《Burnout Reincarnation [SLOW BURN BEGRUDGING KINGDOM BUILDING]》 The First 100 Days Archmund Granavale staggered to top of a hill on the Granavale Estate, overlooking fields of golden wheat maintained by their tenant farmers. He was barely nine-years-old, but his body had been weakened by the Crylaxan Plague, a nationwide pandemic that had consumed the nation for half a decade and killed his mother and siblings. He was the last hope of House Granavale, but the plague had weakened his body. So despite the gentle sun upon his face, filtered through the leaves of apple trees, he eased himself down a tree trunk and closed his eyes. And he dreamed. He sat in front of a bright, flat rectangle. There was a half-sphere in his right hand, cool to the touch, and his left hand danced over a strange abacus. Like a machine, he dragged the sphere, and highlighted a sentence on the screen. He stretched his hands ¡ª holding the mouse and keyboard for hours on end had strained them, and he would be here for many hours more. The world outside the window was dark, but hours of work remained on the computer. At least his office was brightly lit, so he wouldn¡¯t fall asleep. Another few months, and this bout of work would be over, only to return again in a year¡¯s time. This was his life ¡ª sitting at a computer at 10 pm, moving numbers around and building spreadsheets, doing nothing meaningful. Was this all life had to offer? Archmund Granavale jolted awake. The sun was still high in the sky. Yet now the clouds cast wide shadows upon the rolling fields. His heart hammered in his chest. He felt tense and restless ¡ª anxiety. And his stomach felt heavy as if he was going to throw up ¡ª despair. He¡¯d felt tragedy before, when his mother had died, so long ago he could barely remember her, but this was different. This was a lack of hope. Archmund Granavale had never wanted for anything in his life before. As the last heir of House Granavale, he had been spoiled by his father and their servants alike. He had never known lasting pain, for they immediately brought forth the Gems to heal him. He had never known boredom, for his days were filled with tutelage about the lands and titles he was to inherit. And he had never known a lack of purpose, because he was to rule as Lord Granavale once he came of age. And suddenly all of that was terrifying. ¡°Fuck,¡± he said under his breath. ¡°Fuck.¡± Then he paused. That word had been in English. The word ¡°fuck¡± had been in English, which was the language he used to know in that memory. It was a generic profanity for being frustrated or angry, but it also meant fornication ¡ª something that he was sure he hadn¡¯t been taught, yet made perfect sense as something that could happen. He didn¡¯t even know if any swears existed in his native tongue, though now that he thought about it they obviously did. He never used to think like this. Before, he¡¯d had proud yet simple thoughts about how great nobles were, or how good the harvest was, or how much he hated tutoring. But now his mind was expanding far beyond what it had been. If that had been a dream, it had been extraordinarily vivid and detailed. Now that he¡¯d pulled the thread, he began remembering more and more about English. It had a subject-object-verb grammar, which differed from his native language, and was very very liberal about borrowing loanwords from other languages, to the point where it¡¯d borrowed words from every language on Earth. And that was another thread. That he¡¯d lived in another world, called Earth. That Earth had so many languages, so many countries, its own systems of religion, power, and culture that were like nothing he¡¯d known. That he knew about so many of them. That if he tried to remember, he did. This wasn¡¯t a normal way of thinking. His was a mind given to strange circuits and loops, that held onto strange trivia like a sponge and went places other minds would not. They had called him ¡°gifted¡± in his previous life. He was sure of it. He¡¯d studied Physics in college (which was like going to the Imperial Academy, but for commoners), and later more advanced math, and even some soft sciences like finance ¡ª and he¡¯d been a voracious reader, absorbing books and their trivia like a sponge in water ¡ª though strangely enough, in none of his memories did he actually use most of that knowledge for anything at all. And yet something didn¡¯t make sense. He had been ¡°gifted¡±. Earth had been a paradise world. Disease had been conquered. Famine was a thing of the past. War was a distant rumor. So why had he been so miserable?
