NOVEL NEXT 132 - Archmund Still Dreams of a Life of Leisure
Almost a year ago, Archmund Granavale had remembered the first of his memories from a past life.
In that past life, he had been told he was "gifted" throughout his whole childhood, and then he'd grown up to be an adult with barely anything to show for it. There were no great mountains surmounted, no empires built, no worlds conquered — just a single moment staring at a harsh computer screen in the dead of night, eyes strained from overuse, mouth dry and bitter from coffee.
Never again, he'd thought to himself. He had a second chance, and he wouldn't have that life.
And then everything that could have happened, did.
A Dungeon had opened in his territory — not some abandoned medieval oubliette filled with generic wildlife and evil beings, but a passage to the underworld that was filled with harvestable riches. The Crown Princess of the Empire, in disguise, had shown up to subjugate it, and he'd demanded to go along with her, sensing an opportunity that would not repeat itself. In doing so, he'd won her trust, her respect, and access to a source of unimaginable wealth and power.
He'd let it get to his head. He'd thought that much power and success had been adequate to play god. He'd done some cursory exploration of his lands, played around with some magic under the tutelage of someone unqualified to teach, and thrown a mock dueling tournament for small children. All of it had amounted to pageantry, frankly — he'd told himself it was to gather loyal followers and the most worthy wielders of his magical Gemstone weapons, but it hadn't been that sound of a plan to do so.
And then everything had gone wrong. The Dungeon had "burped", spewing out Monsters into the world, which rampaged through his county. Luckily, the damage was minimal — but lives had been lost. Lives lost because of his own carelessness, lives lost because the crown princess had assumed he was more competent than he actually was. An easily mistake caused by miscommunication. At least he hoped it was miscommunication and not intentional sabotage.
And the Crown Princess had placed another constraint on the Dungeon. Within fifteen years' time, his Dungeon would stop producing Monsters and their loot drops as well. To a child, fifteen years might as well have been an eternity, but he knew from experience that fifteen years could pass in the blink of an eye.
So he'd gone back into the Dungeon again, this time with the goal of doing things right. Extracting weapons and wealth that might actually tip the balance of power in his favor.
And to make a long story short, he'd come out the other side with an immensely powerful upgrade to his magical artifacts — a way to assess the "stats" of people, Monsters, and hopefully things with his Gemstone Tablet. He'd achieved a magical Second Awakening, greatly increasing his offensive power.
But as importantly, he'd realized it was important to rely on other people instead of just exploiting them. To find trusted lieutenants and then actually trust them. He'd made friends of the three noble heirs in the other counties that composed Agraria Duchy: Beatrice of Blackstone, Rory of Redmont, and Gelias of Greenroot.
It had taken him a while to get to this point, but Archmund Granavale had realized a few distressing things about himself. He thought of himself as lazy, and yet he ended up taking on far more burdens than he could bear.
In his past life, he had thought that label of "gifted" was a burden that had doomed him to struggle chasing the ghost of a better self, one that had lived up to his potential. In that past life, he had consigned himself to accepting that he had been a "gifted" child who had grown into a "normal" adult. Yet in the past few months he had no choice but to consider that he might genuinely be special after all.
Yet he knew from experience that giftedness wouldn't be an advantage forever. Everyone grew up and got experience and wisdom eventually, unless they died an untimely death.
Which was why it was more important than ever, this time around, to build something that could carry him to a comfortable life, instead of charging forward on his own power, even when running on fumes, until he burned himself out.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
In his revelations, he had decided to take the idea of noblesse oblige seriously. Not because he believed in it or anything (he did, frankly, believe in human rights even if he thought that a lot of people were inherently worse than him at a lot of things), but because it would be one of the pillars that would set him up for a comfortable life.
Society needed rulers, but it also needed thinkers, and bridgebuilders and farmers and toilers. But there was no reason bridgebuilders and farmers and toilers had to suffer, if he could save them from it.
But, he sometimes thought, he was alone in this thinking.
He was up against the world, and he had no idea how strong the world truly was. His magical education was deficient. Five months ago he'd seen Awakening as the end-all-be-all of magical potential, but now he knew that it was only the First level of power. Now he knew there were Second and Third Awakenings. Doubtless there was a Fourth, and a Fifth, and who knew how many others. The Omnio Emperor, no matter who he was, doubtlessly had access to powers beyond his current imagination, and that was without considering Blessings and Gems of Worldsoul and Elven Magic, which existed within the concept of the system yet were congruous with it.
And there were also concerning questions
Quality of life had barely advanced in proportion to match all of the savings and efficiencies implied by the existence of magic. Why?
The first option was the null hypothesis: He was just wrong. Quality of life was in fact better than it would have been otherwise, and he had no frame of reference, given that his standards were the 21st century on Earth. Magic had uplifted the people as much as it possibly could.
The second option was that it wasn't possible: something about magic didn't scale, or magic didn't allow the breaking of physics to such a degree that mass improvements of quality of life were possible. But he didn't think that was the case. His magic had obeyed his scientific understanding of the world. He had turned a Gem that produced visible light into one that produced microwaves and infrared light. The visible spectrum existed as expected. He was able to bend space and make wormholes with the same simplifications he'd learned in his middle school science classes. If there was a barrier, it wasn't in the fundamental sciences of this world.
The final option was that a number of structural and social factors prevented scientific progress revolution.
The common man was trod underfoot. Adult aristocrats weren't particularly powerful and yet were legally protected. The protections of the law were immense for nobles but not for the common people.
He had the law on his side, but only to a point: the Omnio family could doubtlessly snuff out his noble life as easily as he could snuff out a peasant's. They didn't, not often, not as far as Archmund could remember, but he had no doubt they could.
And, he'd learned in his research, while he'd had the honor of meeting the Crown Princess, there were actually thousands of people technically part of the "Omnio Family". Most were irrelevant, but all were ambitious. All of them willing to reach for a scrap of power, if it might elevate them in their great game.
Which meant his kingdom might only be as strong as his power to personally defend it. Which meant that even as he built up his people, he had to build up himself.
But even then one man alone couldn't do everything.
Which ultimately meant that if he wanted a true kingdom, he had to progress along three lines.
First, the development of his land. Uplifting his people. Raising their quality of life. Shifting the economy to surplus, perhaps manufacturing, perhaps service instead of toiling in the fields or making small crafts for meager exports. Turning them into an economic powerhouse without his direct intervention, so he could spend his time pursuing personal power, whatever form that might take.
Second, that pursuit of personal power. The Dungeon embedded in his land was the obvious threat. The dead still spawned within it, even if he had "tamed" it, to an extent — but there was still one more level of it to conquer. But the more pressing threat were the living and breathing. He might be on friendly terms with Princess Angelina Omnio, but that was very different from being in the good graces of the Omnio Empire. They might be friends personally, but a shift to embrace human capital instead of a Dungeon's "Gem capital" as the driving force of a local economy was an undeniable contradiction to the material interests of the empire — and he'd heard there were many who were willing to take advantage of a position of weakness. Even his friends and allies — Beatrice Blackstone, Gelias Greenroot, and Rory Redmont — had come to his harvest festival celebration with the explicit goal of
Third, establishing and solidifying strong relationships with as many allies as he could so that when his personal power inevitably faltered — if the shadows of his own mind caught up with him — if his external enemies shook him from his station — his collapse would be into welcoming arms, into a bed of feathers.
A comfortable life would not be easy to win, but he had no choice but to win it.