[1% LIFESTEAL] Chapter 184 - Mercenary Help

The mercenary recruiting went a lot faster than Freddy expected. He had thought it would be a slog through a giant list of potential candidates, but when they sorted the list from most to least expensive, he instantly found exactly what he wanted. 

There were many solo mercenaries he could mix and match like playing cards if he wanted to, but those at the top all came in parties of three. The group at the very top stood out because they were the only available three-star party on the list. 

After quickly checking their capabilities and the price, he saw no reason to keep searching. 

For a brief moment, he thought: Wow, they only cost 11 million dollars a day! and then immediately felt super depressed. He was shocked just how quickly his appreciation for money vanished as he acquired more wealth.

He still remembered the time when he was working as a cashier and an archhuman woman bought a bottle of orange soda for $2. She saw the price, scowled, and then asked “Isn’t that missing a couple of zeroes?” 

He laughed at her for months. 

And there he was. Wondering why he can hire a few three-stars for only 11 million dollars a day. Enough money to house several dozen families felt like pocket change. It wasn’t a mystery why he was getting out of touch. But for him, who had spent most of his life mocking people in similar situations, it was a pretty massive moment of hypocrisy.

To say he was deeply ashamed of himself would be a huge understatement.

After vowing to try to keep himself more grounded in reality, he read through the detailed description of what this group could do.

It was composed of three men—a scout, a porter, and a support. Well… technically. 

They were designated as being able to fulfill those roles, but a closer look at their abilities revealed that they were capable of a whole lot more. 

Their talents, abilities, and equipment were listed in a shocking amount of detail. It seemed that career mercenaries could kiss their privacy goodbye, but it also made sense. Their capabilities were effectively an ad for their services, and they were protected by their companies.

The most ordinary of their members was the scout. He had the light affinity, and his talent allowed him to collect information through his abilities. Simply put, he could basically turn his light constructs into semi-permanent cameras or drones he could use to scout. 

That being said, he was also an expert spearman and a master illusionist. If that wasn’t enough, he had a stage 3 Light Beam that touched the very edge of what a light-affinity caster could do without a manipulation talent.

Among the three men, he was the most ordinary, and it wasn’t even close.

The support was next. His affinities were holy and unholy, and his talent made it so that whenever he used an ability from one affinity, his next ability would be empowered if it belonged to the other affinity. So, as long as he kept switching between the two, he could display quite a bit of power. 

Among his Holy Blessings, he had a variety of specific buffs for right about everything, and even specific combinations of traits, like speed and strength, strength and durability, durability and speed and several others. 

As for his Unholy Blessings, he had only two—a very workhorse stage 3 Unholy Blessing of Stamina, which was optimized for duration and minimal backlash, and a “panic button” stage 2 Last Resort, an Unholy Blessing that gave an overall physical boost with maximum power and zero regard for backlash. Freddy was quite looking forward to seeing what he could do with that one.

Now, his abilities were one thing. They weren’t particularly out of the ordinary. But judging by the man’s equipment and the brief description of how he fought, he was a bulky frontliner who wielded a sledgehammer. But also a repeating crossbow from range. And also a variety of alchemical concoctions.

If those two weren’t already enough, their… “porter” was a total oddball. The only thing that made him a porter was his talent—Void Vault. He could open a small passage into a private realm he could use as storage. It was only about twice as large as Freddy’s storage ring, but that was a deceptive metric. 

Because the man could put storage rings inside the Void Vault.

Basically, he could carry a whole warehouse worth of supplies in a magical space. And it had none of the weaknesses of a regular storage ring, such as the risk of losing it. That was a very, very powerful talent. 

So how did it connect to his affinities? Easy. It didn’t. At all. 

He had blood, nature, and lightning. Blood and nature synergized because the man used Rich Blood to feed blood fungus in his body. But the lightning affinity was just kind of there. The abilities showed no indication of any kind of synergy with the other two. To be fair, it was powerful enough on its own, but it certainly felt a bit out of place.

With their information out of the way, Freddy cracked the contract open and read through it for more detail before finalizing the recruitment. There were many things he had to avoid doing if he didn’t want to be sued into oblivion. But it was mostly quite reasonable. 

The one thing that surprised him was that the mercenary company had a subcontract with a company that collected monster corpses. So, anything they killed would be retrieved and sold for profit. He could also request to keep specific parts if he so wanted, but only after the collection company took 30% for themselves, which was reasonable, and the mercenary company took half from what was left, which wasn’t nearly as reasonable.

He was already paying them a crap top of money every day, and they wanted half of all the loot? That was just unfair. But there wasn’t exactly a venue Freddy could use to negotiate better terms. 

… Or was there?

Out of curiosity, Freddy called up the adjudicator. A few moments later, the man picked up. Freddy asked him for advice on how he could negotiate better contract terms with the mercenary company behind the three-star trio, and the man offered to try to reach out himself. Freddy accepted and then waited for a few minutes before he got a call back. 