Whenever the Lord Reginald Granavale was at his estate, as opposed to schmoozing in the Imperial Capital, he would share dinners with Archmund. Normally, Archmund would eat alone, watched by the servants, after a day of tutelage in all the topics a young lord needed to know. Until now, Archmund had always looked forward to these dinners. Now, he wondered if he could hide his true self. ¡°Archie, my son,¡± said the Lord Granavale. ¡°Father,¡± Archmund said. The dinner was elaborate yet oddly quaint, almost simple. Steamed greens with butter sauce, white bread, and steak, rare. Archmund had taken this at face value before; now, he had so many questions. This was a meal fit for a noble house that was comfortable but not extraordinarily rich. Butter took hours to churn by hand but much less by machine, which suggested the kitchen staff could spare the time to do this or that there was a centralized industrial butter factory. White bread, similarly, meant someone could separate germ from wheat or that there was a machine to do so. And steak? That was a dead cow. One that a peasant family could use to turn grass into milk reliably for years on end. The food was a bit lacking in salt, however ¡ª far less than the ultraprocessed snacks of his previous life. Salt had been valuable enough that the Roman Empire, which men thought about daily, had paid wages in it; he wondered if that was true of this world¡¯s Empire as well. And it was unspiced. ¡°Are you enjoying the meal?¡± said his father. ¡°I spare no expense for you, my son.¡± ¡°Truly?¡± Archmund said. ¡°Archie?¡± Lord Granavale said, blinking, before breaking out into a beam. ¡°Whatever do you mean?¡±Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. ¡°This amount of salt ¡ª I have no complaints with the flavor, but is this healthful or is this all we can afford?¡± ¡°Entirely health reasons,¡± said the Lord Granavale. ¡°In the Capital, the meals are loaded with salt and lard. Far too rich for my simple country tastes.¡± Archmund realized this was the first time he¡¯d asked an actual question of his father in years. And, if he stopped to think about it, he had been on the path to being a spoiled, pampered brat. The last son of Lord Granavale, the last hope of House Granavale, given every privilege from birth, endowed with the burden of his clan. No one in this estate or the neighboring towns would ever have told him ¡°no.¡± ¡°Do you want more salt?¡± said Lord Granavale. ¡°Would that make you happy? I can get you more salt.¡± ¡°How much would it cost us?¡± Archmund said. ¡°Pennies. A trifle. It¡¯s no large matter.¡± ¡°And if I wanted it for the rest of the year? Until I go to the Academy?¡± ¡°It would be fine!¡± ¡°What if I started asking for extravagance? Cakes for dinner, meat for breakfast, exotic spices at every meal.¡± ¡°There comes a time in every dutiful lord¡¯s life,¡± said the Lord Granavale, ¡°where he must learn temperance. Temperance, the virtue of moderation¡ª¡± ¡°So it would bankrupt us if I did,¡± Archmund interjected. ¡°Was it the spices?¡± ¡°Why would you think that?¡± said the Lord Granavale. His voice wasn¡¯t reproaching or scornful. It was curious. ¡°Meat, sugar, and eggs we can levy as a tax. Perhaps unfairly, but life is good enough in our lands that it wouldn¡¯t cause mass unrest. Spices we would have to import.¡± ¡°Did I teach you this?¡± said the Lord Granavale, in wonder. Archmund shut his mouth. Regardless of whether those memories had been delusions, they¡¯d given him instincts and intuitions that were correct. He wondered if he¡¯d said too much. He wondered if he¡¯d started talking like an unearthly child, someone far too wise for his years. It was certainly possible ¡ª perhaps those memories had been more than memories, but also behaviors, mannerisms, and tics. ¡°I¡¯ve always known you were a smart boy, Archie, but I¡¯m proud of you,¡± said the Lord Granavale. ¡°You¡¯ve got a keen eye and a keener mind. You¡¯ll find the Academy a breeze. Gods above, I might be able to abdicate early and leave the hopes of Granavale to you. I¡¯ve known it all along, but you have a gift.¡± And a cold, creeping chill wrapped around Archmund¡¯s heart. Yes, this was the world that awaited him. This was the role he was born for. This was his original fate. ¡°Tomorrow,¡± said the Lord Granavale, unaware of Archmund¡¯s increasing agitation, ¡°we should begin your training in earnest. What it means to be a lord, the full account of our holdings, and matters of policy and politics.¡± Yes, this was his duty and his burden. To live a life being tutored in the ways of the lordship. To go to the academy to find a wife suitable to rule besides him. To bounce between the city and the country begging for money and military support in the bad times. To have sons or daughters capable of carrying on the family name. And to die, content, with nothing having changed. In this world, that was the duty of ¡°gifted children¡±.
He remembered what it meant to be gifted in that previous life. Only children were ever labeled as ¡°gifted¡±. Children who, for some reason or another, exceeded their peers. Who from some accident of birth seemed smarter or stronger than those around them, and for that brief period of strength got to live blessed lives. They didn¡¯t have to practice. They didn¡¯t have to study. They could just succeed. But that never lasted. The gifted grew up faster than their peers, but rarely further. One day, inevitably, their peers grew to meet them. And the gifted children, who never had to practice or study because of an accident of birth, suddenly were just average. And not long after that, they would be surpassed, because everyone else had learned how to study and practice and compensate for their own weaknesses. And then they would fail. The prophesied greatness of their early years would come to nothing. At best, they could hope to be normal. He had failed. By the time he¡¯d been an adult, he had been so deeply tired. Completely and utterly burned out, and disillusioned with the world. Archmund was under no delusions this time around. He might¡¯ve been ¡°gifted¡± in his last life and ended up burned out because of it. He was still as sharp as ever, but it was flagrantly obvious that he was in the same boat. His major advantage was decades of memories from a previous life. But by definition the advantages granted by aged memories wouldn¡¯t last. Sure, he had the life experiences of a thirty-something-year-old ¡ª but in three decades, so would all of his peers, and an extra thirty wouldn¡¯t mean much. To make something of this life, he needed to seize this early advantage of precocious knowledge, and use it to build a life that he truly wanted.
Archmund''s Journal:
Year 0, Day 0. I remember my past life. I hated it. The normal future for me means being the Lord Granavale. Having a loveless political marriage for status and a mistress if my wife permits it. Spending all my time begging for Imperial funding. I would hate that too. Before, duty would compel me to accept that life. Now, I can imagine another way might be possible. But to find that way, I need to know more. And to remember.
Yet deep within the Guts of Hell and the Arched Vaults of Heaven, along the Axis Mundi that speared this and all other worlds, an entry in a great cosmic ledger shifted. Think of it as a library if you wish, and the System guiding it. A ¡°people management system¡±. A vaguely classist cosmic mechanism for separating the haves from the have-nots. Here is how Archmund¡¯s entry changed He would be seeing it sooner than he realized.
