Torran Tuskan morosely looked out of his office window at the vast city below. He had toiled his entire life to get to this point. Owning an office at the top of one of the crystal spire skyscrapers was a mark of success. His merchant house was known throughout the sector. He had mercantile license. It had seemed, nothing could go wrong. Until it did. Some investments were sabotaged by his competitors, nothing unusual. Then ten metric tons of herbs he had bought at an auction went bad after a chance fight between two D-grade cultivators. His insurance would have covered the damages, but one of his incompetent employees had not insured the transport.
Earnings went down, his sect members became unruly. So, he made a wild gamble to procure a incredibly valuable C-grade natural treasure found on a newly integrated baby world. A fruit full of Origin Dao. Priceless. Everything went perfectly, until the transporting cosmic vessel was boarded by space pirates. Pirates! How in the Stingy Heavens name could pirates afford a cosmic vessel. Well, they’d probably stole it, just like they now had their ship and his merchant vessel.
Search parties lost the pirates in the Million Gates territories, where even his cleverly hidden tracking devices stopped working.
He used one of his skills to view the stats of his merchant house. It was hopeless. He no longer had the resources necessary to stay in business. You needed money to make money.
He estimated a year until the Stingy Heavens took back his mercantile license because his wealth fell below the required baseline.
He heard a sound he’d long believed forgotten. The chime of a new quest appearing on his status screen. He sighed. The Heavens had already reacted. They would challenge him with some almost impossible quest to retain his license.
He drank some of his finest Cloudvine-Vodka, took a deep breath and only then looked at the quest.
Become the trustee (Unique, Long-term): Manage special trust funds, while maintaining secrecy and supporting its beneficiary on his cultivation journey.
Reward: Permission to use trust fund for investment. Mercantile License Status upgrade.
Warning: Requires long term commitment to supported beneficiary.
Warning: Losing more than 50% of trust fund by speculation or mismanagement will lead to immediate expiration of Mercantile License.
Further Details will only be provided after accepting quest.
The Merchant stared some long minutes at the message. Did he dare accept it? Did he dare not? It could be his salvation, but who was this beneficiary? And why did he even need someone to manage his wealth. How much wealth was it?
He pondered his options. The Stingy Heavens would not offer him this if it would not be enough to save his merchant house. He’d be of no use without it. Any upgrade to a Mercantile License could potentially safe him alone. Lesser tariffs for transportation of goods or access to rare treasures. It did not matter. He would use it for best effect. He accepted the quest and a stream of information entered his mind. It was like learning a knowledge skill from the system. In this case, he got a kind of legal document containing the complex rules his trust was operating on. Clear guidelines, what his beneficiary could and could not request.
He blinked. He was supposed to guide this guy to C-grade? That was beyond long-term. That was a lifelong commitment! How much did he need to pay for the necessary equipment? D-grade War Regalia alone would cost… much.
He concentrated and accessed the information about his trust fund. It was a list of diverse materials, object, equipment, Nexus Coins, Nexus Crystals, weapons, arrays…
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
The list went on and on. Garbage and unique treasures mixed. It could work. Barely. Should his beneficiary reach his goal of C-grade, the quest promised a reward, according to his level of contribution and success. If the guy died… he’d lose access to the funds immediately.
While reading the complex rules, he would have to work under for the foreseeable future, he paused. There was an interesting passage. He actually had access to his ward’s status screen? He seemed to be considered something akin to a master in a master and journeyman relationship. After deliberating for a full minute, he accessed the status. The Dao chart showed two peak proficiencies, which was a good start. Seemed a bit one-sided, but a decent starting point. He continued reading until he found which Dao’s his ward would be using…
He broke the glass he was holding, threw the splinters uncaring into the room and cursed to the Stingy Heavens. He’d been tricked. Space and Time? Those two couldn’t even be used together until… E-grade? Higher? How would this guy kill his enemies? Wait for them to die of old age?
Torran decided he’d have to research. A lot. There was no way he’d find a heritage to guide someone like this. He was doomed. No way, he’d get someone with such a rare Dao combination to C-grade. He’d never even find a fitting cultivation manual, much less a blueprint for a Cosmic Core.
He brooded on his desk for hours, reading the status information again and again. He took a deep breath and stood up. He slammed his fist on his desk top. He would do it! He had never given up in his life, he’d not start now. It would not be easy, but he’d never had it easy either. He vowed to not only get his ward to Monarchy, he’d join him. He would follow in his wake to the peak of cultivation.
Torran burned some incense and meditated to ground himself. That always helped him thinking. He’d need to allocate budgets for all cultivation stages.
Then he’d have to start researching what his ward would need for a successful ascension to C-grade. While it was impossible to chart the many experiences, insights, epiphanies, failures and successes so early, some things were universal.
When reaching for D-grade, a Perennial Vastness token would almost guarantee a successful construction of a cultivator’s core. Equipment for D-grade also got prohibitively expensive.
For E-grade, he’d need some Node breaking treasures. Those were hard to get on the open market. He’d have to send out acquisition teams years in advance. And if he wanted to get his hands on a treasure to find hidden nodes… That would be nigh impossible. The peak factions gobbled those up as soon as one got found. His ward would probably have to find his own. Maybe he could at least research possible locations that were not claimed? Or at least could be bought with enough funds.
In F-grade, he’d have to acquire tokens for system events and limited title trials. Maybe one of the transferable Tower of Eternity tokens, if his ward didn’t manage to acquire one on his own. Some minor equipment, defensive treasures and crystals for cultivation. Further studying the list of materials, he got to work with, he found he didn’t have to worry about cultivation crystals. Apparently, some unnamed person had started him on his cultivation journey by helping him evolve his race, to D-grade no less, and fed him some treasures. This person also gave his ward two crystals to cultivate. Attuned crystals for Space and Time respectively. Torran paused. That couldn’t be right. Nexus Crystals attuned to such high Dao tiers only appeared at C-grade. His ward would explode if he even touched those.
It took some time to find a footnote inside the information missive, that explained it. Both crystals had been inscribed to limit the energy flow. There was another footnote explaining, he wasn’t allowed to sell those crystals. He chuckled. Yes, that was something he’d planned to do just seconds ago. The information also explained the reasoning for this this seeming waste. Peak affinity to peak Dao concepts would naturally deteriorate without constant affirmation. Regular cultivation using attuned crystals would solve that problem best.
All in all, Torran came to the conclusion, he would not have nearly enough funds when reaching the higher grades. He’d have to invest right now. If his investment bore no fruit until he needed the increased funds, he’d be… inconvenienced.
The merchant spent two days straight with setting a preliminary budget and investment strategy.
He summoned his clerk. A morose human entered his office, wringing his hands: “I’m not finished with calculating the ideal sequence of selling our off-world assets. You wanting a status report every few hours doesn’t help. We’d need more men if you want it done faster.”
“Forget the liquidation project, Dammon. We got a new sponsor. All our assets shall be open for business again tomorrow. Inform our trading partners, we are back in business. First order of business: get me an estimate of where we can sell off large quantities of medium quality weapons and armor. Mostly F- and E-grade, with some D-grade officer. Most damaged, but repairable. Maybe we can sell it to one of the newly integrated planets in the Zecia sector. We have enough to outfit about 40.000 warriors. We also have mountains of scrap-metal and some slightly damaged war-arrays.”
Dammon looked at him as if he’d grown a second head. It took a while to convince him: no, this wasn’t a bad joke and no, his leader had not gone mad. Soon he started grinning like a froggoid. Then he went to work.