My decision to drip-feed myself answers as I had questions and not just sit down with Biribo and have the whole world explained in an afternoon had, to be honest, been made simply because I was overwhelmed at the time. The discovery that I’d already glossed over some of his early pointers had validated that choice, however. It was just lucky I’d forgotten something not very relevant like the theoretical possibility of buying scrolls instead of something important which could get me killed. There’s simply a limit to how much data a human brain can absorb at a time, otherwise “studying” wouldn’t be a concept.

As if I needed further validation, it turned out an innocuous question could lead me down a twisting rabbit hole that burrowed right to the heart of what was wrong with this world. At least that happened while we were camped out in yet another stand of khora, observing another stretch of sleepy backroad and waiting for a caravan to ambush, so I had time to get into it.

Of all things, it started with coins.

“Silver, black, red, gold, blue, and white,” I recited, slowly tilting my open hand so that the coins piled in it glinted in the dim light. They were very shiny. Ephemeran coins, aside from being made with an exquisite precision that matched and exceeded modern Earth metallurgy, never seemed to get dull or scratched. They also all had bands of color just inside their outer rims, which was something I’d only ever seen back home in commemorative coins that were never intended to be carried about or change hands. Whatever it was made of, the colored parts remained as glossy and apparently impervious as the rest. The actual engravings depicted either abstract shapes reminiscent of sunbursts or Sanora’s face from a variety of angles depending on the coin. She was immediately recognizable; whoever had designed these had clearly seen the goddess in person, as I had.

“Yep, that’s the ascending order,” said Aster. “Don’t forget they’re in pairs, too.”

“That’s how you calculate the values,” Donon added. “There’s discs, halos, and stars, see?”

There were indeed three styles of coin, each available in all six colors. Plain round coins, and then others with circular holes in the center.

“So, within a shape group, each color up in the chain is ten times the value of the previous one,” Donon lectured. “So a black disc is worth ten silver discs, and a red disc is ten black discs, and so on up. But! To get the value of the next shape group, you gotta consider the positions of the pairs. The halos are the second tier up from discs, right? So you count from the second pair—but from the first coin in the second pair, cos it’s from the first tier. Once you’ve got your starting position, you double it, so a silver halo is worth twice what a red disc is worth. Then they go up by tens; a black halo is ten silvers, and so on. Then! For the stars, it’s the same deal: they’re the third tier, so you calculate from the third pair—but you’re counting from the second tier, so it’s from the second coin in the third pair. Therefore, a silver star is worth ten white halos.”

“Yeah, you’ll notice a complete lack of star coins in your bag there, Lord Seiji,” Sakin drawled. “People like us will probably never see one of those in person. There was almost no point in Donon explaining how to count them.”

“Hey!” Donon protested. “It’s important to know this stuff! Just cos we don’t get to handle stars doesn’t mean Lord Seiji won’t.”

“I’m not a hundred percent convinced white stars even exist,” said Harold.

I carefully stowed my handful of coins back into their pouch, hung the pouch back on my belt, and only then clapped both hands to my forehead and dragged them down my face.

“That’s the expression he makes whenever somebody mentions limns,” Donon stage whispered.

“No,” I said, hearing the deep spiritual exhaustion in my own voice, “no, this is much worse.”

Eighteen different denominations of coins? No linear progression of values—or rather, three different ones, separated by weird arbitrary leaps? Not to mention the scale of them. I was having trouble coming up with a comparative value of Ephemera coins to any currency I knew, just because the kinds of things I’d bought here had almost nothing to do with anything purchasable on Earth. The only point in common I’d found was street food, so calculating roughly from that, a silver disc was worth…maybe one yen? One or two—small enough to be effectively not worth carrying. That also explained why Gilder kept using “graydisc” as a pejorative. Then on the other end of the spectrum, there were coins apparently worth so much they couldn’t be used for anything except maybe major real estate transactions or international trade agreements. And even then, who would accept them? What the hell could you spend them on if you had one? It’d be like trying to get change for a trillion-yen banknote, if the government were stupid enough to issue such a thing.

Also, if my math was right, I had grossly overvalued a gold halo. Apparently I’d bribed Captain Norovena with…not pocket change, exactly, but way less than I’d have sold my professional ethics for. Just how crooked could this country possibly be? Not to mention that Aster’s Guild insurance payout for the deaths of her teammates was a downright insulting sum, now that I added it up. Both these facts matched my general observations about how shitty everything was here.

