I gestured to Isidre that we should move somewhere more private.

“I told you that was a disguise, didn’t I?”

“And this is another one, is it?” she asked. “You seem… different, beyond the obvious changes.”

That would be due to the fact that she could feel my [Charisma] now. It was a pain not being able to use social skills through my puppets, but at least I was immune to the reverse.

I shrugged. “I’m not great at the whole ‘different faces’ yet,” I admitted. “I should have used different names, but it’s a pain to keep track of.”

“And this face… has taken over the town?”

I detected a hint of accusation in her voice.

“I am bringing democracy to this town,” I firmly corrected her. “And prosperity. You would not believe just how primitive their financial institutions are—”

“They had the Baron to lead them… he died and — did you kill him?”

“No.” I looked her in the eye. “The Baron was a criminal. When he didn’t come back from wherever he went to, he wasn’t able to keep his crimes out of sight anymore.”

“That can’t be right,” she said, shaking her head. “The Baron, he was fighting the Tribes, he wanted me to—”

“The Tribes aren’t the enemy!” I exclaimed. “Look around you! They’re just people with cute ears. Trading with them is going to make us all rich.”

“You were the one who brought them in,” she said wonderingly. “You were working with Kaito since the start.”

“For peace! We’ve both been working to de-escalate both sides, calm them down—”

“And the Baron was in the way of that wasn’t he… and so was I. You probably brought the assassins in…”

“Hey! The walls are a joke as far as stopping any high-level person goes,” I said. “It didn't take Illusion magic for that guy to sneak in and kill people. I had nothing to do with it.”

That halted her for a bit. “Perhaps that’s true,” she said. “But you were working against me during the Griffin attack, weren’t you?”

“I was fighting on the walls,” I said, my voice hard. “I must have missed seeing you there. That’s part of why I’m a part of this community and you’re not.”

“No wonder I lost,” she said bitterly. “I was up against two Champions at the same time.”

“Isidre…”

“No, I get it now. I’ll get out of your way.”

“Don’t be like that,” I pleaded. “You can do a lot of good in this town.” If you can get your head out of your ass, I added mentally.

“I’ll go east,” she stated. “That’s where the King has been asking me to go.”

“That’s the other contested area,” I said. “Isidre, if you start a war there… the lives and wellbeing of everyone around you right now will be thrown into the fire.”

“I’m not going to start a war,” she said flatly. “But if one starts, I’ll win it.”

She turned to leave, but was struck by a sudden thought, and turned back. “Will you be one of the representatives that sees the King?”

“Probably,” I said warily. I mean, it wasn’t a sure thing. It was still a long way off. I could die, or we could rebel by then.

She nodded. “I shall look for you in the Capital at that time, then. We shall see which of us has been more useful to the Kingdom.”

She turned to leave again, not waiting to see my shrug. Is that what we’re competing in? Doesn’t seem like something I should care about.

I let her go and moved on to my next order of business. Neither of my erstwhile suitors were visible, which left me free to do some networking. There were a lot of adventurers in this crowd, and they weren’t drunk yet. This was the perfect time to try and round up some investors.

Kaito sighed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m glad that you didn’t kill her when you had the chance, but this is going to cause a lot of trouble for everyone.”

“Yeah,” I said morosely. “I didn’t even think of it at the time, but I’m starting to regret it.” We were meeting outside the city again, her girls keeping a close eye on me to make sure I didn’t get too close.

“Don’t. I don’t believe that the Champions are meant to kill each other.” Kaito said.

“Well, sometimes they work together, but there are definitely times when they haven’t,” I said, recalling the histories I’d read.

“Yes, but deaths are rare — at least from other Champions' hands. I think that is what separates us from people from this world. They find killing to be far too easy a solution.”

“That’s…” I looked at her in disbelief. “That’s a very rosy picture of our world.”

“I don’t mean to call us Saints,” she waved my objection away, “Only to say that here, they are worse. Killing is encouraged here — by the world itself. In our world, killing is properly seen as a last resort. I think that might be why we were Chosen.”

“To teach these guys non-violence?”

“Think about what we know about our small group so far. All ordinary people, yes? No mercenaries or soldiers, or hardened criminals.”

“All from different cultures…” I added.

“Yes! Pitted against each other to fulfil the Gods' tasks… the only thing that binds us together is our shared circumstances.” She seemed excited by the idea, as if she was on the edge of a revelation.

“And yet, when we clash, we tend not to kill…” I said, trying to follow where she was going.

“We talk, we compromise, we remove ourselves from the equation,” Kaito continued. “Even your argument with Miss Isidre fits the pattern.”

“Okay, but why is this important?”

“The Gods, of course, Miss Kandis. These things we are describing, the Gods are very bad at them, yes?”

“I suppose. Wait, you think they brought us here to teach them how to negotiate?”

Kaito laughed. “Well, perhaps. I’m sure they have many reasons. As many reasons as there are Gods.”

