Chapter 426: Ras Market Opens
Where there are dungeons, there are adventurers.
In this world, a full seventy two dungeons permanently show themselves to the outside, and there are so many adventurers that if you grabbed a random passerby, one in ten would work in some job tied to the trade.
Because it pays.
The magic stones that come out of slain monsters can be sold to mages, and the byproducts harvested from their corpses bring in enormous money.
For anyone who has ever made a living by the blade, it is a dream job: stake your life, make one big score, and get out.
And because humans stake their lives on dungeons, dungeons overflow with every kind of resource.
’Is there any reason I shouldn’t be the one to take it?’
Weak dungeons are going to be wiped out by humans sooner or later anyway. A dungeon that launches an uprising against a higher ranked dungeon and loses without gaining a thing deserves to be culled.
But if they are going to be culled regardless, let them disappear in a way that profits us.
Just as a men die and leave a name, a dungeon owner dies leaving behind monsters and magic stones. My plan was to take what I gained there and sell it to the Marquis.
"Things like troll blood and minotaur horn sell pretty well. Cockatrice meat would probably move better than you’d think, too. The production efficiency blows away those chickens they raise. All it costs is magic stones."
"Master, do you intend to kill the demons summoned by the Demon King’s Army and sell them off?"
"No, Eila. I did consider it, but that would be unfair to the Demon King, unfair to the soldiers who’d die, and unfair to the magic stones wasted on something like that."
Say I sold off any old thing for magic stones, summoned a troll with them, drained its blood, and sold that. Then used those proceeds to summon a new troll and drain it again.
As long as there was profit in it, I could repeat the cycle forever and grow my capital, but there was a better method available, so that was the one I picked.
"We’ll do what we’ve always done: take the enemy’s goods and sell them for money."
"The way we sold the goods we took in Ras Vegas over in Avalon?"
"Of course. The only difference is that ’enemy’ now extends past humans to demons."
We would raid dungeons instead of human cities. Through the perfectly legitimate route of a Seizure Battle, we would strip them of their magic stones and their wealth and sell it all to humans. Humans wouldn’t have to risk their lives going into a dungeon; they could pay a small markup at our legion’s market and buy whatever they needed.
"Ah, so this is what they call the tables turning."
"We become the adventurers, in effect."
"That’s right. It’s not a wrong way to put it. Adventurer or dungeon owner starting a Seizure Battle, either way you’re clearing a dungeon."
So I dispatched a large force. To collect the wealth piled up in ranks seventy two down through sixty five, troops under Lune as supreme commander crossed the portal to go rob the enemy dungeons.
Meanwhile, my own job was preparing the market that would open trade with our counterpart. Eila and I rode in on a unicorn and looked over the market buildings spread out to the left and right of the main road.
"You’ve come, sir!!"
"I have. You’ve all been working hard. Anyone slacking?"
"Not a soul. Everyone is working exactly as we... instructed. Not one slacker, so the whole foundation is already built."
The carpenters’ representative, Zibru Jarzier, pointed at the market building behind him.
"Thanks to the blueprints you drew up so well, Legion Commander, it went up easily."
"Nonsense. It was never more than a simple sketch to begin with. Turning it into something this perfect took your talent, your skill, and your sweat."
The market, its spaces divided out with wood, wasn’t just a long row of stalls; it was a modular structure laid out like a modern shopping arcade. Each rectangular unit had a counter built in so goods could be set out, and every unit was screened off by walls.
"Right. From today, this place will be called Ras Market. Is there anything you men want?"
"If we said we wanted to do it with an elf, would that get us sent to the ranch?"
"Is it that you want to go to the ranch?"
"Ah, well...."
Zibru and the other carpenters burst into hearty laughter.
"It’s a chance to go at it with gorgeous older women without the wife breathing down our necks! As long as they don’t actually kill us, please, we’re begging you!"
"Very well. On the day the market is finished, I’ll charge you with some crime or other and sentence you to the ranch. Anything but elves is fine, but elves are off limits. If you want an elf, win one yourself. Just go hit on them, no?"
"...That’s the thing, there are only three elves who are into humans!"
"The rest of them glare at us so cold... like they’re about to put an arrow through our dicks."
The carpenters poured out their bitterness.
"But the second they see an orc, they haul him straight into an alley... ugh."
