Chapter 264: Progress

Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav

Unlike the snow-covered Northlands, spring arrived early in the central plains of the south. The temperature would rise quickly within two weeks of the first spring rain, and spring’s arrival would be accompanied by numerous showers.

To use the churches’ way of saying things, the Winter Goddess Donya decided to give her power over to the Spring Goddess Arsheer. Amid this warm season of blooming flowers, the plants that had hibernated during the winter sprouted new buds. Starving animals begun their search for food. A new year had brought with it a new cycle; all living creatures were reinvigorated, and new lives were born in this golden era.

Alright then, I’ll stop speaking poetically and start talking about more practical things. Yep, let’s talk about making money. Spring brought with it plenty of business opportunities.

In this era of cold weapons, traveling typically relied on horses and horse-drawn carriages. In winter, the roads were caked in ice, and traveling was inconvenient; the transportation of goods and daily life products would be quite slow. Throughout the winter families and stores would use up many goods, and when it ended, there would be a need for restocking.

This was why each spring was a golden opportunity for any merchant to make money. It was also considered acceptable to raise their prices slightly. The high demand at this time of year would allow merchants who specialized in this line of work to make an astonishing amount in their first cargo shipment of the year—it would amount to a staggering thirty percent of their entire profits for a whole year.

The Lagraz Kingdom was a major producer of silk, green obsidian crystals, redwood, and rosmarinus trifoliate. Among their exported products, green obsidian crystals and rosmarinus trifoliate were both magical ingredients, and redwood was an excellent wood for crafting mage staves. These magical ingredients were all highly sought after by both the Mage Country and the Bardi Empire.

Since the market had demand, there would always be sellers. All the merchant groups would head out immediately after the final snow of the new year and sell off local products in other countries for profits. Then, in another country like the Bardi Empire, they would use their profits to buy various local products and sell them back in the Lagraz Kingdom for enormous profits.

However, just like my original world in the past, the great profits to be gained from the importing and exporting of goods would be accompanied by great risks. If merchants ran into bandits or unscrupulous governmental officials, it would be considered lucky if they could retain even half of their wares. If they were even unluckier, they might even run into military situations, political affairs, or even warfare and other unpredictable factors, which would cause them to lose everything.

Yet, in this generation, the most dangerous of all was to attract the attention of some “domain lord.” After all, no matter how great a merchant’s connections were, they would still be limited in a country that wasn’t their home. Some major nobles treated stealing wealth from foreign merchants as free breakfasts as long as there was some passable excuse they could come up with.

As ordinary people wouldn’t dare to take up the import-export trade, there would obviously be no ordinary people in this business. Those that dared to become import-export merchants were typically very difficult to take down. Many would have extremely strong supports, sometimes even being connected to the royalty of their origin country; they would be unafraid of the extortions of a normal domain lord. Some would have sufficient strength to protect themselves, and some would have their own personal mercenary groups or something similar. After all, the fact that they were able to protect themselves in foreign lands meant that they had trustworthy combat strength available in their hands.

The leader of the Veji Merchant Association had no connections to royalty or nobles and was obviously of the latter type. Although this merchant association was only a new one that had existed for a little less than twenty years, the hard work and careful management of the Veji Family’s leaders helped them successfully monopolize the trade routes between Bardi Empire’s Anliso City and Lagraz Kingdom’s Anton City. The scale of their mercenaries matched that of a small domain lord’s army. However, there was something different about the situation this year.

“…It seems that the best I can hope for is that I won’t lose everything.”

Sindy Veji, aged 46, was one of the higher-ups of the Veji Merchant Association. He had been conducting import-export trade along this route for almost thirty years now. Yet unlike past years, news about the Bardi Empire’s situation had been murky recently, all sorts of rumors abound.

Skilled merchants were instinctively sensitive to danger. In their eyes, a major upheaval within a country was synonymous to problems in its economy. Recently, there had been many rumors about strange magical monsters and undead appearing within the Bardi Empire, which greatly decreased the amount of merchants traveling between the Bardi Empire and the Lagraz Kingdom.

