Opening the door to the dinner party in the casino, Aki found 2 drows, 2 dwarfs, 2 beast kin and 2 humans sat at the table.
"Hello, excuse me, the dinner was supposed to be at 10, right silver?" He asked with some nervousness, since it was half an hour before the scheduled, and got a nod from the silver scaled ophidian. "Well then, allow me to introduce my..." *Thunk* a knife burrowed itself in the wall where Aki's head was moments ago.
"Who do you..." *crabluck* the cat kin tried to say something, but a telekinetic tentacle made his neck do a 1080.
"Does anyone else prefers my not so polite introduction? No? Good, it's a pain to not make then bleed you know? Anyway, I'm Aki, Silver's new boss, called the reunion to talk bout my work policies. By the way, my wife is right outside and just waiting cuss I was sure some idiot would want my help for suiciding and she wanted to skip all the trouble, so I came first." Rapidly said Aki while abandoning any pretense of politeness and simply teleporting the corpse away so he didn't need to keep the blood from spiling.
That just made the bear kin that sat besides the deceased cat kin even more pissed. Not that he dared attack when Aki showed his back to call for Tsu though.
No one else talked before they set, neither after for a while since they got a bit weirded out about Aki sitting on his wife's lap.
"Should we start the dinner earlier since everyone is here or should we just do the crude talk?" Asked Aki since he noticed even the buerocrate-like drow didn't seem to remember how to talk.
"Uh? Yes, it would be best if you used this moment to talk about your future plans." Answered the business drow.
"Understood. Well, the plans I have are pretty simple really. I will be opening some stores on the legal side of things for more capital and face, opening a bank with fair rates for connections and initiating my own slavery company for personal. From clothing, to alchemy to mercenary work. Expect to see and hear a lot from me miss minister." Aki explained to the city's minister of finances.
This time everyone was surprised in a different way. Most noticeable was the strondous laughter of the bear kin.
"Oi!" He suddenly stopped and looked seriously at the lightly smiling Aki before acting like this some jap novel. "Brat, even if you got some power, do you really think it's that simple to open up a brand on the dark empire!?"
"Of course. I've read it's code of laws, the laws of the province and from the city, besides participating on the tournament while my wife represents a regional colony, which gives her special prizes related to such. By the way, even though I talk like we're married, that is only under her tribe's belief, which is not enough to declare us as a married couple in the eyes of the Empire or church, making her still eligible for it. Besides, I've just got my high class citizenship approved by a bishop (Not the one that talked to him after the tournament, every city has 2, and that one is a traveler.) this morning after paying the sum of 5 rose coins (around 10 M dollars), so if I meet someone with a province wide commerce permit, I'm an eligible trade partner for that someone if they perchance do not yet have the authority and resources to trade with more than just this city. That such is one of the extra prizes members of a colony/serf territory is definitely not a coincidence. Since I'm bragging about our accomplishments anyway, did you know that even if Bella doesn't win even once we will still get the permit because she broke the record for the test of swiftness bellow level 100 while being only level 53 and now she is seeded to the semi finals?"
At this point of his blabbering, everyone on the table had already noticed 2 things. This guy doesn't shut up unless made so and they were only bring 'politely informed beforehand' about his plans.
"Miss? Aki, is that correct?" Asked the young (38) dwarf matron representing the dwarfs in asylum on the city. While not necessarily here because of criminality, they are still refugees from various clans. Be it because they woke up something they shouldn't with their mining or because their clan suffered a more normal extinction, plenty of dwarves ended in the underdark and you'd be hard pressed to find a city without such community.
"Just call me whatever you want, where I come from even insults can be considered normal forms of address (not kidding)." He waved her worries off.
"If that is so than I shaw say my piece" Said the dwarf with an almost imperserptive accent. "All the information we could get on you is that you are registered as Elizabeth Akita Victoria, comes from a distant land and is a vampire of at least noble lineage. I didn't expect the meeting to go like this, but as the most calm person that isn't thinking about how much trouble a new bank is going to be, I have to ask, who actually are you? You simply appeared out of nowhere and the only thing we hear is that you like killing and coffee, then you come with multiple bombs. I had noticed something was off with the message and prepared to stop a war. Now I see it will be impossible." She said and looked at the bear man.