The elves had already gotten a taste for orcs, and they had no particular interest in humans. The relatively open minded ones came to a grand total of three, and even they were making trouble, all three insisting on becoming the wife of the same man at once.
"Legion Commander, can’t we really do it with an elf just once? We swear we’ll give it everything we’ve got!"
"It’s not the sort of thing that happens just because I order it.... No, if I ordered it, it would happen, but...."
So for a human to sleep with an elf was like reaching for the stars.
When an orc spotted a passing elf and pointed at a wall, the elf would cut a hole in it herself and back her hips up to it. Humans, by contrast, had to work themselves half to death for the same thing.
’Still, they built the market beautifully. Nothing else for it.’
"Fine. I’ll see to it that you get your elves. In exchange, you’d better finish the job properly."
"Wooooooah!!"
The carpenters cheered. It brought a smile out of me in spite of myself.
"Asking for elves is cheeky... but when you’ve produced results like this, that’s a different story."
"Master, shall I put out a call for elves? If I ask around personally rather than going through Luna, some will come forward of their own free will."
"Do that. But you can’t force anyone into what they don’t want. In that case, we’ll bring in succubi."
If they couldn’t have an elf in the flesh, giving them a dream of one was only decent. Watching the carpenters hauling logs around with their own arms despite not having the strength for it, I found them admirable and a little pitiable.
"Those guys have no idea how rough the road is for an elf who goes human...."
Out of some eighty elves, exactly three had chosen the human route. They were hoping for one more. Well, we’d see.
"Is it because the elves are working alongside them?"
"They all fell for the minotaur scare at first, but they’re people who know what you’re really like, Master. Orc, human, elf, minotaur, right now they’re all working together without distinction."
Any materials in short supply were hauled in from the nearby forest by the minotaurs. The elves used wind spirits to shave timber down into something like plywood. They followed the human carpenters’ directions too, working hard and never shirking the dirty jobs.
"A place where humans and demons can coexist.... Heh heh, so this is Rastopia."
"Master, aren’t you really just hoping everyone has sex without regard to species?"
"All you did was say it out loud and my gut aches, Eila. Want me to demonstrate the dawn of going human right here?"
"That would be fine in its own way, but... will you still be doing it with a guest coming this way?"
Eila scrunched up her face and pulled on the Andras mask. From beyond the canyon, riders carrying a white flag came racing toward us.
"A guest, then. A white flag means they’ve been given a pass.... Instead of welcoming them with open arms, what do you say we welcome them with open legs?"
"They’re a little late. It seems they’re in quite a hurry."
Just as Eila said, the Marquis’s people drove their horses hard down the main road. Coming completely unarmed was surely a sign that they trusted us, but the enormous carts the horses dragged behind them made me a bit suspicious.
"Haaalt!"
A bearded middle aged knight shouted. The men behind him all reined in and jumped down from their saddles. Eila stepped forward to meet them.
"Identify yourselves-ras."
"We are men sent by the Marquis."
The knight was holding the pass I had sent to the Marquis. Eila took it and held it up in front of her beak for a long while, checking it.
"Master, it’s genuine-ras."
"And your name?"
"Anthonius Denebola. I serve as the Knight Commander of the Marquis’s house."
"...A pleasure."
I stretched out an arm, wrapped it around Eila’s waist, and tilted my head back. I greeted him with the greasiest expression I could manage, the look of a crooked slaver hawking a young slave, the smile of capitalism itself.
"What brings you here? And what is that in the cart?"
"His Excellency wishes to purchase courage."
"...?"
Anthonius swung his arms about like an actor on a stage as he declaimed.
"Courage strong enough to overcome any hardship and adversity! The pride that will not give ground even before a dragon! The dignity that bows to no one, no matter who stands before him! That is what His Excellency the Marquis desires. And to that end."
Snap. Anthonius flicked his fingers, and the knights behind him threw back the covers on the carts.
"We have brought what you are sure to want. Heh heh, behold."
"...What is that?"
I was honestly appalled by what was sitting in that cart.
"Don’t tell me you brought this as trade goods."
"Indeed. A luxury item so fine that even in the capital it takes ten million gold to obtain."
"...Ten million gold?"
A snort escaped me on its own. It crossed my mind that an assassin could be hiding inside, but I couldn’t stop my hand from reaching into the cart.
"You’re telling me this goes for ten million gold?"
