These Side Characters Have More Important Things To DoCh132 - It’s hard work being popular

“Wow!”

It wasn’t only the audience who saw the lightning. Nearby people working or living near the Rosewood estate all paused in their work and found an open place to watch. LS5hsu

They weren’t disappointed.

Two lightning strikes came down in quick succession—

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ZZZZ! FLASH! C-CRK! BOOM! BOOM!

The dark clouds started flashing with internal lightning as highly localised rain fell. Snakes of fire cut through the rain, hissing and letting out billows of white vapour. lOc8Bh

FLASH-BOOM!

The lightning bolt cleaved through vapour, sending it rushing outwards and washing over the stunned audience.

Ball lightning appeared on the ground and flew up in whizzing paths. When they crashed together, they exploded in fire and light.

The audience was treated to a magical show full of motion and sound and light. At one point, there were even huge rocks levitated into the air, only to be shattered into a million pieces as lightning struck through them.

FLASH-BOOM! FLASH-BOOM! FLASH-BOOM!

With a final massive strike, the dark clouds dissipated, rain fell in a fine mist, and a faint rainbow appeared.

The rocks setting a beat in the background gave one last thump.

Ren Xiyang bent his body, head down and hands out to signal the end of the show. AocMVw

“WAHH!!!”

“WOOAAHH!!”

The audience full of Earl-Rosewood fans burst out in cheers and applause.

“Earl Rosewood! Earl Rosewood!” V7YSXh

“Encore!”

“ENCORE!”

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

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…But they wouldn’t mind seeing more of what Earl Rosewood could do.

In the last few years, pre-Angio-duel, Earl Rosewood had never publicly used lightning magic, and not that many people had the privilege to watch Earl Rosewood training.

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If Earl Rosewood could maintain that kind of output over the course of a battle, he could very well become a military power in the future and unseat the Storm family.

“I appreciate—” Ren Xiyang started. 7uvkFM

The audience finally stopped cheering and clapping in order to hear him.

“I appreciate your enthusiasm, but unfortunately, I can’t continue. We have a schedule to keep to, after all.”

There was a smattering of laughter. Those who worked closely with Earl Rosewood knew how he liked to keep to a schedule and liked short, direct meetings best.

Ren Xiyang took out his notes. zjE5w8

“Let me begin with the strategic vision. All the talks you will hear over the next few days all contribute to the Rosewood’s goal of improving the health and lives of humans, animals, plants, and the environment. My long-term vision is to establish sustainable, healthy processes and promote harmonious living.”

Many attendees were absently nodding, as they had heard this many times before.

“This goal is not possible without the contribution of thousands of people. Every day is another day for progress and improvement. The change that a single day makes may not appear much, but when I look back, I can see just how far we have all come. I’m proud of what we have achieved so far, and I know wewill achieve many great things into the future. I’m thankful that so many of you have accepted my ideas. I’m also thankful to those who also contradicted me respectfully.” Ren Xiyang quirked his lips. “I don’t know everything, no matter what the rumours say. I’m happy to be corrected.”

“This meeting aims to showcase the activities and achievements of different teams in the Rosewood estate and Rosewood fief. This meeting also aims to promote communication between teams. While you listen to the talks, I hope that you can look out for any cross-team connections that could be made. Perhaps there is some portion of your goal that could be done more effectively together. Maybe your team is missing out on expertise that another team can provide. Or maybe, during the meeting, you come up with a new great initiative that multiple teams could work together on. I encourage you to talk to each other and to me.” cZK2PI

Ren Xiyang put his notes away. “I hope you enjoy the conference. Thank you for listening. Kel, the floor is yours.”

Kel stepped onto the stage. “Thank you to Earl Rosewood for that astonishing magical display and for that motivating opening. Please give Earl Rosewood a round of applause!”

To loud applause, Ren Xiyang bowed to the audience and walked down.

Kel smiled at Ren Xiyang and at the audience. “Now, first up is an invited speaker from Crown Prince Rian’s Royal Healers’ Association. The Rosewood fief was one of the first fiefs that joined His Highness’s program. The speaker today is…” IrJn f

The Rosewood meeting was jammed packed: there were over three dozen talks, many of them allocated only 20-minute slots, including question time.

There were guest talks from numerous speakers: Royal Healers’ Association talked about their work across the kingdom and their training of village folk doctors and nurses in the Rosewood fief; Lady Florence Sage spoke about farming research and education and her new book with Earl Rosewood that will be coming out in a few months; and Baron Cordovan described the changes in the Cordovan fief applying similar initiatives as the Rosewood fief.

Aaron summarised the newest results from the latest census. Compared to the previous year, the Rosewood fief population has grown by another 10%. In total, the population was now approximately 25 thousand, meaning that 5 thousand people had moved to the Rosewood fief since Earl Ayden Rosewood took over. This was a huge amount of people, and that meant there was highly expensive to provide food, housing, healthcare, jobs, and other services.

Otto Silvercharm came to the stage to talk about the Rosewood finances. He was very proud to say that the Rosewood group was not yet in debt, despite the huge social spending, as Earl Rosewood recently brought in a large sum of money from the production of floating carriages. (The crowd grinned and clapped.) 3SWRDQ

A Rosewood manager spoke about various other statistics, including the employment rates across the Rosewood fief and in the Rosewood group, the number of people who had signed up at the Rosewood office for work and were allocated to jobs, homelessness rates, crime rates and types in the Rosewood fief, and bandit attack rates in the fief (zero).

