Chương 287: The Opposite of Sense

I know that I said I was going to take some time off, take a break, but not like this. It's been four days since Belisa was remanded into Ebonder custody, and Meadwhite has not made a move. He should have been compelled by now. The tether he planted in her to bind her shell to his soul has to be ripping him half-out of his own corpus. I know what kind of force it exerts, and it's not something you resist for a long time.

Even if I presume that true liches like him have stronger souls, this is not something he should be able to resist for four days. The tension and pressure should only be getting stronger now that I've discontinued our sessions, and besides that Septimus's people have started performing their own rituals to increase the pressure. Those rituals aren't great for Belisa, but better than not dealing with the lich that attacked her. So this is tense. I'm constantly checking my scrying gear, but there's no movement there.

Days of anxious anticipation, and no idea exactly when it stops. No idea exactly what's wrong. It's aching me, it's grinding at me. This is not restful. And not least of all because the longer this goes on, the more likely it becomes that we were badly wrong about one of our starting assumptions. And whatever that is, it's going to create a lot more trouble for us going forward. This is not a situation that abides mistakes.

What is confirmed is that the process that Belisa was subjected to is definitely a variation based on the procedure liches use to prepare a new corpse for their habitation. So it is almost certain that it is in fact a lich that did this to her. Or at least someone that knows the lich rituals, and since liches famously do not share that knowledge, it's either an existing lich or a necromancer that figured it out from clues, stolen lore, and trial and error, who is intending to become a lich.

Since at any given time the number of existing liches is pretty static, but that "people who put in the time and effort to learn how to become a lich but haven't yet" is a very small number, we're confidently betting that it's an existing lich, performing experiments with a new procedure. Belisa's family has ties to necromancy and Kralcit. Meadwhite has ties to necromancy and Kralcit. I have ties to Belisa, Meadwhite, and Kralcit.

So the fact that someone worked this ritual on her specifically, and then taunted me with her in my classroom, is very telling. Basically, this is either the work of Duke-Emeritus Meadwhite, or this is some other well-connected lich with all the same linkages who we don't know anything about but has decided to frame Meadwhite, or this is actually just a stupidly convoluted coincidence. These are things that we're all really sure about.

And it would really suck to be wrong about any of them, because that would mean we've got unknown elements mixed into a very dangerous and volatile situation. Best case scenario, I have badly underestimated how powerful a lich's soul is compared to mine. So, there's only bad options here. Or, there's some other assumption that I didn't even consider that is interfering. So on Fiveday morning I'm a bit of a jangled mess. And that's when Kurumi decided to strike, waiting for my vulnerability.

"Hi," she said with a harmless-looking smile.

"So, I finished checking out that information from our meeting, and I think that your long-term profit projections look even better than you thought." I've been doing almost nothing but stressing about liches and necromancy for the past forty-eight hours. So I am slower than usual.

"Huh?"

"So, while you were talking to those leader types about secret dangerous stuff you didn't want me to know about, I chatted with the nervous guys," Kurumi said with a self-satisfied smile.

"And they were ready to tell me just absolutely everything. The scared ones always do. Anyway, I wanted to talk about the financials with you first."

"Why?"

"Seems safer."

"Why?"

"We'll get to that," she said.

"Anyway, your pals, they think like crooks."

"I've got bad news."

"I know they're crooks, but they think like crooks, and that's very limiting. Look, you've got them setting up a series of depots, warehouses and storehouses along your route. But that's not what they're doing. They're setting up hideouts and dead-drops. And then they just calculate a standard rate of attrition for water damage, vermin damage, theft by their own employees and bribes for local officials.

They're going to pay more for hidden storage, more for transport costs, and give up a percentage of all shipments just because their thinking is limited."

"I believe I made it clear that these are smugglers, and they will be smuggling," I said. I took off my ring, glanced through it, and put it back.

"You did. But if I can get them to agree to a finishing roofer and some pest control, we keep attrition down. Also, don't calculate for bribes for local officials. The land they're building on is safe from inspections, that was the order from the duke and the lord protector."

"Oh, yeah, those bribes are for me," I said.

"Sorry?" she blinked.

"Follow me now," I said, gesturing it out.

"They already had an expense bracket for bribes. They did not have a bracket for the percentage for a property manager's fee. I just changed their seven-point-five to a flat five and told them that they're bribing me to keep the inspectors out of their business. Since we've already negotiated the inspection parameters, it's not even a stretch of the truth. And it helps them feel like proper bad-lads rather than thinking of themselves as running an honest freight enterprise."

