China Trembles While America Drools...?
The day after the Director of the Jeju Tower Management Headquarters and a full squad of special forces troops had stopped by to happily demolish a watermelon.
"Mmmnnnghhhh—!"
Bathed in the bright morning sun, Dohyeon stretched until his shoulders popped.
"Oof. It's scorching already, and it's barely morning."
In truth, there was nothing fresh about the morning at all — the summer sun blazed down with demented fury.
Swoosh-swoosh-swoosh.
As he brushed out Goldie, eldest brother of his skeletons, Dohyeon chatted away.
"Sorry I can't feed you all the tasty stuff you'd like, but hey, at least you don't suffer in this heat. Right?"
Clack-clack!
Goldie answered with brisk enthusiasm, drinking in his master's touch.
Ding-dong—!
Dohyeon and Goldie turned toward the front door in unison.
The Director of the Jeju Tower Management Headquarters had given notice of a visit the night before, but nobody had mentioned anything about showing up at the crack of dawn.
Isn't this a little rude, even so?
Dropping by at an hour when even the neighborhood community office would still be shuttered...
Dohyeon opened the door anyway.
Click.
"Good morning, Climber Cha Dohyeon. We're here from the Management Bureau."
Outside stood a woman in a wide-brimmed pointed hat, beside a man bowing so deeply at the waist that his back formed a right angle.
"We've come at a terribly early hour, haven't we? Please forgive us. Given the nature of the matter, I'm afraid I got a little ahead of myself."
The official, who introduced himself as Jeong Siwoo, Team Leader of Climber Support Team 1 at the Jeju Tower Management Headquarters, bowed until his head nearly brushed the watermelon sitting on the table.
There was no guaranteeing that no foreign HUMINT operatives had slipped inside the Management Bureau. For both security and negotiation, settling things swiftly before working hours began was the safest play. And with Dohyeon — who had even treated them to watermelon yesterday — wearing a distinctly sour expression, Jeong Siwoo had hurried to lead with an apology.
Seated alongside him, Cassandra — Yoo Seolah — shot Jeong Siwoo a weary sidelong glance.
Having accepted the apology, Dohyeon saw no reason to drag things out and cut straight to the point.
"Raise your head. I'll take the apology. Now, what brings you here?"
Head bobbing back up at once, Jeong Siwoo stated his business.
"Yes, sir. The Management Bureau would like to purchase the entire output of the items you craft, Climber Cha Dohyeon. If possible, we would also like to request an exclusive contract."
An exclusive contract, hm. Can't say I see a downside.
In Dohyeon's experience, whenever the Management Bureau slid an exclusive contract across the table, the terms written into it would be genuinely generous. This was, after all, the institution that had cheerfully extended a billion-won loan on nothing more than his being a promising Climber. He propped his chin atop his laced fingers.
"Then shall I hear the whole story, along with your terms?"
Jeong Siwoo's complexion brightened noticeably. He turned to Cassandra.
"Climber Yoo Seolah, would you walk us through the appraisal results?"
"Of course."
Yoo Seolah, who had been regarding the docile Goldie with fascinated eyes, laid four sheets of paper on the table.
They were the appraisal certificates for the goblin skull engine, the orc skull engine, the orc shaman's skull engine, and the troll skull engine. The item-name fields had been left blank, and beneath each one Cassandra's official seal gleamed crisply.
"Since Mr. Big Brother Goldie didn't send over the item names, I'll explain by size."
Cassandra set the goblin skull engine down atop its certificate.
"First, the smallest one. Everything in this series is made of a mana-friendly material — just like the crystal orbs that drop in the Tower — so it assists a mage in working spells. This one reduces the mana consumed when casting."
Catching her breath, Yoo Seolah tapped a section of the certificate with her finger.
"And then there's a function never before seen in any item: amplified spell power. I couldn't tell you how it's possible, but this sphere continuously generates mana. The user can't draw on it directly, but it weaves itself naturally into whatever spell is being cast and boosts that spell's power. The amplification multiplier varies wildly depending on how much mana the spell costs, so there's no way to pin it down to a number."
