Damn.
Back in Weldon, for the first time in what felt like years, I’d missed my cellphone. I’d missed the ease with which I used to be able to contact people. Ranic hadn’t been able to get in contact with Jeric through the village interface before I left, but I had been hoping that he wouldn’t be here, because it meant Ranic would be by himself in charge of our project. If I was back home, checking this would’ve been as simple as pulling my phone out of my pocket. Instead, I’d spent days fretting.
“We do,” I replied.
I said goodbye to the guards and driver while servants unloaded my luggage. Fredrick politely hurried me along and then led us through the palace’s elaborately decorated marble hallways to a sitting room.
As soon as we entered, servants began appearing with plates of food, glasses, and an assortment of chilled bottled beverages. Within less than a minute, a small buffet was set up under the window and everyone had walked out, leaving me alone with Jeric.
I looked Jeric up and down, trying to assess how he was holding up. The man was in rough shape. He clearly hadn’t been sleeping well. “I got that business in Weldon taken care of…is it safe to talk about it here?”
Jeric shook his head. “Our conversation is likely being listened to, if not by mundane means then certainly by a wizard scrying.”
“No it's not,” I whispered, throwing my voice in a faraway tone.
Jeric snorted, giving me a strained half-grin. “So there was no trouble?”
“Everything is going to plan,” I said carefully. “Well, everything that’s not me being escorted here for eight straight days and having to go through a monster-infested forest. I’m glad I listened to Ranic and I didn’t drag him here or there would be no one to manage the project…” I realised that nerves had me rambling, so I forced myself to stop and take a breath. In a far calmer tone, I said, “So, what has gotten you so tense? I haven’t seen you this tightly strung since…you know.”
Jeric scowled. “The regent has involved my wife and daughter.”
I paused. Few things could rile Jeric up, but his family was one of them. “How?”
“You know I spoke with the regent through the village interface system after you helped me.”
I nodded.
“Well, she wanted to know what we had done and how. Of course, I refused to tell her. It wasn’t my exploit to share. So she asked what I planned to do with the experience I earned. I made the mistake of telling her it was for my daughter. She’s used her influence to figure out how much experience Isabelle and I have saved up for Emily and realised it’s just below what’s required for her to reach her threshold. She decided to throw an ascendance ball.”
I leaned back and frowned. “I don’t know what that is, but it doesn’t sound too bad?”
Jeric sighed and leaned back in his chair, deflated. “It’s a grander version of the presenting ball where our children are presented to the other nobles as they absorb their experience and cement their position among them. An ascendance ball is much bigger and more lavish and usually reserved for the most powerful families that can afford not to give the bare minimum of experience necessary to keep their class but enough to reach their first threshold. If the ball is done properly and the individual being presented significantly impresses everyone, then they can trigger an advanced method for passing through their threshold.”
“So she’s helping you?” There was a fair amount of implied confusion in my tone.
“No, the party is a manipulation. I think at first she thought I was lying about giving the experience to Emily and was trying to force me to admit I wasn’t telling the truth. But she always had the backup plan of going through with the party if I was willing to give it to her. She’s done the math and knows we don’t have enough experience to get Emily to her threshold, meaning we can’t take advantage of this event, and help her pass through her threshold. The regent is trying to force me into a position where I will have to ask her for the experience to get her there. In return, she will want the method you created.”
I frowned. “Is that so bad?” I mean, it didn’t sound so bad, besides the whole me losing a lot of money part.
I knew how hard it was for nobles to pass through their thresholds. They were on a level that was quite frankly insane. They made farming thresholds seem easy. The monetary value of my exploit was high, but if it got Emily through her first threshold, it would be considered a reasonable price, even cheap.
Jeric growled. “The woman is a tyrant and warmonger. She is all smiles and sweet words while she needs something from you, but she will calmly destroy you when she has what she wants. She intends to replace the king when he dies, long may he reign. If she succeeds, it would be a disaster. We’d be at war with everyone.”
“If that’s true, should you really be saying that in her house?”
Jeric visibly forced himself to calm down and released an exhausted sigh. “It’s fine. She wants what we know, so long as we don’t tell her, we are safe, and I’m also not foolish enough to move against her even if I could influence anything, so I’m no threat to her.”
“So what can we do?”
“I don’t know.”
His tone held too much worry. He seemed too stressed to think straight.
“Can I buy the experience you need? I’ve got a lot of gold.”
“You can’t purchase noble experience. As I’ve said in the past, it can only be traded for favours.”
“Economic favours?”
“Not directly and not in the way your mind thinks.”
“Explain it to me then.”
“An economic favour between nobles would be something like choosing to have your village be supplied by Lord B’s mine even though they were farther from you than Lord A, because Lord B’s town was unable to trade with anyone closer and is now suffering for it. The favour would economically support Lord B’s people, which would affect how much he could eventually spend, but the primary purpose would be to help those under him.”
