"These are all worth forty-five thousand Credits each. Those over there all range around twenty-two thousand Credits."
"Mhmm. Okay, pack them."
"Which ones?"
"All of them."
"....."
"You can't sell them all? Should I go someplace else?"
"N-No! No, good sir. Please wait a few minutes, and I'll get your order ready. Do you need a cloth bag or–"
"No, I have dimensional storage in my smart bracelet."
"Oh, can you use mana, good sir? Are you a Cadet?"
"Yes, I can. I am a Cadet at the Global Military Academy."
"Oh, good. We provide a special discount for Cadets, sir."
"Oh? Okay, do you need to see my ID?"
"Ahh, yes, please."
After separating from Kent and the main cast, I wandered around the city for a bit in search of an alchemist shop and soon stumbled upon one.
So without any delay, I entered the shop and made an order for a variety of low-grade mana potions.
Since my order was needlessly big – around thirty mana potions – even the shopkeeper was a bit taken aback.
Even though they were only low-grade, they were still pretty expensive.
Fortunately, I had made more than enough money to easily buy half the items in this shop if I wanted to.
For reference, I roughly made around seven million Credits.
By the way, miraculously, I didn't get lost on my way here even once.
Now if I get back to the hotel without getting lost again, it would truly be a miracle.
It didn't take long for the shopkeeper to ready my order and hand me a huge cardboard box.
"Sir, here's your order."
"Mmm, thank you."
I took the box from his hands while thanking him and storing it in my smart bracelet.
"By the way, sir. If you don't mind me asking, why is a Cadet buying mana potions from outside the Academy?" the shopkeeper asked curiously.
He had a point.
The Global City was separated from the outside world in more ways than one.
Aside from being walled off, the city had its own ecosystem – its own currency, rules, regulations, and even government.
Yes, although the Central Government still has authority over the Cadets in the Global City, the ones who truly rule over everyone there is the Cadet Council.
Of course, that, in no way, means that the Cadet Council shares the same authority as the Central Government – the ones who rule over the world with an iron fist.
No, the Cadet Council has no power in the real world.
Since many of their members go on to become great leaders or soldiers in the future, they are treated highly for the potential they hold.
But that doesn't mean they can hope to go against the Central Government, now or ever. No one can go against them.
Anyway, back to the topic.
Since the Global City has its own ecosystem, it's almost independent of the rest of the world. Everything there is cheap compared to the outside world.
For comparison, let's do this:
One Credit is equivalent to eighty or so Merit Points.
A mana potion I bought from here that cost me twenty-two thousand Credits would only cost me around eighty-eight thousand Merit Points.
That's just a little over a thousand Credits.
Yes, there's THAT big of a difference between buying the goods in the Global City vs. the outside world.
Alcohol, weapons, daily necessities, martial manuals, alchemy potions, and everything else that is there is much cheaper than their cost in the outside world.
How does the Academy make that possible? By providing career jobs to retired soldiers with nowhere to go and no family to return to in the outside world.
Master craftsmen, great chefs, best-of-the-line alchemists, gifted farmers – aside from workers and laborers, every job is handled by either robots or retired soldiers who once graduated from the Global Academy themselves.
How does that not crash the currency of the outside world, then?
Well, for starters, you can't convert Merit Points – the currency of the academy – into Credits – the real-world currency.
Secondly, you can't buy stuff from the Global City and sell it to the outside world or vice versa.
The AI in your smart bracelet would alert the Cadet Council in that case.
However, that doesn't stop you from using the Academy's product on yourself in the outside world.
By extension, it also won't stop you from buying goods from the outside world and using them while inside the academy. But, of course, doing this would be stupid for obvious reasons.
If you can get something for cheap, then why would you pay a high price for it?
The reason for that is: I can get rich quickly in the outside world but not in the Academy, where my wealth and status depends on my academic performance.
But since telling that to a stranger would be embarrassing, I gave him a made-up excuse.
"I ran out of Merit Points in the academy. And since we were out on a trip, I thought about filling up on supplies from the outside world."
"Oh, oh. I see, good sir," pressing his hands tightly like a good businessman, the shopkeeper smiled. "So, anything else the good sir would like to buy?"
"No, this good sir would like to receive the bill."
"Oh, right away, good sir."
After paying the bill for my purchase and exiting the Alchemist shop, I made my way to the hotel.
On my way, I detoured through the slums of Silveserine City.
A great politician once said: If one truly wishes to understand the state of a nation, one should seek out its impoverished citizens.
Yeah, even a city as magnificent and beautiful as this has slums. Every city in this world has these kinds of places.
