Chapter 7: Making Money

Under the land management section of help I learned that if you own a certain amount of land different perks come with it. For 160 acres you can designate 10 acres as a sanctuary. This means that within that space no monsters can spawn. They can still travel through but they cannot live there or appear there. At 320 acres the sanctuary size quadruples to 40 acres. At 640 acres the sanctuary size quadruples again to 160 acres and you start to have access to the town/village developer.

The help menu seemed reluctant to give me details, but I inferred from other questions that it would allow for magic building of infrastructure and possibly access to a Great Game store. Once you hit a personal property amount of 2 square miles’ things start to get interesting. The sanctuary size only doubles to 320 acres but your area is now considered your domain. In a domain the owner is considered the ruler and gets special bonuses and can confer bonuses to others. Basically you become a noble and can give perks to others. The part I almost missed when questioning help but will be the best for me is that when you become a ruler you are allowed to claim surrounding unclaimed land and add it your domain. At 5 square miles you officially become a king with a kingdom and earn even more perks under the Great Game system.

Help also taught me that the land has to be directly owned by an individual or family. The government of the United States does not count. Basically all of the national forests, parks, wildlife refuges etc.… will revert to unclaimed land. Each person over the age of 16 can “Homestead” 80 acres a year. Finding all of this information solidified my plans for prepping for the Great Game change over. I am going to purchase as much land as possible next to a national forest as possible. It has to have at least 1,280 acres so I qualify as a domain. Then using the claim function, I will claim as much of the unclaimed forest land as the system will let me. This should vastly increase the safety of my family and friends because of the large sanctuary, bonuses I can hand out and access to a Great Game store that many people will not have at the beginning of the game.

In order to make this work I need more money. I have been working on developing my long range sensing capability to help fix this problem. I first got the idea from several different stories and anime. If I send out a pulse of mana through the ground, air, or water I can get a return and sense where living things are along with a general sense of the terrain. This works similar to a bat’s echolocation ability. I decided if it could do this then it should just be a matter of imagination, intent, and amount of mana to sense other things besides living organisms. So I started some simple experiments.

I first tried to become a human metal detector. It took some time but was surprisingly easy to do. After I figured out how to sense all metals, I just fine tuned my efforts to sense precious metals and gems. I can now sense concentrations of precious metals and harvestable gems up to 500 meters away. I expect this range to increase with practice. I do have to concentrate for 30 minutes to an hour, so it is not a fast process. However not only can I sense the metals and gems I can call them to me with double the mana cost.

So the next two weeks will be a “camping trip” with my daughter. One last hurrah before she starts college. We will be traveling to a variety of areas up and down the Appalachian Mountains where precious metals and gems have been found before. This is totally by coincidence of course. I will also be checking out several properties in the area. The Appalachian Mountains provide security, water, relatively mild seasons and lots of land for sale and in the way of national forests and especially the Appalachian trail which connects a lot of different types of government land together. I think it will be an ideal area to start my sanctuary.

After copious amounts of research, I discovered that Appalachia, especially North Carolina, is renowned for pockets of gem quality diamonds, sapphires, rubies, but emeralds most of all. Small deposits of precious metals such as copper, silver, gold, and platinum can also be found relatively easily. Most of them are not large enough for commercial exploitation, but should be perfect for my needs. I hope to come back with millions after this 2 week trip. I can only hope that I am as lucky as my game title says. The funds that I need are in the ground, I just have to find them.

What a fun trip that was. I had a great time with my daughter and spent a significant amount of time searching and finding the funds I need. After 2 weeks I was able to significantly increase the amount of money I have to work with. I lucked into enough gems that I can hold a few back for learning to enchant purposes. Diamonds hold air enchantments, Rubies hold fire enchantments, Sapphires hold water enchantments, and Emeralds hold Earth enchantments. There were also many lesser quality gems that can be used as enchantment holders like topaz. They only work ½ as well but are much more plentiful than the precious gems.