Archmund Granavale Lifespan: 9/90
Stat Value Titles Achievements Bound Items Relationships Skills
Strength 5 Granavale Heir (*new*) Reincarnated Memories N/A Lord Reginald Granvale, Father N/A
Dexterity 5 Lady Sophia Granavale, Mother (deceased)
Constitution 5 Amelia Granavale, elder sister (deceased)
Intelligence 5 Linus Granavale, elder brother (deceased)
Wisdom 5 Calla Granavale, elder sister (deceased)
Charisma 5
Luck 5
The Slow Road to Escape How do you keep your second chance at life from going the way of your first? For Archmund Granavale, that involved a temper tantrum and locking himself in his room. He was nine. He knew he could get away with it. Right now, he had one goal: Figure out what the fuck was going on. He remembered some snippets from his past life, though more and more were coming back. He wrote as much as he could down ¡ª in English, so no one else could read it. He had to reconcile what he knew from his past life with the circumstances of this life. And somehow he had to turn that into avoiding ¡°bad ends¡±: loveless political marriage, dying in a pointless war, or worst of all, rotting away in mediocrity in Granavale County until the end of time.
What were his chances of an untimely early death? House Granavale was in a comfortable position, for a two-member house. Their holding, Granavale County, was an insignificant county outside of the imperial core. It was not a breadbasket, a trade hub, or a crucial border. Its existence may as well have been a formality. He had a few options here: play the game of status and wealth to elevate the Granavale name through diplomacy, marriage, or other avenues of prestige, or abandon the title entirely and let it be absorbed by some other noble family. He could go to the untamed lands and become a monster hunter, which was a lucrative but dangerous job. But he had no skill with a sword, bow, or Magic Gem, nor any understanding of what that job would entail ¡ª because the Granavale lands were so safe. The House Granavale had lasted hundreds of years, but they had nothing on the pedigree of the Imperial Family, House Omnio, and were far poorer than the upstart Veneto, a merchant clan with several de facto trade monopolies and rumored underworld ties. House Omnio descended from Alexander Omnio I, more commonly known as Alexander the Conqueror. He¡¯d established the Omnio Empire, which was so successful that even now the country, continent, and known world were all called ¡®Omnio¡¯. Magic was real. In his old life it hadn¡¯t been. There was a University of Imperial Mages, which was insular, mysterious, and heavily regulated. He didn¡¯t know a lot about magic in this world. It could have been a party trick, a weapon of war, a closely guarded secret, or something utterly useless. It was annoying that he didn¡¯t know. That was something he had to change. One thing was for certain. He was not in a video game ¡ª at least not obviously. Magic spells didn¡¯t have clear ¡°mana costs¡±. He couldn¡¯t meditate to view a ¡°stat sheet¡± on the back of his eyelids. He couldn¡¯t clench his brain to open up an inventory screen. If he gazed up at the night sky, there was no ¡°perk tree¡± awaiting him in the constellations. If a System governed the world, it was hidden ¡ª for now. This was both comforting and frustrating. In his old world, he had no reason to believe that there was anything but random chaos governing everything. But this world had magic, which fundamentally changed the game. Even if he had to figure out how himself. In his past life he had studied financial markets. In those systems, you could make a lot of money by teasing out hidden patterns and making bets on them. Tease out the patterns well enough, and make the right bets, and you would end up rich. Suppose that physical strength, manual dexterity, innate intelligence, and wisdom, charisma, and luck were fundamental driving stats for every living creature in this universe ¡ª a common system in video games. It wouldn¡¯t make sense for a living, breathing world to function on a point-allocation system upon a discrete ¡°level up¡±. But it did make sense for one¡¯s skills and stats to increase naturally when used. Though perhaps he was just assuming this was how it should work given his knowledge of his old world. There was an extremely simple way to test if the world functioned on a game-like system where doing strength activities built strength, and intelligence-like activities built intelligence. Do a hundred push-ups a day to build strength, and if the world functioned on exponentially scaling game logic, over the course of a year he would become superheroically strong. If this didn¡¯t work, he would still be physically stronger from having done a hundred push-ups a day for a year. This was a strategy straight from the writings of an author in his old world, Cal Newport ¡ª a ¡°little bet¡±. Little bets were small, low-risk actions one could take with the possibility of huge payoffs if they were successful. He had heard that nobles were stronger and smarter than the peasantry. He¡¯d assumed this was natural before he¡¯d awoken, classist propaganda since he had, but now he wondered if it was simply an extension of resources and self-care. In his old world, the idle rich were able to take care of themselves, buying expensive cosmetics and health procedures and spending significantly more time in education. If this world functioned on the growth logic of games, then one would hear stories of impossible feats of strength by the nobility ¡ª unless they were deliberately repressed. He would have to track his personal progress. An untracked change could be illusory, wishful thinking of the mind. But he¡¯d remembered a framework from his last life called ¡°SMART goals¡± meant to make sure goals were achievable and not vague: specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, time-bound. Task #1: do 100 push-ups a day for a year. Track how long it takes to do them and how many are possible consecutively. Specific: 100 push-ups daily. Measurable: how long it takes to do them total and how many were possible consecutively. Actionable: it was, by definition, a physical action. Relevant: push-ups to train strength. Time-bound: he¡¯d do it for a year.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. That was a start for the physical side of things.
