Contest (The Stork Tower Book 6)

by Tony Corden

  Just ahead, Leah saw a small clearing and directed Mĕi to land. Leah dismounted, and Mĕi headed into the forest to feed. While she waited, Leah kept a close watch on the surroundings and listened to the forest sounds. It was just as well she did because she was aware when the soft sounds of the birds and insects died away. Even the wind seemed to stop moving among the leaves. She was wearing her red suit of armour and equipped her bow. She cast Darkness Dragonscales and waited in the centre of the clearing, facing the direction where the forest had first gone quiet.

  The first indication of the creatures was a hint of shadow-mana seeping into the clearing between two trees and a low growl. Leah heard a second growl before she spotted some crimson coloured mana bleeding into the air of the glade several metres to the right. She slowly shuffled backwards as two wolf-like creatures edged into the open space. Each of them was covered in mana, which appeared to ooze from their skin and spiked fur. One of the creatures had eyes of deepest night with skin, fur, and teeth the colour of dark shadows. The other had crimson eyes and was the colour of venous blood. Both appeared to flicker in and out of sight.

  SHADOW GLITCHWOLF (Level 347) 120409HP (17350EP)

  BLOOD GLITCHWOLF (Level 351) 123201HP (17550EP)

  Both wolves had their lips drawn back over their fangs and emitted deep throated snarls. As they entered the clearing, they stayed close together instead of separating. Leah thought this was odd until she realised all her attention was now all focussed in the one direction. She moved even as the thought crossed her mind. She shot an arrow at the blood glitchwolf and dove to her right. Equipping her blue armour, she brought the Amber Dragon around in an arc and it passed straight through a third glitchwolf. This one was a dark ochre colour. It had been sneaking up behind Leah.

  Leah came to her feet and faced the three glitchwolves which were now spreading out as they faced her. She noted that although her arrow had caused some damage it was not embedded in the glitch wolf but had fallen from its body. Leah cast Chain Lightning at the blood glitchwolf, the lightning drove it backwards and knocked it off its feet, then arced to the ochre glitchwolf where it fizzled out and disappeared. Leah checked the creature’s label.

  EARTH GLITCHWOLF (Level 355) 126025HP (17750EP)

  She reasoned that her lightning attack had been grounded by the glitchwolf. Leah gripped the Amber Dragon in her right hand and then equipped two of her daggers before throwing them at the earth glitchwolf. The first sunk into the chest but the other passed through the glitchwolf and disappeared into the bushes behind it. As the second knife passed through the beast, the first knife dropped to the ground. Leah could see the ochre mana coalesce around the wound and stop the bleeding. Within moments, the glitchwolf was back to full health although the amount of mana around it lessened slightly.

  The blood glitchwolf made a small barking sound and a stream of blood shot from its mouth and wrapped around Leah’s right arm. The glitchwolf raked its head backwards, dragging Leah forward and off balance. The shadow glitchwolf lunged forward to snap at Leah, catching her left forearm in its jaws. Leah’s armour and dragon skin held and the darkness diamond dusting on the armour absorbed the mana of the blood rope, releasing Leah’s right arm. She cast a ball of light just above the shadow glitchwolf’s head, it similar to what she used in the Kraken’s cave, but smaller. Though it didn’t do as much damage as Leah had imagined it was enough to force the shadow glitchwolf to release its grip.

  The earth glitchwolf lifted its front legs off the ground and slammed them down hard. A ripple of earth radiated toward Leah, knocking her off her feet. As she fell the blood glitchwolf pounced on her, grabbing her shoulder in its jaws, shaking her as its teeth ground down on her armour. Before it could penetrate the enchanted Büyük hide, Leah reached across with her spare hand and cast Freeze. As she cast, the glitchwolf’s jaws released and Leah felt her hand fall through the glitchwolf where she had grabbed it. Leah rolled to her feet just as the earth glitchwolf attacked. In response, Leah unequipped the sword and Misted. The glitchwolf barrelled into her, knocking her to the ground again. Fortunately, the glitchwolf was just as surprised at what happened as Leah was, so she had time to roll to her feet before turning to face the three glitchwolves.

