Fantasy Economics 101 - Chapter 17

Every great business starts with a plan

"Wait, Mister Raol! Slow down! You're being too rough!" the hermitess cried out in alarm.

"You heard her, fool! You have to insert it gently, and only speed up gradually, over time!" the ghostly necromancer scoffed while floating near the ceiling.

"So this is how the humans do it? Fascinating," the dwarf whispered as he rose to his tiptoes to have a better look.

"Stop talking like we're doing something lecherous!" the skeleton in the middle burst out, his skull glowing bright with magicka. "In fact, just stop talking altogether! It's distracting!"

"I'm just trying to help…" Elkayla whispered in a dejected voice.

Raol glanced at her, and let out a soft grunt.

"I know, but this is my first time, and it's stressful enough without all of you looking at commenting and Sargoth's bollocks, now even I'm doing it!"

His outburst flipped the hermitess's frown upside-down in the blink of an eye, and she let out an amused chuckle.

"Focus, you simpleton! Focus!" Werdner yelled, and Raol matched him in an instant.

"That's what I'm trying to do, so stop disturbing me!"

The necromancer continued to fume as he flew in circles over the rest, but the skeleton didn't give him any attention and focused on the ritual in front of him. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, with the magical circle, repaired and refurbished after the previous accident, filling the room with an eerie blue light that matched the glow given off by his bones.

With each passing second, he clumsily channeled the magicka accumulated in his body into the mystical formula, and the light grew more intense.

"I'm starting to run low. Another coin, please," he said, and the dwarf hopped over to his side.

"Here you go," Middy, his eyes sparkling with excitement, poured about ten coins into his hands.

With the infusion of power, the astral body surrounding his undead frame became a little more pronounced, and the gold coins seemingly floated on a transparent blue sheen stretched around his bony palms. Without hesitation, Raol threw all of them into his mouth, and his glow intensified like a furnace that was just fed by the bellows.

There was a grunt of effort as he did his best to keep the raging magicka under control and direct it into the circle. Slowly but surely, the power drained from him and caused the inner layer of the ritual circle to shine even brighter as an amorphous shape took form in the middle.

"You're doing great, Mister Raol! We're almost there!"

"Amazing! I never thought such things could be!"

Elkayla had her fingers balled up in front of her chest, while Middy was practically hopping with excitement as they watched the indistinct blob in the middle slowly elongating and changing color. As it shifted and morphed, the light emanating from Raol slowly dissipated, and so did the shimmer of the circle.

"The window! Someone open a window, quick!" Werdner exclaimed, just as the room was about to plunge into darkness, but Elkayla was one step ahead of him and threw the shutters open.

For a short yet seemingly eternally long breath's time, the cottage was filled to the brim with a pregnant silence as everyone's eyes (or equivalent) were glued to the circle. Or rather, the creature inside it.

Coiled up, there sat a single, confused snake. The matte scales on its back were spotlessly white, while its stomach was colored reddish-brown, from the bottom of its jaws to the end of its long and tapered tail. Its head was rounded save for a few pointy scales and a pair of tiny, horn-like protrusions over its deep, emerald green eyes, and it bobbed up and down as if it just woke up and was still groggy.

Then, like a bubble popping, the silence vanished with a high-pitched sound coming from the hermitess as she skipped over and draped her arms over the skeleton's neck from behind.

"We did it, Mister Raol! It worked!"

Her voice caused the snake to pull back in fright, but when nobody else moved, it extended its head and looked around curiously.

"Of course it did," Werdner scoffed, but tried as he might, even the grouchy old necromancer couldn't hide the glimmer of satisfaction in his voice. "You were using my formula, and I already succeeded once! This was just a trivial reproduction of my results, establishing that—"

"What is this creature?" Middy asked standing a fair distance away and holding out a poked he picked up from the side of the hearth, as if afraid that the small sneak would attack him.

"It's a… white copperbelly, I think?" Raol spoke hesitantly. "I've never seen one before, but that sounds about right."

"Is it dangerous?"

"It's a monster, so…" Elkayla started, only to let out a startled yelp when the snake suddenly leapt toward Raol.

The skeleton's first instinct was to slap it away, but the small creature was fast, and it coiled around his forearm arm, then slithered up his body before settling loosely around his neck, like a thin scarf, and resting its head on Raol's shoulder. His eye-light blinked in confusion when faced with the unexpected development, and after a moment, the snake mirrored his gesture, its large, green eyes opening and closing a few times.

"Hold on," Raol muttered, the lights in his eye-sockets narrowing into squints. "Do snakes normally have eyelids?"

"That's a good question…"

Elkayla timidly came closer again, and when she did, the snake turned to face her. She tried to take a better look at it, but the creature mirrored her motions, and when it was sure she wasn't trying to hurt it, it turned back to Raol and rubbed its head against his cheekbones, looking almost affectionate.