The second major point of order was magic. Magic pervaded society, yet hadn¡¯t transformed it into a post-scarcity utopia. Magic was rare if powerful yet common when weak. Magic was easy to use, hard to master. Magic was accessed through Gems. Archmund had one on his desk. It was about the size of his thumbnail, and it cost roughly a year¡¯s of a peasant¡¯s wage. It looked like a ruby, but was cut like a platonic tetrahedron, though not perfectly. He ran a finger over it. A faint electric hum, familiar yet brand new, flowed from a deep place in his soul through his finger to the Gem, which lit up with an orange candlelight. The Gem had a complex official name, but this one he¡¯d always called the Red Gem of Light. He felt a little more tired than he had a moment before. Doing magic always made him feel this way. His knowledge of magic was basic. As far as he knew, it was accessed solely through Gems. Gems came from the earth and the corpses of slain monsters. He didn¡¯t know what monsters were, just that they appeared in Dungeons and the frontier wilds, but it was probably worth learning more. Gems were rated on multiple dimensions. Density, size, and refinement of cut were the most basic, but Gemologists studied for decades to develop full understanding of Theoretical Gemology. He didn¡¯t understand why when simple metrics were stunningly effective: A denser, larger Gem would be more powerful than a smaller Gem. Refinement and cut were nuanced, though. The more faces a Gem had, the more refined the cut. The more refined the cut, the more powerful the magic. A few chips or mis-cuts would weaken the magic, but not shatter it. In fact, sometimes intentional flaws would be introduced to create weaker spells. There was a basic geometric innovation here. A square, a pentagon, a hexagon, a heptagon, and an octagon were all regular polygons. There was an argument from calculus. If you had a polygon, and you added more sides to it, it became more and more like a circle. In that sense, the regular polygon with infinite sides was a circle ¡ª though, since infinities were ugly to work with, strictly speaking the circle was the polygon as the limit of the number of sides approached infinity. If you made the analogy, then a perfectly spherical and polished smoothed Gem might be immensely powerful. If it wasn¡¯t already being done, why not? The spell or enchantment associated with a Gem depended on three basic things. Its ¡°element¡±, its density, and how it was cut. Any human could touch a magic Gem and charge it to release the spell it was enchanted with. That was the limit of his theoretical knowledge. Unfortunately, he didn¡¯t understand the practical side nearly as well either. Why did he feel more tired when he used Gems to cast spells? Was magic the normal kind of life energy that could be replenish food and was used for everyday tasks? Was magic drawn from a limited spiritual pool, and if he ran through it all would be never be able to use magic again? Or was magic something deeper, potentially tied to his soul, and doing too much magic could cause permanent damage? He didn¡¯t know, and didn¡¯t know if anyone knew. Magic was rare, even among nobles ¡ª the comfortable House Granavale held maybe ten Gems in their estate, across all their holdings. There were maybe fifteen known Gems in their entire County. He only got to have one at all because of how spoiled he was. Rough and less dense Gems were probably obtainable from the mines, but dense and refined Gems dropped from monster corpses, which allowed adventurers and monster slayers to get richer and more powerful, which allowed them to hunt more monsters, and so on. Was monster hunting the path to true power and freedom in this world? Perhaps. But then again, there was an equal argument for pious ascetic study: There were legends that when sages and wise men died, they would leave behind no bodies, only perfect and dense Gems. Task #2: Charge the Red Gem of Light to personal exhaustion over the course of the 100 days. Track how long it stays bright. Track how many days it takes to recover. Do this after the daily push-ups. Archmund''s Journal:
Year 0, Day 1. Push-ups: 100 in 1.5 hours Magic: Light lasts for 10 minutes It¡¯s so odd how I never questioned magic before, yet now I see all sorts of holes in it. What is magic? Does everyone have magic, or are nobles actually a separate species that can use magic? Why hasn¡¯t magic revolutionized society beyond the pseudo-18th-19th century environment I find myself in? I¡¯ve set two goals: one physical, one magical. If this is a game, governed by a hidden system, I should find myself becoming immensely powerful through level-grinding. But who can say if this is a game? Perhaps this is true reincarnation, like in Buddhism, and this is the realm of the hungry ghosts or the gods. Perhaps this is a physics-based simulation instead of a game, so grinding won¡¯t work. Perhaps this is all a vivid delusion brought upon by surviving the Crylaxan plague ¡ª but that doesn¡¯t explain how my knowledge of ¡°English¡± is so internally self-consistent. Perhaps this is all a dream. The worst kind of literary cop-out imaginable. The Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi once dreamt of being a butterfly. When he woke up, he asked himself ¡°was I a philosopher dreaming of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming of being a philosopher?¡± I will never know, until the illusion breaks. Until then, I must live as if this is my last and final chance.
The day after Archmund began his exercises, his stats, in that distant and hidden sacred library, updated.