"Right, that was going to be my third point but let's move to it," she said.

"They could be making a lot more money as honest merchants. They're going through extra expense for lower margins, taking extra chances, and they could be doing so much better with the same resources through legitimate channels. I feel like they're just stuck in their mindsets, and if they just wanted to ship foods, tools and ores instead of stolen jewelry, drugs and weapons, they'd all be making a ton of money."

"Of course they would," I said, cocking my head to the side.

"What else?"

"What?"

"Well, what were you getting at?"

"Like, as a point?"

"For example, yes," I said, arching an eyebrow. I don't feel like I'm having a shrouded shadow-conversation here, but someone in this dialogue is definitely missing something.

"Well, just that they should switch over!" she said.

"Have them start shipping real goods for real businesses and make a ton of money!"

"Oh!" I said, brightening as I finally saw what she was trying to communicate.

"No."

"No?"

"No," I confirmed.

"But why?"

"Because I don't need them to run legitimate business," I said.

"And they understand that. I can just open the doors and fill every car of every train with tools, foods, and ores. That part's easy. I can wait until the day we open, announce that I'm taking bids, and run a full cargo. And then after we've proven our results, open for new bids at a higher rate. No problem. But if I don't lock down the criminal element, I'm going to have to deal with a rogue criminal element." The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"That made the opposite of sense." I folded my hands, and considered more carefully how to communicate this.

"Look, your family is in shipping. You're used to thinking of the criminal element as competition, or an occupational hazard. For you, smugglers are either a bunch of unpredictably violent weirdos that tie up the docks at weird hours and make business complicated, or they're pushy jerks that keep trying to sneak their goods onto your pallets without the right paperwork. Maybe they're associated with bandits or pirates, stealing from your ships and wagons. But I'm looking at this whole thing from a different axis.

I am opening a brand new industry, a whole new way of operating. And I could act naive and do everything aboveboard with legitimate partners. But if I did, the criminal element would get involved anyway. Count on that. There is no way, ever, to run a profitable enterprise and not have criminals getting involved. So instead of trying to ignore that and letting them surprise me when they show up, I am taking control of the smuggling first, so that my criminals keep out the other criminals.

They become something I can predict, and manipulate." She was staring at me like I had magically transferred a bad taste into her mouth.

"What- but- that-""Look, if I don't have a pack of criminals guarding my shipments and making sure that no amateur robbers try to steal the cargo, I'm gonna have a thousand creative types realizing that they can derail a train just by digging under the crossties with a shovel. Hundreds of people die and the bandits can pick through the cargo at their leisure. But if they know that they can't sell anything? That no fence will touch them? That not only the cops but the crooks they ripped off will come after them?

It's a whole new layer of security." Her eyes narrowed as she thought.

"Criminal elements are very territorial. So you're inviting them into your territory so you control which ones you're sharing space with?"

"And cutting myself in for a percentage, yes," I said.

"And I get them to finance the first round of support industry and infrastructure, which will later expand out of their control as more legitimate businesses move into the field."

"Hmm." she said.

"All right. I understand the ways in which it makes sense. I acknowledge it's a good idea. But there's still a 'why' hanging around. Why are you doing it? Or, rather, let me rephrase that. How. How did you decide to do that? Like, what mental process took you to incorporating smugglers in your long-range heavy-cargo transportation business? Nobody does that. Nobody thinks like that. So why did you?" I smirked. I hardly ever get to use this one.

"I know the difference between a plan, and wishful thinking. If I set out to do something, and I say 'first I'll invent this, then I'll build these, then we'll have that, and then we'll profit!', that's just wishful thinking, daydreaming. If you sit down with that and you say 'all right, what would go wrong first', then you've started working on a real plan. Figure out what parts are definitely going to go wrong, and incorporate those.

If you can't think of anything that would go wrong, then it's time to do some research, because you don't know enough about what you're doing." She stared at me with bright, blinking eyes as a smile stretched the corners of her mouth.

"You are the most amazingly cynical person I've ever met. Do you really live like this?" I dropped my elbow onto the desk and propped my chin in my hand.

"What do you think seeing the future does to someone, hmm?" Even if it weren't for that, there's the fact that I just plain understand this world and how it works. At a fundamental level, nothing in Hearstwhile can ever be easy. It's in the DNA. It's in the culture and the cronyism and corruption. And it's in the story. It's how the game is made, it takes eight steps to get ye flask.

