Risks And Recreation

"Hypothetically, of course," I hurry to reassure the naive young lady. "The emperor would obviously initially deny you knighthood or something of the sort just to test me as well as your loyalties. At which point I would simply cut you loose and send you home where it's safe to make it look like I did not have any deep ties with you."

At first she once again looked shocked and angry with a real reddening of her face, but at length she said nothing and simply discarded a few cards under my unabashed gaze. It really would be for the best. If the game's mortal emperor did not think we had strong ties or she any loyalty to me, there would be no reason to pursue her except to maybe bait her in with the knighthood and then question her.

The questioning alone was what I hoped to avoid, though. "Essentially, if the chain of command has a bad link in it somewhere, following you to your knighthood is my last-ditch chance to meet the emperor in a positive light. I DID do some crazy shit to get that thing and even if the gods paid me, I don't have it anymore. Nor do I want it. Thanks to some people, it smells like a rat."

"I'll be the one wearing that rat-smelling divine artifact!" She snaps suddenly, showing her anger for the first time that I had seen. Toward me, anyway.

"Yeah, but you smell like sunshine and roses so what's the problem?" I ask in mock confusion, looking at my friends around the table one last time with my hopes up. Of course, neither of them said anything but continued with the card game. Lana simply gave me an impatient look with one brow curiously raised.

Being cute and corny would not help me anymore right now. "Sorry," I sigh tiredly, admitting defeat once again. After everything I had been through the passed couple days, I was simply too tired to save myself right now.

Moving back to the previous topic at hand, I say, "We also have a clan allied with several other clans who are already based in the capital. Even if I avoided the emperor in the short-term, you could be knighted and Tragedy's Travelers could still plant a headquarters in the city while I continue developing imperial ties. It will just have to be IN the city instead of a giant complex outside."

"You want to make a second grove?" Oleander asks curiously, thinking of the only other large-scale property we had anything to do with at the moment. As a half-dryad character, her ties to nature were the strongest and the greenhouses currently in the Delai property were there mostly for her to begin with.

Seeing that Lana was interested in hearing this by how casually she played the current hand of cards, I reply with, "It will have an area like the grove, but it will be a smaller centerpiece to the complex. The rest of it will be for housing, crafting, trading, and training in bulk. I'm talking a hundred-forge smithy that will potentially be running full time and matching workshops.

"Besides these job skill centers we'll have at least two training grounds for large-scale drills and marching and one giant Agility course," I go on, basing the outer-capital complex on the original designs for this property. We did not plan on having so many workshops here, but the forge and Agility course were supposed to be here waiting for us.

"Then there's the clan and public housing, which will be funded by our in-house market and paid public use of our clan workshops," I go on quickly as nobody manages to win this next hand except for a random queen in Lana's hand. It honestly looked like everybody had tried to play for Straights. "This would all, of course, be funded by us and not the Delai Family. We would probably just use your family to sell stuff.

"Since we may be circumstantially forced to settle for an in-city headquarters, we could settle for large amounts of the cheapest land possible and still set up public workshops and a trade hub. The in-city headquarters will literally just be a place for us to hang our signboard until we get our Traveler city up and running."

"How long will it take before the city in Winter Wood is actually a city?" She asks calmly while measuring the cards in her hand before finally picking three of them to trade out. "What kind of city will it be? What do you think will become of it?"

"A free-trade city independent of the mortal empire that doubles as a Traveler military headquarters," I reply shamelessly. "The empire is only a third of my own potential problems, even if the emperor approves of me. The rest of my problems will come from other Travelers and things not from this dimension. I imagine whatever leadership is in place in hell is not too found of me."

Nodding her head slowly, Lana now asks, "I was told you guys captured the higher demon leaders… how many demon soldiers do you actually have?"

Wishing I had a hand of cards of my own, I simply flick a gaze to the numbly pale faces of Mr. Harlow and the old lady. At this point in the conversation, they had heard enough craziest to not know what was real and false but there had definitely been things like treason and rebellion discussed. However, they were just quietly waiting to see where this conversation ended up.

"Stored in a special dimensional box of sorts belonging to our clan, we have… a couple thousand," I reply quietly. "Hundreds of the different types we could get and even twice that in chaotic spiritual entities. If I unleashed everything in the clan on this city, even people like Sir Beryl would die and the city itself would be leveled. If I absolutely needed to, I could do something similar in the capital. If I made it worthwhile, I could have three other clans in the capital do the same and more than double the demon numbers between them."

"Overall, there's about thirteen thousand demons remaining from the lost city as a reserve force who are currently constructing the city foundations and aqueducts as we speak," I add at length when everybody else remains silent.

In an outright war against the empire, we could fuck up a good chunk of the continent or even raze the capital with those numbers brought together. In a war against players right now, maybe only a few hundred on the continent with abilities like mine would survive while everybody else sacrificed their levels dying again and again.

Once the player average went over level one hundred, though, demon soldiers like them would lose effect. Especially since the update that released loose cultivation into the game world where anybody dedicated could have several thousand MP. Ten such people could wipe a hundred demons even now if they burnt out their mana pools with basic spell-skill combinations.

At this moment, to the NPC population, even Lana with her new stats and abilities looked shaken by my reveal of our demonic defense forces. "The demons in our storage are open to the clan," I say vaguely, as if I intended to reassure her until my next words, "they are constantly being bought up to be used as mounts and familiars. Our clan even has a mandate in place that ram-head Taurian demons are the mount requirement for each member. This way, they all donate money and assets to the clan in exchange for a huge amount of points with which they have no choice but to spend everything on a mount first and foremost. Then everything else they can start buying."