Not everyone was able to stand back up after the awakening that shook the world seven centuries ago.
Some people used the chaos happening at the time as a ladder to ascend to powerful positions and capitalized on the situation.
They went down in history as the new leaders of the world.
They set up Ruling Families and Noble Houses, allowing the generations after them to run the world for centuries to come.
However, the people who were busy surviving back then couldn't do anything of the sort. They just suffered much like how their descendants are suffering now.
The gap between the strong and weak is so wide now that it can't be crossed anymore unless you become strong yourself.
The rich keeps getting richer while the poor suffer in cast away places like slums.
The condition of Silveserine is no different from the rest of the world. Even though it's called the Silver City for its beauty and wealth, not everyone is still happy.
As I entered the slums, I didn't see skyrise buildings covered in silver or lush greenery adorning the streets.
I saw starvation and poverty.
Scrawny children running around with sticks in hand, houses made of wood and clothes, and men and women roaming the streets in rags.
Naturally, I was getting many stares and I was aware of them all. The reason for the staring eyes was my uselessly expensive suit and my overall good appearance.
As for why I was here? Well… the Vampire King is hiding in this slum.
No, I wasn't here to fight right now. I just wanted to scout the battlefield ahead of time to come up with some plans.
Not only do I need to force her to come out of hiding, but I also can't drag a civilian into the bloodshed that'll happen tomorrow because of me.
Don't get me wrong. I don't care about a stranger's life. I'm one of those 'I'll let the train run over five people to save a person that I know' kind of guy.
However, if I can avoid a loss of life with no negative consequences affecting me, then of course I'll choose to avoid the loss of life.
Besides, if the Military Police were to find out that civilians were endangered because of a Cadet, I would face punishment harsher than simple increments in my training time.
To be honest, if I abide by the rules, I should alert Military Police about this situation and let them deal with the Vampire King in a much safer and more professional manner.
However, if I allow them to do that, then they'll seize everything they would find in the Vampire King's possession – that includes the Mythical beast egg that I'm after.
And I'll die before I let that happen. If I want my future plans to succeed– if I want to survive this doomed world, I need that beast egg.
I'm not exaggerating. I had thousands of different future simulations running in my head for the first few weeks when I came to this world.
I thought about thousands of different possible ways my life could go in this world.
Every life that I imagined ended up either with me dying before the final war or being too late to save this world from its doom.
The reason for all that was that I couldn't get strong faster and break through my potential.
The only way I can prevent it from happening is by getting that beast egg now or coming up with an alchemy potion that can break mana core potential.
And since I'm no alchemist, and a potion that can break through mana core rank potential won't appear until the next two years, I only had one remaining option to choose.
Of course, I'm only a human, so my calculations aren't absolute. It's not like everything I imagined would go exactly like that.
And it's also not like I know the future.
There are thousands and millions of hidden variables that I couldn't factor into my calculations simply because I don't know them or I'm incapable of it.
For example, I don't even know what decision I would make three hours from now, let alone the decisions that others could make three years from now.
However, I'm strictly talking only about the future possibilities that I predicted here. I'm talking about the worst of the worst of the worst cases.
Worst decision that I would have to make. Worst decision that others would make. Worst ways the actions of the people around me would affect me – only cases like that.
And if there's one thing that makes me proud of myself is that I prepare for the storm before it even rains.
I believe in Murphy's law – Everything that can go wrong will go wrong, that too at the worst possible moment.
If I prepare for the worst, if I doubt my closest, and if I keep on thinking calmly in any situation that presents itself, then no scenario in the world can ever surprise me.
That way, everything would be under my control.
"Umm…"
As I was about to exit the slums, I felt someone tugging on my clothes from behind.
I turned around to find a young, around seven to eight years old girl, fairly looking better than kids her age here, pinching my pants with a saddened look.
She had moppy orange hair and fair skin smeared in mud and dirt. Contrary to her dirty appearance, her clear hazel eyes looked at me with nervousness and distress.
"Yes?" I questioned.
"D-Do you have something that my mother can eat?"
"I don't," I said before bending my knees and facing her at her height.
I dug my hands into my pockets and took out a copper alloy coin with the number '40' engraved before handing it to her.
"But I have money," I told her. "Forty credits will buy you enough food for yourself and your mother."
Suddenly her eyes lustered with delight and elation before she nodded and ran off.
Seeing that, many other kids quickly swarmed me and started begging.
Although I didn't have much physical money on me, I gave away everything I had before, somehow making my way out of the people crowding me.
"Fuuu," as I let out a deep breath while leaving the slums and heading for the hotel, a smile formed on my face.
"Phase one completed."