“Not going to happen,” the adjudicator informed. “They have no interest in compromising with you. All they told me was that you can hire a lower-ranked team if you want a bigger share of the monster loot.”

Freddy sighed. “I see. Well, thanks for the help.”

“In case you need anything else, I’ll be available.”

“Thanks.” He hung up.

A bit peeved, Freddy went back to the tablet. Sadly, he needed them more than they needed him. If anything, the support alone was enough to sway him. 

“You’re gonna hire them?” Sophia asked.

He hesitated for a moment. Then, he scrolled down a bit, but found no other Unholy affinity support among the top mercenaries. He sighed. “I wish I was petty enough not to, but I really want the Unholy Blessings.”

“Fair enough. Last Resort is insane and I imagine you’d make good use of it.”

He snorted. “Oh, you have no idea.”

Still, even with the somewhat unfair split, he was excited to find out just how much money he could earn from the monster waves. He strongly doubted it would come even close to the figures he could earn with his organ trade, but he would be killing a lot of monsters. It would add up. 

And thankfully, anything he picked up himself was entirely his. Even if he had the porter carry it.

After checking everything, he pressed the recruit button and hired them for a month. He could renew the contract if necessary. In the checkout section, however, he noticed a strange little detail. 

He had to manually select to have them come along with him in his party. He thought that was a given, but apparently, no. It wasn’t. He could apparently assign them to go wherever. 

It was at that moment that it finally clicked. “Oh, fucking hell…”

“What?” Sophia asked. “Did you press the wrong button?”

“No. I just realized something. All of these mercenaries”—he quickly scrolled down the list—”aren’t going to participate in the defense unless someone hires them.”

Sophia raised an eyebrow at him. “Uh… Yeah? Makes sense? I guess?” She laughed awkwardly, clearly confused. “I mean, these are literally mercenaries. They fight if you pay them. Not sure why you’re surprised.”

He sighed and leaned back. “I mean… yeah, I get that. But what then? They came all the way here and they’re just going to leave?” His expression darkened. “Or worse, they’re going to wait behind the safety of the walls for the situation to get desperate enough.”

Humming to herself, she shrugged. “It's a bit unpleasant, but again, that’s the business they’re running. It’s better than nothing, no?”

Perhaps it would have made sense to him a few months ago. But having spent all that time digging through the practices of dirty businesses, he had become rather sensitive to exploitation. He could feel that something was off.

“Yeah, I’m not so sure about that.” He straightened his back and cupped his chin. “Think about it—who are their clients? It won’t be the elites or their people, since they have more than enough manpower. But you know who will be hiring mercenaries? The people of the Northern Belt. Those who can’t leave this place or evacuate.

“And if they’re taking this much from me, what will they take from people who are desperately fighting to keep their only remaining home safe? Seventy percent? Eighty? Ninety? And look here—the mercenaries can be assigned to fight outside of your party. There’s a different contract for that. Let’s take a look at it.” He pulled it up. As expected, the loot distribution wasn’t even mentioned. 

Meaning, they would just take everything for themselves. 

“Oh…” Sophia muttered.

Freddy shook his head. “Now look at these prices. They're pretty reasonable, no? But what will happen when things start getting scary? If the walls start cracking? Regular folk will start getting desperate. After all, they have nowhere else to go. So what will they do? They’ll try to hire the mercenaries. But they will hardly be able to afford even the cheapest ones. So they’ll have to do whatever it takes to get their hands on more money.

“Think about it—these companies could just join the fight. They have contracts with collection companies and highly competent fighters. The loot they could collect would alone be enough to make them a fortune. But they choose to hold their help ransom instead.”

She frowned. “Okay, when you put it like that…”

Suddenly, he had another realization. And this time, he chuckled. 

“What’s so funny?” Sophia asked. 

“What if I were to, say, hire every single mercenary on the list? According to the contract, they can’t back out of the deal if I pay them ahead of time.”

She frowned. “Is that worth it?”

He shrugged. “That depends on how hard they’re planning to hike their prices. If I’m right, booking them for what they’re worth now will make them miss out on a lot of revenue.”

She hummed. “What if you’re wrong?”

“Let me put it like this—if I spend more money than I had to, I’ll get over it. But if the situation gets crazy and they start demanding absurd sums to step in, I’m going to be really fucking angry.” 

Sophia eyed him for the moment, and then she smiled. “Let’s do it.” 

He grinned and nodded at her. 

Thankfully, the three-star party was the most expensive by miles. Even the strongest elite two-star party cost ten times less per person, and the prices only went down from there. 

A quick look showed that Georgie’s company wasn’t on the list. They seemed to be participating anyway. He would remember that. 

