A Black Market LitRPG

Three days later…

Sebastian sipped on a cup of tea at a luxurious restaurant in the Central Sector. As he placed the cup down, he could already hear slightly agitated footsteps approaching him from behind.

“The great leader of the Seven Snakes, this agitated. You should be happier – your opening day for the shopping arcade went extremely well, save for the slight delay.” Sebastian spoke without turning around.

“A delay you engineered.”

“An accusation unfounded.”

“I know the Ardent Cretins have a tight grip on the unions here. You’ve been pressuring them to increase the price on us for arcite fuel.” Kyle spoke directly as he sat opposite Sebastian, his face clearly incensed.

“Mr. Kyle, I am a proponent of the free market. You cannot sincerely believe I am to blame for the increase in price. Perhaps the market has shifted significantly since you built the shopping arcade.”

“I doubt the market can shift enough for a company to be willing to renegade on a prior contract.”

“Perhaps the company may be facing certain personal issues of their own.” Sebastian smiled.

“Personal issues created by you?” Kyle scoffed.

Sebastian sighed. “I do not control the union of business owners. If they decide to increase the price, I too am at their mercy. And I’ll prefer not to retaliate less the Mad Dog gets loosed on us again.”

“Let’s cut to the chase. How much would it take for you to stand down?”

“Not everything is about money, Mr. Kyle. Isn’t that why you provided an entire free bathhouse service to the entire district?”

“You want me to shut down the shopping arcade.”

“Again, not my wishes. I do not speak for the union. But right now, they are feeling very, very threatened by you. Who am I to restrain them? I am just but one man.”

“Seems that I have been talking to the wrong person then. My apologies.” Kyle got up to leave, not bothering to talk any longer. It was clear that he and Sebastian would not be able to come to a compromise.

Kyle knew why Sebastian had launched an attack: the new shopping arcade was pulling in too many customers and causing the other businesses in the city to suffer. Coupled with the addition of a new transportation hub as well as a free bathhouse, the footfall was tremendous.

Landlords across the south sector were losing their tenants as they were lured by the Golden Snake construction with competitive rental rates and promises of increased traffic. Even local small gangs who ran a protection racket were also threatened by their food market stall owners escaping their grasp, all fleeing towards the shopping mall, selling affordable food for the poor who were already there for the free bathhouse.

Kyle already had plans to establish a cheap food market area next to the shopping mall to centralize the traffic further, increasing his power and influence. However, while he expected local business owners to be angry, he did not expect Sebastian to get involved, especially considering that the shopping arcade was nearly five districts away from where the Ardent Cretins ruled.

He’s threatened by the growing influence I have over the local population. Kyle had been doing public projects ever since he joined – free soup kitchens, public cleanup events and so on. He knew from centuries of crime in the Galactic Era that being in a gang meant making a balance between the amount of good and evil done to society.

The addition of the shopping arcade was meant to make Kyle and the Seven Snakes nearly indispensable in the society of Raktor, where any attacks against them would suffer severe public lash back from the residents, who now had a taste of a higher standard of living thanks to the improved utilities and jobs provided by the gang.

However, this would not come to fruition as long as they did not have a stable supply of arcite ore. Even the black market was somehow afraid of selling directly to Kyle, forcing Kyle to spend far more than what was the market price in order to get it.

It’s an economic war.

Kyle headed back to the shopping arcade, where the footfall had significantly reduced compared to the opening day. The first light-thrower show was a complete dud, causing many to lose confidence in the shopping arcade.

In the office, the rest of the Seven Snakes’ higher-ups were already discussing the situation along. Keith noticed Kyle’s entry, speaking quickly to him. “It’s not looking good, sir. Even our construction company are unable to get new building projects due to the perceived failure of the shopping arcade. Many of the lesser nobles are unwilling to give us the tender either, favouring other companies.”

Damian nodded. “It’s the same with food and water as well. Many of the large suppliers of flour and fish are somehow refusing to supply any restaurant or stall owners that are working under us. If we don’t solve this issue by this month, most of them are not going to renew their tenancy contract regardless of how much footfall we have.”

“We need arcite fuel to keep up the transportation network. Forget about refuelling the shopping arcade – they don’t even want to refuel our wagons regardless of where we drive to.” Monca grumbled.

Reese was clearly dejected, slumping into a chair. The first public showing of his invention had failed tremendously, hitting him hard.

“The fucking Ardent Cretins need to be taken down a peg. Why can’t we do the same thing we did with the Ilysian Punks and just bloody their nose for a bit.” Niko suggested.

“Are you crazy? We might have gotten larger over the past month, but we’re nowhere close to matching the numbers the Ardent Cretins have. Hell, we might not even come out unscathed if we fought the Red Lions right now!” Damian retorted.

“Has Wrent replied to our request for commercial contracts?” Kyle asked.

