Milo

  I stare confused at the young man, as he runs down the hall half naked. Then I spin, and find Via, as wretched as ever, draped over a plush looking chair that appears more like a pile of stuffing pulled together, and wrapped up with a cloth. In her left hand she holds a pipe packed full with mana infused opium, filling the room with its heady scent. She sits mostly naked, but at the sight of me she rolls her eyes, and draws a blanket to cover her body.

  I glare at Via.

  She glares right back at me. “What do you want motherfucker?”

  I nod my head. “I want a cut of the money this little place makes monthly, or I'm putting it out of business. 10% of the profit.” Before I can even finish she waves her hand.

  “Deal. Someones bringing a contract now.”

  I blink. “Why…?”

  She rolls her eyes. “This place is absurdly popular. People pay to be in the fights, people pay to watch the fights, people pay to eat or drink here, people pay to smoke here, it is incredibly profitable, and I'm not losing it, because some asshole wants a portion of the profits.”

  I tut quietly. “Well now I just look a fool don’t I.”

  She smirks rudely and tilts her head. “You always look a fool.”

  Then a contract is hurriedly tucked into my hands, I sign it without even thinking, and am quickly rushed out of the room. In a daze I stumble down the hallway, and lean gently on the walls as I walk. I stumble forward, before bouncing off the chest of a haggard man. His beard is patchy and short, his hair oily, and clumped with a variety of dried liquids. He has blood and vomit all over the front of his shirt, and only has a short warhammer with a tapered end tucked into his belt.

  He glares at me, and slurs a word I can't quite catch, while spitting on his own beard.

  I glance at him. “Sorry.” I mutter, and drop my eyes down.

  He glares and slurs another word. “Ot e probum li me-an”

  I blink. “No… Sorry.” With half closed eyes I stumble around him, and out the door of the arena, into the street.

  I squint at the bright sun, and take a breath of deep air before stumbling off along the street.

  I stumble out along the street, and as I walk I notice something. An excess of poverty, especially among the beast men communities. I have an idea what I can do about that. This idea will also help get rid of some of the humanoids living in the sewers.

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  I stumble along until I find Gertrudes office, and I peek into it. She sits at her desk snoring.

  I walk up and slap the desk heavily. She sputters, “Wha - What's that?” She blinks a couple of times in a daze before glaring at me. “What are you doing you fucking jack-ass.”

  I smile, and sit down. “We need to be more self-sustainable, food wise.”

  She glares at me. “Yes…”

  I smile, “Why don't we dig multiple floors down of space, that we can attach mana lighting to simulate the sun, we can power the mana lighting through wheels that we can force labourers to run on, and then the crops can be farmed by those same forced labourers.”

  She sighs. “Great, great… Where are we getting the labourers from?”

  I smile. “All the beastmen, slumming it in our city! The criminals, the debtors, I mean someone could probably even sell themselves into slavery to save their families. Or, we can capture the humanoids living in our sewers, and force them to farm for us.I mean we could even create like a puppy mill style thing with the sewer creatures, because nobody really knows they exist, so it doesn't matter what we do to them, as long as nobody knows about it!”

  She chuckles. “Why not… Though if anybody learns about it, you are gone. You could even train some of those sewer people to be like elite military units for you.”

  I smile, and snap my fingers vigorously. “Exactly! You see!”

  I spin off, and into the street. First I trek over to the tower, where Oats hang out, and I search out their earth division. This is a group of earth mages, directly headed by Ivan. I collect myself a couple of earth mages, and for an excessive amount of coin, they agree to carve a couple of levels out from under our little city, and then reinforce them as well. They also promised to do this below the sewers so they wouldn't be destroyed, and for a little extra they agreed not to tell anyone about it.

  Next, I wander off to start hiring security. I picked very carefully. I needed people who don't really have a life. They need to have something I can use to control them. A gambling addiction, a drug addiction, their family, it doesn't matter, but I need something I can use to control them.

  I ended up selecting ten people for the first floor. A young man with a deep opium addiction, another one in severe gambling debt with a hardcore addiction, a middle aged woman with like 8 kids to take care of, so I can leverage those kids against her if I need to, like three other people who are in debt to me, and the other four have a cocktail mix of addiction to a variety of drugs coming through from the other side.

  I pretty much immediately leveraged that against all of them, and made them promise to keep their mouths shut about what's going on in those little underground bases we are making. The first floor will be producing soldiers. I need them desperately, as I currently have no private forces, except for a couple adventurers, or thugs I've managed to strong arm into service under me, or the guards.

  My plan is to organize them into colonies within the floor. Three colonies will exist, and they will each be a different race, but the third one will be mixed races. Each colony will have a ‘squad’ ; this squad will be military aged men, or women if they are fit enough. Ill create competition between the colonies by making their squads run drills or missions, and whoever does the drills or the missions best get more food, and more luxuries, the second best squad gets the second best quality, and quantity of food, and luxuries, But the worst squad will get their entire colony the worst food, in the least quantity, with the least amount of luxuries. I'll make it so that even the poorest colony won't starve, but they won't be happy, and they will be hungry.

  To make them loyal I'll do two things, I'll introduce priests, who will preach a fake religion based around combat, and being loyal to their betters(being me). I'll have a different priest for each colony. The second thing I'll do to instill loyalty is to give them a highly addictive mix of opium, mana, and alcohol called swill that they will get addicted to, and if they don't consume some over a long period of time, they will experience serious withdrawals, which eventually cause death.