Chapter 942: It’s Just Good Business
<span style="font-weight:400">Elisae hummed softly to herself as the conference ended, watching as both the High Mother and the AI left the room. She didn’t leave so quickly, however, because she still had some things that she needed to hand over to ra. After they left, ra turned to look at Elisae, a small smile on her lips. “So, you said that you had some inheritances of an ancient empire?”
<span style="font-weight:400">In truth, that wasn’t the only reason that ra had asked for Elisae to participate. In fact, it wasn’t even something that she knew about until after their initial conversation. What ra was interested in was Elisae herself. The Queen blessed by fate, whose karma was so good that it was believed that the heavens themselves smiled upon her. Thanks to ra’s connection with Dana, she of course knew the truth of the matter, but the influence of her karma was still very real.
<span style="font-weight:400">ra knew that as long as Elisae herself wanted this to seed, luck would be on their side. When she learned that Elisae happened to have the remnants of a machine empire, she had to question whether this was something fated, or if Elisae had simply had so many fortunate encounters that she had something for nearly any situation.
<span style="font-weight:400">Elisae nodded her head with that same smile, opening up her inventory. “Of course! When I got these, I thought about bringing them out into the real world, but I had the feeling that I shouldn’t. You never know what’s going to happen when you get mysterious technology involved!”
<span style="font-weight:400">Naturally, this conference room wasn’t a part of Fragments of Acidia, so Elisae could not truly pull the object from her inventory. All that she could do was retrieve the object data to show to ra.
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<span style="font-weight:400">Self Replicating Autonomous Drone - DAMAGED
<span style="font-weight:400">This dronees fully equipped with a digital synthesizer, able to break down nearby materials in order to replicate itself. It can be programmed or modified to carry out a wide variety of tasks, whether military or civilian.
<span style="font-weight:400">- This drone has been damaged beyond the point of usability. It is rmended to find a Gctic-level technician in order to repair.
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<span style="font-weight:400">Chaos Fragment Cannon - DAMAGED
<span style="font-weight:400">This weapon can be installed on any space-faring vessel, capable of releasing F9-level power. Most effective when directed at a single unit, but can be configured to affect a cone at F7-level.
<span style="font-weight:400">- This weapon has been damaged beyond the point of usability. It is rmended to find a Fragment-level technician in order to repair.
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<span style="font-weight:400">ra blinked when she saw the details of the two items in Elisae’s possession. She could immediately tell why Elisae wouldn’t want to bring them to the real world. If the drone happened to be repaired improperly, it could devour an entire while replicating uncontrobly. As for the cannon… the fact that it was a <i><span style="font-weight:400">chaos</i><span style="font-weight:400"> fragment cannon meant that it used the power of the void.
<i><span style="font-weight:400">F9-level… if I remember right, the ships on the boss’s ships are only F3, with the missiles getting up to F5. F5 is already lethal for medium-strength gods if they get hit directly, from what we’ve seen. In that case, F9 should be simr to the gship cannons of major empires.</i>
<span style="font-weight:400">Looking at the two files presented to her, ra was rubbing her hands together. Then, a thought urred to her. “Why don’t you just use your domain of Wishes to repair these?”
<span style="font-weight:400">Elisae, however, simply shrugged her shoulders at that question. “Honestly? I find so much random stuff like this that it isn’t really worth it to use wishes all the time. That would just be draining my divinity for something I probably won’t end up using. Especially when ites to doing a job I don’t actually know how to do, like repairing this tech.”
<span style="font-weight:400">ra nodded her head at that. “That’s fine. I know a guy that would love to get his hands on these.” A knowing smile shed across her face, and she sent out a prayer.
<i><span style="font-weight:400">Hey, Tubrock? Found a couple gadgets you might be interested in looking at.</i><span style="font-weight:400"> Naturally, she wasn’t going to entrust this work to someone from Fragments of Acidia itself, as they would most likely submit the finished product to their own empire. The only safe options were Tubrock or Ashley, and Tubrock was the more enthusiastic of the duo.
<i><span style="font-weight:400">Let’s see,ss… aye, those would be curious. I s’pose ye wanna rope me in for starting this empire of yours?</i>
<i><span style="font-weight:400">Nope!</i><span style="font-weight:400"> ra shook her head. Even she wasn’t brave enough to try to get one of the Greater Pantheon directly involved with a project this big. <i><span style="font-weight:400">I just need you to help me get these two gadgets up and functioning.</i>
<span style="font-weight:400">There was a long silence from Tubrock, before he said in a somewhat sharper tone. <i><span style="font-weight:400">‘Fraid I didn’t catch that. I asked if ye wanted to rope me in for this empire of yours.</i>
<span style="font-weight:400">ra hesitated for a moment, before dipping her head slightly. <i><span style="font-weight:400">Tubrock, would you like to join our little project?</i>
<i><span style="font-weight:400">Well, if you’re gonna twist my arm, I suppose it can’t be helped!</i><span style="font-weight:400"> ra gave a wry smile when she heard the tone in his reply. He must not have had any major projects in the works afterpleting Olympus. That, or he wanted to use this empire as the testing ground for some of his other ideas.
