pulled out his Magic Net and sent a long string of messages to Viscount Roster.

The next instant, Viscount Roster replied with a massive info dump—looked like around ten thousand words—covering all of Roster territory's basic textile industrial Magic Conductors. From spinning machines to looms, from sewing machines to winding machines, tons of machine names he'd never even heard of appeared before his eyes.

"This... why does it feel like Viscount Roster had this all written up already?" Tricky Coin Al didn't look at it right away. Instead, he thought this to himself.

And then asked it outright.

"A lot of people have been asking after seeing how well the Golden Merchant Guild's garment sales are doing. We haven't integrated production machinery and processes for new materials like nylon yet, so we can't sell those at the moment. But we've got complete sets of Magic Conductor machinery for making clothes from traditional materials, usage instructions, even how to design and build magic-tech era textile and garment factories—we've got full plans for all of it."

Viscount Roster's straightforward answer made Tricky Coin Al's heart tighten.

Sure enough, he wasn't the only one who could see the trajectory of the times. Looking across the entire continent, there were probably tons of people who'd noticed and wanted to grab onto this opportunity!

A sense of urgency welled up inside him!

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