I can only achieve nothing and become the Pirate King.

Chapter 363 The Behemoth and Its Master
Shortage of people
This sentence made Sager stunned.

He lit a cigar, leaned back on the throne, seemed to be thinking about something, and slowly exhaled a puff of smoke.

"How many of us are there now?"

Lily: "..."

What are you thinking about?
Just want to smoke a cigar, right?
Ever since the remnants of Whitebeard's group were no longer a threat, his men have been constantly conquering territories and expanding their influence. As the territory grew larger, Sage no longer paid much attention to it.

Anyway, the plan is being completed.

"According to last week's statistics, our total force has reached 13,589 people, with a total of 71 warships, including one main ship, the Death Star, four large battleships, four cadre ships, and 62 standard pirate ships."

Needless to say, the Death Star is fully staffed with 2,000 men and women. It has four large battleships, with a standard crew of 800 men, comparable to large naval warships, and is also the ship for senior officials.

To be precise, it is the flagship of Moriah, Hawkins, Urouge and Akin.

But Ajin doesn't care now. He strongly demands to return to the Death Star and serve as the battle captain. Sage has also agreed. If the entire ship goes out, that battleship will not go out.

Now it is just a boat used by Ajin to lead his men to conquer territory.

The three female cadres were crew members of the Death Star and refused to be assigned to a flagship. Even if they had important matters to attend to, they would only travel on the Death Star.

There are four cadre ships, with a standard crew of 360 people, mainly Bellamy, Palu, Miott and the "Executioner" Slayman who came later.

Relying on his outstanding command ability and fierce combat style, Slayman has been recognized by the pirates of the Scourge Pirates and promoted to a cadre.

As for Jambalu and Statham, one was a helmsman and stayed at the base camp. The other was a shipwright who worked with Letty. He was a giant and was not suitable to lead a warship alone, so they all returned to the Death Star.

Oh, and there’s also a black cat named Faust who guards the treasure house.

Basically, I slept at the hatch of the treasure house when I got on the ship, and slept at the door of the castle treasure house when I got off the ship. I was almost transparent.

The remaining sixty-two pirate ships are the warships owned by the men of the Calamity Pirates. The number of people on each ship varies, ranging from eighty to one hundred and sixty.

"In addition, in our territory, we have one base camp, O'Hara, with three thousand troops stationed on three large magnetic field islands, each with a thousand troops stationed. In addition, there are thirty-seven islands, of which only twenty-seven are equipped with stationed personnel. The remaining ten islands are currently unattended and uncontrolled, and are in the flag-planting stage."

"Also, the total number of people under the jurisdiction of the Calamity Pirates is 2,536,212. The data is from last week's summary."

"Ah? Are there so many people and so many islands? I thought there were about twenty." Sag touched his chin.

"Not much actually, Sarge."

Lily said: "Now that we have no obstacles, we can expand very quickly, but each island is different."

"Important production areas, frontline islands, and dangerous shipping routes all require a large number of people to be stationed there. It's not just the islands with large magnetic fields that are important. For some islands with average resources, although we send fewer people, it's not too few. Because we also need to allocate personnel to escort transport ships, at least 120 people are needed to be stationed on an island."

"We still need to allocate manpower to continue expanding our territory, and we need people to lead our men to go on expeditions, so we are seriously short of men, which is why there are still ten islands vacant. Unless we don't go on the expedition, then the number of men we have now is enough."

"In addition, we don't have enough people under our jurisdiction, especially on the islands, where production capacity is too low and there is a lack of population."

"Sage, we are short of workers now."

They are different from Big Mom. Big Mom's Totland has only thirty-four islands, but her sphere of influence is very large because many islands are in a flag-planting state.

It's different here. There's no such thing as planting flags. Every place they go to must be completely controlled by someone. Even if they plant flags now, it's purely because they don't have enough people, so they can only mark the place as their sphere of influence first.