“Probably more,” I agreed. “Fyskal seems like the type of guy to have at least three reasons for anything he does.”

“That’s probably true. Anyway, I just think amongst those reasons, serving as an example for them is one of them. Or it should be.”

“Maybe. Seems like hubris to be teaching a God anything though.”

“Perhaps. I haven’t been struck down yet though.” She rose from her cross-legged position on the ground with an ease that I was envious of. I suppose that my empowered body could actually manage that now, but I’d wimped out and conjured a low chair for our chat.

“I will head East as well, and see what I can do to defuse tensions over there,” she continued. “I may not be able to reconcile with Isidre, but I should be able to prevent any provocations from becoming incidents.”

“I’d go with you, but…”

“You are needed here,” she told me firmly. “The accord is still fragile. I’ve spoken to Tonet, and she has agreed to cease her activities, but in the absence of both of us I fear she may resume.”

“Do you know why she was trying to start a war?” I asked. “It might help future negotiations if I know what her goals are.”

“She was unwilling to be specific… I suspect it may be actual hatred on her part,” Kaito mused. “Though she is not a beast-kin, she is close to many families that have been wronged by the Kingdom. The degree of your independence from the Kingdom was of great interest to her.”

“Maybe if I was open to discussing reparations,” I speculated. “Though the King, and probably most of the townsfolk would have conniptions at the idea.”

“That would probably be well received on her end,” she agreed, “But I’ll leave that discussion to you.”

I stood up as well, and she bowed. “For now, I must take my leave, Miss Kandis. May we work together again.”

I returned the bow. “Let’s hope. Good luck on your journey Miss Kaito,” I said, hoping that the honorific would get translated through.

It had taken a lot of schmoozing. My [Bargain] skill had gone up a level, and I thought [Persuasion] might be close to one. In some ways though, it had gone a lot faster than I thought it would. At this scale — a single town, with not very large amounts — money moved a lot faster than I was used to. Bank transfers were incredibly convenient, but they weren’t as fast as a bag of platinum coins handed over the table.

You might think that counting the coins would slow things down, but [Identify] sped things up immensely. I could glance at the bag, see how much was in there, confirm it with the investor, and write out the receipt.

Storage was an issue. For now, I was using my ring. It meant that I had to carry my daggers again, but we should have something more convenient soon enough. At the moment, we had a building — that was being strengthened, and I was consulting with Mandel on an enchantment design for a secure vault. The Bank of Talnier was in business!

Now, my first employee (Huette was paid by the Council) was putting the final touches on the contract for my first customer. Since we were starting small, Mr Vaillancourt was only borrowing 10,000 gold to set himself up as a [Stonemason]. I had a feeling that Masonry was due to a resurgence.

Part of my feeling was all the new construction, but we were also going to be reopening the nearby quarry. It hadn’t been used since they’d built the town wall, and even then it had been too much trouble to work. Most of the stone used on the wall had come from Anchorbury. Shipping costs had been outweighed by the need for the heavy guard that the workers had needed.

It must have been quite an impressive undertaking, only slightly diminished in my mind by visions of stone workers tossing the heavy stone blocks like bricks. Now though, after talks with our new friends, we could expect the monster spawns to be greatly reduced. All we needed to do is clear out the existing spawn points, and we should be good for a minimal guard.

New resources, new business. It felt like usury to be charging 15% per annum for these loans, but the looks of relief and gratitude from prospective clients eased my fears. From the looks of it, at these rates, we’d have more applicants than we could afford once the economy picked up. Rates might have to go as high as 30% just to reduce demand… unless I could start getting paper money accepted.

“That all seems to be in order, Mr Vaillancourt. If you understand your obligations, please sign here and you can have your money.”

Delmar, my new employee, was one of the first new [Talnier Officials]. He wasn’t much older than Cutter really, but he hadn’t wanted to spend the rest of his life as a butcher like his father. He’d jumped on the chance for a [Profession] with merchant skills and applied to work for the Council. I’d poached him with a higher-paid job, and now he was my new banking clerk.

He’d almost quit in the first week, as I’d started training his [Scribe] skill up by making dozens of exact copies of the forms to fill out for applicants. Next was training in procedures, but that did have to wait for clients to practice on. For now, I was shadowing him through each part of the process, but he’d soon be ready to do a lot of it on his own. Naturally, I was making sure I was the one to personally authorise all the loans.

Smiling a customer service smile, I moved over to Delmar and retrieved the prepared bag of coins. The leather bag thumped down on the desk Its weight was considerable, about five or six kilos. Yay for super strength.

[Identification]: Bag of Platinum Stars (1000)

“One thousand Platinum, please confirm and sign here,” I said. Vaillancourt glanced at the bag and signed the receipt. Delmar made a note in the book.

“Congratulations on being our first customer,” I said. “Good luck with your business.”

We shook hands, he thanked me, and we did all the social niceties involved in saying goodbye to someone you’d just given a lot of money to. We were finally a going concern.