Archmund Granavale Lifespan: 9/91
Stat Value Titles Achievements Bound Items Relationships Skills
Strength 5->6 Granavale Heir Reincarnated Memories (*new*) Ruby of Light Lord Reginald Granvale, Father N/A
Dexterity 5 Lady Sophia Granavale, Mother (deceased)
Constitution 5->6 Amelia Granavale, elder sister (deceased)
Intelligence 5 Linus Granavale, elder brother (deceased)
Wisdom 5->6 Calla Granavale, elder sister (deceased)
Charisma 5
Luck 5
The Mayonnaise Cliche Mayonnaise is a condiment made by emulsifying egg and oil, usually by drizzling the oil into eggs while whipping furiously. A small amount of acid, either oil or vinegar, is added to stabilize. Archmund Granavale had read no small number of reincarnation fantasy stories in his past life. He had read good ones. He had read bad ones. And in the bad ones, the reincarnated protagonist, upon being sent from Earth (it was always Earth) to their highly derivative fantasy world, would invent mayonnaise and become immensely rich by selling it. Because apparently people in fantasy worlds were too stupid to understand how to mix eggs, oil, and acid in order to make a sauce. And so having one basic commonplace piece of knowledge acted as a hack to wealth and power. Archmund really hated the idea that he was being a living cliche. If there was one thing he hated, it was hackery. Trying to get rich off of selling an extremely easy to replicate sauce seemed like genuine idiocy. When the idea first floated through his mind, about a week into his training regimen, he¡¯d dismissed it as ridiculous. Yet a part of him couldn¡¯t deny that if it was stupid but it worked, it wasn¡¯t stupid. And becoming an independent entrepreneur ¡ª or merchant, really, in the parlance of this world ¡ª was a potential key to the freedom that could liberate him from the monotony of his normal life. And then the strength training had started paying off far too quickly than was sensible. On day one, he¡¯d needed a whole hour to do 100 push-ups. By day ten, he¡¯d only needed half an hour. That was an insane rate of growth, though he wasn¡¯t dumb enough to assume it would stay exponential. But 10 days to double his physical weakness strongly suggested that the world operated on different physical rules. A scientist in his old life, Carl Sagan, had a famous quote: ¡°If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.¡± Apples. Flour. Sugar. Butter. Eggs. These were ingredients that went into an apple pie, and each of them had a complex origin and supply chain. Plants had to evolve to convert sunlight to sugar, and then some plants had to evolve fruit that concentrated those sugars in a tasty bundle. Seed-bearing grasses had to be domesticated over generations to bear wheat grains. Mammals, with their live birth and milk production, had to evolve and be domesticated as sources of milk, which could be separated into whey and butterfat by churning. And, on the other end, egg-laying animals also had to evolve, with eggs that had a complex protein structure that set when heated. Mayonnaise was more than just the ingredients that went into it. The emulsion that made up mayonnaise was a complex physical process that involved the entangling of oil, egg protein, and water. It was an emergent property of the universe itself. So if the laws of physics were meaningfully different, mayonnaise might not be possible. That was how Archmund Granavale justified spending an afternoon in his estate¡¯s kitchens, trying to recreate mayonnaise, instead of finding new and innovative ways to train. He felt a little bad for the servants, because they were not in the habit of telling him no to anything. And if dinner was late, they would be the ones blamed, even if it was all his fault. ¡°You¡¯re sure you want to do this, ¡®young master?¡¯¡± asked a maid, Mary. Mary was just two or three years older than him. She had joined the staff somewhat more recently than the other servants, who had been there for Archmund¡¯s whole life. Archmund ignored her and cracked two eggs into a mixing bowl. A servant gently placed a jug of seed oil on the counter; another, a pitcher of vinegar and box of salt. Archmund salted the eggs and added just a dash of vinegar. It was remarkable that chickens, or creatures indistinguishable from them, existed. It was remarkable that seed oils were easily obtainable by the nobility, as opposed to needing to rely on lard or tallow. The nobility could eat well; that said little about the rest of the world. ¡°Mary, help me whip this.¡± She rolled her eyes. ¡°You know, they usually don¡¯t even let me into the kitchen, ¡®young master Archie.¡¯¡± Her words were dripping with sarcasm. ¡°My arms are too bookish and weak to whip this egg with any effectiveness. I am a noble with a poor constitution, so I must humbly beg my maidservant for assistance.¡± She rolled her eyes. Then she pinched his bicep. ¡°Wha¡ª¡± ¡°Holy shit that¡¯s an actual muscle!¡± Mary said. ¡°I thought you¡¯d have flabby and useless arms but wow, you¡¯ve actually got something going on there.¡± He didn¡¯t feel obligated to tell her that he¡¯d somehow developed these muscles in the course of a single week. ¡°Will you help me?¡± ¡°Surely a noble of your stature can summon your great and powerful noble magic to whip the eggs yourself, or use those muscles which you apparently have.¡± ¡°A noble¡¯s magic is to serve the Emperor and Heaven, not to whip some eggs to make sauce.¡± ¡°So that¡¯s what we¡¯re making, huh. I think you can manage. Unless¡­¡± Archmund wondered whether Mary was a harbinger of bigger changes. Foreshadowing, he would¡¯ve called it. The Crylaxan Plague had killed a lot of people, and in the aftermath of great plagues, like the Black Death, there were often radical societal changes. The older servants were never lippy with him. Either that, or she was just young. ¡°I¡¯ll read Ardur to you. ¡®The Imp and the Well,¡¯ maybe.¡± Faery tales. Mary loved those. Unfortunately, she wasn¡¯t fully literate, so she needed people like him to read them out loud. ¡°Throw in ¡®The Voice from the Highest Hill¡¯ and you¡¯ve got yourself a deal.¡± ¡°Deal.