Fantasy Economics 101 - Chapter 19

Every business venture needs investment

Work on the Dungeon began in earnest three days later, when Middy's prospector crew arrived, and it opened with a rather unexpected discovery.

"The mine has what?" Raol asked, sitting at the recently fixed table at the depths of the abandoned red manor, lit by a pair of gas mantle lamps borrowed from the hermitess. The chamber he chose to occupy was once a torture chamber, but once all the rusted and useless tools of the trade were collected to be melted down at a later time, no one could tell its original purpose. There were, of course, many less grim rooms cut into the stone, such as the comparatively lavish chamber that once housed the senior agent in charge of the operations of the facility, but that was reserved for Elkayla's use.

She was the only woman in their group, and while the dwarves were more than happy to sleep sandwiched together like salted fish in a barrel, Raol gave her some space on her own, which she greatly appreciated. Middy chose to live with the rest of his crew, while the Necromancer's ghost had been safely exploring the lower levels of the mine (though not without complaints), so he was rarely seen.

In the present, the skeleton was staring at the excited dwarf holding a rudimentary map of the mine, with several areas circled in red ink.

"Idrillum ore! This mine has idrillum deposits, in the fourth layer, and there might be even more deep under us!"

"I'm not very familiar with the word, but since you're so excited, it must be good news."

"It's not just good news, it's great news!" the dwarf grinned as he slapped the map onto the table.

"Is it valuable?"

"Not to you humans, it's not, but it's one of the key ingredients for the alchemical process to create orichalcum!" The dwarf's eyes were practically glowing with a mixture of excitement and greed. "It's preposterous that such a rich mine was forgotten for so far, but if we just refurbish the scaffolds…"

"That's good news indeed, but does it actually help us?"

Middy paused and patted his beard, suddenly lost for words.

"I… I mean, I was sent her to prospect for idrillum, so it should at least get the officials at the Great Hall of Metals off my back. If we can export it back to the Mountain Home, it could be used to requisition more tools and manpower too."

"But wouldn't that interfere with our plans about the Dungeon?"

"Not necessarily," Middy raised a finger and poked the map at a couple of points. "This is one of the original shafts. Good, dwarven-made tunnel, and it reaches far into the mountain. I compared our map with the survey records, and its endpoint isn't far from a depleted silver mine right around here."

"Are you suggesting we connect the mines?"

"It should be doable. That way, we can extract the ore here, then transfer it to the other mine, where we could sell it to the closest Dwarfhold."

Raol stared at the map, and there was an uncomfortable suspicion in his mind.

"When you say this other mine is 'close by', how close are we talking about?"

"About two leagues," the dwarf answered, and the skeleton's eye-lights flickered with shock.

"You want to dig a six imperial miles-long tunnel under the mountain? Is that even possible?"

"Sir Raol! Look at who you're talking to!" The short man beat his chest, causing his beard decorations to jingle. "Once we get the equipment and men down there, we'll get it done in a week!"

"… I really shouldn't underestimate dwarven technology," the skeleton mused as he pored over the map once again. "What about the changes to the first floor I suggested?"

"Don't worry, I've already called some old friends and family for help. We can start the remodeling as soon as they arrive. Thankfully the ventilation system is still in good shape, so we can focus on the tunnels and the entrance."

Raol nodded and then steeled himself before asking the most pivotal question.

"How much will all of this cost?"

The atmosphere in the room turned sour the moment the question of money was brought up, and Middy also sat down.

"I'm not going to lie, Sir Raol, but our finances don't look good. My crew trusts me, and my old colleagues and family are willing to help out for sure, but a project of this size requires lots of manpower, and they need homes to live in, food to eat, and places where they can drink and relax. All of those will be enormous money-sinks, and not something you can sustain by the current rate of slaying summoned beasties."

"Give me a number."

Middy took a deep breath, and looked the skeleton in the eye-lights.

"I think we'll need about five hundred thousand gold pieces to prepare the site, connect the mines, and make all the necessary infrastructure." He paused, and added, "This is, of course, only a conservative estimate. Also, have you considered what to do with all the waste generated? Both by us, and the summoned monsters. Plumbing and sewers are also going to cost a small fortune."

"Elkayla is looking into that, but she's not saying anything yet. Probably so I wouldn't get my hopes up."

"Yes, the Lady of the Woods is quite considerate," Middy commented with an odd smile, but then his expression clouded as he added, "Speaking of her, she seems to be avoiding me as of late."

