“I am told the law changed four hundred years ago. At that time, if someone was ill, their family took care of them, and if they were addled, their family minded them, and if they were mad, their family took care of them too. One way or another. But the law took no interest, do you see?”

“I don’t, sorry.” I shrugged.

Carousel half smiled. “To lay hands on someone is battery. To threaten them is assault. To lock them in a room without their consent is kidnapping. Unless it is a family matter.”

“Ah. Got it.”

Carousel waved gently. “The point is that the law thought of everything as between families, or duties owed to your lord. Well, and contracts and other things, but no matter. There was a plague, and everything changed. Whole families were lost, and the survivors were often addled. Mad, but more often cattle-brained.”

Huh. I knew high fevers could cause brain damage, but this sounded pretty damn severe. No idea what disease could be.

“When you say cattle brained…”

“According to my old priest, the afflicted were simply helpless. Humans following animal urges without any wit and no family to care for them. Before the plague, you would simply drive people like that out of the village. They were too stupid to even beg. But there were too many of them after the plague. They would wander, damaging crops, walking out in front of horses or cattle or just dying in inconvenient places like wells.” Carousel smiled slightly. Again. It wasn’t any more comforting this time.

“And the solution was?”

“They had no family to look after them, and no one would accept the heavy lifetime burden of adopting them. However, with attention, one could tie one of these cattle-brained people to a plough.”

“I suddenly have an unpleasant feeling about where this is going.”

“Four hundred years later, the law is still in effect. A person without a family and who is unable to care for themselves is legally an animal. None of the obligations one owes to family attach to their care, and obviously, their ownership may be traded.”

“And I was right. Osain is a slave trader.”

“Oh heavens, if it was just that, we wouldn’t be nearly so eager to see him burn for an eternity.” She laughed. I think it was supposed to be charming. “No, it is that he is making animals. A slave is still a human. An animal is an animal. Without that… light inside of them that makes them think.”

“Oh, the feeling got worse.”

“Yes. People are found. Refugees, maybe, or a child of someone who cannot pay their debts. Or that person themselves. Someone who won’t have anyone stand up for them. They are taken behind the red doors of his establishment, and by means of what I understand to be a modestly complicated alchemical draught and an ice pick, a person is turned into a thing. An animal. Capable of following extremely simple commands like “Walk!” or “Stop!” and not much else.”

“And… you wouldn’t use horses or whatever to pull the plough because?”

“Horses are expensive. Human lives are cheap.” She said calmly.

Ah. Yep.

“But horses can pull faster and longer than humans, right?”

“Oh yes. Which is why you have lots of humans. There are lots of refugees, after all. And...” I could see her about to say something else, and snap her jaw shut. Must be the game interfering. Got to stay family friendly for the app store.

That was fine. I knew the rest anyhow.

I let a long sigh escape as I sat back on my throne.

“For what it’s worth, it’s not a particularly common thing to do. Horses and actual peasants tend to be a lot more efficient and the… victims… take a lot of supervision. A LOT of supervision. For some people, delivering that supervision is a benefit. It takes a certain kind of person to prefer this sort of arrangement.” Versai didn’t look much happier than Carousel did.

“More common as the war against the monsters dragged on, I bet.”

Neither spoke. They didn’t have to.

“I wondered why so many people were willing to fight to the death in the Floating Quarter. I guess there were a bunch of reasons.” I was surprised by my voice. I sounded tired. I thought I would be outraged.

Carousel nodded quietly at that.

“More in the last… no. I can imagine it. The Marchioness saw it as a regrettable wartime necessity, turning possible threats to the public order into useful and productive members of the labor force.”

“Almost word for word what I heard someone say, my Lord,” Carousel’s voice was bitter. “the one time someone managed to point out in court that Mr. Gashben’s “Leisure Farm” was more damaging to morale than news of lost battles, while being infinitely less productive than his neighbors.”

“And Osain was the local ‘merchant.’ A nasty, smelly job done by a disposable person in the Floating Quarter. All of a sudden, I don’t care that he was confined in a tiny invisible box and torn apart by monsters over and over again. I kind of wish I could send him back. Along with his customer base. What a pity none of them survived.”