  Leah let her fangs grow and went into full vampire mode. If the flickering in and out were a form of misting, it would explain why her attacks had missed. Yet there was something else happening. If it was just misting, then the glitchwolf should have passed through her. She let her fingernails grow into long thick claws and then took a step toward the glitchwolves snarling at them and pulling back her lips so they could see her teeth. The glitchwolves all lowered their centre of gravity and moved to spring at Leah. The blood glitchwolf attacked first, leaping at Leah. Leah sidestepped and brought her claws across her body to rake the glitchwolf’s neck. As her claws started to pass through the glitchwolf, she misted them and was rewarded by the blood glitchwolf dropping to the ground with its throat ripped out.

  The other two wolves were more careful, but without their ability to evade attacks, Leah’s armour provided enough of a barrier that she defeated them readily without receiving much more damage. Leah took a luck potion before harvesting them.

  You have harvested:

  1 blood glitchwolf pelt*

  1 Vials of blood glitchwolf Blood (5.1, 2)**

  1 Shroud of Blood potion—Permanent

  * These are prized and used to make garments with 50-100% defence against blood attacks.

  **As a vampire, when you drink this you will be covered with a shroud of blood-mana for a period of one hour.

  You have harvested:

  1 shadow glitchwolf pelt*

  1 Vials of shadow glitchwolf Blood (5.1, 2)**

  1 Spell of Glitching

  * These are prized and used to make garments with 50-100% defence against Shadow attacks.

  **As a vampire, when you drink this you will be covered with a shroud of Shadow-mana for a period of one hour.

  You have harvested:

  1 earth glitchwolf pelt*

  1 Vials of earth glitchwolf Blood (5.1, 2)**

  1 Shroud of Earth potion—Permanent

  * These are prized and used to make garments with 50-100% defence against Earth attacks.

  **As a vampire, when you drink this you will be covered with a shroud of Earth-mana for a period of one hour.

  Leah looked briefly at the spell of Glitching and found it was similar to Misting but it allowed the caster to do so while holding their weapon. It was also able to be used to attack vampires in their misted form. Mĕi returned, and Leah was about to reduce her to a statue when she decided that Mĕi needed to grow in strength if she was going to be useful in a fight. She told Mĕi she was going to leave Mĕi to forage overnight and would be back in the morning. Mĕi seemed to understand, and Leah left her in the forest and logged out.

  STORK TOWER

  Leah arrived back in the Tower and started to read through the latest information on Survival when Gèng interrupted her, “Stephen and Leon would like to talk with you. Although it depends on what you decide, they expect you’ll need to go with them and meet Dunyanin’s CEO, and their Vice President of Marketing.”

  “Where do they want to meet?”

  “Stephen and Leon can come here, but if you meet with the CEO, then it will be at their corporate headquarters.”

  “OK, can I use my multitasking to stay here and look through the Survival material and also meet with Stephen and Leon in the outside gazebo?”

  “That is more a question of my ability to manipulate your neural signals than a test of your ability. I will look into it, but at the moment I don’t have a sufficient grasp of how you are multitasking and which areas of your neural structure is involved. I will discuss this with Dr Roberts. You can review the material while you talk with Stephen and Leon as you have in the past. Your ability to interact with the information happened naturally, we are still trying to understand how you are doing it and
which areas of your brain are involved.”

  Leah nodded and they continued to discuss the issue as they walked to the outside gazebo. It was evening and Leah stopped briefly to watch the shimmering of the lanterns on the water. Leon and Stephen were already waiting in the outdoor area and Leah went to join them.