Then I encountered a very weird problem.

In the past, Lily felt that if the number of people increased, a lot of food would be needed, and the financial pressure would be great.

She had always thought that Sager had robbed so much money in the first half just to prepare for ruling the territory. After all, how can you rule without money?
It wasn't until she was doing the overall summary last week that she realized something was wrong.

Sag's money was converted into various industries. After all, building a factory is not just a business matter. A large part of it was his own investment.

Especially for weapons, warships, gems and food, the first three were wholly owned and controlled by Sager, and no one was allowed to interfere. As for food, Sager controlled half of the country's food industry and canning factories, and the remaining half was run by those businessmen, most of which were in the affiliated islands.

The big expenses for running these factories are staff salaries and material costs. With such huge expenses, Sager's money should have been spent long ago.

But the problem now is that there is still a lot of money in the palace, nearly 13 billion Baileys in cash and 10 billion in equivalents, and the more than 20 billion he robbed seems to have never been touched at all.

The taxes collected from O'Hara are fed back into the country in a very healthy way, serving as resource costs and labor salaries, and then accumulating more and more.

Even if Sager was extravagant and wasteful, there was still a lot of tax money collected. Even if the tax money was all spent at some point, Lily would not worry.

She just felt that the money would come back sooner or later, and that O'Hara was running very well.

It's not even about money now.

It's a problem of insufficient staff.
There are more than 2.5 million people, and now there are not enough people!

Lily never thought about it, ever.
In her concept of life, she simply feels that someone is oppressing the people, and the people are like weeds, miserable but will always grow back.

It's so rare to have a stable job.

Now, with more and more people, people are making more and more money, and their demands are increasing, so more and more resources are needed.
Then more resources are needed to produce output, and more people are needed to do this work.

The merchants set up all kinds of industries, and except for the half of the grain share, they set up everything that people needed.

At first they were still in O'Hara, so O'Hara didn't have enough people.

A large number of industries and factories, as well as service industries and individual handicrafts, ensure that everyone in O'Hara has something to do, and there is even a shortage of staff.

The whole of O'Hara, two million people!
Even if we leave out the children and elderly, there are still quite a few people, and it is still not enough.

If there are not enough people, then we have to seek help from outside. The islands with large magnetic fields are better, as there are still some people. But those affiliated small islands have as few as three to five thousand people on each island, and as many as over ten thousand. There are not enough people for us, let alone to do other work.

Originally, half of what was produced in O'Hara was kept by themselves and the other half was sold.

But the growing needs of people have gradually overwhelmed the other side.

But the business has to be done because it makes money, and the merchants dare not raise the prices. Sag's rule is to sell at the same price internally and he does not care about externally.

However, the lower the price internally, the greater the demand; although the price externally is high, the higher the price, the more people will invest in it.

then
There are enough resources, but there is a lack of labor to convert resources into commodities.

Very strange.

It’s so strange that Lily sometimes can’t figure it out.

Not only her, but everyone felt something strange. Marika even said that this place was realizing her dream.

Even Lily herself felt that such a country was like heaven.

Everyone has something to do, everyone can make money, and everyone is getting better and better.

But sometimes when she thought about it carefully, she felt a little terrified.
She subconsciously looked down from the height of the palace at the city buildings below.

From here you can see the crowds of people, almost the size of fingers, bustling about. It is so lively and bustling. The whole city seems to come alive, exuding unprecedented vitality.

But her eyes blurred again, and she felt that this 'living' city suddenly opened its mouth, and the people became densely packed sharp teeth, like a terrifying monster that devoured everything.

She turned to Sage, the captain she was going to follow for the rest of her life, a so-called illiterate guy. When he saw her looking at him, he couldn't help but bar his white teeth and smiled brightly.

But she suddenly felt that this smile was as frightening as the city beneath her feet that chose its prey and devoured anyone it saw.

The master of the beast.
It's him!
(End of this chapter)