Supreme Governor Clarissa
Looking over the reports that had been delivered to me, everything was running smoothly for the most part. The Governors were slowly adapting to competing with each other and already there were developments in the food angle.
There were also many that wanted to have their cities upgraded to level 4 for meat. I knew I couldn’t bother Michael too much about that, even if we were charging them. Using him as leverage to keep them in check was powerful.
It was nice to be back at the top, and actually get recognition for once. While Michael had his own power, in his fist or skills. The power to control everything around me was quite enjoyable in its own way. I had been right to back him all those years ago. Showing that I would not back down to his threats and intimidation.
At least he would be a lightning rod for any problems to show up. And while I had not thought much of his punishment of the Avatar at first, it had horrified me the more I watched it. The woman wasn’t right in the head before, but now I could see her sanity dribbling out of her skull. It wasn’t obvious, since she could still speak, but there was a more desperate tone to her voice and communications.
An edge, a fear, that wasn’t there in the past gripped her as she was ground down every day. I had thought putting her in a dark pit with poor food would have done it, but she could see anywhere. What Michael had thought of to torture the woman, was something derived from the deepest reaches of hell itself, or something out of Dante’s Inferno.
I don’t think there was a bureaucratic hell, but it was clearly worse than anything else imaginable. With physical torture, there would be pain, suffering, and you would either die or get over it. Eventually the pain could be blocked out. Anything endured enough became routine.
But the endless paperwork having to be done through proxies over a distance forced the Avatar to pay attention. It was grinding down on her mind, like a trickle of water over a rock. While there was barely any erosion right now, in time I could see that trickle carving a canyon and forming a waterfall. There would be nothing left of her.
All that would be left would be paperwork and the Almighty System itself that forced her to do the paperwork to live. Perhaps that was Michael’s end goal? To purge the human from her body to have a conversation with all that remained. If that was indeed his plan, I would not be surprised. While he hated administration and the tedious tasks of managing people, he was not stupid.
No, this punishment was beyond clever. It was depraved genius at its finest. I shook my head and turned back to the deekly reports that had been submitted to me from the various governors along with their tax revenue. Each report was confirmed by both the auditor and vice governor of the city.
The later two were rotated so I wasn’t worried about corruption setting in. No one wanted to lose their cozy well paid positions. I had been making examples of corruption very heavily, not sparing anyone if there was any blame. It brought a warmth to my soul to be able to execute people who did their jobs poorly rather than just firing them. If you got paid, you did your job properly.
I guess that was the nice thing about an absolute dictatorship, I didn’t have to put up with too much idiocy. I had also been getting regular restorations and investing in my stats as well. I planned to live for a very long time and it was clear they reset the body to a good standard of health. The Divine Empress and other tests we were running proved this.
“Priority message, Captain Francis,” a messenger reported from my doorway. Certain messages would come straight to me, no detours. Anything from Michael or his protection detail came right on through after cursory scans for energy.
I took the letter and confirmed the stamp on the outside was there. We were still working on a way to make them tamper evident. The messengers were reliable for the most part, but there had been incidents where they had peeked at the contents. If they were caught it was death and that had been explained to them. But I am sure some still did it. We needed glue or wax and soon.
Looking at the message, it was just an update on their movements and progress. Some interesting information about this Cult of Doom monster. That was concerning. It could easily lead to a disaster in a city.
Level 4, what a headache. We needed to grind the higher-level zones, but getting people up to that height required a lot of investment. Well, I was slowly evaluating the progress of various teams and individuals in their grinding exploits in level 3 zones very carefully.
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I had been doing it since the war, but now it took even more precedence. I needed to select the people who wouldn’t quit or get bored. They didn’t have to be good, but they had to be grinders. Day after day of killing monsters to bring in crystals. That kind of individual was hard to find. People willing to keep working regardless of how tedious it got.
While others might think there were a lot of workers out there like that. Killing monsters required a certain drive, since every fight was a risk. And it just got worse. Level 5 monsters did curse damage. I closed my eyes and let out a long sigh.