I reached out and shook the little bell. “Sebastian, come to my Throne Room please.”

“Sebastian, realizing that this is going to sound insane, could you kill someone for me?”

There was a complicated look on everyone’s face. Sebastian himself went through a truly spectacular series of expressions, eventually settling on exasperated amusement.

“I suppose it would depend on the person and the circumstances.”

“Osain.”

“Oh. Him.” Sebastian had the most remarkable voice. Like a warm chocolate cake filled with razors. Then his face changed again to a sort of irritated wonder. “No. No I cannot. And I don’t think you can either.”

“Pardon?”

“Seriously contemplate killing him. Imagine summoning him to this room, pulling out my old knife and stabbing a hole through his rotten heart. Leaving his gutted flesh hanging from the rafters like a carcass in an abattoir and enjoying a glass of wine as the blood drains out. Leaving the peeled skin from his face pinned to the wall as a warning to anyone else contemplating such a complete moral collapse.”

“Christ Almighty, Sebastian!”

“Or just imagine killing him. Tower Master.”

I shook off the original mental image, and tried to visualize killing Osain. It was… hard. Even with everything I had seen and done. Even having killed the monster in Gradden March. The notion of grabbing hold of a human being, even a terrible one, and killing them…

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

It was one thing watching Kirito turning people into vanishing pixels in SAO. Even as a power fantasy, it was sanitized. A show like Helsing or Black Lagoon or Drifters was bloody, but the blood never seemed to stick. If you were the MC and you killed someone, you might agonize over it a bit, but then you got over it. And then you carried on like nothing had happened.

I yelled at Shinji to stop being such a pussy and get in the goddamn robot. I yelled at the people on the screen to pull the damn trigger already. A villain isn’t going to just un-vilain themselves. Sometimes a protagonist needs to get their hands bloody.

A lot harder when it’s you, and the hilt of the knife is pressing into the small of your back. I took a deep breath, then another, then a third. The empty ritual comforted me. I closed my eyes and imagined.

And opened my eyes again. “What the Hell?”

“Just so, my Lord.” Sebastian looked like he was choking.

“Like, if we are casually discussing killing him-”

“Or stitching him to the floor of his shop of horrors and burning it down around him-”

“No problem imagining it. Stitching, really?”

“Oh yes. Just takes some very strong, very long, needles and a lot of patience, my Lord. He has wooden floors.” Sebastian apparently spoke from experience there.

I sat up with a jolt. “Does he have anybody in there?”

“No. I checked. First thing.” Sebastian hesitated. “Second thing.”

“What was first?”

“Just standing in shock outside my own front door for the first time in eternity.”

Fair. I rubbed the spot between my eyebrows. Economy was actually an important job. If you don’t have a solid economy under you, you can’t support your war machine. So I needed someone to at least fill the roll until an actual expert was around. I’d have to try and bribe Jim. In the meantime…

“I don’t think he’s a valid target.”

“Pardon, my Lord?” All the summons looked at me curiously.

“Osain is unfortunately one of my people. Like you. And the first thing I learned about violence in this world is that my people need a valid target to attack. Let me give you an example. Carousel, please fire a glass arrow out the window at a tree.”

She looked like she really wanted to, but shook her head. “See? Can’t be done. And now- Versai, please stab Carousel in the leg.” Versai really, REALLY wanted to, but she also shook her head.

“Sorry, Tower Master. I can’t do that.”

“Yeah. No intentional friendly fire, because they aren’t valid targets. Can I release Osain from my… let's go with ‘employ?’” I tried to will it to happen. “No, no I cannot.”

I drummed my fingers. More mechanics. Interesting, interesting. I tried to imagine stabbing Sebastian, and ran into the same total blank. That complete certainty that what I wanted to do was so impossible, I couldn’t even marshal my muscles to try.

“Sebastian, could you imagine killing me? Seriously, I mean?”

“No, Tower Master, I cannot.”

