NOVEL NEXT 108 - Archmund Puts Rory in Debt
Archmund had expected Beatrice to laze around for at least a little bit, but his revelation of his new and powerful techniques had lit a fire under her. She'd rushed out his office as fast as practical, eager to begin farming more powerful tools for herself.
Rory entered, pushing the door open with his back.
"Why are you doing that?" Archmund said. "You look like a Monster from behind. I almost shot right through your head."
Rory didn't laugh at his hilarious joke. Painstakingly, he turned around, revealing what he carried in his arms.
Mary.
"So it's like that, then," Archmund said coolly. It wasn't like he was like that or anything. They could do whatever they wanted.
"Do you have a bed or something around here?" Rory said.
"I'm sure there's something resembling a bed around here. But I want to hear from her about this first."
"There's no time for that!" Rory said. "I need to— that'll work!"
Rory laid Mary on the desk. Her breaths came out in short pants. Her eyes squeezed tightly shut.
Alright. Maybe Archmund had misinterpreted the situation horrifically. Just a tad.
"She was like this when I ran into her," Rory said. "I don't know what it is."
"Let me see," Archmund said. He laid the back of his hand on her forehead. It was hot, but he couldn't tell if she had a fever or if she just ran hot normally.
Gingerly, he touched her ID card. He could feel her magic, and his didn't interfere and penetrate into the card. It seemed to follow the general principles of Attunement — only one person could truly Attune and Awaken a Gem, and exceptions caused weird things to happen. Once confident of this, he tapped and held it to his Gemstone Tablet.
"Isn't that your Omnio Communicator Device?" Rory said, frowning.
"Yeah. Who knew the Omnio had a way to communicate with Dungeons?" Archmund said. It was technically true and it wasn't a lie.
"Huh," Rory said. "No wonder they've managed to stay Emperors for so long."
Rory was probably more right than he knew. Information was power, after all.
Archmund was sure he could navigate to her stat screen manually, but tapping the Card on it instantly pulled up her status screen with even more details.
There was an extra section on the Screen, a dropdown from the lifespan section.
Health
Ailments: Dungeon Magic-poison
Status: stable.
Lifespan: Unchanged.
Archmund frowned. "She'll be fine, probably. I'll have the Clerks bring some water and keep her hydrated, but I don't think we need to leave to get medical attention."
"Are you sure?" Rory said.
"I mean, you said you ran into her, so was she still able to walk…?"
"Yeah, but as soon as I picked her up she passed out like instantly."
Oh, so she was just tired.
"It doesn't look like it'll be lethal or permanently crippling," Archmund said. "I just sent Beatrice on a mission, and I don't know where Gelias went. Once all of us are back together again, then we can start going back up and get her the care she needs."
"I don't know if it's a physical thing," Rory said. "Maybe it's a mental one."
"A mental one?"
"Killing monsters, splitting their heads open, watching them eat each other… doesn't that disturb you at all?"
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Archmund frowned. "In abstract, I'd think so. But they're the restless, wrathful dead. They do these things because their instincts tell them to terrorize the living, so they adopt aspects of the living."
It was the uncanny valley at work. Humans had a strong aversion to things that looked close to human but didn't match perfectly. More cartoony characters were preferred over "photorealistic" characters that were ever-so-slightly off. Some thought this was the same ancestral instinct that led to racism, but after spending so much time in the Dungeon, Archmund felt it was likely a response to corpses, or other grisly images of the dead.
"Don't worry about it, Rory."
Rory nodded a bit slowly for Archmund's liking. "You're the boss."
That he was.
And as much as he valued and appreciated Mary, her sudden convalescence was a disruption to his maximally efficient plan. A pity, since you couldn't really help when you got sick, but as the manager of this little charade it fell to him to find effective solutions.
He looked at his most recent experiments.
He'd made quite a few prototype Gems of Mental Fortification, each worth a small fortune, and he'd already given one to Beatrice.
They weren't perfect. The Gems still had some variation in Charisma and Intelligence enhancements. They took a while to really kick in, for the stat bonuses to show themselves. They needed to be meditated on to reach their full potential. But they were an absolutely necessary part of his long-term plan.
"Rory," Archmund said, "catch."