  Stephen said, “Thank you for being available, Leah. We knew the minting of your own coins would raise some flack from Dunyanin, and it has certainly done that. They’ve certainly learnt their lesson from the last debacle and approached us before going to the courts. Because you’d given us warning, because you had Peter working on this even before the Lanetli quests, and because he has clear records of this we’ve been able to convince them that any court action to stop you would fail. Even so, they are probably going to ask the courts to issue an injunction to stop minting coins until they have sufficient time to consider the impact of this on the Dunyanin economy.

  “Someone in their organisation suggested that they’d be better served doing a face-to-face rather than going through the courts. I think it was your friend Emil. The CEO has agreed to a meeting where they will ask you to stop of your own volition to give them time to get a handle on this.”

  “Stephen, from what you’ve said I doubt the court would grant the injunction.”

  “I don’t think they would, but that will back Dunyanin even deeper into a corner. Even if you are planning on rejecting it, I’d like you to meet the CEO, and at least listen to their offer.”

  “Fair enough, but give me five minutes to do some other research, and then I’ll come.”

  Stephen and Leon nodded and disappeared. Leah increased her processing ability to maximum and co-opting two of Gèng’s four-dimensional matrix-processors, she sifted through the Dunyanin handbook, its bylaws and also reviewed several financial texts and a variety of market analyses. When her five minutes were up, she sent a quick note to Peter before messaging Stephen that she was ready. Leah asked Gèng to clothe her in suitable business attire and transfer her to the corporate headquarters of Dunyanin.

  DUNYANIN

  Leah arrived in the lobby of the Dunyanin headquarters where Stephen and Leon were waiting for her. In the lobby were large screens showing different areas of the fantasy world, a reception area, and a bank of elevators. A lady from the reception desk approached them and said, “Ms Carroll, Mr Riley, Mr Scorsese, welcome to Dunyanin headquarters. My name is Hinata, and I am Mr Kartal’s personal assistant. Please follow me.”

  They followed Hinata into an elevator which whisked them to the top floor of the headquarters and into a large luxurious office where three men sat on one side of a large table. From her research, Leah recognised Erol Kartal, the CEO of Dunyanin as the man in the centre.

  She nodded to him and said, “Hello Mr Kartal, my name is Atherleah. With me is Mr Stephen Riley, one of my lawyers and my CFO Mr Leon Scorsese. I appreciate your willingness to discuss these issues face-to-face instead of going through the courts.”

  Mr Kartel stood and said, “Welcome Atherleah, please call me Erol. Beside me is our Chief Counsel Hakan Batur and my CFO Liam Karlsson. Please have a seat.”

  After everyone was seated, Erol said, “You certainly caught us off guard today. We’ve had a few attempts at people minting coins in the past, but they have all been single craftsmen without your resources or position and we’ve been able to convince them not to do so fairly easily. You, on the other hand, are currently in the spotlight, your marketing is exceptional, and your craftsmen have done a brilliant job in designing and manufacturing the coins.”

  “Thank you Erol, Leon’s brother Peter has been the force on the ground and we’ve been working on this for some time.”

  “Don’t thank me just yet. Despite all that praise, we aren’t just going to let you just print your own money.”

  “Now that is an interesting idea I hadn’t considered. I suppose I do have the reserves to guarantee any notes I’d issue, but I think you’re right, coins with real value make much more sense in a fantasy economy. Think of it this way, I’m not printing money, what I have are exceptional craftsmen who produce octagonally shaped medallions which have values equal to, or greater than, the official currency of Dunyanin. There is nothing in the handbook or user agreement which prevents people bartering these medallions for goods of equal value.”

  “That’s sophistry, and I believe you know it. Your so-called ‘craftsmen’ have called them coppers, silvers and golds.”

  “Fair enough. I’m prepared to instruct them to both imprint, and call them, something different. I suppose we can’t use lira, dollars or credits so we’ll have to improvise. Maybe we can call them something different in each locale and really spice things up a bit.”

  “Atherleah, it isn’t the name and this isn’t a joke. Dunyanin reserves the right to create the world currency and to mint all the coins.”