“Mmm.”

Very interesting. Sebastian had been a dungeon monster for a while, and had held me at knifepoint. He absolutely would have killed me then. Yoko and Mrs. Hungry were presumably in the same state. Was there a way to use that fact? Not sure.

“Alright, we can’t kill him. Can we lock him up?”

“I… suppose so. I don’t feel any inhibition about doing so.” Sebastian said.

“Good!” I opened the interface for my Council and removed Osain from the Economy position. Various horrors flashed through my mind. Chaining him to the bottom of the sewer, with just his face above the surface. Having an oubliette installed. The Room of Ten Thousand Rats.

Something was building in me. I knew what they were describing was real. I could absolutely see people, maddened by an endless war, under constant threat of extermination, turning helpless people into animals. Just for the sheer power of it. Just to be the monster.

And here I was. In the perfect position to be the monster. And with a little care, I could keep Osain alive and in agony, forever. Actually, if I used my brain for four consecutive seconds, it would be childishly easy to arrange a fatal ‘accident.’ Versai had mentioned that she drowned once, despite not needing to breathe. There was a river of sewage right there. The dots hardly needed connecting.

And not only would nobody tell me “No,” they would cheer. I would be the hero, delivering justice one gulp of turdwater at a time.

“Find a closet somewhere and nail the door shut.”

“Tower Master?”

“He won’t starve, doesn’t need to use the bathroom, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t even get tired standing around. He can’t even go crazy, or at least, I don’t think he can. So shove him in a closet and nail the door shut. Pick a closet he can’t break out of.”

“Tower Master is merciful.” Sebastian hid his disapproval. Carousel didn’t.

“Two votes for the Room of Ten Thousand Rats, hmm?”

“I’m sure my Lord’s arrangement is appropriate.” Carousel’s voice was brittle in its courtesy.

I tried to think about how I would explain it, and I just… I didn’t have a better reason than “I’m softer than a microwaved marshmallow in real life, and the thought of eternally torturing someone makes me sick.”

That I had spent a life being called a creep and made my peace with it because I knew I had never really hurt someone else. Until Kim. And that was arrogance and carelessness, not something I wanted.

“Noted. If a better option comes up, we’ll look into it. Get to it.” I forcefully changed the topic. “Sebastian, what does our current tax revenue look like?”

“Modest, my Lord, but I think you may mean “profit,” here. Which is nil, unfortunately. We are paying out vastly more than we are bringing in, spending down the treasury at an alarming rate. That will stabilize once we start bringing in more resources and can start mobilizing the internal economy. At the moment, I am not collecting rent as a way to offset what we should be paying our laborers.”

“Well damn. Set aside half a percent of revenue for the moment, just to build a reserve. We need to figure out how to pay you all, and that means budgeting for it. Tell Jim that I need someone for the econ job, which now pays and is unlikely to eat up much of his punching practice time. All the councilor jobs are being paid. He’s invited to join now, before the salaries are set, which means he will be in a position to help set his own salary.”

Sebastian brightened up at that. “Yes, my Lord. I will see it all done.”

I dismissed them and reclined the throne. God, what a mess! And it wasn’t even my mess! What was that thing some of my clients talked about? Inherited liabilities? Something like that. When you bought a company, you also bought all of its debts. I ‘inherited’ the money making operation known as the Gradden March Floating Quarter, and everything that came with it.

I sighed. Should I move people around? Sebastian I could slot almost anywhere- the combination of aristocrat, mafia don and spy with a history of military service made him a Swiss Army Knife of a Councilor. Madame could actually also fill in for military, as she served in the Royal Mage Corps. To say nothing of economy or her current development role. Even Seneschal- she managed an awful lot of people.

Versai and Jim were a lot more limited in their role filling options, especially since neither seemed to want to manage people. Versai became a bodyguard rather than work as a squad leader, and as far as I can tell, all of Jim’s employees are his kids.

Vicious psychopaths that they are. Hard to imagine any of them fixing a Tiki drink.