In the meantime, Werdner finally descended from the ceiling and inspected the newly summoned being, and his expression soon turned sour.

"What is this? You simpleton! This isn't a white copperbelly!" he exclaimed, causing the snake to shudder and hiss at the specter.

"Then what is it?" Middy, still holding the poker, spoke from the other end of the room, and the specter folded his arms.

"How should I know, knave!? Do I look like one of those natural philosophers of the University to you!?"

He pointed a finger at the white serpent and was just about to launch into another tirade when it let out one more hiss and unceremoniously chomped down on his fingertip.

"Yowch!" the ghost yelled out and floated to the ceiling, nearly dragging the snake along, but it let go and coiled around Raol's neck again. "It bit me! That infernal monster bit me! How is that even possible!?" Werdner howled, more in outrage than pain.

"I don't know, but I think I like this guy," Raol joked, and while it was meant to be little more than a jab at the overdramatic necromancer, the snake let out a high-pitched sound and vigorously rubbed its head against his cheekbone once again. He absently raised a hand, and when he used his bony fingertips to scratch the head of the creature, it let out a low, purring sound and closed its eyes in delight. "Oookay. So, I'm not a natural philosopher either, but I'm fairly sure snakes aren't supposed to do that."

"Just what did you create?" the dwarf muttered as he came closer, only to freeze when the snake turned towards him, his face reflected in its round pupils.

"I don't know, but she seems smart." Elkayla sidled closer to Raol, but unlike with the necromancer, the white snake didn't seem hostile to her.

"She?" Raol asked, his tone drenched in skepticism, but the hermitess nodded with confidence.

"Yes. She gives me that impression, right, little one?" To everyone's surprise, the snake nodded. Or rather, moved its head up and down. "Wow! She can even understand what we say!"

"Don't be fooled by that creature, apprentice! Get away from it!" Werdner warned her, but Elkayla's attention was already captivated.

"Hi, Miss Snake. I'm Elkayla, and I'm Mister Raol's…" She suddenly hesitated and leaned over to look the skeleton in the eye-lights. "Mister Raol? What am I to you?"

"Hm. Considering that I'm living in your home, I think the right term would be 'landlord'."

"Uuu. I don't like that." She shook her head, and it made him consider things one more time.

"In that case, since you've helped me with so many things without asking for anything in return, it would make you my benefactor."

"True, but… I don't like that either. It sounds too impersonal."

"Then… friends?"

The hermitess's face lit up like the sun, and she beamed at the snake still perched on Raol's shoulder.

"You hear that, Miss Snake? I'm Mister Raol's friend."

She held out her hand, and after some hesitation, the creature extended its body and rubbed its head against her fingers, eliciting a giggle from the young woman.

"She's adorable! Mister Raol? Can we keep her?"

"I already said I liked it, or her, so I'm not going to walk back on that."

"Are you out of your mind, you lout!?" Werdner yelled, his furious expression made somewhat harder to take seriously by the way he was hiding between the rafters. "And you, apprentice! I told you to get away from that unknown creature and that dangerous beast!"

"Don't be like that, Mister Werdner. Look, she's completely harmless." To demonstrate the point, Elkayla scratched the snake under the chin, and cooed, "Who's the nice Miss Snake? You are! Yes, you!"

In the meantime, Raol was conflicted. The whole point of this ritual was to summon monsters to be slaughtered for their loot, so logic dictated that they did just that and calculated how much profit they made. On the other hand, the little snake was not only smart, but it managed to capture Elkayla's heart and, even more importantly, Werdner hated it. That, in and of itself, was a great reason to keep it around.

"I don't mind keeping it."

"Her," Elkayla insisted, and Raol gave up with a shrug.

"Her, then. We can say she's a memento of our first success, but… we need to give her a proper name."

"Huh? Isn't Miss Snake a fine name?"

"It is… but it's also a little generic" Raol pointed out.

"In that case… How about Lady Zmiya!"

"That's…" he wanted to say it sounded way too specific, but his words were interrupted by a scoff coming from the rafters.

"Stop this nonsense! If you want to keep it, call it what it is: Test Subject Number One!"

"I don't think she likes that," Elkayla said, seeing that the serpent turned towards the ghost overhead and hissed with all her might. Meanwhile, the hermitess faced the dwarf, who was inspecting the magic circle. "Mister Middy? It's your turn."

"My what?" he blurted out in surprise. "I… I had nothing to do with this, so…"

"But we used Mister Middy's coins to summon Lady Zmiya."

By the sound of her insistence, she already considered the name she had picked to be the best possible choice, but she still asked the dwarf out of courtesy.

"In that case…" Middy whispered as he patted his beard, and then his eyes lit up with an idea. "In that case, we should name her Albedo."