Sindy gazed at an approaching thunderstorm as he mused to himself; he was quite worried about the situation. Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about it. Many orders had been placed with their merchant association in the previous year, and several of them were from old customers that had been with them for over a decade; he absolutely couldn’t afford to anger them. No matter what, he had to make this trip to the Bardi Empire.

Unusual circumstances would require additional measures. The leader of the Veji Merchant Association was willing to spare no expense and paid heavy fees to invite two of the top ten mercenary groups in the Lagraz Kingdom. They had even required that the groups send out high-level elite combat strength to come guard them.

As a result, the strong were indeed willing to be hired by them. The leader of The Eagle of Sulo Mercenary Group, “Meteor Sword” Juste, and the leader of North Horn Mercenary Group, “White Dragon” Carlogier personally arrived to guard them. These two individuals were both very famous for their strength in the Lagraz Kingdom, and, as agreed, they brought their elite subordinates to guard the Veji Merchant Association. The problem was that the expected profits from this time’s import-export trip weren’t going to be enough to pay the price to hire these two mercenary groups.

“Heavens, please don’t let us meet with any trouble, especially not those undead that don’t care about their lives…”

If the hired mercenaries didn’t meet with any combat situations, the typical way that they worked was that they would only have to be paid eighty or ninety percent of the originally agreed upon price. There also wouldn’t be any need to compensate their losses, so that would be the best case scenario; the Veji Merchant Association would at least make enough money to cover all their costs.

“Sir Sindy, why do you always look so depressed? The weather’s really nice today. You should be happy that we can make good progress due to the weather.”

In Sindy’s eyes, this blonde-haired boy, who was all smiles, appeared to be only fifteen or sixteen years old. However, after talking a bit more with him, Sindy felt more and more like he didn’t understand this boy named Rolo.

Rolo seemed childish and ridiculous, but was especially talented in the merchant business. Some random sentences that he would say would require Sindy to ponder for quite a while before he understood them, and, in the end, he would feel like they were quite logical.

These strange members of the Silver Coin Squad came to Sindy of their own volition and offered to be hired as mercenaries for an incredibly low price, which astonished him. At first, he thought that there was some plot, but he understood when he looked at the wares that they were carrying. He must have thought too much about things, and they probably only intended to seek protection from a large merchant convoy. Their offer of working for cheap was only a cover for wanting to borrow his much larger group to help them make a small profit.

Normally, this type of joining in mid-way was somewhat taboo and typically wouldn’t be accepted. However, when Sindy directly told them that he had seen through their real intentions of “joining him for protection,” they admitted it quite honestly and even offered to pay him a sizable sum.

“…We absolutely need to deliver this shipment of Wenlo grape wine. Right now, the world isn’t peaceful, so how could we dare to travel by our weak little selves? We’ll pay you, and if there really is trouble on the way, it’s always safer with more people.”

Of course, how useful the bribe paid to Sindy was in allowing them to travel with him was unknown.

“Right, Captain Rolo, could you tell me more about what you said yesterday regarding the relationship between banks’ loans and market prices? There were some things that I didn’t quite understand. For example, if I can talk to the banks and…”

For Sindy, who had been a merchant for two-thirds of his life, he had gained much knowledge over the past few days. Although this Rolo fellow was quite young, his knowledge was vast, which was to be expected of a mage. About loans, banks, and… well, according to his vocabulary, he called it all ‘finance.’ His personal opinions were completely different from the norm regarding this subject. Although it seemed to be a deviation, when Sindy carefully thought about what Rolo said, they sounded quite reasonable.

Meanwhile, as I listened to Sindy, who was endlessly prattling on about the merchant business, I was regretting why I hadn’t stopped my stupid mouth from saying all those random things about finance.

