NOVEL NEXT Book 4, Chapter 5
"So, I've been doing some digging," Volex said, seating herself in my lap. "Wanna hear what I've learned about little Miss Valentine?"
"Hit me," I said, not bothering to un-recline myself; it'd been a long day, and I wasn't looking forward to my nightly magic exercises. I did them at night because they involved mostly-exhausting my ability to use magic, and I was of the opinion that I should do that as late in the day as possible so that I've got first dibs on my magic for more productive uses, like casting spells to solve problems.
Still, it had been a very productive first week of classes. Especially for Volex, who had learned an Occult spell from Professor Takeda, which extended her body's range from her reliquary, letting me send her out on longer-term tasks without my direct supervision, such as gathering information and talking to people I wanted to avoid.
"House Valentine is a very, very minor merchant house, which is on the upswing, but is hurting for a few very specific lacks," Volex said. "Their main problem is that they don't have very many friends among the nobility, and so don't get to benefit from the sorts of sweetheart deals that the bigger and more successful merchant houses get. And where Envy fits into this is simple: her plan is to marry into a wealthy and influential noble house, so that House Valentine can get a foothold in the halls of the nobility."
I blinked a few times.
"...That's it?" I said. "That's her whole plan? That's- she owns a fucking airship! All she has to do is convince her teammates to let her borrow it for a year or two after graduation, and she'll give House Valentine the edge of owning a fucking airship! And marrying someone to maybe secure a good trade deal is the best she can do?"
"You read their adventure logs, right?" Volex said.
"Well, yeah," I said, nodding. They had, according to their files with the Adventurer's Guild, completed the absolute bare minimum of adventures necessary to continue taking classes here, with the notable exception of their most recent adventure, over Spring Break, wherein the brief had turned out to be inaccurate, and they ended up fighting a small crew of sky pirates- which was how they'd gotten The Harpy.
"She's only had that ship for a few months," Volex said. "She's had that plan for years."
"I mean... Okay, but still, she's an Adventurer," I said. "Adventurers tend to find all sorts of weird, exotic bullshit that ends up being worth a ton of money, and if she can't figure out how to monetize that, I'm sure her parents can. They're Merchants, this is their whole thing. But..." I sighed. "Whatever. Chances are, she probably wants to get married for other reasons, too, not just to secure an advantageous alliance for her family. I'm not gonna give her a hard time about it, I'm just gonna... Plan for something that could benefit her family as part of the adventure we've gotta do."
"As for the adventure, I have an idea for that," Volex said. "By which I mean Helen has an idea for that, and telling her no might prove difficult."
"...Let's hear it."
"There's a whole fleet of sky pirates over the Barracuda Sea, and there's been a truce brokered between the Hikaano Imperium and the Grigian Republic specifically for the sake of dealing with the pirates," Volex said. "And among the measures being taken by the Joint Admiralty is placing a contract with the Adventurer's Guild, in the hopes that the Adventurers will either wipe them out entirely or soften them up to the point that the Navy can mop them up afterwards."
"And that contract..."
"Is for ten million dollars," Volex said, smirking. "Helen told me she was worried she'd have to pay out the difference herself- she knows your plan needed an adventure worth a million dollars, and as long as you picked something big enough to satisfy her and whatever ritual is going on with the Vega Twins, she was willing to pay out the money you needed from her own coffers if she had to."
"I see," I said. "Well. Ten million sure is a lot of money. They wouldn't be offering that much if they thought this was going to be an easy job, though."
"They would not," Volex admitted. "No, unfortunately, this fleet is led by a Grigian elite who was finally caught red-handed with his secret network of suspiciously well-organized pirates. That's why the Grigian and Hikaano navies won't just wipe 'em out themselves."
"Fuck."
"Think you're up to the challenge?" Volex asked.
"No, of course I'm not," I said, shaking my head. "I've scored some impressive wins, sure, but those were all against decidedly non-military foes. The King of Thieves was a terrible fighter, Paimon was already half-dead when I got to him, and his cult were a bunch of self-important wannabes. This? This is the sort of thing you'd want a real battlemage for, not a ragtag band of teenagers with delusions of grandeur."
"Well, you don't have a real battlemage," Volex said simply. "How else would you take down a fleet of airships? Would your gun work?"
"That..." I paused. "...I mean, no, not the gun itself, but something similar to that could work, if I spent some time in the shop... Although, I'd have to either radically revamp the accuracy enchantments or find some way to make the bullets explode, or else..." I trailed off. "...Goddammit, Volex."