¡± Though now that Archmund thought about it, this might be an interesting test whether skill acquisition operated on the same underlying game logic that personal attributes seemed to. Would it be possible to power-level someone in literacy? Or was it possible that power-leveling was only possible for the rare and privileged few? Either way, he liked Mary. She was about six inches taller than him, mostly because of age. Her skin was smooth for a member of the working class, but she had fading calluses on her hands. He recalled that she had worked for her aunt and uncle doing manual labor before being sent to join the household.Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. She had straight dark hair that came to her shoulders, pale skin, and gray eyes. Archmund knew he would miss her terribly once he had to formally enter high society and she realized it was no longer appropriate for her to be sarcastic with him. But that was at least five years in the future. As Mary whipped the eggs, Archmund drizzled in the oil. The mayonnaise came together as fast as he¡¯d expected. It was a modest amount, but more than enough for ten sandwiches. He tasted it, and it was as rich and creamy as he¡¯d remembered. ¡°Would you like a taste, Mary?¡± ¡°I¡¯d rather not. Raw eggs.¡± Oh, he was such an idiot. He¡¯d been spoiled by the hygiene of his old world. ¡°There¡¯s no need to worry about that,¡± said a booming voice from behind them. It was Willem Barst, an old friend and trusted servant of the Lord Granavale. They had been together for years ¡ª since the elder Granavale¡¯s time in the Imperial Academy, in fact. Chef Bast had been trained in Imperial culinary traditions, and was, in fact, one of the few ostentatious luxuries retained by House Granavale. ¡°We run all the eggs through hygiene spells. Have ever since the start of the Plague,¡± Barst continued. ¡°I¡¯m glad I won¡¯t catch ill again,¡± Archmund said. ¡°Chef Barst, what do you think?¡± Barst swiped a finger through the concoction and tasted it. ¡°Ah, you¡¯ve made mayonnaise! Where¡¯d you¡¯d learn about this?¡± (He didn¡¯t literally say the word mayonnaise, but it undeniably a proper noun. Upon hearing it, Archmund instantly understood that whatever name it was under, mayonnaise already existed.) ¡°Damn, this wasn¡¯t just one of his fits of pique?¡± Mary said. ¡°This mayonnaise stuff already exists?¡± ¡°It¡¯s rarer, and not an obvious recipe,¡± said Barst. ¡°Is there any reason why?¡± Archmund asked. Barst¡¯s eyebrows knit together, and he pursed his lips in the way he always did when he was trying to hide something from Archmund. ¡°Young master, it¡¯s made from raw eggs, which perturbs the common man, especially since the start of the Plague.¡± ¡°What if we used sanitation spells?¡± Barst¡¯s eyebrows tensed even further. The servants had a habit of doing this, going to great lengths to hide just how rich the Granavales were from Archmund. It was obvious now, but he still hadn¡¯t figured out why they bothered. ¡°The average farmer doesn¡¯t have energy to cast a sanitation spell every morning to clean a few eggs when they could borrow the town¡¯s fire spell or some flint and steel once a month and cook the damn things,¡± Mary said. ¡°If it¡¯s a matter of scale, we could build a manufactory. Crack a few hundred eggs into a basin and cast the sanitation spell on all of them at the same time. We could add oil to the basin while swirling it with a rotation spell.¡± ¡°You¡¯d never find a noble willing to do magic in a manufactory.¡± ¡°Why does it have to be a noble?¡± ¡°Because commoners don¡¯t have enough innate magic to cast complex spells. Only nobles and heroes do. You should know this by now.¡± And an alarm went off in Archmund¡¯s mind. Magical capacity could be grown and increased. He was almost certain of it. He had been practicing with his Red Gem of Light every day, and each time he was able to charge it for longer and longer. It had gotten to the point where he would be watching it in the mornings to see how long it had stayed lit, because he had enough power to keep it lit through the night. Something told him it would be a bad idea to claim, even if it wasn¡¯t fully proven, that commoners could use magic as much as nobles if only they had the time and opportunity to practice. That was the stuff of revolution, and it might lead to getting him killed. ¡°Say I did this myself,¡± Archmund said. ¡°Ignoring all the social obligations and such. Is there any other reason it wouldn¡¯t work?¡± Barst told Archmund how much the eggs and oil cost. It was about half a month of his allowance, which even considering his youth, was significant. Sighing, Archmund agreed to pay for the costs of the supplies. This world was just unfair.
¡°He wasn¡¯t in any position to refuse your offer to pay him off,¡± Mary said. ¡°I know.¡± They walked in silence towards Archmund¡¯s room. ¡°What didn¡¯t he tell me?¡± Archmund asked. ¡°A whole lot.¡± ¡°Did he cheat me?¡± Mary stopped walking. Archmund turned around. She was gazing through the window towards Granavale Town. ¡°I don¡¯t know. You gave him what I get in a month and a half of work. Two eggs is hard to get but not impossible. I couldn¡¯t say how much the oil would be. I only ever had lard or butter.¡± Archmund walked up besides her. ¡°I grew up with three siblings or cousins. My aunt and uncle only had enough for the one chicken. Before I started here, we¡¯d only get an egg once a month ¡ª and that was for the four of us. My aunt and uncle would skip, or be out hawking their wares. When they came back we¡¯d eat well for a few days or so, but then they¡¯d have to be off again.¡± Perhaps, Archmund reflected, he could¡¯ve put a higher priority on understanding the harshness of this world¡¯s poverty. Perhaps it could have avoided this conversation. Or perhaps this conversation was just what he needed. ¡°I worked for a year and a half here before I could save up enough for a second chicken. Now my siblings get two, maybe three eggs a month, though your generosity keeps me fed far better.¡± ¡°So for a factory where we cracked a few hundred eggs into a basis¡­¡± She laughed, not meanly, but as if on the verge of tears. ¡°Where would you get so many eggs? From all the poor workers who need their daily eggs to live? Even you couldn¡¯t buy up that many chickens, surely. It¡¯s silly, Arch. It¡¯s¡­ beneath you, young master.¡± The real issue with mayonnaise in fantasy worlds wasn¡¯t one of the ingenuity of the people, or for want of ingredients, or a lack of appetite for the condiment. It was logistical. If you wished to make mayonnaise en masse, you must¡¯ve first invented factory farming.
