The original Shionel settlement was nothing more than an attempt at earning more money. It was difficult for individual merchants, entrepreneurs, and skilled laborers to be able to consistently receive a consistent demand for their goods and services and also be remunerated in a commensurate manner in that era and region.
The reason for this was that markets were nowhere near as sophisticated as they were today. There were no regulations or enforcement. Currency as a concept was still immature and in its infancy and the barter system was still in place for the most part. Furthermore, the fragmented groups were too small to have any meaningful currency that could be used universally within a certain geographic region, or could at least be exchanged for other currency.
This was why the many struggling merchants and laborers gathered together in a large enough settlement to form the original Shionel settlement. Their sole aim was to unite their interests in one big interest group comprising thousands of merchants, entrepreneurs, and laborers, and negotiate and bargain as a larger and more powerful group that is better able to secure their interests and access the existing demand for goods and services they were capable of providing.
"In short, money was the unifying factor. Not shared culture or values. The only shared value is money. Money can transcend language, cultural, biological, and perhaps even species differences!" The professor grew increasingly excited. "The only way for the Shionel Confederation could ever lose its 'culture' is if the state stops revolving around money. And that is why I respectfully disagree with my colleagues who are skeptical and or against the extensive commercialization of the Shionel Dungeon."
This earned an applause of approval from the audience. It seemed that his sentiment was quite attractive.
"I see," Jimmy nodded. "That does make a lot of sense, I have to admit. It doesn't matter what the dominant culture is, so long as the highest value is money. However, what we do care about is who the dominant adventurers are, and also who the dominant market players are. The Shionel Confederation has become a melting pot for many powerful forces that are competing to carve out a share in the Shionel Dungeon. It's been exciting watching different groups bring out their best Martial Squires while also doing their very best to buy the best Martial Squires and parties to plunder the dungeon for them. What are your thoughts on that?"
"Oh, it's most certainly been quite fascinating to study the supplier market patterns of the Shionel Confederation in the past year. A lot of it has been more or less in line with my predictions. Deacon Industries completely dominated a lion's share of each floor's yield, making him the strongest force in the supplier market. There are tons of sectors and industries that are consumers of the raw esoteric resource supplier industries, this directly gives Deacon Industries a giant amount of influence over all of them, which Chairman Deacon has surely put to great use in many ways. He was who I bet as the ultimate winning of the Shionel Dungeon, given that his stronghold over the market had been unbreakable for an entire year."
"'Had been'," Jimmy offered him a wry smile. "Not anymore it seems."
"Not anymore, no," The professor laughed good-heartedly. "Or, to be more precise, someone has successfully broken his dominance on shares of the yield of the twelfth floor of the Shionel Dungeon. It has been all the buzz around town recently. The mysterious, unknown, and anonymously created and registered Esosale Suppliers that had very recently begun to be aggressively promoted by the Bradt Distribution Services have taken everyone by surprise. Frankly, for all my knowledge and experience, I had never predicted something like this happening even in my wildest dream, I have to admit. A random force appearing out of nowhere and dethroning the titan from its throne and suddenly supplying massive amounts of esoteric resource yields that had been disappearing from the twelfth floor? Such a thing sounds like a tale from a fictional novel, rather than a real event. Yet I have to admit that I was quite excited at this revelation as well. The world is full of surprises, without a doubt."
"The sheer number of theories, speculations, and conjectures that have been flying around leave my head spinning. I'm unable to tell what is true, and what isn't," Jimmy sighed. "I was hoping you could shed some light on this strange phenomenon."
"Haha, I can understand why it is so confusing," Jimmy laughed goodheartedly. "Unfortunately, it is a very confusing outcome frankly. Even I'm not entirely certain of my theories. But I can share with you some of my insights, hypotheses, and suspicions, if that's alright."
Jimmy nodded vigorously. "Most certainly,"
It was actually the main reason that the professor had been invited in the first place, instead of popular S-rank parties or other more flashy guests. The Esosale Supplier phenomenon was so interesting and fascinating to literally everybody, that it was worth bringing on a more mundane and boring yet highly knowledgeable guest to shed some light on the matter.
"There's a lot of information to sort out here, so we might jump around a bit," The professor warned lightly. "Chronologically, the first outlying event was the clearance of the second floor anonymously, and the tax evasion. That was the first interesting event that gained temporary traction, but it was not all that significant since the second floor was a dead floor. However, the next shocking event was the drastic change in policies from Guildmaster Bradt that allowed for anonymity in a lot of areas in the Shionel Confederation that were previously impossible. This was a drastic amendment to protocols that were not on the agenda of matters that Guildmaster Bradt had based his campaign. It frankly still doesn't make a lot of sense to us, but it could make sense under the hypothesis that the amendment was to allow for the anonymous creation and registration of Esosale Suppliers that Guildmaster Bradt aggressively promoted after."