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
"See?" Volex said, flashing me a bright, gleaming-toothed grin. "You're smart, you figured it out."
"Fuck you," I said, closing my eyes. "Ugh, this is going to be so much work..."
"Awww, poor baby," Volex teased. "And all you have to look forward to as a reward for all this hard work is millions of dollars and the gratitude of four beautiful women."
"I don't need this shit," I grumbled. "Vanessa wouldn't make me kill pirates for the privilege of touching her boobs. She's offered already."
Volex simply laughed at me.
"Besides, I already have millions of dollars, and nothing to use them on," I said.
"Au contraire, you can use them to contract out a lot of the more tedious parts of manufacturing these brand-new weapons of yours to House Valentine," Volex said. "Which, you know, might endear you to darling little Envy."
"...Point," I said, before sighing. "Ugh. Still. This is gonna suck."
"You'll live."
---
"I gotta say, Cat," Talia said, beholding the schematics and calculations for my brand new Atrocity Machine. "You are real damn creative."
"I wish I wasn't, sometimes," I said, staring at the paper that promised death and destruction. "I'm going to be honest, I don't feel good about hunting pirates for a bounty. Killing people for money feels like exactly the sort of behavior that explains why people don't like pirates to begin with."
"You're falling into a classic moral fallacy," Faith said. "You've correctly observed that the Paladins, who enforce the law of Hikaano society, are corrupt, cruel, and all-round evil. However, you have erroneously concluded that, because law enforcement is bad, organized crime must be good. This is not true."
"I mean, I'm aware that organized crime is also bad, but-" I began.
"What you're missing is that there's more to the morality of an action than the words you can use to describe it," Faith said. "There's a difference between a thief or a mugger, someone who perhaps turns to crime temporarily and out of desperation, and a bandit, who has chosen a lifestyle of killing people to take their stuff. When someone makes a habit of doing awful things to people, someone has to make them stop doing that, and as much as restorative and rehabilitative justice are preferable, sometimes the only way to permanently stop someone from hurting others is to kill them. It's not a good situation to be in, by any means, but it's better to navigate it imperfectly than to refuse to navigate it at all."
I blinked a few times.
"...You've been praying a lot, lately?" Talia asked.
"Uh... A bit," Faith said, before coughing awkwardly. "Sorry, it's just... Justice is The Mother's whole thing, and... Well, no, it's a third of her thing, the other thirds are War and Freedom. Still, you know what I mean."
"Yeah, I getcha," I said. "The Father has been-"
"Death is hardly the worst fate you can inflict upon another person," The Father said. "A quick death can be a mercy of its own."
I blinked. "...Chiming in every now and then, such as right now, to tell me that killing people isn't the worst thing in the world."
"How about you, Emily, does your god have an opinion on any of this?" Talia asked.
"Asklepius abhors violence in general," Emily said. "He's a strict pacifist."
"How do you square that circle?" I asked. "You're an Adventurer. Violence is your main vocational skill."
"No, it's your main vocational skill," Emily said. "I'm still a Healer, through and through."
"...That feels like a really fine distinction," Faith pointed out.
"Maybe you guys should consider what would happen if you did win that argument," Talia said. "Which is, y'know, either Emily quits and goes home or Asklepius takes her magic away, and either way we stop having a dedicated Healer."
"Everyone here is either a Cleric or a Druid," Faith pointed out.
"There's more to being a Healer than just casting healing spells," Emily said. "Even without any magic at all, I can still do surgery. And without a Healer's skillset, you're going to be a lot worse at healing other people than a real Healer."
"Right, well," I said, sighing. "Let's just... Let's just get this design wrapped up. I'll see about getting all the materials soon."
"Where are you going to get that much fuel oil?" Talia asked.
---
"What do you wa-" Envy began, before I slapped a briefcase on the table of The Harpy's common room.
(The ship's interior was much more spacious now, after I helped Vanessa (and also Veronica) finally wrap her head around pocket dimension theory, and now, the whole space was about the size of my van's interior, but without a second floor. It'd taken the twins all week to do it, but it was easy enough.)
"...You have my attention," Envy said, as she beheld the money inside the briefcase.
"I need the materials on this list, in the quantities specified, as quickly as possible," I said. "None of them are exotic, just bulky. How quickly can House Valentine get that to me?"
"I'd say two weeks," Envy said. "The rails can be slow, after all."
"Rails?" I asked, frowning. "Natalia Valentine, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but you have an airship. You have until Monday morning to get me those materials. Can you do that?"
"...We'll try," Envy said quietly.
"Excellent," I said, nodding. "A pleasure doing business with you."