He threw a Gem of Mental Fortification at Rory. As the taller boy caught the Gem, there was a telltale spark of light as his magic flowed into it, and then he almost dropped it as he realized what he'd done.
"Are you sure?" Rory said, looking at the Gem with awe and horror, as if he hadn't seen hundreds of the things drop from Monsters in the past few hours.
"What do you mean, I'm sure?"
"A Gem like this could buy you half a village," he said.
Archmund snorted. "Probably more."
Maybe Archmund's perspective was skewed, and Rory was the sane one when it came to wealth.
"And you want me to have it?"
It was an investment.
He'd once believed that education was the greatest investment of them all.
In his old world, higher education, "college", had grown to be very expensive. And yet allegedly it was still one of the best ways to guarantee lifetime social mobility. He didn't have the exact numbers, but over the course of a career the difference in earnings between a college graduate and a non-college graduate was about $500,000 American dollars, or about half of a small house.
He was pretty sure it was about that amount, though for all he knew it could have been twice that amount. He was reasonably sure a college education, in his old world, was worth between $100,000 to $1,000,000 in lifetime earnings. Split the difference and make it $500,000.
This statistic was both very impressive and also much less than it seemed. For though $500,000 was a life-changing amount of money in his old world, it was spread out over a career of 40 or more years, which came out to about $12,500 per year.
That could also be a lifechanging amount of money, but then again so was the value of a single Gem.
That led to the way people managed to pay for college. College wasn't cheap; it often cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in itself that weren't easily paid for upfront. So prospective students would take out loans and enter "debt". The hope was that the credentials and knowledge granted by college would pay for the cost, and yet for many that promise went unfulfilled.
That was Archmund's real goal in "giving" Rory this Gem at no cost to himself.
He'd get Rory in his "debt".
A great plan that was already starting to work.
"Just… wow," Rory said. "Wow. This is… it's a lot. It almost makes up for how badly you injured my pride in that tournament of yours."
"You aren't still mad about that, are you? Beatrice is."
"Can you take it easier on her? She's lonely."
"Aren't we all. Aren't we all."
"I don't know, I… I didn't realize you trusted me so much," Rory said, looking at the Gem. "This is… it's a lot."
"It's not like you can sell it anymore, now that you've used your magic on it."
"I wasn't going to, but I think I could. There's a market for used Gems too, you know. They're maybe worth a tenth as much as pure Gems, but I could sell it. I won't, though."
"You sure it's not a black market?"
""Like… the sign's painted black?"
"Illegal, Rory. I mean illegal trading."
"No, the Empire buys old Gems. To melt them down, I think?"
Or to feed to pet Monsters. If they could control Monsters the way Archmund could, they could basically refine as many Gems as they'd like.
Though it begged the question of why they hadn't taken over the world with legions of the undead, why all their troops were among the living. He knew that Monsters roamed the Frontier, so they could survive outside of a Dungeon, but he suspected he'd have a chance to test for himself.
Maybe it was simply a limitation of the range of control. Even now, he could only control the Bottom and Middle Subtiers of the Second Tier, and though his control was working its way upwards, it would be awhile before he could control Monsters and Spawning Pools in the Upper Subtier or Tier 1 or the surface.
"Point is, I'm glad you trust me with this," Rory said. "Thanks."
"You're welcome," Archmund said diplomatically.
He didn't want to correct Rory's misconceptions, for sure. Though he did like Rory, in many ways Rory just wasn't at his level.
But things didn't have to be that way.
There were plenty of smart people in the world. Unfortunately, many of them were assholes. There were plenty of good people in the world. Unfortunately, many of them weren't smart.
It wasn't like the world could be divided into good people who were stupid and bad people who were smart. He felt ashamed for even thinking that way, even if he'd seen a lot of evidence that it was true enough to apply.
But that was Earth thinking. Here, in Omnio, change was far easier to achieve.
Intelligence could be powerleveled through reading progressively harder texts. He'd found no such way to do so with Charisma, which in theory would either make people nicer or more manipulative.
But when it came to Rory, the man was both kind but also fanatically loyal (to Beatrice). If he was just a little bit sharper, he would be an invaluable ally.
But in the short term, his increased mental capacity would raise his output and more than make up for Mary's incapacitation, letting Archmund focus on crafting stronger and stronger Gems.