Imri left the department store with several large bags of clothing for himself and Emelia. As soon as no one was looking at him, he placed the engagement ring in his dimensional bag. Despite splurging a bit, the shopping had barely put a dent in his finances, and he wondered why everything was so cheap.
Imri wondered if it was just the one store selling things for cheap but was quickly dispelled when he secured lodging in one of the few open hotels. The price of an amazing room in a four-star hotel was a fraction of its typical rate if credits and dollars were equivalent. Likewise, a nice meal was a fraction of what he would have been willing to pay for something that wasn’t fried Drake.
After his meal, Imri made his way to the bar. He was dressed in some of his newer clothing and did his best to look presentable but not stuffy. He even got his hair and beard trimmed to look more civilized. He still felt like an outsider and a fraud, and he seriously considered spending the rest of the two weeks locked away in his room studying enchantments and meditating. Instead, he ordered a relatively expensive scotch and hoped for the best.
“Are you new here?” an extremely attractive woman in a cocktail dress asked.
“What gave me away?” Imri asked awkwardly as he put on his best fake smile.
Imri did a double take when he used Identify on the woman and saw her profession: she was a level 6 Escort.
“Did you use Identify on me?” she demurred.
“I’m sorry. It's a bit of a habit at this point,” Imri said, even though he wasn’t sorry. He was done being guilted into not using his abilities.
“Don’t worry about it; I was just teasing. As to your other question, I’ve met everyone here. There aren’t exactly a lot of new people coming and going,” she said.
“I see,” Imri said, unsure what else to say.
“So, how about it? Do you want some company tonight?” she propositioned, nearly causing Imri to spit out his drink.
“Is that legal here?” he asked.
“It’s not like this city is a bastion of law and order these days,” she said with a shrug.
She was an extremely attractive woman, and Imri would have been interested before the integration. Fortunately, he had an amazing and even more attractive woman waiting for him in Celestia. A woman he was going to ask to marry. He was about to dismiss her out of hand when he had another idea.
“Sure, why not,” he said.
“It’s 100 credits an hour, with payment due upfront and a minimum of two hours,” she said, effortlessly switching from seduction to business. Imri didn’t argue and sent her the 200-credit minimum.
They made their way to Imri’s room without much talking. Even though he had no intention of sleeping with her, Imri still wasn’t quite comfortable with the situation. She must have known Imri wasn’t her typical client because she eyed him suspiciously.
“What’s going on?” she asked before they reached his room.
“I just want to talk. No sex,” Imri admitted.
“I don’t care how much you paid; I’m not going to sit there and be lectured about being immoral or anything like that,” she insisted.
“No, nothing like that. As you noticed, I’m new in town, and I just want some general information about the situation,” Imri assured her.
“Fair enough. I’m still keeping the entire 200 credits, and I’m not sharing anything confidential about any of my clients,” she said. Imri nodded, actually reassured by her demand for client confidentiality.
When they entered the room, Imri pointedly avoided the bed. Instead, he pulled out the chairs by the desk.
“So, what did you want to know?” she asked as she sat down.
“To start, your name,” Imri said.
“You can call me Mikayla, and you are?” she asked with a smile.
“You can call me Ian,” he said, deciding not to give his real name. “So, why 100 credits an hour?”
“You're paying me 100 credits an hour for market research on escort services?” she asked.
“Something like that,” Imri admitted.
“It was the number I could charge where I didn’t get pushback from my clientele,” Mikayla said with a shrug.
“And your clientele, who are they? In a general sense,” Imri asked.
“Usually, they are people who work directly for one of the Barons or Baronesses. They are the only ones with money to throw around, that or mysterious strangers who just showed up here,” she said.
“No one else has made money from selling monster parts to the system store? No unique resources to harvest?” Imri asked, ignoring the 'mysterious stranger' comment.
“What's a system store?” Mikayla asked.
“You know, the nexus where you can sell items to the system for credits,” Imri explained. She just stared at him blankly. “The giant floating crystal that is the center of the settlement.”
“Oh, that thing. A couple of my clients bragged about seeing that. In general, those are stored inside and guarded at all times,” she explained.
“All five of them are like that?” Imri asked.
“As far as I know,” Mikayla said with a shrug.
“And what about monsters? Does no one sell monster parts?”
“The nobles are willing to buy them for a few credits, but there isn’t a lot of money in it,” she said.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Imri couldn’t believe it. The nobles were hoarding every advantage for themselves, but that was crippling the city. It was so short-sighted and stupid that he could scarcely believe it. He also suspected the other arrays were related to personal wealth.
Imri tried to school his expression into stoic indifference, but his anger must have shown because Mikayla studied him quizzically.
“I’ll give you your credits back if you tell me what you know,” she offered.
“Just keep them; I don’t need the money,” Imri said dismissively.
“You don’t need the money,” she repeated.
“A couple hundred credits shouldn’t be a big deal. That’s barely more than some of the cheapest items the system will sell. It’s only a lot here because the nobles hoard all the wealth. Even low-level monster parts sell for hundreds of credits if not thousands,” Imri explained.
“How do you know all this? Who are you really?” she asked.
Imri realized he was failing spectacularly as a spy. In his defense, he had pointed this out to everyone before going on the mission. He was here for his system abilities, not his social skills.
“I can’t say,” Imri said, backtracking slightly now that his indignation had settled down.
“Fine, keep your secrets,” she said with an exaggerated pout.
“Is everything as bad as it seems? How are people getting by?” Imri asked.
“People find a way. A lot of people barter for what they need. Others, like me, adapt and find a way to extract a few credits. Honestly, things are probably worse than they seem. I’m barely getting by and make a lot compared to some. Prices for everything are going up despite the lack of currency. There just aren’t enough new things getting made, and the existing supply from before the integration is starting to run dry,” Mikayla said.
