FB: Chapter 134 – Deal Or No Deal

Patriot carefully looked over the sheets I had presented him. The items I had stolen were carefully tucked away into the Bankers Union’s vault in the Capital. No one was stealing anything from there.

“Foxy, you are good and your plan is reasonable,” he replied.

“I sense a ‘but’ coming,” I replied.

“You have created the biggest diplomatic incident in decades, possibly even a century. At least since 9/11,” he said.

“Woah, that is going a bit far. It was all in game,” I replied.

“Which we can’t prove in game and there are no laws outside of Exponential about the level of terrorism you just unleashed in game. China is screaming for blood,” he replied.

“Clearly butt hurt that I beat them. Losers whine, winners win. Now do you want to deal or not? Unless you want a similar treatment?” I asked casually. I could see Patriot tense up at that. Before it might have been an idle threat, but I had cost China trillions. The poor accountants were still calculating the level of damages I had inflicted.

While the damages were great, the blow to their reputation was even greater. The one thing Asian people hated was being embarrassed and I had delivered a major embarrassment to them. Patriot wasn’t wrong that I had increased tensions, but China had no grounds to complain.

Trying to litigate actions in Exponential in the real world was never going to happen. And I knew that everyone else was secretly happy about China losing to me. They just couldn’t admit it, but they were all grinning inside their black hearts.

“And all the betting?” John asked and I shrugged.

“It is just about getting the three items. Never said how it had to be done. I could sell these items to NPCs and hire an elite team to get the remaining two instead. Or talk to Baron Hayfield over at the Great Bear. Consider it my patriotic contribution and for dealing with the political drama,” I said.

“No.” I was shocked at that.

“Is that what you are saying, or your boss?” I asked.

“My boss. We are confident that we can beat you and stop you from getting a Green Leaf out in the wild. As you have said in the past, we used the lore to remove the easiest source. If you want to get it now, I heard a rumor it can be found in a level 300 island zone,” he replied.

“Why?”

“You embarrassed America and if we deal with you directly, it will make things much worse. Foxy, you are not just toxic, but radioactive at this point. I only came here to talk to you as courtesy and confirm it was you behind the theft.” There was a reason I didn’t bring the actual items. The sheets of paper weren’t proof I had stolen them. But we both knew the truth, there was no point in denying it.

What was aggravating was the complete blacklisting I was getting from the super guilds. “Are you sure you want to take that risk? They are still calculating the damages to HeroTen. It is going to be in the trillions,” I countered.

“That is what those above me decided. The big boss doesn’t like you and neither does Congress. You have made waves Foxy, being a lone player has its strengths, but it also has its weaknesses,” he replied.

“And you don’t care if I sell to the Great Bear Guild?” I asked.

“Go ahead. More money flowing into our sphere of influence is never a bad thing. The items aren’t important to us, it is our reputation. While you are popular with the masses and our fans, there is also pressure against you,” Patriot said.

“My popularity is at 78% in America and 63% worldwide. That is across all demographics. It is just the elites that don’t like me for becoming rich and trampling over them in game,” I replied.

Patriot shrugged at that. “Could be. No one will criticize you publicly, but they also don’t want to work with you. You can afford to make an enemy of all the top super guilds, others can’t,” he replied.

“And if I do to the Forged Fang guild what I did to HeroTen, will there be a response outside the game?” I asked.

“I can’t promise anything. Probably not, but I don’t make the rules. The people above me do. I just report in for duty,” he replied.

“Fine, it would have been a good deal for you to buy the items off my hands,” I replied.

“Then we would have a fight to the death with HeroTen. You punched them hard, but it wasn’t a knockout blow, nowhere near close.” That was true, but it would take them quite a while to recover. All those lost skill shards was a huge loss of money. Probably more than the buildings themselves, since they needed time investment to earn experience to increase their rank. I know I had done calculations in the past about the value of experience point per rank. It was enough to want to make anyone want to die.

While I wanted to say more, I didn’t need an economic lesson to explain why my base was so polarized. When Exponential first came out the exchange rate was insane, around 20 dollars to a single copper. Now it was around 2 dollars to a single silver.

There had been speculation that Exponential Corporation had set the exchange rate too high to start with in order to draw in players. It had worked. While the loss of money through exchange was staggering, I knew something no one else knew. QAI controlled the financial system, or close enough that what it didn’t control didn’t matter.