If Michael was challenged and he had about ten billion points invested, then level 5 would be out of reach for a long time. I considered other possible options to increase revenue, since that was the true basis of power in the Systemic Lands.
It was all a business at the end of the day, and the cashflow was crystals. We needed to maximize our intake of crystals and reduce waste. There were two sources of waste. The cities being damaged and people dying. While it might seem like city damage was expensive, it was nothing but a drop in the bucket and short term.
The real headache was from people dying. It didn’t escape my notice, that people and teams just disappeared. The Almighty System sending out Death to test them and they failed. If anyone succeeded, I hadn’t found anyone yet, but my auditors had their eyes and ears open to people suddenly surging in power or talking about special points.
Revenue was constrained by the number of monsters that could be killed. While we hadn’t hit carrying capacity for the zones, it would come in time as people kept arriving and the level 2 and level 3 zones filled up. While there was some attrition, that kind of attrition was actually helpful with the long-term population crisis.
The only hope was in the city upgrades, but that was a dead end as well. I didn’t even want to think of a 1,000 level 6 monsters attacking the city. It would be impossible to survive at this point in time. But it was something we had to race for in order to see if there was a long-term solution to so many problems.
Even with careful planning, and lines, the store pillars would be running more and more. Another bottleneck that we faced. While Michael had challenges he had to deal with, such as actually killing the monsters, I had to ensure everyone didn’t kill each other out of frustration.
The risk of classism was real and we decided to embrace it. Michael and I had decided that meta-point holders would be brought into the fold or killed. Like his original idea of an Immortal Council. They would be granted the right to wear symbols on their clothing. That rule was still in effect after all this time along with color coding what certain people could wear. It was useful, like a threat display and made it clear who someone reported to.
Governors and their men had red, from Carlos’ Red Dawn years ago. The Imperial Government had blue and a golden dragon, since Michael had picked those colors. Shopkeepers had just purple instead of multiple colors. Level 1 grinders and new arrivals had gray. Level 2 grinders had light green. Level 3 grinders had dark green. Level 4 would get gold and green, if I could manage to get a group to handle a level 4 monster without dying.
There was no caste system in place, it was a social and cultural system that had been set up for the most part. But anyone using official colors like red, gold, or blue without permission could be executed. Thankfully there were no complaints, once again showing how useful an absolute dictatorship was.
It wasn’t just for the purpose of putting people into slots either. It was to check people’s appearances for anyone being in disguise. Word had been spread about shapeshifters and how Michael had used one to steal the Divine Empress’s treasury. People had challenge questions now and introductions were quickly becoming a requirement to ensure someone was who they said they were.
This was important to prevent infiltrators. There were other powers out there. We had a half to a third of possible cities based on where people had been arriving from Earth. India and Russia were the two biggest groups of people that came to mind. The cultural hegemony all those Indian cities could bring, could easily give rise to another Divine Empress, or Michael.
The fact that someone cleared a tower before him was concerning, but not a surprise, since we weren’t the first here. The only thing was to ensure a unique culture of paranoia long term to ensure that any infiltrators would have a hard time and stand out. Another thing the auditors were tasked to keep an eye out for.
The towers themselves were an interesting conundrum. One could only go up, but they spewed forth an endless torrent of point giving monsters. If there was a way to harness a tower to be a grinding facility for points, the rewards would be immense.
That would be an immense and very difficult project with the level 5 boss monsters inside and a possible level 6 boss monster at the top. But if it could be done, the sheer number points that could be constantly ground out would be immense.
I was working on plans based on what Michael had told me. It wouldn’t be simple or easy. But once we got people killing level 4 monsters out in the wilderness, I could have him run through a tower a couple of times to see what changed and if it was possible to grind out crystals. While a difficult plan to pull off, it would give my Empire an immense advantage in the battles to come.
Michael might have the title, but I controlled the levers of power. No one would ever threaten me ever again. And when this place finally revealed its true nature, I would ensure that I survived and lived no matter whatever disaster occurred.
The few survivors from the Dragon Empire had been quite informative about the calamity of the past and many other useful bits of knowledge.