It made sense that they were starting to run into shortages. While some parts of the supply chain could be adjusted to a more localized area, others required significant time and infrastructure to set up. Food shortages were likely due to the lack of fertile land nearby and many survivors in the city. Throwing credits at the problem wouldn’t fix any of that; it would only inflate prices.
“Thanks for your help. The information was extremely useful,” Imri said.
“Any time, Ian. That was the easiest 200 credits I’ve ever made,” Mikayla said as she left.
Imri couldn’t sleep, so he switched to meditation instead. He reached the meditative state of mind, but something felt physically off. It felt like something was trying to burrow into him, but he couldn’t tell where that feeling was coming from or even what part of the body it was affecting. It wasn’t painful, but the feeling of wrongness lingered. Imri used body scan meditation to feel each part of his body, and it didn’t turn up any abnormality every time. Despite that, he still felt certain something was off. Eventually, he gave up on finding the cause and did his best to ignore the feeling. When the first light of the morning started coming through the blinds, Imri ended his meditation.
He had only managed a few hours of meditation, which was enough for now. He set out, heading toward one of the dead drop points. He made a stylized mark on the wall, the signal for a meeting in the afternoon.
Imri wandered about the city, knowing it would be sometime before the meeting. He continued using Identify on every single person he could see. His efforts were eventually rewarded with a pair of rank-ups.
Skill Rank Up Identify F to E
Trait Rank Up Enigmatic Being F to E
Imri was just about to start heading toward the predetermined meeting location when he did a double-take. His Identify had returned an unexpected result, and a seemingly normal-looking man was actually a level 27 Azala Infiltrator.
Imri did his best to appear nonchalant, but the Infiltrator turned and stared at him. In the next instant, Imri felt a force assaulting his mind. It attempted to worm its way past his mental defense and subvert his will.
Unfortunately for the Azala, Imri had several layers of defense against its attack. His Willpower had exceeded human limits and was likely orders of magnitude higher than his attacker. On top of that, his bond with Emelia provided a resistance to mental attacks, as their two minds worked in tandem to support each other. Finally, Imri’s Locus of Mana gave him resistance to all magical attacks. The end result was that the Azala’s mind attack did little more than give Imri a minor headache.
Imri did his best not to show outward indications that he was casting a spell. He defined the parameters of his spell without using his hands and cast the spell. In an instant, space collapsed around the unsuspecting Azala. It was squeezed under localized pressure equivalent to the ocean's bottom, instantaneously causing innards to extrude from its body.
It happened so fast that nearby people didn’t notice anything happening until the pressure equalized with a loud bang that sounded like a bomb being dropped. People screamed and ran as panic and terror took over.
Imri winced from the unintended collateral damage he was indirectly causing as a mob mentality overtook the people around him. He had become too accustomed to fighting near unkillable Drakes or Sentinels and hadn’t properly adjusted to a much squishier target. He also wasn’t used to fighting in an urban environment where millions of people were nearby.
He stooped down and picked up the core, which was about the only distinguishable body part intact. It seemed that the core was also the most durable portion of a body. As soon as he grabbed it, he disappeared from sight, using Blink to teleport to a nearby roof. This was quickly followed by a couple more Blinks in rapid succession, taking him far away from the scene of the attack.
“Well, that complicates things,” Imri muttered to himself as he used Blink to appear in a nearby alley.
Imri resumed his walk to the meeting point, though he made sure he hadn’t attracted anyone’s notice. When he felt reasonably certain he hadn’t, he went directly there. He made it a point of emphasis to Identify every person he passed. Fortunately, the Azala seemed to be a small percentage of the population, as he hadn’t encountered another before or since. He didn’t think for a moment that it had been the only Azala here.
He arrived at the public meeting spot a few minutes late, but one person was still missing: a woman named Maggie. Joel looked relieved when Imri showed up, but as the minutes dragged on with no signs of Maggie, he again grew concerned.
“Could this have anything to do with the explosion on Grand Street?” Joel mused.
“No, that was me,” Imri admitted. It stung Imri a bit that no one seemed surprised by his admission.
“Do we keep waiting?” Someone else asked.
“No, we don’t want to be together longer than necessary. Imri, you set up this meeting,” Joel pointed out.
Imri summarized what he had learned from Mikayla: the nexuses were being treated as personal items for the progenitors who had since become nobility. They were taking advantage of their total control over the market to buy things for pennies on the dollar, and the lack of currency in circulation was stifling the economy. Supply shortages were starting to cause major inflation, further exacerbating the other issues.
When he was done, others corroborated what he had learned. If anything, Mikayla had been right to assess that she was one of the fortunate ones. People were starving and starting to get desperate. However, instead of trying to fix the problems, the nobles simply ramped up their police forces and used them as personal armies to put down any attempted uprising.
However, worst of all was a water shortage. Lake Michigan hadn’t been integrated as is. Instead, it was some strange liquid that wasn’t dense enough to swim in, resulting in people or boats simply sinking to the bottom. It was also light enough to carry it easily in the wind, resulting in it constantly appearing like a mist that lingered above the strange body of liquid. Unfortunately, it couldn’t be used as a substitute for drinking water.
Another interesting tidbit was the relationship between the nobles. Each of them was overtly fighting amongst themselves. Imri suspected that they wanted to form a Count title, but no one could garner the support of the others. They had to offer something that would entice the others into giving up a percentage of their power. From what little he knew of the nobles, he doubted any would willingly do that.
“It seems like another month or two, and this city will tear itself apart,” Joel concluded.
“That’s why we are going back to Celestia. Then we’re coming back here with a force to take the nexuses,” Imri declared.