I had a manufacturing site, essentially, in Gradden March. Hidden Moon Mountain would be a raw material site. It couldn’t supply all the materials that Gradden March could use, but it could supply a lot.

Roads. Alianna said I needed roads. Well, I have a road building pack and one order left.

“Marci, how long would it take you and the Judiths to build a road from here to the Gradden March relic site?”

I have no idea how that works. Is it connected to the Sky Realm somehow? Is there even anything physically there?

“You have all the materials we need. Given the size of our crew? We can do it in one.”

“Really?”

She just looked at me. The imaginary unfiltered Lucky Strike hanging from her lips twitched at me in contempt.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s see what linking the site to the Tower will do!”

And then it will be time to fight the wave. But that’s fine. I have so many fun things to try. And so much frustration to vent.

I don’t regret trading orders for my life. I am a little irritated that I had to. But I really don’t know what I should have done differently.

“Just need to lay the last stone, Tower Master.” Marci gave me a look. Well, she always gave me a look, she existed in a state of perpetual professional irritation.

“All Awakened, to your battle stations!”

“Our what now?” Marci’s look intensified.

“Battle stations. It’s where you are supposed to be during the battle.”

“We don’t have any.”

“What? Yes you do.”

“No, she’s right. You generally tell us all exactly where to stand.” Versai butted in. Carousel nodded over her shoulder.

Once again, a beautiful moment was sabotaged. Goddess protect my sanity, because it must be fraying by now.

Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Okay, back in it.

I told them all exactly where to stand. The battle plan and the field layout had undergone a certain degree of refinement after the last battle. No more linear tracks, it was all about scattering and confusing them, hurting them with small traps and forcing hidden units to reveal themselves. Like the pins in a pachinko machine- the little homicidal balls would bounce around a lot before reaching my now alarmingly deep moat and glass-smooth stone walls.

With a few seemingly open places in easy artillery range. Because blowing up groups of monsters will never not be satisfying.

I looked over everything from my balcony. We were ready. “Workers-finish the job, then into your bunker!”

Oh yes. My workers had a bunker now. A bunker called “Huddling under an overhang from the Rampart, in easy sprinting distance of the front door.” I’d do better tomorrow. It’s the Tech Bro way- come up with a cool name, push out a borderline-broken first iteration, and swear blind that version two will be better, as long as the funding is there.

Marci and the Judiths shoved the last paving stone into place. My battlefield now had a road running through it, but practicality be damned, I made them snake it through the barricades and traps. No pit traps or anything on the road itself, of course, but I’d rather blow up the road and rebuild every night than leave a literal clear path for the monsters.

There was a little flash of white light, and a gentle *ding* sound. And that was it.

“Any pop ups? Rewards for completing my first road?” There was nothing. The sun was setting quickly, drawing down the curtain of the night. Maybe literally in this world.

There was another *ding* from behind me. “Rache, Rikka, scout for enemies and mark them. Artillery, fire at whoever is closest.” I turned to go see what was making the noise.

My realm management interface was flashing at me. I looked over at it, and tapped the glass.

Gradden March road link established. 800 Rune Bones/Wave, Provides Workers for connected resource sites. Develop your Sky Realm to unlock even more benefits!

Wait. Wait. Wait just a goddamn minute. I can use workers from Gradden March to farm resources? Is that just for my Sky Realm, or can I use them here at the Tower? What about resources from other Relic Sites? I thought they would all be next to each other in the Sky Realm. Do I also need to link them to the Tower? Or is it the linking to the Tower that generates benefits for the Tower instead of for the Sky Realm?

A roar shook the windows of the Tower. It took a hideously mutated throat to produce both bone shaking base and a piercing high pitched scream at the same time. I rushed to the balcony and looked out. There was a Giant sized monster smashing its way out of the forest. Not as big as the titans at the end of the Gradden March battle, but almost halfway there. It had two heads- a misshapen tiger and a mutilated bird- coming out of its broad shoulders. It looked like a preview of Hell.

“I do not have time for this. Miyuki, shoot that ugly thing. Versai- bring me two heads!”