  “Erol, I can’t see how you are going to legally grandfather that reservation in place. Respectfully, I suggest you have created the world currency, and unless there comes a time when I’m Empress of all Dunyanin, then you will always control that currency.”

  “It’s not simply a matter of control. Just keeping track of the coins will require a fundamental change in some of our basic coding. The cost to test and implement the changes will cut into our revenue. How would you compensate us for this?”

  Leah paused and then slowly shook her head, “Um, I see your point. You’ll want me to agree to help keep track of the coins, ensure they are real Imperial coins and work out ways to have them recorded appropriately for players who want to bring money into and out of Dunyanin.”

  “Exactly, the cost is prohibitive. We understand you have put some effort into this and we will consider ways we can assist in recovering the coins you have already handed out.”

  “I’ve a better idea, Erol. I assumed this would be one of your major issues and so I’ve already asked Peter to create the Imperial Bank of Vatan. I will take over the burden of ensuring the coins are validated, and we will set very competitive rates for those who want to exchange Imperial coins into Dunyanin currency. I’m sure I will be able to establish a branch in every major centre on Vatan within the week and you won’t need to change any of your coding. The handbook and user agreements do not prohibit players operating banks. If anyone else begins to mint their own coins, based on our example, then, be assured, my bank will offer appropriate exchange rates for these as well.”

  The Dunyanin Chief Counsel Hakan Batur leaned forward and spoke forcefully, “You can’t do that.” Turning to the CEO, he said, “Erol, I’ll organise an injunction immediately.”

  Leah stared at the Dunyanin CFO, Liam Karlsson, and raised one eyebrow as if to prod him to speak up. He leaned forward and said slowly and quietly, “Um…, just hold on a minute, Hakan.”

  Turning to Leah, he said, “What mechanism do you suggest operating the Bank under?”

  “Peter was instructed to create a Merchant Clan called the ‘Imperial Bank of Vatan’ with its specified interest being banking. I suggested he should consider starting several such clans in the next few days and then form a Banker’s Guild. That is, of course, as long as no one else, for example, Dunyanin, had started such a guild first.”

  Liam said, “We are prohibited from operating a bank or banking institution in Dunyanin as a part of the internal gameplay. The Dunyanin Bank is only for players and is for primarily for collecting fees and managing player accounts.”

  “I know. You are not, however, prohibited from helping to organise a guild to enable the responsible behaviour of anyone who did operate such a bank. Some might even suggest it would be responsible of you to ask a third party to help set up such a guild to ensure the both the integrity and the transparency of the system.”

  Liam was silent for a moment, then turned to Erol and said, “Mr Kartal, I’m satisfied that Ms Carroll is acting within the guidelines of Dunyanin and that we would be best served by allowing her production of valuable meda
llions to continue. I believe we will not be disadvantaged financially in any way and in fact, Dunyanin will most likely profit by allowing her to continue her current foray into finance. As per her suggestion, I concur that we should create a Banker’s Guild and find a trustworthy third party to operate it.”

  Erol looked at Liam for a moment and then turning to Leah said, “Liam will have to explain it to me but I trust his advice when it comes to making a profit. If I was to agree to this, do you have a suggestion as to who might be suitable to operate this guild on our behalf?”

  “I’d suggest an organisation like the Emerald Trustees, or a similar firm.”

  Erol sat and thought for a moment then said, “Ms Carroll, Mr Riley, Mr Scorsese, I thank you for your time. If we have any further questions, we will be in contact.”

  Leah, Stephen and Leon exited the room. Stephen turned to look at Leah and then whispered in exasperation, “Leah, we need to talk sometime about surprises, about when they are and are not appropriate. But not now, now I’m going to have a long talk with Peter and iron out how to set up this bank. I imagine I’ll need to hire another associate.”

  Leah smiled and said, “You do that Stephen. I imagine the bank should earn enough within weeks to pay for the associate.”

  They all said goodbye and then disappeared.

  8

  Chapter 8

  December 16, 2073 - Part 14