“Have you not realized by now?” said Luther. “Someone did notice. In fact, not only did they notice, they helped me. But not because they wanted to, of course.”
Helen put it together. This was why the Minister of Finance and the Lord High Treasurer had fled. Luther bribed or coerced them. Either way, it didn’t make much difference now. She moved on to a more important question. “What did you do with the money you removed?”
“That was the real challenge. I had no great need of the money, myself. If anything, it was a burden and a risk to keep around. I considered throwing it all into a volcano, but that would have required quite a bit of manpower, and frankly, I doubted that any reasonable person would perform such a task for me without succumbing to temptation. In the end, I gave some of it away to the less fortunate. I would have liked to give more, but too much would have surely drawn attention from the media, so the rest went to Abolish for their services. It would seem I did not get my money’s worth on that front, but then again, I knew I was overpaying from the beginning.”
Abolish. She would have liked to go a while longer without hearing that name again. If they had the money, there was no telling where it was now. She didn’t even know if any of them had survived the Battle at Rathmore. Harper hadn’t been able to tell her how many he killed.
She intended to press Luther for details, but she didn’t expect to learn anything else of use, and indeed, that proved to be the case. She decided to leave before Luther wasted any more of her time.
Mehlsanz followed her up the prison stairs. ‘What are you going to do now?’
‘...I am open to suggestions.’
‘Wow. It’s that bad, huh?’
‘If you have any ancient wisdom for me, now would be the time.’
‘I’m not sure I have any ancient wisdom that’s worth two hundred billion troas.’
‘I thought as much.’
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every night at midnight PST by ~400 words.
i am open to suggestions
ReplyDeleteMaybe it is just me, but reapers can phase through the ground. So why can't the queen ask the four reapers on her side to scout under an area right for gold. Then have Harper laser his way down to it. They could get enough in a few weeks to atleast pay the interest on the debt for a few months, wile mining enough to replenish the stolen money.
ReplyDeleteOr ask hector to turn out beam after beam of his iron, then sell it off by the truck load. At $3 a pound, he can turn out 50, one ton beams a day for 2 weeks. That would give her 42 million dollars to work with. Hector alone could turn her nation into the iron export capital of the world.
Your forgetting reapers are intangible and also can't see diddly squat underground just cause there ghost things doesent mean they can see without light except maybe souls but from what we've seen only humans have souls so far so yah no searching for gold but you have a point with Hector's iron if his element really is iron they still don't know for sure
ReplyDeleteNot sure if it's been mentioned... but how did Luther learn about Abolish in the first place?
ReplyDeleteGot it, thanks.
ReplyDeleteWill be addressed eventually. You may recall that Hector and Garovel are having money troubles of their own.
ReplyDeleteOn a side not, just going off of your numbers there, 42 million in 2 weeks would require about 46 weeks to achieve 1 billion. Achieving 200 billion would take about 175 years.
Hasn't been brought up yet, no.
ReplyDeleteThe idea was not to solve all the money problems with iron, but to provide a stop gap to meet interest payments on the borrowed money. Who knows, the other nations might prefer iron as it is a valuable resource for building and manufacturing.
ReplyDeleteThat would not solve all the queens new money problems, but it would buy her time to figure a better solution. As an old engineer once said "If a problem is to big to fix all at once, fix any part of it you can, then reassess where you stand."
Looking forward to the explanation. Luther is an incredibly interesting character. Actually, all your villains are pretty awesome, but Luther is not just crazy, but apparently also wickedly intelligent. Also, infuriating, but that's kind of the point with villains.
ReplyDeleteI was right I knew it, the explody guy took the money.
ReplyDeleteIt would likely be much more prudent to not just form large beams of iron to sell as bulk metal, and instead sell a variety of basic preformed shapes, like I-Beams. I-beams are worth more then raw metal per pound, and would require little to no added effort. Cause ya know, it's the same thing as your idea only shaped as an I. Just Saiyan.
ReplyDeleteI can see two possible ways of paying off the debt (besides ways that require any commerce know-how): Hector's element, or the underground.
ReplyDeleteHector's element may actually be some insanely precious metal, thus solving their money problems.