“Originally, I had just intended to pretend to be a merchant as a convenient way to join them, so I randomly picked some economic theories from my original world to tell him. I never expected that he took them so seriously to the extent that he now wants to know everything about economics. I was a law major, okay; I’m not interested in economics to begin with. How would I possibly know about the foundational workings of economics? If he asks me any longer, I’ll have to start making things up.”

The best way to make a lie seem like the truth was to put the lie within another lie that would easily be seen through. This would make “intelligent” people reveal the “lie” by themselves, finding the “truth” that they were looking for.

Meeting Sindy’s merchant group was an unexpected lucky occurrence for me. However, joining them when they were all highly on guard was difficult. If we volunteered and recommended ourselves just like that, we would most likely be rejected, and if we showed off our true abilities, it would instead make them think that we had some nefarious plot. So, I decided to purchase some grape wine as cargo and made up a story about someone in the Bardi Empire ordering it. I intended to pretend to be a small merchant who was simultaneously trying to save money by being a mercenary.

However, the result gave me a headache. My disguise had been too successful, as after I told Sindy some words that I only happened to hear before in my past life, he actually treated these sayings as valuable treasures. If he kept asking me, I might get exposed as a fraudulent merchant.”

“Shh, this is a forbidden topic.”

Alright, since I didn’t know how to respond, I decided to treat it as a secret I didn’t want to tell him. Although it was totally uncute of me to answer in such a fashion, he actually viewed me with even greater importance. He changed from speaking directly to talking in a roundabout fashion, and tried striking up a conversation with me every day, all in order to dig up some more of my opinions about commerce.

Today was the third day since we joined them and left Buja Town. This guy actually came to find me early in the morning for more questions, and just as I was intending to make some stuff up, our attention was attracted to the sudden sounds of arguing and weapons clashing.

“Again?”

We all felt helpless. No matter if it was in literary or martial circles, nobody liked being number two. Those in the same line of work would always be competitors, and one of the side effects of us joining this merchant group as an adventuring squad acting as guards was to make the other two mercenary groups view us with displeasure and enmity.

“We already accepted this guarding mission. Originally, we’re already displeased with the two major mercenary groups splitting the guarding fees, so what’s with you all butting in?”

Even though we already said that we wouldn’t ask for any of their fees, sometimes those in this line of work only wanted to fight for their face. Over the past two days, the other two mercenary groups had challenged us numerous times. Normally speaking, since we were the ones in the wrong to begin with, this would all be over if we just let them win once. Yet although I kept telling my members to act weaker than they really were, none of them were that weak to begin with. All of them promised me so prettily face to face but immediately broke their promises when I wasn’t watching. In the end, those mercenaries were the ones on the losing end, and the two much larger mercenary groups that had lost repeatedly kept hoping to regain their face, but this resulted in them losing over and over again.

And, right now, this was doubtlessly yet another argument caused by some “accident.”

Suddenly, a purple magic flash appeared in the sky above our camp. The source of the light came from where everyone was gathered.

“…That should be Captain Juste’s famous Epic-ranked weapon, the Meteor Sword. As expected of Juste, a Gold-ranked weapon master. His attack is so frightening. It seems that he’s become serious. Eh? It’s already at such an extent, but Captain Rolo, you’re not worried about your own people being injured?”

I shook my head, smiling wryly.

“Worried? Of course I’m worried, but I’m worried about that Meteor Sword fellow. Let’s go over there and take a look. I hope that nothing will happen… damn it, that idiot actually challenged Little Red! Sindy, do you have any coffins in your cargo? I’ll buy one. Oh, whoops, it looks like a coffin will be unnecessary. Do you have any gravestones?”

While Roland and his companions were still on the road, the Bardi Empire’s plan for an ambush met with an unexpected amount of trouble.

With the assistance of the activation of many black obsidian Soul-Summoning Towers, the human-made Dimensional Descent of the Undead Plane had indeed succeeded. Large amounts of low-level undead were created. However, in this area filled with death, where even the colors of the world had become gray and white, there was an abnormal patch of green that incredibly stood out.

