Ryuu thought for a while. If she went back to her hometown, she would just be idling away. She might even be questioned by the surrounding neighbors and interrogated by various aunts and uncles in the name of gossip. She would not be able to live peacefully in seclusion.
But if she went to Takumi's side, both parties knew the basics and wouldn't ask too much. With the care of Riveria and the others, it might not be any more inconvenient than returning to her hometown.
At this thought, Ryuu was moved. But...
"Let me think about it. I need to finish the business at hand first."
Now was not the time to make a decision. The prerequisite for her retirement was to completely eliminate Evilus. They had not taken any action yet, and the results were not out. It was too early to decide. Moreover, she had no feelings for Takumi. She didn't know much about the others either.
Although Ryuu didn't think Riveria would trick her, out of caution, she was still prepared to wait and see before talking.
Takumi nodded, expressing his understanding.
"Let's wait until the operation is over. We welcome you to join us at any time."
Anyway, there was no rush at this moment. It was only a matter of a few days. It didn't matter if she waited.
"Thanks."
Ryuu thanked him, then stood up and left.
However, Ryuu did not leave the Twilight Manor. Instead, she asked someone from the Loki Familia for a guest room, intending to stay here for the night so that she could participate in the next annihilation operation.
...
After Ryuu left, Riveria couldn't help but look at Takumi with confusion and asked:
"Why did you suddenly think of inviting her to join the Dimensional City?"
Takumi shrugged: "Actually, it's nothing. I just feel sorry for her, and I just want her to be your companion."
He didn't have any ulterior motive in inviting Ryuu to join the Dimensional City. He just happened to think that after the Evilus clan was wiped out, Ryuu would lose her goal and have nowhere to go.
So he thought that it would be just right for Ryuu to join the Dimensional City as a companion for Riveria.
Although there were many Elf girls in the Dimensional City, except for Riveria, the others were all from other worlds, and they were not from the same clan as Riveria at all.
Therefore, Takumi felt that even though Riveria said nothing, she would still feel lonely, so he took advantage of this opportunity to recruit Ryuu to supplement the number of Danmachi Elves.
"You really are..."
Hearing this, Riveria didn't know what to say for a moment.
Moved?
Naturally, she was moved.
But words always seemed pale, so Riveria expressed her gratitude to Takumi with practical actions and leaned over to kiss him.
Takumi was also happy to enjoy this benefit and took advantage of the opportunity to be intimate with Riveria.
"That's enough. I don't want to mess around with you in the study."
Seeing that Takumi was about to push the envelope, Riveria quickly stepped back.
Takumi did not force himself and continued: "Besides Ryuu, you can also pay attention this time to see who can be won over."
"Even if you can't let the other party directly join the Dimensional City, you can still open up entry and exit permissions and let the other party become part of the floating population of the Dimensional City."
As soon as Riveria heard this, her expression became serious.
"Has it already reached this point? Do you really want to do this?"
Relaxing entry and exit authority and accepting a floating population is a step that every city must go through in its development.
Otherwise, if it always relied solely on immigration, not to mention the slow population growth rate, it would cost a lot to accept a batch of immigrants. It would also slow down the development speed.
For example, the current operation method of the Dimensional City was to introduce immigrants first, and then build the infrastructure for resettling these immigrants, namely building houses.
This seemed to be developing very steadily, but if one analyzed it carefully, they would find that all the manpower had been devoted to infrastructure construction, while other aspects such as agriculture, industry, and commerce had not received any development.
Such a development model was undoubtedly inefficient and deformed.
Take revenue and expenditure, for example. Under this model, the Dimensional City's finances were only expenditures.
The Dimensional City provided land, building materials, and wages to allow the Lizardmen to carry out projects to resettle themselves.
Although food expenses, clothing, and daily necessities could recover part of the cost, these things were also from the Dimensional City. The so-called recovery of cost was nothing more than moving money from the left hand to the right hand.
Overall, in fact, the Dimensional City was constantly spending money.
And all that such spending could get was money for the Lizardmen to buy and rent houses in installments in the future. It was not certain whether they could get back the money, and the cycle was still very long.
This was equivalent to the Dimensional City using financial expenditure to buy a kind of labor futures, and might even lose money.
And because under this model, agriculture, industry, and commerce could not develop, when digesting these labor forces in the future, the Dimensional City would need to continue increasing investment.
Although it had the organization of the Infinite Magic Furnace and material generation, the expenditure cost of the Dimensional City had actually been suppressed to almost nothing.
But no matter what, the low efficiency of this model was still a problem.
After all, generating materials out of thin air was, from a certain point of view, almost the same as printing more money.
They were still just Lizardmen, and there were not many people, so they didn't see any problem yet.
But if they added 10,000 Misaka Sisters to the mix, this imbalanced revenue and expenditure model would cause problems sooner or later.
Therefore, Takumi also had to find a way to increase revenue and reduce expenditure. The solution he came up with was to open up entry and exit permissions to attract a floating population.
When this floating population came to the Dimensional City, it was equivalent to expanding the consumer market. After all, there were so many things in the Dimensional City that they did not have in their original world. Wouldn't they want to buy them?
Then they would definitely buy them, which would drive consumption and let commerce develop.
And to buy things, you had to have currency, right?
The Dimensional City only accepted materials and could not exchange money for money, so the floating population could only use materials to exchange for currency.
Wasn't this equivalent to generating income?
If there were no materials to exchange, then they had to make money in the Dimensional City.
At this time, the floating population transformed into a large labor force and productivity, which drove construction and industry.
And working in the Dimensional City, food, clothing, housing, and transportation were definitely indispensable.
This in turn promoted the construction industry again. Consumption in turn drove construction, agriculture, industry, and commerce.
Then, a cycle was born, completing the internal cycle of reducing expenditures, allowing the economy to flow, revitalizing all walks of life, and allowing all sectors to develop.
Of course, Takumi currently did not plan to open up too much, but was planning to introduce a small number of floating population to achieve a stimulating effect.
After all, the current Dimensional City could not accept too many floating populations at once. The housing problem alone was not resolved for the residents of the Dimensional City themselves.
This group of floating population was only used to play a leading role in the internal circulation.
Takumi did not expect to rely solely on the floating population to solve all problems; he just hoped that it could serve as a guide for the better.