"Well, it's not like I will show you guys my status, but if you ask like that than the best I can say us that I'm not from anywhere close, have always been this crazy and will be 17 in some months." With that last one the bear man fell from his chair and the others were practically shell shocked in their own way. "Pffff, what is it? Just cuss I'm a vampire doesn't mean Ima gonna instantly be old. On a more serious note, I also didn't really plan on a war, my baseline for it was high, plenty high, and yet this guy crossed it with the public treatment of his sex slaves. As a bad person, I know certain things happen, but seeing them still makes me pissed. Any man joining such scum forgets they had mothers, sisters and lovers, forget how to act like people. Be it the ones that actually believe in his anti-semic, racist and xenophobic ideas, or simply stay there helplessly, I shaw deliver to all of them the mercy of death, but none are going to come anywhere near your so called paradise while I live! If I had the power before I wouldn't have left even one drop of blood from those middle... *cough* it seems I have exeded my bounds. I apologize, those were offensive and brute words that came from my pure anger and disgust about a similar culture. While I won't put my declaration of war down, I'd ask you all to lower your weapons, I won't use more of violence for tonight." He said and showed his hands, which made everyone jump thinking he was about to cast a spell, only to notice he meant 'peace'.
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"This is certainly one of the most interesting dinners we've had since silver assumed, but I'm afraid that would not be enough for allowing such shock in the economy." Said the fat human, representative of the dark merchants guild in the city. Yes, it's the same as the merchants guild, but acts in the underdark, but it is called like that because it is consisted of the most predative and unscrupulous merchants around the world, the underdark just so happens to be an 'open' passage through plenty of said rock.
"I will have to stand with sir Goldic. While uncommon, we agree that such sudden shift is dangerous and would represent a fall of the revenue of the city." Sternly said the level 100 minister while putting her saber back in the scabbard.
"Calm down you two, you make it sound like I'm not willing to share the profits! There's a saying that goes like 'if you make a cake big enough, everyone can be satisfied with only a slice because even that would be bigger than the cakes of many others'. If I'm taking the customers we just need them to buy more. If they don't have enough money we just need to raise the circulation of money. If they have no more time to work we can always go to the government and sell something that will improve the efficiency of the workers and raise the amount infused into the city and the amount of people coming in." With the attention of all present fixed on him after a bunch of flowery words for building up tension, which he didn't even do that well, Aki started getting to the point. "While I don't intend on sharing all my ideas and products, working together can definitely bring more than working against each other. Be it trade of service, resources or refined products, if they're not implemented correctly they won't be worth as much as they could, so you'd be losing time and money. A great example would be a cloth washing shop I intend to make. While cheap and simple, if advertised correctly, it could very well be used by the whole city and get me money simply by the sheer amount of costumers. Now, say the colosseum starts to have some non letal shows of prowes, plenty of hot headed youth would like to try their luck for a small fee. They'd be tired out after some tries and the population would be entertained. Some refreshments would be for the best, maybe even an alchemical tincture to enhance stamina restoration, the recipe of which was gifted to senior Goldic by me and has my dungeon, which I tamed, cultivating the materials needed in large scale. Of course, it's a shame this simple minded fool can't imagine any other uses for such petty ideas, I'm too conceited for that and prefer to keep things simple." Said Aki while nodding and slipping a small stack of papers to both merchants, both with his suggestions, recipes and some contracts. "How rude of me though, I don't think I have prepared much else for the honorable dwarfs. I apologize for now, but later I shaw send twenty barrows of some fine alcohol of my own homeland." He said and gave, the woman was looked at a apologetic look while giving a meter tall stack of papers through the table. Those were simple technologies amplified by magic, like an automatic crucible, mana and rune forging theories that a Aki isn't able to actually perform yet, the recipe to smokeless gunpowder, so on so forth. "Though I've heard that the beastmen mostly come from the deserts after the passages up north, so I thought I'd send some exotic plants and ingredients over." Aki made a charming smile while passing a single page with a death treath written in blood to the pale bear.
*****
The rest of the dinner was pretty silent in comparison. Some jokes here and there and some socializing, two marriage arrangements well rebuted, from the dwarves and humans, one meeting with the queen squeduled and a very constipated bear going off earlier.
Overall it was very satisfactory and productive.
The food wasn't bad, but Aki's avatar still had some flaws, one of then being that it had a weaker palate. Mostly because Aki couldn't get a good enough tongue and had to do with a so so one, since most demons didn't actually need to eat, getting a refined digestive system that didn't involve lots of acid was very hard.
Even though Aki did always like strong tastes, not being able to define the more subtle parts of the gourmet level meals in front of him made eating them himself quite hard, so he mostly just nibbled around and left the rest for the actual hungry demon in the room.
I mean, who doesn't like gluttonous characters?
"What do we do now then? The tournament is still nine hours away." Asked Tsu while expecting some other plan.
"Uhhh... Do we really need to do something? I was just thinking of cuddling to sleep. I could be the big spoon today. I was so awesome right now, can't I get a reward." He pouted and started tracing his finger over her six pack, getting himself a kiss in the head and a smile.