Chapter 121 Act 13: Dungeon

Author: Starving Wind	Original Source: Joara	Word Count: 3071 characters
Translator: Anonymouss	English Source: Re:Library	Word Count: 1893 words
Editor(s): Silva

The lord’s home office. I guess calling it the Queen’s home office would be more apt, is where I stepped into and sat myself down in front of the table which was located at the center of the room.

[Would you like to begin the management of the London city?]　

The system message popped up at the same time as I sat down on the chair. Since that was the very reason I came here, I pressed ‘yes’ right away.

[First, you can check summary information about London city’s current status. To check, please press yes, or if you wish you skip it and go right into management, please press no.]　

Usually, I’m not the type to read tutorials or manuals much, but this was something I could definitely not afford to skip so I didn’t. Therefore I pressed the ‘yes’ button.

[London city – Tier: Capital of Kingdom LEVEL – 1

Outer wall tier – LEVEL 10 (Current), LEVEL 20 (Maximum)

Inner wall tier – LEVEL 10 (Current), LEVEL 20 (Maximum)

Luxury tier – LEVEL 1 (Current), LEVEL 10 (Maximum)

Prosperity tier – LEVEL 5 (Current), LEVEL 20 (Maximum)

Hygiene tier – LEVEL 3 (Current), LEVEL 10(Maximum)

Security tier – LEVEL 2 (Current), LEVEL 10 (Maximum)

Defense troop number: 1312 soldiers / Security troop number: 1012 soldiers / Royal guard number: 300 soldiers

Population: 1,320,000 people / NPC taxation profit: 254,350,000 gold

Total city revenue (Including NPC taxation): 2,284,390,000 gold

Total city maintenance expense: 835,410,000 gold¹]　

Though there was a button to see more details about each item, I felt that my brain would become overloaded at that rate so I decided to look only at important summary details.

Of course, I would need to read deeper details later on to manage the city properly, but I felt that reading just this much was enough for today.

“As expected of a capital city, what an amazing amount of revenue…”

More than anything, I was amazed by the amount of revenue that London city was making. Of course, after taking out the maintenance expenses it would end up around 1.4 billion gold, but that’s still an insane amount. If I were to just keep all the profit to myself for just 3 months, it would be equivalent to the amount of gold that I had gained over 5 years with my current character.

The problem is that I had announced that London was now going to be ‘tax-free’. I tried inputting a setting where taxation was taken out for every single human user for the next upcoming revenue collection to see how much profit I would end up with.

[Would you like to apply the ‘Tax-Free’ setting for London?]　

Of course, I pressed yes. I predicted that if I didn’t change the setting now and only checked the numbers, I would end up finding it much more difficult to apply the change of settings in the future.

[Total city revenue (Including NPC taxation): 1,047,550,000 gold

Total city maintenance expenditure: 843,190,000 gold]　

“Tsk…”

It was just as I expected, but I couldn’t help but feel bad about losing 1.2 billion in profit. One thing that was reassuring was that there’s going to be at least 200,000,000 gold in profit each month, but once you consider that there are mountains of future expenditure to raise the levels of the city management, all that profit I would gain would quickly turn into losses instead.

It seemed like I would truly need to completely empty out my personal wealth to pay it off instead. But since I was holding such a massive amount of gold in total already, it didn’t mean much to me. There are only two guild members that I have to ‘feed’, and if I needed to I could simply sell off the ‘trash items’ in the vault that I didn’t need to make up for the amount. If that doesn’t work, I can simply spend my real money to earn a lot of gold as well. Since the war is over, the value of gold will be going down for a while, and the market would be left with so much supply for things that overall prices would go down. I knew that I could even ask Jasmine for help if things got worse, so there was no real reason to be worried.

“Though I’ve seen plenty of cases where users saved up money to become a lord of a territory, I guess I am the first one to save up money to support the city that they own instead.”

I tried asking how it turned out like this, but it was something I brought to myself in the end. Then I thought that since it was already done, I should make sure that the city can be as beautifully decorated as it can be. To control and manage a gigantic city like London was a dream that anyone would have once in their life, right?

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that I was having fun with a ‘city simulator’ game right now.

“I will make sure that the city completely fits my tastes!”