“Okay, I can follow that. So, any favour you did for experience would have to involve the village and its prosperity, and it might negatively affect your village and positively affect someone else’s, but in the ideal situation, it would positively affect both, but to a higher degree for one party.”
“Yes.”
“So, is there anyone that you can help?”
Jeric laughed. It was a bitter sound. “No, Arnold. Blackwood isn’t in any position to assist others. The only places worse off than us have been razed to the ground.”
After Jeric’s dark declaration, neither of us spoke for several minutes.
Then a question occurred to me. “What happened to the people from those places that were destroyed?”
“If they lived, they left.”
“But where did they go?”
“To other villages and towns.”
“So they were refugees.”
“For the most part.”
“Are they a drain on these villages and towns?”
“Sometimes; it depends on their levels and skills. The older members would be an asset anywhere.”
“So, would you be doing these other nobles a favour if you took these non-asset individuals off their hands?”
Jeric blinked and shook his head. Some of the tension left him. “I need to stop being surprised by the way your mind works. Yes, that would be considered favour-worthy. And a rather big favour if we were to go so far as to take their orphans and destitute.” He smiled at me and adopted a semi-serious expression. “Arnold, it is my understanding that you require workers. Being a compassionate individual, would you be willing to open your doors to those who have lost their homes and are of limited level, helping the poor and needy in their time of struggle?”
Having him go along with my suggestion caused a cold stone to drop into my stomach and I began to feel nervous. He wanted to turn what had been a hypothetical scenario into reality. My mind began racing, and I lowered my ga
ze, uncomfortable. “I wish I could talk to Ranic,” I muttered.
Even though I’d suggested it to him, something about the situation felt off now that he was asking. It was the risk involved. It wasn’t just to me.
“I’m sorry, Jeric. I know this was my idea, but I just realised I can’t immediately agree to this. I haven’t thought this through at all. I was just saying the idea as it came to me. I was thinking in the abstract, not reality. It’s only occurring to me now that if we do this and Ranic says it can’t work after the fact, we might completely screw ourselves and them. Those people might have their lives upturned for nothing, causing them to suffer further than they already have. I can’t make that choice just for your daughter’s threshold. I don’t want to make someone’s life worse just to make someone else’s better. And I have a lot of debt to think about. I hope you understand.”
Jeric paused, becoming serious. “I do.”
I nodded. “Would the experience gained from the favours actually put Emily at her threshold?”
Jeric shook his head. “I don’t think so; certainly not without taking so many people that it would be a disaster. That means I couldn’t make a straight trade.” He frowned, scratching his chin. “What about a charity auction? No, that wouldn’t work. Even if they were bidding with their experience, the price wouldn’t go high enough. A straight purchase might work. A thousand experience and they can buy a future for a farm orphan who will be guaranteed a place as an orchardist trained under a master scholar. It would come under the rules of charity, and this would be considered a change of fate, so they would gain experience for the rest of the child’s life. It might take a couple of decades, but they would earn back their initial experience investment with interest and then begin to make a profit. There are many that would go for it, but not enough…I sense there is a solution here. I just can’t see it yet.”
This sort of problem was the kind of thing you had to deal with in better strategy games. I’d played enough of those to know there were dozens of methods you could use against other factions or people in this case. Some of them didn’t even cost you. The idea that came to me wasn’t my own. It came straight out of the strategy game Hailstone and what little I remembered from my grandfather’s grumbling about big business.
“Does the regent have any enemies?”
“Plenty, but as I said, I’m not foolish enough to side against her.”
“I wasn’t thinking that. Sometimes in my world, big businesses will buy small businesses that create an invention that will make their product redundant. They buy these smaller businesses to suppress their creations. They consider it a cost of running their business to buy the smaller business and then dissolve it. I think if you tell her enemies about the exploit without details and then tell them what she is trying to do, they will be more than happy to give you the experience just to keep the information from her. And I am fairly certain your actions will be considered a favour as you are allowing them to interfere with their enemy.”
A look of absolute horror crossed Jeric’s face. “What kind of world did you live in?”
“One where the people were the monsters.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
A CHARMED EXPERIENCE
Our short conversation spurred Jeric into action. He muttered to himself for a few more minutes and then rushed off to meet with people who might be able to use what I suggested, leaving me alone. A servant boy, maybe 14 years old, silently stepped into the room as Jeric fled and sat down on a stool in the corner. He was most likely there in case I needed something, but I couldn’t help thinking maybe he was there to keep an eye on me. If the regent really was as evil as Jeric and everybody claimed, that would make a lot of sense.
I didn’t know who the servant boy was, but I pitied him. This world didn’t offer you much of a chance if you found yourself trapped at the bottom of society without levels or the money to gain them. Sure, anyone could technically do any job, but the constraints the system put on you made success more challenging. There honestly wasn’t much you could do to pull yourself out of poverty if you didn’t have class levels. Becoming a servant was one of the few options that might keep you fed and comfortable. It was certainly better than going off to war to fight and die.