Then again, maybe my math was just wrong—or my starting estimate of how much the currency was worth based on how much a snack from a roadside stand cost. Who knew how medieval khora-based agriculture stacked up against modern food production? Also, I couldn’t discount the possibility that just thinking about this monetary system might have permanently scrambled the mathematical circuits in my brain.

“Nonsense,” I groaned. “All of it! I can almost forgive the measuring system—almost—that’s just the kind of thing primitive agrarian societies with no scientific tradition come up with, but this? At a certain point, someone’s deliberately minimizing utility and maximizing gratuitous pains in the ass!”

“Hey, don’t blame us for the coins,” Goose protested. “Look at ‘em. You don’t think we can forge anything like that, do you? Coins come from the goddess.”

“Goddesses,” Biribo corrected. “Virya’s coins have exactly the same values, just different artwork. A few of them trickle into circulation around here, with Shylverrael so close, but the two economies are mostly separate.”

“How, exactly, do coins come from goddesses?”

“Dungeons,” Aster said, as if this should be obvious, or made any damn sense at all. “Well, occasionally Spirits, I hear. But yeah, mostly dungeons. Lots of useful stuff comes from dungeons.”

“Scrolls and artifacts and Blessings, I know.”

“Nah, she means lots of useful stuff!” Biribo chirped. “Dungeon loot runs economies and drives civilization! Adventurer stuff like you mentioned, but also a lot of trade goods that Ephemera can’t produce the old-fashioned way—or at least not easily. Metal ingots, bolts of cloth, pottery clay… And they increase in value as you go to the more dangerous parts of dungeons. Adventurers in the deepest depths might earn a new scroll or artifact, but they can also haul out jewels, lumber, exotic fruits that won’t actually grow anywhere…”

“Not to mention there’s a good trade in edible monster parts,” Goose added. “Or medicinal. In cities that have a dungeon there’s always a whole industry of followers who go in behind the adventurers and cart out the big shipments of stuff that appears in the rooms they clear. We’re talking pallets of metal and stone and stuff.”

“I hear the Emperor of Lancor lives on an all dungeon diet!” Donon chimed in enthusiastically. “Manticore steak, sazja fruit and glittershrooms, the works!”

“Huh,” I grunted, contemplating. A whole economy based on dungeon drops. My innate suspicion of otaku bullshit was jangling, but I also had the nagging feeling that this piece of information had brought me close to understanding something very important that I couldn’t quite put my finger on just yet. “Well, anyway, I’ve got suspicions a culture at this stage of development shouldn’t be able to run on fiat currency, but that’s just a hunch. I’ll freely admit I don’t understand economics well enough to fully argue that point.”

“Sorry we’re so undeveloped, Lord Seiji,” Kasser snipped.

“It’s not your fault,” I said kindly. “But what I do understand is that what you’re describing can’t work. If coins are just constantly generated in dungeons and flowing into the economy, even if it’s just trickles of whatever fits in an adventurer’s pockets, that’s a recipe for infinite inflation. How are they taking money back out of circulation? Ceremonially dumping it into the core?”

“Not exactly, but close!” Biribo said cheerfully. “Nah, what keeps money scarce is buying miracles!”

“Wait.” I held up one hand. “Hang on, I need to prepare myself emotionally for this.”

I turned and trudged over to the ground-level outcropping of khora shell which I had identified as handily bench-shaped when we picked this spot to encamp. Lowering myself onto it with a sigh, I turned sideways, stretching my legs across it, and leaned back against the bulk of the towering khora behind me. Eyes closed, I let my head come to rest against the rock-hard, slightly fuzzy outer shell, and slowly breathed in and out twice.

“Okay.” Without opening my eyes, I made a beckoning gesture at Biribo. “Hit me.”

Aster mumbled something as she walked off the direction of the place where Twigs was keeping watch over the road with Arider’s spyglass. I only caught “dramatic” and “big baby.”

“If a given religious institution is accepted by one of the goddesses as valid,” Biribo explained, “they can purchase a miracle. Of all the various Sanorite and Viryan religions across Ephemera, that’s how the ‘true faiths’ single themselves out: they’re not proven until they buy a miracle from their goddess. How much a miracle costs depends on a lot of factors, but let’s just say you pay for something like that mostly in star coins, if not entirely.”