"Spoken like a true alchemist," the necromancer moaned overhead and levelled a finger at Raol. "Instead of such inane topics, we should discuss why this bonehead ended up summoning this… this… whatever in the Court's name that thing is, instead of a white copperbelly! Weren't the instructions clear enough for you!?"

"Leave me alone, old man," Raol glared back at him, not budging at all. "I told you I've never even seen one of these 'white copperbellies' before, so it's a miracle we summoned a snake at all on the first try."

"Ah! That's it!" Elkayla exclaimed, startling the little snake into hiding inside Raol's clothes. By the time she poked her head out again, Elkayla was already standing over the magic circle with Werdner's grimoire in hand. "It must be because of the Anthropogenic Pan-Subconsciousness Field!"

"What does the Anthropogenic Pan-Subconsciousness Field have to do with this?" the necromancer's ghost asked incredulously, while the dwarf was just outright confused by the unfamiliar words.

"Nothing!" Elkayla declared with an ear-to-ear grin, and pointed at Raol, who once again had the snake hanging around his neck by this point. "It's precisely because of the lack of its influence that Lady Zmiya Albedo was summoned! Because Mister Raol didn't know what a white copperbelly was, he had to imagine one, and since all the magicka and some of the miasma came from him, this was the result!"

"That… makes a lot of sense," Werdner spoke in an uncharacteristically soft voice as he finally descended back to the floor level. "You're a smart one, apprentice. Your talents are absolutely wasted here, in this forest…" He paused and sent a sideways glance at the skeleton. "And on that lout."

Ignoring the barbs in his words, Raol rubbed his jawbone.

"So you're saying that what the circle summons is based on my imagination?"

"Your intent," Elkayla corrected him.

"So that means that if I intend to summon something I'm more familiar with, and I don't have to rely on my imagination, it would be more accurate to reality?"

"Oh, that sounds fascinating," Middy noted, his curiosity once again getting the better of him.

"Should we give it a go?" Raol asked, and the dwarf immediately handed over a handful of coins to him, eager to watch the show.

Meanwhile, the hermitess closed the shutters again and quickly returned to Raol's side.

This time, the skeleton was more careful. After eating the first coin, he could easily activate the magical array, but instead of consuming all of his 'fuel' in one go, he slowly tossed them between his jaws one by one, gradually increasing the intensity of the flow of magicka.

As for what he would summon, he decided on something he was very familiar with, and after the sixth coin, an indistinct shape appeared in the swirling vortex of magicka and miasma in front of him. It was a stout creature, with a pot-belly, twig-like limbs, and a disproportionately large bald head dominated by a huge nose and ears. It was hard to see, due to the blue light of the ritual illuminating the room, but its skin was a pale green, and it was dressed in a simple loincloth and was carrying a simple club, barely more than a fallen branch.

It was a monster that was incredibly common all over the continent. In the West, it was commonly called a 'goblin' or 'boggart', while in the North, they would go by names like 'mistlings' and 'trollkin', while at other places, they might be called 'wild kobolds', 'ympe', or 'ghilan'. At the end of the day, they all referred to the same kind of creature, and even back when Raol was alive, he encountered a few of them during his travels. As such, he could easily picture the small monster, and through the mystical arrays of the ritual, bring it into being.

Once again, the moment the light died down, the hermitess hurried to open the shutters, and they all beheld the confused goblin standing on the magic circle.

"This time it was much easier than—" 'the first time around,' is what Raol would've liked to say, but his voice made the green humanoid let out an enraged shriek.

"Skreee!"

"Ah!"

"Oh no!"

Elkayla yelped, and Middy hurriedly reached for the fire poker, but the goblin's eyes, filled with madness, were locked onto Raol, and him alone. It raised its makeshift club over his head, and while it was a short monster, the sitting skeleton's skull was well within his reach. Of course, Raol wasn't content to let it strike him, but he never got the chance to defend himself.

Without warning, the whole room lit up with a sharp white light as a bolt of lightning streaked across the air, from Raol's chest to the screeching goblin's. It all happened in the blink of an eye, and after its whole body shook, the creature's eyes rolled back into its head and it limply collapsed onto the floor, occasionally twitching and convulsing. And there, on top of the dead monster, sat a coiled-up white snake, hissing at the corpse.

Once she made sure the goblin was dead, she triumphantly turned back to Raol, only to panic as the creature's belly began to rumble. Thrown off by the sudden movement, the sneak let out a high-pitched squeal and hurriedly climbed up to the skeleton's shoulders again. Meanwhile, the rumbling stopped, and then the goblin's stomach popped open like an overripe melon, and out came a shower of brand sparkling new and, considering the circumstances, remarkably clean gold coins.

Once the money on the floor stopped bouncing and spinning, the silence left in their wake was outright deafening.

"Well, I didn't see that coming," Raol noted light-heartedly, trying to sound calm and collected even while he was shocked out of his skull. "You really aren't just your run-of-the-mill snake, are you?"