All of these talks were interspersed with plenty of breaks with plenty of food. The mixture of sit-down tables, standing-up tables, clusters of chairs, open space, and Rosewood gardens all provided flexibility in how groups of people could gather and talk.

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There were a lot of talks on Rosewood initiatives that targeted improving health: aside from the Royal Healers’ Association’s work, the Rosewood fief was also funding the building or expansion of hospitals in the larger towns, and forming travelling non-magical doctors and mage healers who regularly made rounds of small villages and very small scattered properties that couldn’t support a long term healer. There were also programs to help women in regard to specific health issues (including menstruation, contraception and abortion), along with support for other matters such as aid in divorce procedures.

The most expensive projects, aside from the large free-food programs, were the construction projects. Aside from hospitals and medical clinics, other projects included: roads, water systems and sewage pipes, the new Rosewood staff building on the Rosewood estate, social housing on the Rosewood estate and in local towns and villages, community centres and schools in towns and villages, and food storage warehouses and silos. BJO4sW

There was a cluster of talks on education and educational products, from the curriculum, to the in-house production of paper and pens and the new printing press that was being set up. There was even a talk from the head herald—a group of heralds were in charge of going around towns and villages to announce new Rosewood laws and initiatives, and titbits of information to the residents.

Rosewood-branded notebooks and pens, made in-house, were given out to all participants.

Work directly involving the natural environment formed a small section: there were forest expansions, the planting of trees and plants in towns, and the examination of historical flooding and mapping out flood plains.

The newest team was the one tasked with developing a project to formalise the training of animal health doctors, starting with agriculturally relevant animals. PR XNd

Ren Xiyang wished there were more talks on agriculture, but this was a work conference, not an agricultural science conference. He personally gave a talk on new varieties of crops that provided better yield or better quality produce with the same amount of effort. Other talks touched on composting on the Rosewood estate, fertiliser formulations for specific crops, and developments in specialised equipment to make farming easier.

The last set of talks was on product developments. Teams bought prototypes onto the stage and many participants had the opportunity to try them out during the breaks: there were protective clothing developments for medical purposes, bicycles and their variations, innovations in wheelchairs and their floating equivalents, and innovations in food storage.

At the end of the three days, people were both more tired and more friendly towards each other as new connections had been made.

Kel invited Earl Rosewood/Ren Xiyang up to the stage to give the final summary and closing remarks. tq7 DP

“It has been a packed three days, and I appreciate your continued attention. We touched on many topics, from great new buildings to increasing medical healthcare access in small villages. However, with limited time, we couldn’t go into detail on all the amazing projects. I urge you to seek out other speakers and teams to learn more about what they are doing. We also haven’t seen all the projects in the Rosewood Group, and we certainly haven’t seen all the projects being completed in the Rosewood fief by residents not directly affiliated with the Rosewood Group. While I listened to the talks, I also came up with new project ideas. If anyone is interested in working on these, please approach me or another senior Rosewood staff member…”

Ren Xiyang listed the teaching of languages, including sign language and Angian; developing recycling, to make sure that all Rosewood products can be reused, recycled or composted at the end of their life; expanding social teams to form terms to look after the needs of priority groups, especially the ones that currently have less support in the Rosewood Group such as prisoners, veterans, the ill, ethnic minorities, the visual or hearing impaired, and sex workers; expansion of the Rosewood printing press, to start a new small educational newspaper, and to accept manuscripts for printing which would require the hiring of editors; the use of natural pest control such as ladybirds to eat aphids, ducks in wet fields, owls and raptors; and finally, natural disaster simulations—making plans and practising what everyone should do if a natural disaster would happen.

“—And over the last few days, many of you have also approached me with new project ideas. I have also heard your requests for a five-day conference, and for more magical displays. I’ll see what I can do. Magical displays are expensive and I’m not sure Master Silvercharm will agree to such an expenditure, just in case.”

“Hey!” Otto protested good-naturedly from the audience. 7WTulA

Ren Xiyang’s lips quirked up. “Finally, let me thank all the people that have made this conference possible. Speakers and attendees, thank you for taking your time and travelling here. Thank you to Kel for tirelessly chairing the sessions. Thank you to…”

And after a long list of thank yous, Ren Xiyang could finally say—“Thank you all for a very successful meeting. This concludes the summer meeting! Feel free to talk, food will be provided at the usual location. Thank you.”

Kel led the energetic clapping.

They’re probably energetic to have the conference over, Ren Xiyang thought. He folded up his notes and quickly walked down from the stage, letting out a deep exhale once he was out of the sound-enhancing spell’s range. ysJEpx

The sound of chatter swelled as participants stood up and started talking. One group headed towards the food area first, leading a start migration over there.

Ren Xiyang said goodbye to Kel and the others first before quickly walking away before anyone could catch him.

Story translated by Chrysanthemum Garden.

He was exhausted.

Yes, he was used to having a lot of meetings and he technically knew everyone who was attending. But there were a lot of talks and a lot of people, and many people wanted to talk to him, and he didn’t remember half of their names since there was no Kel to brief him like what would usually happen before he met with them… ZFN3zj

And, Ren Xiyang’s work didn’t finish at the conclusion of the conference, because he now had multiple follow-up meetings…

Being popular was hard!

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Thank you to fanfictionaddict13, Pusheenninja2, Arro, WaywardLion, and Trin for the support! (So many in such a short time!!!!) And thank you to all readers, it’s astounding that I have gotten this far, which honestly is not possible without all your love  (⁄ ⁄•⁄ω⁄•⁄ ⁄)⁄ (and comments)

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