“And that’s why we put up with this monetary system,” Sakin said with his usual laid-back good cheer. “Believe me, Lord Seiji, you’re not the first person to notice it’s unwieldy and overly complicated. Kings and popes want the official goddess-coins coming in so they can save up enough to buy miracles, therefore they conduct all their business in those coins and crack down on any alternative currencies that pop up. Fflyr Dlemathlys is one of the few countries that doesn’t actually have laws on the books against barter. They all want those coins flowing, because coin always flows upward.”

“What kinds of miracles are we talking about?” I asked.

“Could be anything,” said Biribo. “There are no rules about it. Considering the cost pretty much requires you to have a kingdom’s worth of income at least, it’s usually something on that scale. Curing a plague, ending a drought, conjuring a new island to expand your realm… Or inflicting plagues and droughts on enemy countries, if you’re nasty. Some of ‘em are more personal, or frivolous. Kings have gotten themselves way overtuned spells or artifacts that made them nearly as powerful as a Dark Lord or Hero, and some of the world’s grandest and most beautiful cities were created in an instant by a goddess by way of miracle. And there’ve been some miracles that neither goddess was willing to perform at any price. But broadly? To get a miracle, you need a legitimate Viryan or Sanorite religious institution willing to intercede for you, a few literal tons of coins, and a wish that the goddess decides she’s willing to grant for the price you offer. The sky’s the limit.”

And just like that, I understood it. The thought that had been tickling at the back of my brain crashed into full comprehension.

These “miracles” were only the most overt example. At every level, from Spirit gifts to dungeon drops, they had their fingers on the scales. A Spirit’s challenge might be anything, and its reward might be anything. Dungeon rewards might scale with difficulty, but that still left a world of wiggle room. Conceptualizing Ephemera as a game world—which it was to the goddesses, even if it lacked RPG mechanics and its residents didn’t see it that way—I would say the entire magic system was a series of gimmicks that looked like RNG but were opportunities for the admins to silently intercede. They controlled not only who got what Blessings and artifacts and spells, but how easily, and even more prosaic things like how much money flowed into and out of the economy and what trade goods would be cheaply available in a given country. At a casual glance, you could mistake the magic system for fair, or at least impartial, but everything was under their direct control.

My god, they even made the currency so deliberately confusing it prevented everybody using it from grasping the value of what they were spending. That was exactly what gacha game designers did!

That was when the true, bitter reality of it sunk in fully: rather than an RPG world, I was living in a giant gacha game.

“I’m going to slaughter them both,” I said aloud, my voice amazingly calm, considering.

“Heh.” At Biribo’s little chuckle, my eyes snapped open as I belatedly remembered I was trying not to let on in front of him that I meant to turn on Virya as soon as I could manage. Shit. The little lizard flicked out his tongue at me in amusement. “I think you should know, boss, that at least half of all Dark Lords and a surprising number of Heroes have set out with that exact ambition. Before you go and do anything reckless, keep in mind that not one of ‘em ever made any meaningful progress toward pulling it off.”

And wasn’t that just the fucking cherry on top.

“Seemed to work out okay for the Devil King,” Sakin said brightly. Immediately, everyone raised their heads and looked at him with the alarm of people who’d just heard one of their ultimate taboos broken.

Interesting.

Biribo buzzed the top of Sakin’s head, making him duck. “If getting exiled to the Void is your idea of a success story, you’re even more screwed up than I thought.”

“And I bet that’s really saying something,” Sakin agreed.

“Lord Seiji,” Twigs interrupted, “there’s a wagon. I think it’s… Yes, it has the Auldmaer Company emblem.”

“Ah, thank you, Twigs.” I swung my legs off my perch and picked my way over the uneven ground to join her.

We had a better vantage for this ambush than our previous one, as the khora forest came to within a few meters of the road, up an incline overlooking it. I’d chosen a spot a bit more distant, where the hill was less steep, to mitigate the hassle of hauling our stolen booty up it. The wagon was indeed approaching; taking the spyglass from Twigs, I raised it to verify the Auldmaer logo on its side, then focused on the alchemical bomb Sakin had carefully planted in the road.

It consisted of a bag of the sleeping powder, surrounded by a layer of the explosive compound which would propel the stuff in a big cloud all over the place once ignited, then a piece of fabric artfully draped over the top and coated in the basalt shimmer stuff which made the finished product look like an innocuous, flattish rock. Sakin had assembled it with a practiced deftness which told me this wasn’t his first time. Now it lurked there at the edge of the road, just waiting for our targets to come within range.

Downwind of us, of course.

“Hang on, Auldmaer?” Harold asked. “Why are we robbing them again? I thought those guys were our friends now.”

