Chapter 459: Chapter 456: Ruthless Reckoning
June was the time of year when the sun’s rays first began to feel viciously hot.
Valon, who had managed to turn stone into gold after just thirty days in Munich, couldn’t resist the urge to light a cigarette as he gazed down at the street scene from the insurance company’s window.
They were mortgage-backed securities, now nicknamed Golden Hen Securities because buying them was a sure thing—their value always went up, just like the fabled hen that laid golden eggs. What the retail investors didn’t know was that at first, the price rose because the securities were genuinely profitable. Now, it was rising simply because the gullible masses were stubbornly propping it up.
Did the banks know? They did, but they were also making money, and making money had never been this easy.
On one hand, they were handing out loans freely, since some sucker would end up footing the bill anyway. On the other hand, the banks themselves jumped into the game, using their depositors’ money to invest in the Golden Hen Securities too.
In the midst of the frenzy, even the Royal Family got a piece of the action. Many people were left dizzy, not understanding why everything was bullish. All they knew was to blindly take out loans and blindly buy in.
In reality, the few orders Rorschach had deliberately released weren’t enough to turn the tide for the factories. What truly stimulated them was the banks’ reckless lending. With the amount of physical currency clearly limited, bills of exchange for large transactions became more common. A kind of small paper note, backed by shares in the Kempson Steel Factory, also appeared and began to circulate quietly on the market. Even the vouchers for the Golden Hen Securities could be used as equivalent currency.
Finishing his cigarette, Valon couldn’t help but laugh—if he dared to play this game in Valuva now, the populace, having been burned once before, would undoubtedly put his head on the Gallows. ’So naive,’ he thought. ’The people of Bayern... they’re just so wonderfully naive.’
He almost couldn’t resist lighting another, but as the smoke from the second one filled his lungs, a rhythmic, sharp pain immediately shot through his chest. It was the "lung" Symbiote he hosted, protesting. It seemed Valon and the Symbiote had a "gentleman’s agreement": one cigarette a day, maximum.
The City Hall didn’t let the opportunity slip, either. After receiving the Royal Family’s approval, a new round of conscription began, absorbing the previously unemployed "unstable elements" into military camps, while simultaneously placing new orders with the factories.
If the Bayern Kingdom were given more time to convert the debts of the factories and the Royal Family into unified war bonds, they might actually have been able to pay everything off by plundering the wealth of Valois.
Valon would never give them such an opportunity.
He felt as if he were destined to be tied to financial disasters, but it didn’t matter. The old Valon would have been fearful and anxious, but the man he was now only knew enjoyment. He would only open his arms to the scorching-hot market—’Let the explosion be even more violent!’
The only shame was, he didn’t have the power to set it all off.
In mid-June, the left flank of the Empire’s forces clashed with the Valois National Guard. To everyone’s surprise, the National Guard won a major victory. The Empire Army forces deployed in the coastal regions retreated to the Lowlands, exposing the flank of their main army.
Meanwhile, Bayern’s many factories suddenly found that the price of raw materials had skyrocketed. Furthermore, the Special Zone announced that its Steel Factory, food processing plants, and others had new production capacity coming online. The City Hall then diverted subsequent orders to the Special Zone.
Under this twofold pressure, a large number of Bayern’s factories defaulted on their contracts. The Golden Hen Securities reverted to their true form—packaged junk loans, now completely worthless.
"Gentlemen, according to the terms of the contract, we are indeed obligated to pay out the insurance claim. However, another gentleman has something to say," Valon replied with a grin, facing the intimidating bankers.
True, based on the valuation of the security deposits and the original shares of the steel factories, it wouldn’t have been impossible for the Bayern Stable Insurance Company to foot the bill. However, a situation that the Silver Association hadn’t foreseen arose: Prince Otto arrived in the Meeting Room.
With a grim expression, he and a group of officials from the City Hall surged into the Meeting Room, representing the Bayern Kingdom’s interests. They were there to stop the insurance company from honoring its commitment.