"She just doesn't like to interact with others, I think," Raol answered off-handedly, his mind still bogged down by coming up with a way to get things off the ground. His idea wasn't unwarranted, considering that the young hermitess had chosen the life of quiet solitude in the middle of the wilderness, but the dwarf sounded uncertain.

"But… she was always very friendly with Sir Raol, wasn't she?"

"Well, we're friends, I suppose," he muttered absently, his bony fingertip scratching the surface of the table.

He never really thought too deeply about it, but the young hermitess was indeed quite sociable when it came to him, and she was the one who approached him first when he was still lost after his resurrection. Without her altruistic support, he couldn't even imagine where he would be this day.

"Yes, we're good fri—"

"Mister Raol!" His words, along with his thoughts weighed down by lethargy, were interrupted when Elkayla burst into the room with a large glass jar in her hands.

Her sudden appearance caused the snake sleeping on the pillow of the nearby bed to jump up in fright and hurriedly slither up the sitting skeleton's leg and poke her head through the end of his sleeve.

"Sorry, Lady Ayanga. I didn't want to startle you," the hermitess smiled, and even though her face was tired, her expression radiated enthusiasm as she put the glass jar onto the table. It was filled with a green, viscous liquid, and only after she wiped her forehead did she notice the dwarf. "Ah, Mister Middy! My apologies, I didn't see you until now."

"Is… Is this discrimination?"

"N-No! I swear, I was just…!" Just as she was about to apologize, she noticed the white serpent slither out of Raol's sleeve, and when it poked its tongue against the glass jar, its contents lurched so hard it almost fell over. "Ah! Lady Ayanga, this isn't for you! Don't frighten it!"

"What's that?" Raol asked the obvious question, and she immediately flashed an elated smile and opened her arms wide to present the jar.

"Slime!"

"What?" Middy muttered, eyeing the thick green stuff in the contained suspiciously. "Do you mean the critter that shows up in abandoned tunnels and sewers?"

"Oh! Of course, Mister Middy would be familiar with them."

"I'm not," said Raol, and picked up the jar. It was large and surprisingly heavy, and as he moved it, the thing inside started to squirm, causing Ayanga to angrily eye it. "Can you explain, please?"

"It's a type of naturally occurring monster," she said and poked the glass. "I've read about them from the Natural Encyclopedia of Marcus Lethern, and I overheard the miners complaining about them, so I went to the lower levels and found one!"

"What? Kayla, you know that the deeper shafts aren't fully explored and reinforced yet," Raol chided her with narrow eye-lights. "You could've been hurt."

"I had Mister Werdner with me, and it was safe," the hermitess pouted and then presented the green slime again. "But look! I found one!"

"And that's good news?" the dwarf muttered in disbelief, drawing her attention.

"Of course," she insisted. "The encyclopedia called them 'the world's natural cleaners'! They can consume gutter waste, and corpses, and everything, and in the past some countries even tried to use them to clean their sewer systems."

"Tried?" Raol asked with an implied brow raised high.

"They got out of control and all of them had to be exterminated, but that doesn't matter to us!" She continued to argue with complete conviction. "We can just have the adventurers hunt them, and just summon more when there are too few of them left, and we get even more gold out of it!"

"That… sounds workable," Raol granted to her, but then his eyes-lights squinted into slits again. "Kayla? Were you listening to us just now?"

"W-Why do you ask?"

"Your timing is just too impeccable," the skeleton noted, but seeing the awkwardly fidgeting young woman, he dropped the issue and shook the jar. "So? What am I supposed to do with this?"

"Take a look at it. Or, um… familiarize yourself with it might be the better way to put it? Since, erm, Mister Raol needs to have a basic understanding of the creatures summoned through the ritual circles, right? I don't know how many coins it would cost to make one, but it's a small creature, so maybe we can try using one of the new designs to test it out?"

"Sounds good to me," Raol noted.

Indeed, she had been working on trying to make the magic circles used for the summoning more cost- and time-effective. While Middy's idea of embedding the arrays into a metal plate or disk sounded promising, getting the required materials, itself, was a problem, so for the time being, they were still using the ones produced by Elkayla to gather their starting capital. Yet, being reminded of that only brought the estimates of the dwarf to mind, and it made him sigh.