On this trip I was able to find,

50 flawed gems @ 100 Gold 4 Platinum Pieces worth of loose platinum 22 cloudy gems @ 250 Gold 432 Gold Pieces worth of loose gold 10 flawless gems @ 1000 Gold 616 Silver Pieces worth of loose silver

I plan on keeping all the flawless gems and 2 each of the cloudy gems, converting the rest into Gold and into dollars. With the conversion fees charged by the Great Game, I should have just over 21 million dollars. At least I know that with minimal effort on my part I can make a ton of money and be able to keep financing this operation. I also realize that this disparity and easiness of me making money will only last so long. When the Great Game starts and coinage is the only method of trade my regular fortune will be worthless. I need to use this conversion to the best effect I can now while it helps. Mental note to self, convert everything back into Great Game currency before the switch over.

I have selected my starting piece of land and will purchase everything that I can around it, connected or not. I have the unfortunate feeling that a lot of land will become ownerless after the Great Game starts through human deaths. My primary piece of land is along the French Broad River, and is approximately 1400 acres in size. There are several other pieces of land available near it and it runs up against the Pisgah National forest. The Nantahala national forest is within 15 miles also. It’s perfect, close enough to small towns and Asheville to scavenge for supplies, and isolated enough that it should be safe from large bands of marauders. It has plentiful natural resource throughout the area.

I contacted my lawyers and real estate agent and started the paperwork for purchases of the land I had selected. I also left instructions for them to purchase any and all other pieces within a 5 mile radius. I am feeding them and the world a story about starting an Eco Tourism resort. This should help the Great Game cover up my large purchases of land and supplies.

By the time my land purchases go through another 2 months have passed and I have a general map of my new domain and a rough idea of how I am going to set things up. I have spent ¾ of my recent windfall on just the land purchases. 16 million dollars has bought over 5000 acres in different pieces. My main section of land is just under 2200 acres. After I move up to my new land I will start searching for more funds to continue my plan. I will need millions more to be able to finish what I want in time. Rush jobs always cost more.

I have moved a mobile home and some empty shipping containers moved out to one of the pieces of my new property in North Carolina. I will use this as a base of operations and storage/workroom area until my main Eco-Tourism/Survival Compound is built. Speaking of building things I took inspiration from several stories and have started developing my Earth Manipulation skills into tunneling and wall building. I am keeping the above ground construction small and explainable for now, but I am pretty sure I could build basic housing and structures for over 100 people in less than 12 hours with just my current skill level. The detail and speed should increase as I practice.

Underground is a different story. I dig tunnels like some sort of Giant Mutant Mole on steroids. I do not even have to dispose of the Earth I dig out. I just compact it around the tunnels and rooms underground to help with stability. Reading all those reincarnated into a dungeon stories I read paid off for me. I have built a ton of interconnecting tunnels and bunkers under most of my property. This will allow for more people to occupy without increasing my defensive perimeter and will also serve as storage and a safe place to retreat to if needed.

Doing all of this construction, building, and experimenting on how to keep people safe has made me realize one important thing about my plan. The largest flaw in my plan to save people is that I hate people. Not individually or I want to kill someone, but bunches of people, large crowds, etc. I seriously hate interacting with them. I guess it is more that I hate large groups of people. Large groups tend to follow a herd mentality and do stupid things that piss me off. I am most happy with 1 or 2 people surrounding me at most. This is creating a bit of a problem for me. I love my family, I want to help save my friends and humanity as a whole, but I want to do it with as little interaction with them as possible.

I mean I am building this refuge for people after the Great Game, but I do not want to be a daily part of it. I think the best answer for now is to build everything as I planned and set up a group or ruling council to be in charge. I will reserve the right as the highest leveled and ruling monarch of the area (per Great Game Rules) to veto anything I want. I can use my magic to keep an eye on everything from a distance. This will let me build my own lair somewhere away from the primary refuge I am constructing and let me do my best impression of a hermit while still being available to help out if truly needed. I think this set up will be along the lines of sects in Wuxia and Xianxia eastern novels. I will act as the hidden benevolent Patriarch that can swoop in and save the day and other people can have the headache of running the day to day details. I like this plan.

Along with the new ruling council I can also develop a school for all the children. One that will finally pay back those brats for all the hell they put me through as a teacher. I mean I can develop a fair and balanced curriculum that will teach them everything they need to know to survive in the new world. Ha, Ha, Ha, I am going to make those twerps suffer. I mean that adversity will give them the strength to survive in the new world. Wow, I seem to be holding onto more resentment than I thought. Oh well, I hope it does not change or alter my behavior in the future.