Chapter 6.13 - Purchase Agreements

The summer sun was at its apex, signalling that the year was half over. Soon the summer sun would retreat and signal the beginning of autumn. This year would be a bit special and it was thanks to a quirky young team of adventurers called the Misfits. During one of the misfits excursions into the Training Dungeon, they had discovered a fairly valuable bit of information. Everyone knew that due to the magic of the training dungeon, if you were to receive a fatal wound, the dungeon ejected you alive, albeit bruised and out of stamina.

During an early training mission, there had been an accident. On the fifteenth level Mitch, the team's Merchant, whether by exhaustion or bad timing, had fired a bolter round right as Emil the Duelist dodged a strike from a low level wolf. They had still been learning to work as a team, but a bolter round fired at a lightly armored skygge's head meant death. However, due to the rule of the dungeon, Emil dematerialized and appeared exhausted just outside the dungeon. It was on this day that The Misfits learned that it did not matter the source of the damage, should it be fatal, the dungeon ejected you instead of letting you die.

So from then on, advanced sparring matches, mock battles, and live fire training occurred in the training dungeon. Since there was no risk of death, there was no need to pull punches, weaken spells, or not use real weapons. The only change that was done is Edel decreed that the formal armor would be replaced with a substitution that was the same weight and form, but different material. No need to destroy their military gear during training.

So this year, unlike the previous summer, when they did their mock battles for the Summer Holiday, this time the event would take place in the training dungeon, and would be to the 'death'. Overall, once the apprehension behind the event faded it was met with excitement among the entire populace of Haven. And to top off the excitement, this year's grand prize was three tickets to be bumped to the front of the line for the dungeon, so all of the strongest competitors were going to be giving it their all for this chance.

But this was all taking place in Haven, and the most interesting story of the peak of summer had nothing to do with a deathmatch in Haven, but instead had to do with a specific bureaucratic loophole in a far away city. This dealt with a girl named Kira, in the smog covered city of Morat, the capital of the Sarween Technocracy.

Morat was a city that should not exist. It was one of three grand metropolises in the Technocracy, with the majority of their land being used to support the main cities. This sort of resource consolidation meant that the cities might survive a week if not for the constant shipments of raw goods and materials from the outside land.

Morat, constantly emitting smog into the air and sewage from its pipes should have gone the route of Ston and been obliterated by the Wild, but long ago a specific technology had assisted them, the Pacification field emitter. These pacification emitters pulsed the fields around the city, and kept the wild from encroaching. As the years pressed on and the city became more toxic, the pacification fields had been pushed for miles outside the city. Now there was nothing surrounding the city but scraggy brown and yellow fields dotted with emitters, keeping the wilds at peace.

The Sarween Technocracy would have been able to continue and progress, albeit to the detriment of its environment, had it not been for familial greed.

As a technocracy, Sarween believed that power belonged to the inventor, and by divine decree technology rights belonged solely to those that developed the technology. However like humans tend to do, this thought had been subverted to keep certain families in power.

This was done by limiting the power for an inventor to publish and sell.

The ruling oligarchy, made up of several families each headed by an Archmagus, had developed a plan. To ensure that all the families stayed in power, they would limit the ability of inventors to develop, market, and sell technologies within the Technocracy without heavy government fines, dues, and payments. This would cause young inventors to sign over rights to their invention to a supporting family, and while this would give the inventor a modicum of a payout, it wouldn't give them their just rewards for their breakthrough.

This is what led to a young girl named Kira, who had made a breakthrough, and the mismanagement of the inventor, that would start the avalanche of destruction, fueled by petty greed.

Kira's grandfather had developed the original pacification fields, but was unable to use them or sell them due to the bureaucratic embargo, so like many other inventors, to keep his family fed and housed, he sold the rights to use to one of the few archmagus families. Because of this, despite saving the Sarween from their impending doom from the Wild, he had died penniless in the streets. Kira, growing up in those very same streets, had spent her early years battling sickness and disease, as the constant smog caused numerous health problems among the poor and infirm. However with clerical treatments being tightly controlled by one of the Magus families, it wasn't as if the poor could do anything other than labor away and hope to work hard enough to earn treatment.

It was then that Kira invented a mask. Like the masks that were used in Haven, this one filtered particulates from the air, and since the rich and powerful oligarchs cared more about ruling than inventing, it had been her, a destitute technomancer who created this product. She had planned on selling them at just above cost to aid the poorest of Morat better deal with their sickness, but she had been hampered.

The first was the administrative fees to register her invention and be given rights to sell it. She was initially approached by representatives of the Yumil Family, the ones who lead healthcare in the City. she was sure they would pay her off to shelve her product. Treating disease was just too big of a payday.

Instead, Kira met with the crowds of the poor and in a stroke of genius, gathered the credits to sponsor her product not from a single Archmagus family, but by crowdsourcing the thousands of sick disenfranchised laborers in Morat. That should have been it, and had the Yamil family accepted their defeat, the story would have concluded.

But greed has a funny way of things. The rich seem to only want to be richer. She had begun working on her masks and selling them at just above cost. When the overall health of the city had improved, disaster struck. Kira could not be sure, but suddenly and without warning, her supply costs had tripled. The merchants spoke of an unnamed competitor buying all the supplies she needed for her masks. The goods, albeit uncommon, were not expensive and had no other real use in the nation. They were special ordered, but it was not as if this was a natural fluctuation in the market.

Kira would not be defeated, and after a few large anonymous donations of credits, Kira was able to start production up again. But when indirect methods to halt production failed, her adversaries just burned down her lab. And her warehouse. And her home. They did leave Kira alive. A message to any that would try to change how things were run.