That evening, he wrote down a new task. A larger-scope, longer-term goal that would be necessary if he wanted true freedom. Task #3: Grow the Granavale Holdings and fortune to a point where he literally didn¡¯t have to do anything to maintain them, so he could do whatever he wanted. Task #4: Revise Task #3 to be specific, once he understood realistic economic power in this world.
Archmund¡¯s Journal:
Year 0, Day 11: Push-ups: 100 in 29 minutes Magic: Light lasts for 2 hours Mayonnaise won¡¯t lead to freedom unless I introduce factory farms. Would that even be allowed? They might not care about animal welfare here but maybe there are elves or beast people somewhere on the continent who would take that as an excuse for a total war? I think I should focus on magic. Something¡¯s bothering me: Servants can use Gems. All magic comes from Gems. Only nobles can use magic. I believed that all three of these are true. They can¡¯t be. Maybe everyone can use Gems, but only nobles can ¡°do magic¡± because ¡°doing magic¡± is something else that transcends ¡°using a Gem¡±. This is something I need to investigate to see if this is the path to true power (and freedom). Maybe ¡°noble blood¡± is what you need to ¡°use¡± Gems, and servants have ¡°noble blood¡±. I don¡¯t like the implications of this... wait. We get most of our servants from the County. If all of them have noble blood, then so does everyone in the Empire. Maybe everyone can use Gems, but only nobles get training, practice, and nutrition to actually ¡°use¡± Gems to their full potential. Classic classism. I wouldn¡¯t rule it out, but¡­ It¡¯s testable. Easily testable. Mary can activate Gems. She¡¯s reasonably well fed here. She¡¯s not exhausted in the evenings. I¡¯ll ask her to train the way I do.
The Dungeon Storm It was a dark and stormy night. This phrase was a famous literary cliche from Archmund¡¯s previous life. He didn¡¯t know where it came from, only that it often indicated trite, hackish writing. And yet it fit ¡ª almost. The sky boiled with clouds, and lightning arced across the heavens ¡ª and yet it never struck the ground. And unlike anything he¡¯d seen in this life or the last, this lightning was hued violet. It was deeply atypical for the summer storms. Perhaps the skies wanted to purge all their pent-up tears in the last storm of the season? There was a knock at the door. ¡°Archie? Your lord father¡¯s calling for you,¡± said Mary, her voice muffled behind the wood. This was most irregular. Archmund opened the door to face her. ¡°I thought he was at the capital.¡± ¡°He returned not even an hour ago. And he wants to see you immediately.¡±
They met in his father¡¯s study. ¡°What do you think of tonight?¡± said the Lord Reginald Granavale, not turning to look at him. He kept his eyes fixed on the roiling clouds outside the window. ¡°It¡¯s dark and stormy,¡± Archmund said. His father raised an eyebrow, not knowing what to make of it. Now that he had an opportunity to look, Archmund thought his father looked rather calm for someone who¡¯d rushed home from the Imperial Capital. And dry, for someone who¡¯d been traveling in a storm. Not a strand of hair out of place, not a drop of water in his beard. ¡°What¡¯s so special about this storm?¡± And now his father turned to him. His face was grave. ¡°It¡¯s a Dungeon Storm. Do you know what a Dungeon is?¡± Archmund suppressed a groan. The word ¡®Dungeon¡¯ had been spoken like a proper noun, heavy with import and connotation. There were lots of generic fantasy dungeons in the generic fantasy books he¡¯d read in his past life, but unfortunately this was reality and this world had displayed a certain level of internal consistency. This was going to be a whole ordeal. He shook his head. And his father began to explain. The Omnio Empire was not, despite Imperial messaging, fully tamed land. There were skirmishes on the frontier, entire ¡®provinces¡¯ that were nations in all but name, and there were Dungeons ¡ª dangerous labyrinths full of monsters that appeared after Dungeon Storms, that were an integral part of the Omnio Empire¡¯s economic system.. There were Four Great Dungeons. The first was the ancient Omnio Dungeon that lay beneath the Imperial Capital, kept exclusively for the use of House Omnio and their vassals. The second was the Arcane Dungeon at the westernmost point, held by the University of Imperial Mages, which they harvested extensively for Gems. The third was the Holy Dungeon, claimed by an ancient Saintess for the Church, and they claimed it was their sacred duty to purify the souls within, but mainly it was one of their sources of great wealth. And the last was the Wild Dungeon, on the Frontier, the final challenge of many an adventurer. Those were the Great Dungeons that had lasted for decades if not more; Lesser Dungeons could appear anywhere on the continent, at any time, but would often run dry within a decade. Dungeons were spawned from the wrath of the restless dead. The Church, the Empire, and the University of Imperial Mages agreed on this; Archmund wondered whether it was literally true or if it was highly coordinated propaganda. But when the restless dead grew wrathful, they would erupt from the ground, uniting the powers of hell to strike at heaven. As the strongest of the dead degassed from the depths of the earth, they carved a labyrinthine Dungeon that echoed the memories and regrets they¡¯d held in life. Lesser ghosts and spirits would emerge as Monsters, trapped in physical form, and haunt the halls of the Dungeon. Over time, the most vengeful dead with the deepest grudges would forsake disembodied form and materialize as truly fearsome Monsters. No one knew why. ¡°Is this common knowledge?¡± It was not; it was a state secret. House Granavale had been given the privilege of knowledge because the Dungeon was in their lands. Even then, Archmund suspected it could not be fully trusted; it was clear to him even then that the Church, the Empire, and the University had their own agendas and this rare agreement likely served them. ¡°But why here?