The reason was simple. If the creditor’s rights were transferred, nearly eighty percent of Bayern’s factories, fifty percent of its wineries, and vast tracts of land used as collateral would all change hands. Moreover, since the securities were discounted when the debts were packaged, this transaction would allow Rorschach to cheaply harvest more than half of the Bayern Kingdom.
The leverage the banks had extended had become an all-reaching scythe. Even if those factories went bankrupt in droves, the City Hall and the Royal Family were afraid that Rorschach would consolidate those "ruins." At that point, the "Special Zone" would become uncontainable.
To avoid this scenario, they needed to find a scapegoat to be forced to swallow this "bomb"—either the banks or the insurance company itself. For the Royal Family and City Hall, one party was connected to the Tower of Secret Techniques, and the other was connected to the Special Zone. As long as those two could negotiate a way to absorb these junk bonds, the Kingdom and the Royal Family wouldn’t suffer too great a loss.
After a month’s wait, Rorschach received an invitation from the Tower of Secret Techniques.
"Sigh, trying to poach from the Tower of Secret Techniques is really not easy," he complained.
...
Lucas was in a small mountain village at the foot of the Tower of Secret Techniques, meeting with apprentices from the Mutual Aid Association in a tavern.
This was his job: generously treating the apprentices from the Mutual Aid Association to beer—unwatered beer, at that. Lucas was now a salesman for the "Spell Cloud."
An apprentice asked in disbelief, "Can we really learn a First Ring Spell? Lucas, I remember you were with the Magic Guild..."
"Not anymore!" Lucas replied calmly. Recently, because the banks were making a killing, the Guild’s financial situation had improved a bit. But he had no regrets about leaving. The reason was simple: Rorschach just paid too damn well!
His current salary was several times what he had earned at the Guild. More importantly, Rorschach had given him renewed hope of becoming an Official Mage.
Now, he wanted to bring this hope to the other apprentices, to free them from the ruthless exploitation of the Tower of Secret Techniques. Lucas took out a scroll. "Look, this is a Transformation Technique scroll. It’s much simpler than all that obscure, difficult knowledge. I’m sure some of you will be able to learn it."
"A Second Ring Spell!" "Is it expensive?" "What if I can’t learn it..."
A clamor of questions filled the air. All the apprentices in the Mutual Aid Association were ambitious; they were the perfect target customers. Lucas began to explain the rules of the "Spell Cloud" to them in detail:
"The system taught by the Tower of Secret Techniques is outdated! This new Casting System can drastically reduce the difficulty of Casting... Even if you’re not yet an Official Mage, you can still learn Second Ring Magic. Yes, you heard me right. I can even provide you with scrolls for Tricks for free, and there are discounts on other Magic. Both the learning difficulty and the price of the scrolls are far lower than with the old system."
Starting a price war, in a magical sense, was just the crudest first step. Seeing that everyone was very interested, he continued by introducing a "senior member" service. If someone could learn to "edit old-system Magic into the new system," they could exchange it for free for even higher-level Magic. He also encouraged them to learn from each other.
"This is the true path of Light to becoming a Mage!" A wave of bittersweet feelings washed over Lucas, visible on his flushed, beer-warmed face. "You don’t need any of that bullshit theory! You don’t need to bow and scrape before professors! As long as you put in the effort, you’ll see immediate rewards!
"Just think about it! You’ll stand out from your peers! While others are still struggling with some pointless subject exams, you’ll already be able to cast Second Ring Spells..."
The beautiful picture he painted left the members of the Mutual Aid Association mesmerized. Thanks to Lucas’s efforts as both salesman and after-sales support, several Apprentice Mutual Aid Associations at the Tower of Secret Techniques had transformed into Spell Cloud Research Groups. Among them, some truly talented guys and gals had mastered the technique of translating and uploading Magic. Although most of the Magic they submitted couldn’t create new nodes, for the Tree of Law, it was still a small gain, giving birth to new branches.
Whether these Spell Cloud Research Group users could move from operating underground to using it openly in the Light, and whether they could bring other apprentices into the fold, all depended on the outcome of Rorschach’s upcoming visit.
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