I mean, technically, a farmer had a chance to gain farmer experience if the battle were fought on a farm outside a city, but it was a small chance, barely worth mentioning, and, from what I heard, the crown took those gains from you, reimbursing you with a level for each year of service. That didn’t seem like enough, in my opinion.
I made my way over to the buffet.
I piled a little bit of everything onto a plate, hunting for what was good and what wasn’t. It wasn’t even lunch yet, but free food was free food, and it was all better quality than I was used to. I’d spent enough of my life eating instant noodles to take advantage of any opportunity that offered me a free meal. I grabbed a glass bottle of beer, similar to what I was used to seeing back home, and took a seat.
I enjoyed myself, taking my time, finding what I liked and didn’t, and then raided the best available, stuffing myself silly. I considered offering some to the boy but figured that might get him in trouble. I doubted they’d throw out the food I didn’t eat. Most likely, the servants would eat it once I was done. One of my old roommates used to come home from his hospitality gigs with leftover containers of food. So, I was reasonably sure it wouldn’t go to waste.
Only when I’d eaten to the point of growing uncomfortable did I decide it was time to leave.
I turned to the boy. “Is there a music room I can use?”
He quickly stood and bowed. “Yes, sir,” he said, voice breaking slightly. “However, I was instructed to show you to your rooms when you were ready.”
“Can you take me there after showing me where my room is?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Lead the way, then.”
The boy led me through the palace, showing me which hallways I should and shouldn’t use while explaining what rooms we were passing. I didn’t take half of it in. Instead, I focused on remembering where I was and how I was getting there.
Like I said, the palace was larger than a megamall, so it took nearly ten minutes to reach where I was staying. I also hadn’t listened to him properly because I had missed the fact that he’d said “rooms,” not “room.”
The area I was staying in was basically a large apartment within the palace. I had five bedrooms, a huge dining area, and a balcony overlooking the southern garden, two sitting rooms, and an entertaining room, along with a private library. Three servants maintained everything at all hours of the day.
It was easily better than anywhere I’d ever stayed—and I’d stayed with Ranic. The bathrooms had hot and cold running water and even a toilet like the magical one Ranic’s home possessed. It let you do number two without having to deal with the smell. You also came away clean, no toilet paper required. It was the only thing I’d ever seen that I could point to and say unequivocally, “that’s better than home.” Even those Japanese toilets weren’t on their level. I was reasonably thrifty when it comes to material possessions, but getting myself one of those was an expense I would be happy to pay no matter the cost.
Once I toured the apartment, he showed me to the music room. It was probably more accurate to call it a music hall as it could easily seat a thousand. There was a raised stage at the front with the lower part of the hall empty of seating. Instead, it was filled with hundreds of instruments of every shape and kind. I recognised only half of them.
I put my curiosity aside as I dismissed the boy and entered the room. I walked slowly, listening to the sound my footsteps made as they echoed, testing the acoustics. There was a feel to the music hall like a temple or church—like it was sacred.
It took me about five minutes to search through the vast selection and locate a guitar, but the moment I did I was lost to the world around me, tuning it to my needs.
My fingertips moved
across the strings, strumming the guitar, testing the sound. Music ran between my fingers, filling the void with melody. I began to play, losing myself to the music, letting go of the tension that had been building for weeks. Malia had told me where she’d purchased her guitar, but I hadn’t had the time or, until recently, the resources, to follow it up. It was in a city on the other side of the kingdom. I’d checked the instrument stores in Weldon, but they didn’t make acoustic guitars. Apparently, it was a relatively rare instrument here. The closest they got was a lute and that didn’t interest me. A lute was just another instrument while a guitar was a piece of my past.
Back home, music was only a minor hobby of mine. Then I found myself trapped in this world. Now it was a way to connect to home. A way to connect to my family. A way to connect to everything I had lost.
A couple of hours vanished in what felt like minutes. I only knew it was hours because my fingers began to hurt from playing. I had lost my calluses with the new body but didn’t let that stop me.
At some point, an obese but beautiful older woman in a fine green dress entered the room and began doing something I couldn’t make out on the stage. She didn’t ask me to stop playing or speak to me at all, so I didn’t pay her the slightest bit of attention.
Then she began to sing.
Her voice flowed across my skin like a sea siren’s call, drawing in everything it touched. Her singing was hauntingly beautiful, achingly sad, and so pure and simple that it left me breathless within a few seconds. She sang a song of love torn away too soon. Her presence filled the room, denying the existence of anything but her. A true master of her craft, she wove tone and pause with equal skill, hitting whip stroke high notes, leaving my heart raw and bloody just shy of collapse.
You have been charmed.
I was instantly in love, ignoring and dismissing the prompt so I could focus on the woman before me. The guitar lay forgotten at my feet.
Oh Great! I was Reincarnated as a Farmer Page 29