It wasn’t flashy or in your face. No secret weapon facilities or kill bots. It circulated the money by having a high exchange rate. Since the people who did the exchange were likely to buy capsules for their friends and family like I had, and reinvest into Exponential. It was simple and obvious, but that was what made it so devious. It wasn’t something I cared about, but it was obvious once I put even the smallest bit of thought into the situation.

People called it a conspiracy theory, since it made no sense on the surface for QAI to be losing so much money with its exchange rate. But once you realized it thought long term and wanted more people hooked into Exponential to increase its leverage over the world, then it was obvious what was going on.

This had knock on effects into today when the exchange rate was free floating. The super guilds had insane amounts of wealth, since they had nations backing them up. But just like me, they couldn’t convert all of that wealth into in game coinage. The Exponential market was much smaller than Earth. While the Human Empire was large, it wasn’t an entire world.

That was why the super gulids tried to keep the exchange rate stable and low as players took money out, so they could save money when they got coinage in game. Regular players liked a high exchange rate so they could make real world money and pay for their capsule and subscription. Super guilds liked the exchange rate low in order to have stability and keep the cost of purchasing coinage as low as possible. Right now the exchange rate was spiking after my terrorist activities.

HeroTen had a lot of expenses to pay for at the moment, which meant they needed coinage immediately. While they might have sold some items or held a festival in their city to mitigate these costs, that wasn’t possible at the moment. The sheer loss would have ended another guild ten times over, but for a super guild, they just brought in all that outside money, which caused the exchange rate to spike.

Since it was a global exchange rate that was free floating, the rich people hated it when it went up and the poor people loved it. Completely polarized just like my fan base. All the rich bastards hated me, since I was costing them money and the poor people loved me since I was redistributing wealth to all of them.

This was why Patriot, his boss, and Congress hated me. Well maybe not Patriot personally, but his bosses certainly did. I was incredibly popular among the masses. While the governments screamed and gnashed their teeth at my actions, every regular person with a capsule was cheering me on for sticking it to the governments in power and letting them get more wealth.

The fact that the exchange rate had shifted to almost 4 dollars per silver, doubling what it was at previously was huge. It showed just how much coinage HeroTen was exchanging for. I also figured other super guilds were probably exchanging as well since I had two more items to steal. The market was incredibly volatile in a way no one expected.

Well I did anticipate all of this and had been preparing over the last two weeks. Exchanging dollars for coinage. It was viewed as getting ready for my plans, but what people didn’t realize until today was that it had all been meant for exchanging back into dollars. Even with my transaction, doubling all the money I had thrown into currency exchanges, and the fees, I had almost doubled all the money I had invested.

If I was going to stop my fight against the super guilds for the title of god player, then I was going to make sure I had more than enough to live comfortably on and ensure my security for decades to come.

Unfortunately, that meant pissing off all the rich people and politicians who were losing to me. Even with the opportunity to make a lot of money, the rich people had united in opposition to me more strongly than ever before.

“Fine, be like that. When Forged Fang goes up in flames, you only have yourself to blame. Or your bosses can blame themselves,” I said.

Patriot shrugged with a casual indifference at my naked threat. “I have no doubt about that. Oh, there was one casualty from your actions. Director Han died from falling down some stairs early this morning.”

That was regrettable, but it wasn’t my fault. It was whatever power plays and other nonsense he got up to over in his country and super guild. It was like blaming the sun for causing the weather. You might be right, but it was just more stupidity.

“And you are telling me because?” I asked.

“I figured you went all out on HeroTen for revenge,” he replied. I smiled at that statement.

“I find it is best not to dwell on such things like revenge. Whomever they might have helped or funded years ago, is not my concern. But there is a saying out there I think is quite relevant despite being mostly used by old people. Fuck around, find out,” I replied.

“Hah. Very true. Well, I will be waiting for you Foxy. I am personally charge of our defenses. If I fail, I will be stepping down and going into a quiet retirement,” he replied.

“If you win, who knows where your ambitions will lead,” I replied casually and he shrugged.

“You might be an enemy today, but an endorsement from Foxy for President. Well that might just swing a bunch of people,” he replied.

“You are shameless and you won’t even trade for my items,” I complained, but I wasn’t upset. Patriot was letting me know that the US Government wasn’t united beyond the point of this confrontation. Win or lose, they would accept the outcome. If I won, my popularity would be too great for them to risk touching me. If I lost they just wouldn’t care about me as much.