Chapter 200 – Out of Your Pocket
“Won’t you stop already!”
“Ah, you’re so noisy. Be quiet, Crali.”
“But…!”
“Enough. Or what, do you want to try it too?”
“Never!”
“Then be silent.”
Crali closed her mouth. While improving my petting skills, I used the opportunity to turn to the angered daughter.
“By the way, the price of vaccines just increased. It’s three gold each now.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“That’s the price of trying to kill me.”
“I-I wouldn’t have done it for real!”
“I’d be dead if not for Lady Angin.”
“You can’t do stuff like that! Do you think Geola’s money is for you to siphon as you wish?”
Angin interrupted her with that timing.
“Who said that? The two hundred gold difference will come out of your pocket, Crali.”
“Huh? Why?”
“That’ll teach you to be so stupid. I need to do at least that much, or you’ll never learn anything.”
“Why are you siding with him instead of your daughter? That’s ridiculous!”
“Quiet. Prepare the money for tomorrow.”
“No, but two hundred golds… That’s too much! I don’t own that much.”
“Stop lying. You have 5 golds in your pocket, 271 in your chest at home, and 50 in your secret stash under your mattress. It’s a pitiful place to hide your money, by the way.”
The daughter looked shocked.
“Why do you know that!”
“I know everything. Go back to work now. I don’t want to see you act like a moron for the rest of the day.”
“But…!”
“Do you hear me?”
Crali bit her lips while trembling in rage, her fist clenched and her tail tensed, glaring at both me and her mother with resentment and indignation.
“…Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“…Yes, Mom. I… I’ll do as you say.”
“Good. Go now.”
The girl pierced us with her stare one last time before leaving the tent. Angin removed my hand from her head and opened her mouth to say something when someone else entered. It was one of Geola’s ministers, checking on the situation.
“My Lady, is everything all right? The miss…”
“You don’t need to worry about her. She’ll return when she’s calmed down, and you can resume your meeting.”
She dismissed him with a lazy wave of the hand.
“I understand. Sorry for disturbing you.”
He glanced at me for a second before leaving, too. Angin lay down again, smiling my way.
“I’m surprised. Most people are careful in my presence. Not many would dare touch me even if I invited them to do so.”
That was understandable. From the perspective of the locals, she was a legend, ruling a city of a million people and standing above everyone else in the region. For me, however, she wasn’t anything too special. I had been in constant contact with the ones who ruled my planet, a place that housed thirteen billion people.
It was impressive that Angin Vejas was high ranked, but that was it. She wasn’t even a transcendent, nor the possessor of a tricky affinity. There were hundreds of thousands of folks like her back in my world.
“I felt like it would be fine. You also don’t seem to stand on ceremony much, my Lady.”
“Formalities are just a waste of time and energy.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
As for me, I preferred mingling with common folks. People with power tended to be crazy in one way or another. To put it simply, they were often a pain in the ass.
My words seemed to intrigue her since her ears moved a little.
“How interesting. Is everyone in the domes like you?”
“No comment.”
“Are there a lot of high-ranked and transcendents there?”
“No comment.”
“Come on, you have to tell me something. It’s been so long since anything made me curious.”
I thought about it for a moment before finding a good topic.
“I can tell you a little about technology if you’re interested.”
Her grin widened.
“Yes, tell me.”
“I’m sure you asked artisans and blacksmiths to try replicating selnic items, right?”
“Yes. They said it was impossible to reproduce.”
“That’s an understatement. I estimate the level of technology to be at least several hundred centuries apart.”
“That much? Since the domes have only been around for 800 years, and if we assume the level of technology humans possessed at that point was the same as other species, doesn’t that mean we almost stagnated?”
“It might be. You should know more about this than me. But, if that’s true, it’s not too surprising either.”
“Why?”
“Because of sel and magic. This is just my theory, but let’s say a group of people decide to settle in the middle of nowhere. A couple of earth mages will be enough to build houses and farm for food, and a water mage can provide enough water for the group. Just like that, all the basic life needs are fulfilled relatively easily, and only very basic technology is needed to get that far. Plus, it’s fine to live your whole life like this. There needs to be a catalyst for technological development to go beyond that.”
“Intriguing. Go on.”
“Let me give you another example. Let’s say we have a field in which nothing special was done except planting seeds and waiting for harvest time. When it’s time to harvest, let’s consider that the field gives an amount of food equivalent to 100. Now, if someone uses earth’s blessing and the ones tending to it are not bunnies, the same field will maybe yield 150. It’s good, but it’s also something any earth mage can do as long as they learn the spell. And that’s the limit of what you can achieve with just magic.”
Angin nodded while listening to me attentively, and I continued.
“But, what if you used some kind of fertilizer to increase food production? What if you invented a tool to plow the earth more effectively? Or a means to keep critters and pests away from your food? Then, the field yield could become 180, 200, 250, and so on.”
“That would cause an increase in population.”
“Indeed. More population means more needs to be fulfilled. That’d lead to a demand for better production methods in all domains, and maybe an increase in technology level in response to it. But that’s not all. This surplus in food production will make people wealthier and decrease the number of farmers needed to feed the population. And with wealth naturally comes a demand for better life conditions, because how else would you use your surplus money if not to better your life? That demand also would need to be met, and the best way to do that would be with better technology, too.”
Read 30 more chapters here: https://subscribestar.adult/dictatelion or here: https://www.patreon.com/Dictatelion