"When do you intend to leave for the city?" Lana asks after losing with two pairs versus Oleander's flush.

"After we clean up the outlaws capturing, releasing, and herding monsters through the forest," I reply openly, earning myself sharp looks from the three NPC present. "That should take less than a week but we're only aware of some of their presence and plans, we have to wait until their actual leaders make moves so we can take responsive action."

I could clearly see the thoughts, 'what the hell is responsive action' in Lana's eyes as she once again narrowed her gaze at me but instead she simply said nothing and went back to playing cards. "How do you know it's outlaws?"

"Less than fifty were waylaying the highway into the forest we came in on," I reply honestly. "I don't think they ever even intended to attack us, our traveling party had like two dozen demons and even more mundane familiars. Our familiars just happened to notice them a hundred yards out from us so I flew over and slapped them away like the small fry they are. The others kept one alive and we got as much information out of him as we could before he offed himself."

They had no way of knowing what was true or false, but I essentially restricted ninety percent of the information we received from the outlaw despite the fact that it was all based on the speculation map. Other clans and their 'public ties' only had less than ten speculations while ours had over a dozen confirmed locations and even the water camps.

Besides, everybody involved in that initial confrontation had died. Only some super powerful entity that I don't know about who could stretch their awareness for miles or the gods themselves would know anything about this. Lana would more easily accept this information than the truth, anyway, even if she had no care for the outlaw's life.

"And that's the stepping stone you're using for the baron," she seems to realize after two silent rounds of cards. "Everything really is just so conveniently mapped out for you, isn't it? It would almost make me wonder if you were one of the outlaw leaders."

"No, certainly not," I reply quickly and honestly. "I would not put the lives of innocent natives at risk. Travelers like us, I would farm them for experience if I could get away with it. Those guys aren't innocents since they can switch lives at will. They are, however, a commodity," I reply while gesturing off toward where QTPi was training the noobs in basic attack and defense combination drills.

They had only just started using the parry feints in the drills which showed they had only just started acquiring the basic attack skills. However, despite all of them having opened up their silk armor suits to remain cool they were still striking strong at the air. They were probably enjoying themselves.

"Those guys in fancy suits are a bunch of fresh Travelers I found last night at the municipal," I reply, knowing she would know the only municipal anything I spent time at. "When I got there, things were ugly and they were doing everything from poaching harassment to market manipulation using the municipal's metal stocks. So, I put on a show and then started a big contest and they were the noob bracket winners."

"Is she the top bracket winner?" Lana asks in a dangerously emotionless voice without any inflection or impression at all. Whatever I said next might as well determine her life.

"No, she's the hostage," I reply with a dismissive wave of my hand. "There were some upper echelon Traveler clans using the city's upper clans to run the racketeering, she's one of their top level leadership who I captured after slapping their thugs around. I made her co-host the contest to rub it in their faces and now I am poaching her from their clans.

"She's going to be quite the mole by the time I finish with her, but that's beside the point," I say quickly, knowing I was standing neck deep in treacherous waters from the beginning. "The main point is those thirteen noobs with my bastard swords. I'm just giving them the basics of survival training, their job for the next three months is going to be mass producing materials and crafts that my clan will sell and profit from. Once they get the rhythm down, their first ten production shifts will pay back my investment several times over. Per person. There are thirty actual winners and the same math applies."

"Once everything settles down, I am going to make those thirteen my clan's middle management for the craftsmen and before we leave the city we'll hold another- much larger- crafting competition as well as a few other events. Those events are things I can't talk about until after my meeting with the baron, though," I say solemnly, hoping to use the reference and the unspoken information to keep Lana's attention off of QTPi.

QTPi was not unattractive by any means the same way that Lana was naturally beautiful. Except, they both had their different… styles… of physical appeal. One was seriously physically appealing while the other had the all-round package and perfect face. There was no reason for Lana to feel threatened, but she for some reason was.

Drawing attention back to my clan and its matters, though, I look up at the sky to see that barely half an hour had passed so far before saying, "By the end of the next week, hopefully, I will have taken in a hundred dedicated craftsman who will be dispersed between here and Winter Wood while we set the foundations in the capital."

"Knighthood and everything aside… what do you really think your chances are in using the noble stepping stones plan?" She asks a little hesitantly at first, finally facing herself with her own question after having been strung along on different stories this entire time.

"If I went in without my tithe at the ready, fifty-fifty," I reply honestly while preparing to buff my odds in her thoughts. "However, I have prepared one thousand sword blanks and enough Gigantula silk canvas for as many suits of armor made in a slightly more refined fashion compared to what those noobs are wearing. They were made with impeccable means by yours truly and the mobile crystal workshop platform of my in-name Grand Alchemist teacher.

"With the tithe of those materials and my personal recipes, the city will be able to put out secondary underarmor for its protectors and high quality blessed steel weapons. This would improve my chances to seventy-five percent, eighty in a positive light considering the current state of the city. I believe we just recently took in the evacuees of a neighboring township?"

"We'll take those odds, but I'm coming with you," she says after I remain silent, ending on that rhetorical question. "When do we leave?"

"When Sir Beryl arrives around noon," I reply slightly vaguely while once again looking up at the sky.

*