“You still haven’t figured out what that is? Damn it, why is there a forest here? And it’s a forest that actually attacks undead on its own.”

The lich Alu had been under the impression that he had received a simple task. All he had to do was command and control a large number of low-level undead to slaughter a bunch of completely unprepared humans. However, the abnormal forest that suddenly appeared had delayed his original plans far beyond what he expected. When he thought about the extremely brutal and cruel methods that Undead Emperors liked to use on those who failed to carry out their orders, Alu felt a chill run down his spine—and this was despite the fact that he should have lost the ability to have such sensations.

“Sir, there are more and more strange plants gathering in that forest. The forest is also expanding, and the most inconceivable of all is…”

The black-robed Blood Tribe, Kaka, spoke softer and softer. He seemed to be guessing and sounded quite uncertain.

“What is it? Just say it!”

“It really resembles that recently popular game, Plants vs. Zombies. All those plant types are from that game! I’m a big player of that game and recognized this instantly! And, all those plants are specially modified to work against the undead. Those peashooters are actually capable of shooting Bullets of Light, while those magical vines can actually absorb undead magic, and the plant bombs actually contain holy water inside. This entire forest seems like the natural enemy of the undead.”

Alu paused in surprise but then reacted with extreme anger. He used a magical large hand crafted of ice to grab that unlucky Blood Tribe member Kaka.

“What? Our undead army has actually become someone else’s game? Are others viewing us as mere monkeys monkeying around?”

The furious lich thought about what would happen to him if he didn’t finish his task, and his mana began to seep out uncontrollably. All the high-level undead near him hurriedly retreated. Only the unlucky Kaka who was freezing to the extent of turning pale in the ice claw’s grip was struggling to find a way to save himself.

“Sir, since the enemy’s troops are all commonly seen in a game, we can also think of ways to deal with the plants from the same game.”

The lich Alu nodded as he rubbed his chin, which consisted of nothing but bones.

“Such as?”

The unlucky Blood Tribe member forced his brain to work and somehow came up with a few ideas.

“For example, burrowing zombies, flying zombies, and buckethead zombies. Plants can only block from one direction, and we can send in aerial undead and take a circuitous route around them. There are so many methods.” 1 1

“Yep, yep, not bad! Take some troops with you and lead the way.”

Alright, at least dying in battle would be slightly better than being executed by his boss. Kaka wanted to cry as he led a fresh batch of undead armies to battle.

However, the result remained the same.

Flying zombies? Dandelion seed bombs were waiting for them.

Burrowing zombies? The magical vines and plants’ roots had long since created a terrifying underground network.

Equipping the zombies with steel buckets as protection? Gigantic piranha plants that suddenly popped out from underground swallowed everything.

Taking circuitous routes? This was reality, not a game. Hills and plains were covered with this forest, so how could they succeed in flanking it?

And the lucky (or unlucky) Kaka managed to survive as a miracle with injuries and tatters all over. He had only half a breath left in him, but when he saw how Alu’s eyes were burning with cyan colored soul flames, he suddenly felt like it would have been better for him to not return.

“Hehe, what else do you have to say for yourself?”

“Sir, it’s not our fault for being useless. That forest is cheating; all those plant troops types are ultra-rares; random draws for several tens of thousands of gold coins might not even give you one! But it has all of them! This is basically no different from a pay-to-win player abusing a free-to-play player—it’s too much!”

*Crack!*

With the sound of ice freezing over, the Blood Tribe member, who was addicted to games, was frozen into cubes of ice. The furious Alu turned to his subordinates, only to see that all of them were avoiding his gaze. In the end, he could only give his orders helplessly.

“Everyone, attack! Have the Soul-Summoning Towers continue creating new undead. We’re going to go all-out, let’s see who can win in a war of attrition. We absolutely must carry out the Undead Emperors’ will, otherwise… you all understand.”

Note:

1. All Plants vs. Zombies references!