They may turn to trade with the underground. Which will have a LOT of metals available for cheap, although getting it out would be a problem.
Oh, or they could conquer the countries they owe the debts to. Don't really need to pay back someone when you own them.
I can't believe this hasn't been said yet. It's cliched, makes no sense, and has nothing to do with the genre, but it has to be said....
ReplyDeleteALIENS!
Conquering won't work. One of them is the country of Dozer, which happens to have been founded by the person of the same name, who happens to be the co-leader of Abolish. And I'm pretty sure Luther did this on purpose.
ReplyDeleteAttack the weak ones and loot the money needed to pay off the strong ones?
ReplyDeleteIf a troa is 20 gram of gold then Luther would have to have smuggled out 400 million metric tons out of the treasury, which seems well near impossible
ReplyDeleteNot sure I follow your math. 20 grams of gold would be worth a lot more than a single troa.
ReplyDeleteRegardless, he never said he moved it all at once. Or that it was only gold.
You're forgetting some of the limitations of Hectors ability. He can only produce a limited amount of iron at a time. Then he has to destroy some of it to make more. I don't think the limit resets when the iron leaves his 'range'.
ReplyDeleteConsidering what is happening elsewhere, I actually assume Sair will have more to do with the problem, one way or another. Or the conflict with them. Or beating up people in Abolish with money. Etc. Somewhere in that zone.
ReplyDeletePrecisely, it was almost certainly paper money.
ReplyDeleteI believe it's been mentioned that the limit does reset when it leaves his range.
ReplyDeleteBesides, there's bound to be bits of his iron all over the place, plus the gigantic needle he made and things like that, even just the random bits of iron left lying around are likely more than he could otherwise handle if that was true.
An interesting point...over the course of a Servant's lifetime, such accumulation would definitely become significant. Imagine how annoying and stupid if materialization users had to go back to get rid of leftover chunks they forgot about to make sure they didn't hit their limit. And that does sound familiar anyway. So, yeah, I bet you're right.
ReplyDeletei disticntly remember that the limit only attributed to within their range. their range is a sort of bubble, and within that bubble they can only have a max volume of materialized product. ex - in a bubble range with a surface area of 3140000m^2 (diameter of 1km), you might have a max volume of 100000m^3 (this would vary between elements as some elements would be heavier than others so i think it'd also be surface area that is limited and not volume). as soon as you take a step back, the materialized product at the very end of the bubble would leave your range and would free up some space to materialize more product. and stepping back into your original position doesnt re-add that original volume to the new volume (your volume doesnt increase when you step back into range of metal you already created but you can still annihilate it). (that'd be an exploitative way to increase volume capacity). its hard to explain, but... there is a set limit but simply moving back out of range of already created metal removes the limit 'input' cause by that metal. moving back into range of that metal doesnt increase the input to the limit but you can still annihilate it
ReplyDeleteOh no. Even after beating off the servants and averting the war, they've still lost to Abolish. That money will be all over the continent or blown on evil toys by...
ReplyDeletewait...
Desmond recently came into "a lot of money", and he hasn't shared this plunder with anyone but Karkash. Time for a good old-fashioned quest, with two grudge-match enemies who've overstayed their welcome with the fans as the boss fight!
She could ask Roman's connections for help, I guess...
ReplyDeleteActual only 40million metric ton, but still not a trivial amount
ReplyDeleteThe not knowing is killing me.
ReplyDeleteI actually got pissed off when I read Luther gave some of the money to Abolish.
ReplyDelete*sighs* I have absolutely no idea how Helen can get everyone out of this mess. War seems unavoidable
Well, you could read my comment right above yours...
ReplyDeleteI did read it but I didn't comment cause I highly doubt Desmond has 200 billion troa. At the very least, Luther only gave *some* of the money to Abolish, so Desmond can't have enough to save Atreya
ReplyDeleteHoly shit... That's one crazy stunt he pulled there... All the money of the country gone, most of it to the enemy benefit, and all the money available belong to someone else.. FRIGGIN SICK!!!
ReplyDeleteIf the surprise-loving Garovel was in her shoes, he would be scarred for life and have surprisephoby