“Indeed,” I said, still watching through the glass as the wagon drew closer. “Master Auldmaer’s struggling little trading company has just made a killing by cornering the market on certain rare luxury goods, thanks to us. The logical thing for him to do now is to diversify into more stable and conservative markets, like distributing mundane trade goods between villages and Clan castles around Dount; this stabilizes the company’s cash flow while he scouts for the next big investment. We’re talking simple goods like food, asauthec, and other basics we’ll need. Even better, if he then loses some of these shipments to bandit attacks, it diminishes the suspicion that naturally fell on him due to his huge stroke of luck in Crown Rose losing their competing shipment.”

“So he can surreptitiously funnel materials to us and deflect unwanted attention in one move,” said Sakin with clear approval. “Nice, Lord Seiji.”

“And since Auldmaer set this up with me, it’s a relatively safe opportunity for us to test out new methods of subduing caravans,” I added. “He and I share a need to get our business done without drawing attention. Quiet now, they’re almost in position.”

It was too easy. As the wagon drew alongside the disguised alchemical bomb, I focused the spyglass upon the fake rock, and then focused my mind on it. This was much easier than screwing about with fire slimes.

Spark.

The thing ignited in a great POOF, like the sound of an ox falling onto a colossal pillow, and the entire wagon was enveloped in a gout of purple smoke. There were only two people attached to the single cart, a driver and a guard; one of them got off an aborted yell before going silent. Immediately the smog began to dissipate, vanishing into the air as it drifted away from us in what gentle breeze managed to filter through the khora.

Both dhawls were slumped in the road in their harnesses; the wagon driver had fallen across his seat, while the guard was stretched out on the ground beside one wheel.

“Well, damn,” said Donon. “Seems almost…anticlimactic. Specially after last time.”

“Anticlimactic is what we want,” said Sakin. “Quick, quiet, and no witnesses.”

“And as bloodless as possible,” I added. “The last part is important. Won’t be very realistic as we get bigger and start handling bigger threats, but it is part of my strategy. We need methods of dealing with enemies and not leaving a trail of bodies. Biribo, how’s it look?”

“They’re out cold, boss,” he reported. “Not faking, and no other sapient life in the vicinity; looks like Auldmaer didn’t set a trap for us.”

“Wait, you were worried about that?” Aster demanded.

“He’s a merchant.” I rose and stepped out of the shadow of the khora, making my way down the slope with the rest of my gang following. “The man has a mind of numbers geared toward the singular goal of profit. Also, despite how squeamish he seemed to be about violence, don’t forget he travels around with poison in his pocket just waiting to be slipped to whoever sits down for a civilized drink with him. As soon as associating with us becomes more inconvenient than profitable, he’ll turn on us. The challenge will be to make as much use of him as possible until before he reaches that point and then get rid of him on our terms before he can make the first move.”

“Ooh, cold,” Sakin crowed, full of relish.

“People are selfish and worse, Lord Seiji,” Twigs spoke up unexpectedly, “but that’s not all they are. People are motivated by things like gratitude and loyalty, too.”

“Sure, I value gratitude and loyalty,” I agreed. “That’s why I got a dog; she’s full of those things. And I left her guarding the fortress because this kind of discreet operation is no place for an excitable creature like that.”

“So how long before we’re not useful and you have to get rid of us?” Kasser demanded in a biting tone.

It was always something with this guy. You subject a fellow to horrible torture magic a time or two and he gets an attitude that just never rubs off.

“Well, let’s explore that, shall we, Kasser?” I did not turn around to give him my trademark shit-eating grin, but only because I was walking downhill and needed to watch my feet. “Let’s say I start casually murdering my employees to make some kind of point every time they disappoint me, classic supervillain-style. How long would you reckon I have before they start running off in the night to join up with rival factions and sell them info about me? And then what am I supposed to do? I know you guys have said you’ve got nowhere else to go, but come on. One bandit gang’s pretty much like the next; shifting between gangs is pretty much a lateral move, unless I make sure you’re getting a better deal with me. So that is the deal. Stick by me and I’ll make sure you’re as well-fed, sheltered, and safe as I can manage. I doubt many other gangs would offer you the same.”

We arrived on the road and I bent to check on the guard and wagon driver, carefully moving their limbs into a less awkward position. It seemed like the least I could do.