You can only get Lady Grayson's prize carrots if you win the dog show so you have to go questing for the perfect dog collar which has been stolen by the evil cult, or whatever. I had to kill three liches for a math assignment. A world like that does not let you start a railroad without taking precautions against robbers, raiders, and bandits. Kurumi sat back, crossing her arms.

"I have gotten so used to being the most jaded person around. I bow to a skill far greater than my own." [Quest Checkpoint Complete: Savings and Trust but Verify, +10XP, Advancement: The Wealthy] Immediately after my math class comes my science class. I'm on the same schedule as Nathan, for some reason. Like any reasonable school, each teacher and each room really do have several sessions per day.

But the game only ever had one schedule for Nathan: homeroom, math, natural philosophy, history, geography, lunch, elective, literature, elective, sport. What Intellect score he had determined what he would do during those periods, but the timing was set in stone. And apparently, as a [Rival], I get the same progression. Maybe to highlight the difference between our abilities.

Maybe to maximize opportunities to run into each other: he was always heading from the history building to the geography building at the same time as I do. One of the main reasons I often fly or portal from building to building, and avoid the footpaths unless I know exactly where he is. Whichever reason it is, I've still got my head lodged firmly in Kurumi's conversation when I get to my Natural Philosophy Ⅲ class.

I am looking forward to distracting myself with some good ol' science, with acting as a teacher's aide and trying to bond with these folks and getting to know them. And, getting my hooks in to recruit them for a big workshop project and turn them into a patent warehouse. I promise no sweatshop conditions. But wouldn't you know it? There's a test today. And as we've established, Ryichsur doesn't need my help proctoring tests. He might need my help grading them, but I go through them preposterously fast.

The game still downscales questions for me, so I can go down a page of questions much more efficiently than he can. So, I'm wasting my time here. And that's definitely what I don't need right now. I can only check my scrying ring so many times. I have to get out of here. The professor could see that I was on edge and did not give me trouble about bailing out, he gave me a wave and told me to catch up with him on Oneday.

I headed out to the hall, where there was nobody to blind except a hall monitor and right in that moment I could not muster up any more concern. I dropped out of the school and out onto the street outside of the Ebonder townhouse. Then, a fruitless ten minutes arguing with the housekeeper who answered the door. No, the marquis and marquess are not in right now. No, she would not tell me where.

Well, I then guessed that they were at the secret holding facility where we had built a big damn trap for a certain lich, with Belisa Roadaway as bait. She was surprised enough that I could tell my guess had hit the mark, apparently nobody told the housekeeper that the Harigold princess was a co-conspirator in this act. But even after I demonstrated that I do know enough about this scheme that I have to be involved in it, she does not give me an address or directions, or even directly confirm that I'm right.

It's really annoying but it's still good operational security. I am pissed at the Marquis now but I have to commend his staff for diligence. I want to be doing something, anything constructive. Anything helpful. Anything that brings this bullshit closer to a resolution. Something that gets Meadwhite out of my worries. I've had low-level worries about him for months, waiting for him to surprise me with his next attack against me, for him to take the offensive. But there is nothing, and that doesn't help.

Knowing that he's out there and he cold come at me at any time, that's bad. But now we've taken this whole Belisa scheme to make sure that this comes to a head. We're gonna finish this, once and for all!... Except that it's not working, he's not showing up, and now it's worse than ever. Part of me wishes that I could make myself believe he was dead. But that's not going to happen. A lich like that does not come to a fight unless he's already got his backup body. So now what? Sit on a rooftop and brood? Nah.

I've got other stuff to get busy on. Long-term stuff. I flitted off to various districts of the city. I repaired paving stones in one square, but left them loose in another. I cut a channel in a street to help create a runoff gully to the street-side ditch. I secured some fire escapes, ignored others. I picked one particular alleyway that was long familiar to me.

Savescumming is a good way to learn geography and architecture that you remember instantly even after dying, transmigrating and spending sixteen years preparing. I stopped at the intersection, spotted the alleyway, and was hit with a visceral burst of resentment in my belly. Like something elemental in my soul was rebelling, god dammit not this place again. Carefully I scooted the walls together. I had to gather more stone from nearby, lowering the pitch of the alleyway slightly, creating a slight uphill cant.

The two buildings grew slightly towards each other, I doubt enough for either of their owners to notice. But enough to change the layout of this one alleyway just enough. I flitted to another street and reinforced a window, or weakened a door hinge. Bit by bit, in small inconspicuous ways, I reshaped a dozen battlefields. I don't have any save files, but there are ways that I can put my thumb on the scale. The RNG works for me, this time. And about damn time.