[The territory’s AI is reacting accordingly to your intention. Would you like to establish the territory’s AI right now?]　

Though it said that the AI was reading and reacting to my intention, it just felt like I had reached the stage in establishing the settings for the base level AI, which I had to do before I got properly into managing the territory.

As I obviously knew that it would be impossible to move onto the next stage if I didn’t set up the AI, I pressed yes to the prompt.

[Male, female, gender-neutral. Three types exist. Please select the gender that you prefer.]　

For some reason, I get the feeling that some people knew exactly which option I would end up choosing. It couldn’t be Esther or Katalina…

In any case, I chose the ‘female’ option for the AI. I had a feeling that the people surrounding me started to become all females, but that’s what my intention was in the first place anyways.

[Generating AI. Please wait a moment.]　

A gigantic egg-like shape appeared in the lord’s home office room. It was ridiculous, but I watched the egg with curious eyes wondering what could come out from it.

Crack…

Not long after, a sound of something cracking was heard, as small cracks began to appear on the egg.

“Whoa…”

I couldn’t help but sound impressed by all this. If I was able to, I would definitely get up right away to help out in opening up the egg, but I was sure that the moment I stood up from the seat the whole progress would reset so there was nothing else but for me to just sit there quietly and watch.

Crack!

The gigantic egg which was cracking all over and over again finally crumbled to pieces. And so, the thing inside the egg came into my view.

“Wha!?!”

I yelled out loud in surprise from seeing its appearance.

Nice to meet you, master!

The AI form that stood in front of me smiled brightly and greeted me as if she already knew who I was. A familiar face and body shape. I was sure that it was the appearance of someone I knew very well.

“Signus?”

That’s right. I was sure that it was the same AI fairy that existed back at the sky castle. It’s just that now she wasn’t a fairy, but rather a humanoid female with an angel’s wing on one side and a devil’s wing on the other side.

Yes, master. As the master had become the lord of a city, my movement limitations had been released. Thanks to that, I was able to assimilate this city’s main AI.

Whoa, does she mean she devoured it? This city’s AI?

Judging by your expression, you couldn’t possibly be thinking that I had devoured the original city AI, are you? How could you possibly think that someone as delicate and weak as me would do something so horrifying and terrible?

“But in any case, it’s nice to see you again like this.”

Hehe, me too!

Looks like she has the same type of personality as Katalina.

“So, what happens now? You don’t look like a hologram as you previously did, you look like you have an actual body.”

To give you an easy metaphor to understand, you can think that you now have a pet that’s following you around and can change the city settings in real-time as you wish.

Oho…

“Does that mean you are able to assist in battles as well?”

Of course! I may look like this, but I am an SSS-tier pet.

“I guess you’d devour a huge portion of my experience points then.”

Honestly, pets are very useful. The higher the tier, the more useful they are, but unexpectedly the number of high ranked users that use this pet system to help them out in combat was very rare. The reason as to why that happens was because of the experience points problem that I just pointed out.

It’s already difficult raising your own experience points to keep up with the pace, so imagine at least one-third of all your experience points being taken by the pet, which is absolutely terrible. The higher the tier of your pet, the larger proportion of experience points they will take, so naturally that applies to an SSS tier pet as well, which is the highest possible tier.

Therefore there were many instances where they would bring a pet around with them only as decoration. But even though this was very rare, there were a few that do raise pets together with their own character as well.

Don’t sound so down like that. I may look like this, but I’m the one who devoured… I mean, absorbed the city’s main AI. You can raise my experience points through gold only, master~

Just as I thought, she devoured that AI. I prayed for a peaceful afterlife for the AI that couldn’t appear in the world even once before being devoured by Signus.

“Hmm… Gold, huh.”

Then things change somewhat. Of course, my wealth situation isn’t that good at this moment but I can make some whenever I need so it wouldn’t be that much of a problem to feed her some.

Yes! I can apply various buffs to you as well. If you have me summoned during battle, you will gain an increase of 10% on the probability of acquiring new equipment and items from monsters. Plus I do not lay a single finger on your experience gain.

It was a very enticing advantage to hear. But I knew that there definitely was going to be a disadvantage to go along with it, so I needed to be cautious.

“Now then, tell me the bad news part about you becoming my pet.”