"W-Why did you do that? Is there something wrong, Mister Raol?" the hermitess fretted, and even the little snake seemed concerned as she climbed up his arm and rubbed her head against Raol's skull.

With another sigh, he gestured for Elkayla to sit down, and he explained their current dilemma and the enormous funds they had to drum up if they wanted to get started.

"Maybe… maybe we should start small," he proposed at the end of his explanation. "Let's focus on the first floor, and open up the Dungeon to the adventurers to start generating money."

"But if we do that, we have to accommodate my crew somewhere else," Middy pointed out first.

"And wouldn't it also interfere with all the other activities? How are the dwarves supposed to remove the rubble and move in their equipment if the main entrance is in use by the adventurers?"

Elkayla's question made Raol rub his skull in frustration.

"I don't know, but I can't think of anything else, short of plundering the Adventurers' Guild or something."

"Mister Raol!" Elkayla exclaimed and jumped to her feet, placing her hands on the table. "You can't do that! It's a crime!"

"I know, but what other option do I have? I can't just conjure up half a million gold pieces out of nowhere."

The hermitess was about to argue, but then her expression turned hesitant, and even anxious as she considered her options. At last, her eyes gained a stern, determined glint and she took in a deep, deep breath.

"There's a way."

"Is there?" Middy blurted out, sounding highly skeptical of her claim. "I mean, I also have a few ideas, but nothing that could make so much money at once."

"I'm not talking about making the money, but borrowing it," she said, and as much as she tried to appear calm and collected, Raol could hear the reluctance in her voice. "We can borrow the money from the Adventurers' Guild."

"You want to take a loan?!" The dwarf's expression went through a series of stages, from disbelieving to outraged to cautiously guarded. "No chance. If it was a few hundred, maybe a few thousand? I can see it happening, but those humans are more miserly than a millennia-old elven mother-in-law, and nearly as nasty. There's no way you can get them to hand over five hundred thousand gold, or those guild credits they want everyone to use."

"It can be done, but I'll need a guarantor, and…" The hermitess let out a whimper, but she quickly shook her head and steeled her nerves. "No, I'll do it. I'll send a message to my father, and we'll use the temples as our sponsor! That way, even the guild will be willing to give me a loan, and—"

"Wait, slow down!" Raol interrupted her, just as she was about to gather steam, and he firmly put his hands on the table. "I can't have you take on a debt of that size. It's madness."

"Oh, d-don't worry, Mister Raol." She tried to flash a smile, but realizing it was strained, she cleared her throat instead. "It doesn't matter, because the plan's going to work! We all did the math together, right? If we can make the dungeon operational, we can pay the loan back, with interest, in just a few months, so it's no big deal."

"But what if it doesn't?"

"I mean… in the worst-case scenario, I would just have to go home and… um… work off the debt, I guess? It would only take a few years, and… and it's not a big problem, I swear."

Raol stared at the nervously fidgeting woman. He already knew that she had her own secrets. Her living alone in the middle of nowhere, her idyllic hermitage, her odd quirks and her esoteric knowledge all pointed at her being more than what met the eye. And now, on top of all of that, it appeared she, or at the very least her family, had connections high enough in the hierarchy of the Seven Temples to have them willingly act as guarantors and collateral to secure the funds of their never-before-seen, untested, and unverified plans.

Yes, he didn't ask. Elkayla was a friend, and more importantly, the first person to extend a hand to him in his second life. He had long since decided to accept her as she was, quirks and secrets and all. He looked and her, her face practically beaming 'Trust me' at him, and the skeleton soon slouched his shoulders in defeat, rubbed his face, and pretended to exhale a shallow breath.

"Fine. Give it a go… but I'll also serve as a guarantor."

"And how are you going to do that?" Middy asked, finding the entire conversation hard to swallow.

"If the temples are getting involved, they won't care if there's an extra name on the list." Raol paused for a breath's time and looked into the hermitess's eyes. "If things don't turn out as expected, you run, and I'll take all the blame."

"Mister Raol…"

"This is my one stipulation. We either do it my way, or not at all."

There was a long spell of silence hanging in the room, until the dwarf awkwardly asked, "Should I… also put my name down?"

"No need," Elkayla declared with a defiant frown rarely seen on her face. "If Mister Raol insists, then I'll do as you say, but it's entirely unnecessary." Then, she suddenly flashed a smile, as if her previous expression was a lie, and categorically declared, "Everything's going to work out. Trust me."