“Due credit, Lord Seiji, that’s a point basically no bandit leaders and very few lords ever figure out,” said Goose. “All right, people, you know what we’re after. Search the cargo; we want food stocks that’ll keep for the long haul. Load up whatever you can carry in the sacks. Donon, you have to hand out the sacks or everybody’s just standing around being pretty.”

“Uh, right. Sorry.”

“Why did we have him carry the sacks again?”

“Hey!”

“Auldmaer said the cash box would be secured under the driver’s seat,” I added. “Check for that, please, Aster. Biribo, any sign of traps or…I dunno, tracking magic?”

“Boss, I appreciate due caution, but that’s verging on paranoid. When we start going up against master sorcerers, Void witches, or major clergy, we’ll need to worry about stuff like tracking charms and flashmine spells. Right now we’re dealing with a small business owner.”

“Duly noted, now answer the question.”

“No, boss, everything’s on the up and up. You may loot the wagon with impunity.”

“Splendid.” I fished a handful of coins back out and bent over the wagon driver, searching through his coat until I found the inner pockets.

“Are you looting those poor guys, now?” Sakin asked; I wasn’t looking at him but I swear I could hear him grinning. “Come on, Lord Seiji, haven’t we done enough to them?”

“On the contrary, I am anti-looting them.” I tucked a few silver halos into the man’s pocket and turned to do the same with the guard, noting that Aster had pried loose the small chest of coins allotted for their journey. “We’ve established that Auldmaer doesn’t pay full wages for employees who lose cargo. I prefer not to screw over any more average working-class folks than I can help. It’s gotta be hard enough to make an honest living in this shithole country. How we doing on time, Sakin?”

“Oh, golden, we’ve got at least half an hour before they wake up unless you do something daffy like cast Heal on them. Maybe longer; it’s been a while since I’ve used this particular trick and goblin alchemy tends to get more potent over time. They’re always refining their methods.”

“Good. We’ll definitely re-use this strategy, but I don’t want to be overly predictable, so feel free to suggest other methods we can leverage now that we’ve got an alchemy supplier.”

“That’s what I like to hear!” he said, straightening up from an opened barrel of dried beans to grin maniacally down at me. “I know a good handful of sneaky gimmicks, but it’ll be worth getting in good enough with this crew of goblins to ask them for advice. Last time I worked with gobbos was in a different kingdom, and a few years ago. It’s a safe bet this outfit will have different and possibly better tricks.”

“Actually, that’s good advice for several reasons, boss,” Biribo added. “See, goblins are culturally Viryan. That’s why they get such a raw deal in Sanorite kingdoms like Fflyr Dlemathlys.”

“Really? I figured it was because they were small and easy to push around and incompetent regimes like to prop themselves up by scapegoating harmless minorities for their own crimes.”

“Well, yeah, but I mean the Viryan thing is the on-paper justification, usually. I would advise not trying to play the Dark Lord card until you’re positioned well enough to back it up, but once you’re there, goblins will very likely rally to you. And what they lack in mass they make up in wits. They’re great early additions to any Dark Crusade—exactly the specialists you’ll need to help you get maximum effectiveness with minimal resources.”

“Dunno about the Viryan thing but I’ll back him up on their usefulness, Lord Seiji,” Sakin added while shoveling beans into a sack. “It’ll generally be a good use of your time to establish good relations, now that you’ve got an in with tunnel society.”

“Yeah,” Donon added enthusiastically, “goblins are the—”

He was drowned out by groans, shouted imprecations, and one thrown handful of dried beans.

“Hey!” Harold called, straightening up from a crate he’d just opened. “There’s a whole box of spices here!”

“Ooh, nice,” said Goose. “Be sure to bring that! We’ll have to sacrifice a bag or two of grain, but we should have plenty.”

“Or,” I suggested, “we could bring the grain and just not eat food so full of pepper and sour sap that you can’t taste the actual food.”

All of them, in unison, stopped what they were doing and turned stares of blank yet faintly accusatory incomprehension on me. Even Aster.

“Fine, whatever,” I grumbled. “You people are monsters.”

“It’ll be fine, Lord Seiji,” Goose said with an indulgent smile. “We’re not low on stocks back home yet anyway; with this we should be set up for months.”

“Great, I’ll make sure to get some traps and pest poison next time I’m in Gwyllthean to secure our food storage. We’re gonna hit more targets in the coming weeks; I want to build a solid enough stockpile for when we’ve got more people.”

“What more people are you expecting to get, exactly?” Kasser demanded.

“Ooh!” Aster grinned at me. “Can I tell them?”