"I am! And of course that is not all we brought. There are the basic daily necessities you asked for and various other goods besides, but that item in particular is a gift the Marquis prepared for the master of the legion!"
Anthonius announced it with complete, earnest pride. The small paper box in my hand was starting to give me a headache.
"Ten million gold... damn it, what’s the serial number."
I tore the box open and checked the tiny lettering printed on the inside. The contents spilled out and dropped to the ground, and I got my look at the number.
"I see. With this number, it’s from very early on."
Before we took Zabiyaba and before we renamed it Ras Vegas. It was from the period when we were producing the first generation stockings.
’Probably belonged to one of the ones who skipped out in the middle of the night.’
Someone who had fled Ras Vegas must have sold the stockings at a steep price, and they had passed through the capital and into the Marquis’s hands. Stockings going for ten million gold was good news as far as I was concerned, of course, but I couldn’t quite make sense of it.
’We dumped them dirt cheap in the barony, so why is it like this in the capital?’
Goods I had unloaded at rock bottom prices on sheer volume were commanding a fortune in the capital. Never mind Anthonius standing there shocked that I’d thrown the stockings away; I couldn’t help fixing on the information they had brought me.
"So this is heaven’s last chance to make up for botching the pricing...."
"Wh, what are you saying? To fling aside a gift from the Marquis like that...!"
"Ah, there’s a reason for all of it."
I walked over to Eila. Wrapped in her black robe, she flinched and stepped back, but I moved in behind her and pulled the robe open to either side.
"See?"
"Guh?!"
The eyes of Anthonius and his knights locked onto Eila in an instant. A white dress shirt, a black skirt, and beneath it, running smoothly downward, a pair of ’black stockings.’
"Tell the Marquis this. The gift is appreciated, but we have an enormous quantity of these ourselves. Yes, and on top of that...."
"M, Master!"
I lightly lifted the hem of Eila’s skirt.
"Behold: this is what’s called stockings, and this is what’s called a garter belt. You boner illiterates."
I turned Anthonius into Stiffonius.
A short while later.
I sat down across from Anthonius and got down to serious business.
Even setting the stockings aside, the necessities they had brought made a strong statement that this was the sort of merchandise they meant to trade in going forward, and on our end they were absolutely essential for the humans in the legion. There was no reason not to deal.
"I, if I may ask just one thing? Where did you obtain so many stockings?"
"We didn’t obtain them. We made them."
"...?"
I jerked my thumb behind us, toward the barony. It was an idea I’d come up with in a split second, but as fabrications went, it worked well for persuading the Marquis on rational grounds.
"Why do you think we attacked the barony? This is precisely why."
I picked up the pair of stockings I had tossed on the ground a moment earlier.
"The barony raided our dungeon. They killed my subordinates and stole the stockings we made. Then they slaughtered the Andras without mercy. So we took our revenge."
"That would be less a theft than, well, monsters being... er...."
Anthonius had misspoken. But a slip that size I could overlook once.
"Go and tell the Marquis. We’re in the same boat now. We aren’t even asking for ten million gold."
Clap. I called over the Cream Elf I’d stationed behind me. The elf, who had been carrying a board past us, stared at me blankly, then heard Eila whisper in her ear and let out a snicker.
"Heh heh."
The Cream Elf bent lightly at the waist. The knights’ eyes shot straight to her cleavage. But that right there was true boner illiteracy.
Slip. Slip.
Still bent over, the Cream Elf slid both hands up under her skirt and peeled off her white stockings. She rolled them down and off, then set them on the negotiating table.
"We have stockings beyond counting. Wherever the Marquis’s house chooses to sell them, it doesn’t concern us. We’ll use them to buy the goods our legion’s residents need. As for the price... yes. Let the Marquis’s house set it as it sees fit. We’ll let them go for far less than ten million. Heh heh heh."
Thunk.
I set the white stockings the Cream Elf had just taken off down in front of Anthonius. He swallowed hard and licked his lips.
"Wh, why on earth would you go this far for us...?"
"There are any number of reasons. But if I set everything else aside and name just one."
Clap! I brought my hands together. This time Eila lifted her own skirt slightly to either side herself. Her fingers trembled. Another half inch and the obscene wet traces would have shown; I reached under her backside and lightly ran my fingers along her crotch.
"The Goddess whispered to me in silver. Spread stockings far and wide among humankind, for their benefit."
The clear thread stretching from my fingers glittered in the sunlight.