¡± It was random, supposedly. Or rather, the matter was so unknown, so it appeared random. The entirety of Omnio was built on wars so ancient they had long been forgotten, so the restless dead were buried infinitely in unmarked graves below the whole continent. If someone had a way of detecting the next Dungeon Storm, they were keeping it secret.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Two things struck Archmund about the mechanics of Dungeons. First, there were many, many inconsistencies in these explanations. Archmund was sure there was a fundamental truth that was unknown or, more likely, being concealed. Second, it seemed awfully like these Dungeons resembled generic dungeons (the common noun) from popular fantasy media in his past life. They could pop up anywhere, had a mechanism that caused monsters in deeper levels to be stronger than those in higher levels, and were just dangerous enough to necessitate force but not mundane enough to support an economy based on lone adventurers. It was either too convenient, or he was missing important nuances because he was filtering his experience through his questionable past memories. But now was not the time to investigate any of this. There were bigger priorities grounded in the socioeconomic reality of his current life. ¡°What happens now?¡± Legally, since the Dungeon appeared on Granavale land, it and its spoils were Granavale property. Practically, whenever a Dungeon appeared in a minor county, the local rulers were too poor to exploit it to its fullest. They didn¡¯t have the troops to subjugate the Monsters that spawned, so they couldn¡¯t harvest their resources and wealth. Because of that same weakness, Monsters risked breaching the walls of the Dungeons and becoming genuine threats to the safety of the people. So the only option for poorer nobles was to open their Dungeons up to the forces of the wider Empire and give up the vast majority of the spoils. The Venato Family had a stranglehold over trade. They could provide the necessary supplies to support the inevitable rush of treasure hunters and Dungeon delvers, but would keep the majority of the profits for themselves and their affiliates. Similarly, House Omnio had the strongest, most elite Dungeon subjugators, but their aid meant surrendering the easy spoils of the upper levels. Taking aid from the University of Imperial Mages or the Church had similar issues. In the long term, the only sustainable solution was the cultivation of dedicated local adventurers, but this almost never happened because Dungeons so often lasted only a few years. Archmund knew how this went from how often it happened in his past life. There was a certain part of the world known as America. Broadly speaking, it could be divided into two cultural blocs: North America, which had been colonized by the seafaring British, and Latin America, which had been colonized by the Catholic Spaniards. The British had practiced a form of colonization later known as ¡°settling. Their primary interest was in claiming and developing the lands, while exiling some of their political dissidents in the process. The Spanish, however, had practiced something more akin to extraction. They were less interested in transplanting their people to this untamed landmass, and more interested in extracting wealth from the New World. At the peak of Spanish extraction, they had mined so much silver from the famed Cerro de Potosi that they crashed the market entirely in the Old World of Europe. But even hundreds of years later, North America thrived and was wealthy, while Latin American nations still suffered from the ¡°resource curse¡±: They were seen as a place where the ¡°developed¡± world could take and take and take, and the wealth of their lands rarely went to their own people. This was a fate Archmund wanted to avoid for his lands. And thankfully, his father agreed. The Lord Granavale had a plan to play the Empire, the Church, the University of Imperial Mages, and the Venato Family against each other, and in doing so keep wealth within Granavale County. The Lord Granavale had cultivated a reputation of being hopelessly and slavishly devoted to the whims of his spoiled son; it was a wonderful coincidence that said son had recently become wise beyond his years, but that no one knew it. Said son was perfectly entitled to sit in on meetings with these powerful and influential groups. And if he happened to make ridiculous, unreasonable demands, then the Lord Granavale¡¯s self-serving demands would look all the more reasonable in comparison. ¡°Any questions?¡± the Lord Granavale asked. ¡°Just one,¡± Archmund said. ¡°How will this change our plans for me?¡± The Lord Granavale stared out the window. ¡°If it works, none at all. You¡¯ll go to the Academy richer, and inherit a Granavale that¡¯s much healthier.¡± ¡°And if it doesn¡¯t?¡± ¡°Then the Granavale you inherit might be a ghost of its former self.¡± The carriages arrived. The dignitaries approached. It was time for his first steps onto the world stage.
Archmund¡¯s Journal:
Year 0, Day 95 (part 1??) Push-ups: 100 in 5 minutes Magic: Light lasts past dawn Dungeons? Seriously? The way Father talks about them, it¡¯s like striking oil. If Monsters are the spirits of the dead, and they drop Gems, does that mean Gems are the stuff of souls? Is this the secret to power? Have Omnio, the Church, and the Mages figured out how to successfully farm soul-stuff? What even is soul-stuff? If it¡¯s so powerful then how come I have some as a night light?? Those are questions I only have the luxury of asking once our economic situation is secure. Either this destroys us ¡ª or it¡¯s a way to establish Granavale as a world power. As much as I¡¯d like a free life, the second is preferable to the first.