Seeing no other reason to stall, they got started. But it was a long list. And Freddy was afraid that they would catch on and intervene. They needed to be quick.

Thus, he let Sophia do the buying while he repeatedly triggered Twisted Pendulum. Then, whenever time was sped up for him, he took over until it ran out.

Slowly, they went through the list and hired everyone they could, going from most to least expensive, for a period of 120 days. That was long enough that the crisis might be entirely over by then. 

It didn’t take long to make it through the elite parties, and before long, they were hiring the middling two-stars. Then, something suddenly changed. 

The prices suddenly spiked dramatically. He watched the cost of a random two-star support go up from $36,000 a day to about $170,000 a day. They were looking through the list of mercenaries from every company, and one of the companies seemed to have caught on to what they were doing.

Freddy burst out laughing. “What a bunch of weasels.”

“Can you afford the rest?”

Freddy thought for a moment. “I still have about 4 billion dollars left. I’ll be fine.”

She grinned and raised her card. “Don’t worry if you run out.”

He fist-bumped her with a massive grin of his own, and they kept going.

Soon enough, the other companies caught on as well, and also decided to hike their prices. But that didn’t deter them. Freddy and Sophia continued to plow through, and before long, one of the companies completely vanished. 

Both of them laughed even harder at that. 

Freddy moved faster. “Let’s hurry before the others do the same.”

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for the rest to follow suit. But it didn’t really matter. Freddy had hired all the two-stars already and a good portion of the better one-stars.  

After laughing a bit about the kind of shitty but inarguably funny thing they just did, they continued looking through the shop to make sure they got everything they needed. 

And then, Freddy’s communication crystal lit up. 

He sighed and picked it up. “Hello, Judge. What can I help you with?”

“It is not a good idea to get on the bad side of mercenary companies, Mr. Stern.”

Freddy grinned widely. But he schooled himself and put on his most convincing confused voice. “I’m sorry? Did I do something bad?” he asked with worry in his voice. “I was just hiring some extra mercenaries to man the walls when they all suddenly disappeared. I was actually worried I broke the tablet.”

The adjudicator was silent for a long moment. “Do you not realize what you just did?”

“I… hired a bunch of mercenaries? Again, did I do something wrong? I’ve read the contracts so I’m pretty sure I didn’t do anything illegal.”

Again, silence. Then, a small chuckle came through. “No, I guess you haven’t. That being said, you appear to have accidentally put these companies into a rather awkward position.”

“Really?” He asked, barely holding back a laugh. “How so?”

“Their prices usually vary depending on the situation. Due to competition with the other companies, they had put a lot of their mercenaries up for less than they’re really worth. You’ve just locked them into a horrible deal.”

Freddy grinned at Sophia. She shook her head wryly at him and offered him another fist bump. He coughed and collected himself. “Wow… I uh. I'm sorry? Are they angry with me?” 

“Oh, they're pissed. It’s worse because they don’t pay the mercenaries a cut of what you give them. They’re paid depending on the situation and their performance. If things get bad, it’s likely they’ll spend more money than you’ve given them.”

They’ll be making plenty from the loot, he thought. This argument gets no sympathy from me.

“So what now?” he asked.

“That depends. Are you willing to settle?”

No. Obviously, he didn’t want to settle. The presence of so many extra fighters would greatly lessen the burden on the other defenders, and it would minimize the odds of these companies bullying the vulnerable civilians. 

As far as he was concerned, he already got everything he wanted out of the deal.

Freddy glanced at Sophia with a huge shit-eating grin before saying. “Nah. I’m not willing to negotiate.”

“I would advise you to put your grievances aside and do it anyway.”

He resisted the urge to scoff. “Just tell me what they’re going to do about it if I don’t.”

The adjudicator sighed. “They can’t do much. They live and die by their reputation, and risking that in any way isn’t an option. That being said, they will be extra vigilant about the contract terms. Be careful to follow the contracts to the letter, or they’ll find an excuse to cancel them. And you don’t get a refund if they do that.”

“Understood. Can I trust you to back me up if they try to bully me with nonsense?”

“I’m always on the side of the law, Mr. Stern. The contracts are written in clear terms. Follow them and you won’t have any trouble.”

“Thank you, Judge.”

“And Mr. Stern… Our most recent estimates put the arrival of the monster horde tomorrow, late afternoon. Have some rest for tonight and be ready to move tomorrow.”

“Thank you for the update.” He hung up.

“Well…” Sophia stretched. “I guess we’ll have to read the contracts of all the other companies if we don’t want to get screwed.”

He laughed. “The only contract we really have to worry about is the one with the people who will party with us. As for the people I’ll be stationing, I’ll just assign them to the wall to be safe. It’s impossible to break their contracts if I don’t interact with them at all. But yes, we should read them to be on the safe side. Now”—he got up—”I believe it’s time to go check on those two.”