The small serpent waved its body around as if offended that he only just realized, but she quickly calmed down when he scratched her under the chin. Seeing that, everyone else also started to move, and there were a lot of things to take care of.

About three hours later, the room was mostly back to normal. The remains of the goblin were buried as far from the cottage as the wards allowed, while Elkayla cleaned up the floor, Middy collected all the coins, and Werdner inspected the circle. At last, the four of them (five, counting the white snake), sat down around the table with tired yet satisfied and even a little excited expressions.

"What did we learn today?" Raol spoke up first, and Werdned immediately leveled a finger at him. Or rather, the sneak blissfully sleeping around his neck.

"That this monster is a menace, and we should dispose of it as soon as possible."

"Mister Werdner," Elkayla chided the old man like one would scold a child. "Please don't be rude to Lady Ayanga Zmiya Albedo."

"Excuse me, but where did the first name come from?" Middy inquired while wiping a coin with a wet cloth.

"Simpleton! Is that truly the thing you object to in this situation!?" Werdner thundered, waking the white snake and making the dwarf shrink back, at least until Raol menacingly reached out towards the ghost and caused him to scurry away from the table.

"That's the name I gave her," the skeleton explained, using the same hand to pat the serpent's head. "It's an old Kelani word that means 'lightning'. I think it's fitting." Ayanga, the snake, let out a purr of approval (or so it sounded to Raol's nonexistent ears), and he focused his attention on Middy. "But back to the original topic: we have successfully demonstrated our capability to summon monsters using gold coins as the power source."

"Indeed," the dwarf nodded, looking eminently satisfied. "It's a marvelous breakthrough that will revolutionize the study of wild creatures, as well as our understanding between them and the Golden Spark!"

"And in the process, we made a profit of…?"

"The monster's loot was thirty-two coins," Middy said, gesturing at the money in front of him. "You consumed seven coins to summon it, and the cost of the ritual circle was…"

"About twenty coins' worth of materials," Elkayla clarified. "Unfortunately, the was irreparably damaged after the second summoning."

Raol nodded and did the math. The circle cost twenty gold. That means ten golds per summoning. Add in the 'investment cost' in the form of the coins he swallowed, and it meant they could make roughly twenty golds of profit per creature, potentially more once they got more experienced and everything got streamlined.

While as far as business ventures were concerned, that was an amazing return rate, it was far from perfect. Elkayla and Werdner still had to draw the circles by hand, and that took time and attention. Combined with the fact that those vague 'materials' that the hermitess mentioned didn't grow on trees, meant that it would inevitably become a bottleneck. Even more importantly, while the return was great, the efficiency wasn't.

Creating one summoning circle took about fifteen minutes. Assuming that Elkayla could create about forty circles a day, which was already fairly unrealistic and would've required her to work for ten hours non-stop, it would've meant they could create eighty monsters. If they managed to make a twenty-gold profit on each and every one, it would take them well over thirty years, working every single day without a break, to save up enough money to pay for Raol's resurrection. It was unrealistic… unless they increased the scale of the operation.

"So, Sir Middy?" Raol asked, trying to make it sound like he was smiling. "Now that you've seen the demonstration, would you like to work with us?"

Before summoning Ayanaga, Raol made an offer to the skittish dwarf. He was in dire need of an 'investor', and the alchemist seemed to be the perfect man for the job.

Middy didn't respond right away, but instead, he tapped his short, thick fingers on the table, deep in thought.

"So, in exchange for my services, you would give me access to your future treasury, and allow me to experiment with the gold to prove the existence of the Half-Life Phenomenon."

"Indeed," Raol nodded, and Ayanaga mirrored his action, like a kid following the lead of their parent. "We can clarify the details in a proper contract if you'd like, but that is the long and short of it."

"Hm…" The dwarf's fingers continued to drum on the table, while his other hand absent-mindedly tugged at his beard. "I have to admit, all of this is absolutely fascinating, and the offer is quite tempting… but I'm not sure about certain details."

"Such as?"

"I have some ideas on how to cut the cost of the summoning rituals, by using circles etched into durable, reusable orichalcum tablets, to be exact, but even if we did that… it just doesn't seem to be a practical way of generating coins of gold, whether for your resurrection or my research."

"Don't worry, I have a plan to make the process more viable," Raol answered nonchalantly, and the hermitess leaned over, her shining expression showing her eagerness to hear him out. Middy also seemed more than a little intrigued, so the skeleton solemnly declared, "For us to succeed, we need three things: a streamlined system, workers, and a brand…"

If he still had lips, Raol felt like this would've been the best moment to flash a devious smile, befitting of a mastermind, but since he hadn't, he resigned himself to do with a soft chuckle.

"As luck would have it, I have something in mind for all three of those things."