Kira was again on the streets. She had given away all but her last mask, and she looked in scorn at the smokestacks, billowing out poison. Again, inspiration struck. If she couldn't mask the people, why not solve at the source.

It took several months of work, but Kira figured out a way to reconfigure the smokestacks to create a self contained filter that pulled the chemicals out of the discharge pipe, and left only steam floating through.

But this time, she could not get the buy in. The Yamil family had her blacklisted. The other families did not want to spend the resources to pick a fight with Yamil, as they controlled the healthcare industry. Getting blacklisted by the Yamil family meant that all but the richest members of society were destined to die from lack of medical treatment. And in a city so poisonous that nothing grew, a small scrape could lead to death.

It all looked like an early grave for Kira, as the leaders of the city would rather poison its citizens than affect the bottom line.

It was then that Kira was approached by a Merchant.

***

Kira was sitting in a small curio shop. It sold all manner of books, a few magical trinkets and baubles, and, strangely enough, honey wine from a far distant land. Kira was impressed the shop had a two door system and a magical air purifier. Only the most expensive shops and buildings had these. Kira took all this in, as the kind merchant came in with a platter of crackers and a soup made from cockatrice, noodles, and root vegetables. Kira smiled and ate. It had been years since she had eaten fresh produce, having lived off the ration lines for some time. Fresh produce was too expensive for the average person. Kira became more interested.

"I have had my eyes on you for some time Lady Kira. Your ideas and inventions are quite unique." With that the person presented something Kira thought was lost forever, it was her lab journal, slightly singed. "I hope you don't mind but when we saw your workshop on fire, we checked to see if you were alive, and since you weren't home, we tried out best to put out the blaze. It was too much however. So instead we saved the journal to give back to you. A gift, from the people I represent, to you, a promising young inventor."

Kira's eyes narrowed. "There is no such thing as a free lunch or a gift from a stranger. What do you want from me?"

"Very astute! Nothing terrible, I assure you. I want to give you an opportunity. Your talents are wasted here. So instead i wish to give you a lab, a workshop, and, in due time, citizenship in a country that appreciates your gifts."

Kira blinked. They taught her in school that the greatest thing a member of the Technocracy could do was to invent for the benefit of the state. But they had also taught her that taking the talents bestowed by her ancestors to a foreign adversary was the greatest form of betrayal. In the last years however, she had seen how her own country had betrayed her. Could it be that everything she was taught in school was wrong. This person had saved her life's work and readily handed it back to her. Additionally she was being fed a delicious fresh meal at no cost. The least she could do is hear the person out.

Kira sipped her soup. "I'm listening."

The merchant smiled, "My name is Ale. I have a proposition for you. We both know that the city continues to be poisoned and there is nothing the nobles will do while they are safe. My idea is to force the issue."

Kira smiled, "What did you have planned?"

Ale smirked, "we did not save just your lab journal" and with that produced a stack of papers. "We both know as long as the pacification generators run, the Archmagus families will be unwilling to change their ways. Are you aware that by divine decree, the rights to those generators are on loan? They were not purchased outright."

Kira looked confused. She was always taught that a contract for an invention gave up the rights to the invention forever. Ale continued, "If you payback the contract stipulation as well as the usage cost of the invention, you buy back the rights to the invention. If you review this contract in your [Status] you will see what the buyback price is."

Kira touched the contract and then opened it in her status. An [open contracts] page populated, and showed this contract, and the buyback price. Kira's eyes grew large as she saw it was astronomical. "Its 2.5 million credits! That's more than any Archmagus family could procure! It would take me several lifetimes of working in the mines or foundries. It might as well be held outright!"

Ale smiled, "If you agree to come with me, I will bring you to work in our labs for a much nicer wage than you earn here. You will be given lab assistants, resources, and funding, as well as 80% rights to all monetary proceeds to your inventions. Additionally, you will work with a multicultural team of varying technological skills and see wonders that expand past anything this country would allow to happen. Additionally, if you agree to not renew the contract for the Pacification Field Generators, I will give you the funding to buy back these devices. That way we can force the issue to the Sarween technocracy."

Kira grinned. This person wanted the rights to the tech by proxy. They also wanted to invest in her as she had shown great promise as an inventor. Kira, a destitute penniless inventor, was soon to end up like her grandfather. Her mother died of childbirth fever and her father had died in a foundry accident. She had grown up with her grandmother, who had since passed. This was her chance to break the cycle of poverty.

"Can I finish my soup before we leave?"

Ale smiled, "You can have as much as you wish. My shop is closed for the day."

Kira teared as she ate her soup. She would have a chance.

***

Back in Haven Emil's team had just been ejected from the semi finals of the Summer team deathmatch tournament.

Their teamwork had grown quite a bit in the last 6 months. To even make it to the Semi finals against many teams that entered the dungeons on a regular basis was quite the feat. Additionally, the Misfits had made it all the way down to level 60 of the training dungeon, shattering the previous record.

It still didn't help. Although they had gone far, level 60 in the training dungeon was maybe level 11 or 12 of the regular dungeon in terms of difficulty. And the powerhouses that did deep dives in the regular dungeon were just too powerful. They were violence incarnate.

Emil's team did still make 4th place, an underdog story if there ever was one. They were also all relatively underpowered, which made them unassuming to the casual observer.

But this specific trait caught the eye of Jasmine, who had a plan. She requested Serin give them a single dungeon ticket. She had an idea for a mission that would suit this group perfectly.

***