“No, sir. It seems the Ardent Cretins have already gotten to them.”

“So we are truly alone in this war…” Kyle sat down at his desk, clasping his hands together as he racked his brain, formulating a quick plan.

“Let’s summarize the situation: We can buy what we need, however, the prices are extortion. We are being isolated by everyone under the Ardent Cretins’ thumb.” Kyle began.

“Yes, sir. Assuming we continue to buy at the current black market price we’ve been paying, we’ll run dry in less than a month.” Keith nodded his head.

“The main issue we need to tackle right now is how do we get more arcite fuel. Any ideas?”

Damian raised his hand. “We could try strong-arming the companies into submission.”

“Not feasible. The Ardent Cretins would be guarding them, and I do not want to come into a physical war with them.”

“I did mention we could either look to Versia or the Culdao Peaks for sources of arcite ore, however, it would be a tough ordeal to set up a transportation route that would not be hijacked or harassed by other gangs.”

“So we’re isolated, unable to expand and unable to trade outside the city.” Kyle summarized.

Keith squinted his eyes. “You don’t seem particularly flustered. Do you already have a plan?”

Gordon’s office was now littered with countless pieces of paper as Gordon and Reese argued and jotted down changes, continuously modifying a single engraving.

In the middle of the office was a dismantled light capturer, as well as a pile of depleted arcite ore devoid of any energy.

Kyle was there too, his right hand holding a normal arcite ore while the other held a depleted one.

The system says that it can’t be used, but is that truly the case? Kyle knew that arcite fuel generators effectively extracted the energy from such ore into a liquid form, forming arcite fuel that would then provide power in a similar fashion.

Kyle posited that it was possible to refill the ore again with arcia energy, seeing as arcia energy could be converted into other forms of energy. He just had to find the right engraving.

“Okay, let’s go over this again. The light capturer can capture images by the reflection of light rays, which then exists as energy for a short period of time before the images are stored onto our reel.” Gordon explained.

“Exactly, so what we need to do is to modify the engraving such that the collected light energy would be pumped into the arcite ore!” Reese nodded his head in agreement.

“So why the hell are you making the engraving bigger before we even made any modifications!”

“Right now, the engraving is far too small to see tangible results. The amount of light energy collected is miniscule – we need a larger one to prove it works!”

While the two of them chased down a path of solar energy hinted to them by Kyle, Kyle himself was focused on finding a way to convert mechanical energy and pumping it back into the arcite ore. The efficiency would be much lower, but it would be a form of regenerative fuel as well. Perhaps this would allow me to harvest wind energy as well.

If Kyle had his way, he would have built a partial Dyson Sphere around a star or spread out a net of dark energy harvesters in deep space and be done with it, but he had to start small here.

He grabbed a copy of an arctech wagon’s mechanical shaft engraving.

He created a simple prototype setup, where the mechanical shaft engraving could be turned continuously with a rotating handle while the engraving was trailed off to form a connection to a metal plate on which the depleted arcite ore rested.

Turning the shaft as fast as he could, the metal joints of the test setup creaked as the rotation nearly shook the frame apart. However, he could see a trickle of arcia energy being deposited back into the arcite ore. It seems that the engraving is tailored in one direction. I will have to reverse-engineer it.

Kyle had experience with the engravings, working together with Reese and Gordon to break down the base parts. Reese brought his entire book collection of arctech design, with Kyle spending two days just reading through the books, learning how to break down the engravings into modular parts.

It wasn’t as easy as him simply duplicating the engraving like he had done in the past. All of the engravings he had done before were simple copycats of the textbook he had or a copy of what the goblin shaman had recorded in its den. He had never delved deep enough into the inner workings of the engraving.

His proficiency in arctech engraving began to grow over the days as he continuously iterated his prototype setup, trying new modifications. Every try seemed to result in failure, with the efficiency of conversion being less than 1%. It’s not enough; I need a higher percentage if we are to survive this economic war!

A week passed, and even Gordon and Reese were starting to lose hope. Kyle had lost count after five hundred tries, simply going through the motions and continue tweaking the engraving. As he engraved the next design iteration onto yet another metal shaft, a new system message popped up.

His brain was immediately loaded with information on how to improve the quality of the arctech engraving, his hands working quickly as he threw away the half-engraved metal pipe and started anew. His fingers were steady as a rock as he slowly etched into the surface of the metal, even and distributed. Kyle even began to feel a slight sense of disgust when he recalled the now relatively shoddy work he had done in the past.

Completing the engraving, he placed the completed metal shaft into the test setup, the mental exhaustion of working over a week already taking its toll on his brain despite the consumption of Stamina Potions. He spun the handle again, with the shaft’s engraving clearly working better and smoother.

The depleted arcite ore seemed to recover at a visible rate, though it was still not as efficient as the conversion from arcite energy to mechanical.

“Better than nothing.”