<span style="font-weight:400">Or, perhaps, Tubrock just wanted someone to rx with and y. He hadn’t really taken much personal time in thest… ever.
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<span style="font-weight:400">The process of buying a tradingpany went surprisingly smoothly. From what I could tell, thepany that Dana picked was one that didn’t have any ‘named NPCs’, meaning that they were all the basic programmed characters that popted the majority of the world. Thanks to that, she was able to purchase thepany without any real roadblocks.
<span style="font-weight:400">More importantly, since we had purchased thepany, we wouldn’t need to personally handle the deliveries, unless it was to a destination that we wanted to visit for some reason. Otherwise, Dana could just give orders to thepany and let them carry out their business operations on their own. With her overseeing things, I was sure that thepany would be able to grow.
<span style="font-weight:400">When Dana got back from buying thatpany, however, she seemed somewhat distracted. Noticing my gaze, she took the initiative to exin what was going on. “This game has a business management system. It’s… sort of like a guild, I guess? Only, more specialized. From what I can tell, the system is customized for each type of business. I have information panels for all of thepany’s employees, their ships, and their clientele. Since the newpany is focused primarily on trade, I also have market information for any sector where we do business.”
<span style="font-weight:400">I gave a small nod when I heard that. “That sounds… convenient.” Something like that might be a good idea to work out for the real world, if Ashley could reverse engineer the system.
<span style="font-weight:400">“I suppose.” Dana shrugged her shoulders, moving to sit down in one of the free seats. “The market in this area is pretty stable, so there’s not much room for us to really grow. If we want to grow thepany, it’ll need to be done in one of two ways.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“One, I send them out to more distant systems, ying the gctic market. If I do that, I should be able to ensure a pseudo-stable profit, but it will be rather slow. The other method is that we personally find rare goods that can be sold.”
<span style="font-weight:400">I couldn’t help but nod at Dana’s logic, before a thought urred to me. “Can we abuse the Digital Conversion system to break the market? If we can find a material that has a high market cost, but is rtively cheap to replicate…”
<span style="font-weight:400">However, Dana shook her head to shoot down the suggestion. “Digital Conversion was a system that Fifi integrated into this world’s history, since it was a required system in order for the game to function. Named NPCs all have ess to it. The base price for most items on the market start at the conversion cost, fluctuating depending on local avability.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“For situations like our previous hunt to get special materials for our weapons, the cost of creating those materials was more expensive than simply hiring a team to retrieve them. Especially since most of them were monsterponents or materials rich in energy.”
<span style="font-weight:400">I couldn’t help but nod at that. “So it would be either buying low and selling high, or going on an adventure. Personally, I’d take the adventure.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Tsubaki nodded her head in agreement. “I concur. With the strength of our group, retrieving rare materials should not be difficult.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Dana gave a nomittal shrug, turning and adjusting the disy on a terminal near her seat. “Well, there are three types of resources we can go after. The first is ‘strategic resources’. These are resources that respawn like Mage Heart and Blood Heart. Their appearance in this game is somewhat random. You can have a strategic vein of iron on one, and on another, it might be a vein of divine gold. Every strategic resource is worth arge sum due to its theoretically unlimited supply. That also means that we’d need to explore to find those types of nodes.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“The second type is ‘hazardous resources’. These are resources that are either innately dangerous to carry, or are in a dangerous environment. The environment can be anything from the nest of a powerful monster to the heart of an old star. Most of the materials that we needed for our artifacts came from this type.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Thest type--”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Monster materials.” Tsubaki finished, Dana nodding her head.
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<span style="font-weight:400">“That’s right. These made up the rest of what we needed for our artifacts. The materials from powerful monsters that can’t be easily in. Their remains are highly sought after for a variety of reasons.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Hearing her list out these three options, I briefly fell into thought. “Is there any way to detect if a has a strategic resource?”
<span style="font-weight:400">Unfortunately, Dana shook her head. “Not without using a special vein scanner on the material itself. The scanner can tell whether or not a materiales from a strategic vein. But, without spending the time to mine up the initial sample, there isn’t a feasible way to get that information.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“In that case, hunting for strategic resources would be too inefficient. For monsters… we won’t avoid them, but we won’t go out of our way to hunt for them, either. Let’s go for the hazardous resources, and we’ll just clear out any monsters that get in our way. Also, be sure that none of the materials we go after are hazardous because of memetic effects. Thest thing I want is to suddenly believe I’m a potato.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Dana chuckled slightly at that. “You got it, boss. In that case, I’ll make a note on the map of the known hazardous resources, as well as their value.”
<span style="font-weight:400">As she said that, Lifre jumped up, running to the pilot’s seat.. “Awesome! Let’s go make some money! Wait… weren’t we able to buy thepany because money’s not an issue for us?”
<span style="font-weight:400">With a small smile, Dana exined. “We’re not getting these goods to sell them because we need the money. The goods are used to help uswork. The boss’s goal with this business is to get in contact with some of the different tech advancements avable in this world. To do so, we need to have connections in military, research, and government branches. Once all of that is achieved, we’ll be able to gain ess to more technology like the Hypene Network.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Ohhh.” Lifre nodded her head. “In that case, let’s go make friends by beating up the baddies!”