Having confirmed that Jeong Siwoo and Cha Dohyeon were keeping up, Yoo Seolah brought out the orc's engine and the troll's, setting them on their certificates as well.
"The second-smallest and the largest. These share the same functions at different outputs. I can't say for certain, but I'd wager even the smallest sphere could carry a low-floor Climber stuck under floor ten up and past it. The less mana a spell consumes, the greater the amplification."
It was an explanation Jeong Siwoo had heard before, but goosebumps crawled up his arms all over again. This one tiny sphere could raise a six-person party with a single mage several rungs up the Tower.
While Jeong Siwoo rubbed at his prickling arms, Yoo Seolah took out the last remaining item — the orc shaman's skull engine.
"The second-largest sphere is a touch more unusual. The others were already unlike anything the world has ever seen, but this one goes further. Its output is lower than the largest sphere's, but it shortens casting time. That will bring benefits to Tower conquest that no number can capture."
So build a staff around the orc shaman's skull engine, and you get three effects at once — reduced mana cost, amplified spell power, and faster casting.
When an appraiser trusted enough to warrant Bureau escorts declared that even the goblin version packed the punch to lift Climbers a few floors, Dohyeon could well understand their eagerness to secure the goods.
The Management Bureau, it turned out, was scheming to use his Golgu to set off tectonic shifts in the international order itself.
Dohyeon unclasped his fingers, folded his arms, and leaned back into his chair.
"Then, shall I hear the Bureau's conditions?"
A shadow seemed to pass over Jeong Siwoo's face.
With the Bureau team leader and the wide-brimmed-hatted mage seen off the property, Dohyeon took a seat at the makeshift workbench set up inside the warehouse.
Not to fill any quota the Bureau had requested — Jeong Siwoo had walked away without earning the right to demand one. Just how lopsided the contract between the Bureau and Dohyeon truly was, anyone could have read from the look on Jeong Siwoo's face as he left the ranch.
The Management Bureau's aims had been twofold: to supply the crafting materials itself and so squeeze Dohyeon's productivity to its absolute maximum, and to buy up his output exclusively. Jeong Siwoo had to content himself with having secured the exclusive purchase rights alone.
Dohyeon had no intention of becoming a full-time craftsman who did nothing but churn out items, and none whatsoever of toiling to meet whatever quotas the Bureau set.
The one right the Bureau had managed to claw out of the deal: purchasing, at a handsome price, the Golgu he fashioned in his spare hours, from spare bones, with spare mana.
That they had landed the exclusive contract at all was a mercy. It wouldn't turn the world upside down overnight, but it sealed off every route by which South Korea's resources might leak abroad.
Dohyeon had the debt he owed the Bureau wiped clean in the name of a contract payment, and he'd agreed to a per-delivery payout that made jaws hit the floor — enough to take on ten more ranch employees without feeling the pinch.
In any case, with the ranch humming at full throttle, the reason he was sitting at a workbench was none other than this...
"Goldie! Could you fetch me the box with the goblin bones?"
Clack-clack!
He meant to put his Domination stat — sitting idle at 5 — to work.
Dohyeon's gaze swept across the warehouse, where the goods had piled up to a respectable height.
There's way too much stuff in here.
The byproducts of his climbs simply kept accumulating. The shabby clothes and crude weapons the monsters carried were hauled off regularly by IM Solution, his byproduct processing company, so those never had a chance to pile up — but Dohyeon treated monster bones as byproducts too, and hauled those out of the Tower right along with everything else.
And until he'd picked up Advanced Jade Bone Processing a short while ago, there had been nothing at all to do with this mountain of bones. The warehouse badly needed a clear-out, and there wasn't a suitable laborer in sight.
A necromancer in name, sweating over grunt work with his own two hands? Beneath his dignity. And his dependable skeleton trio were, quite literally, without hands.
It wasn't the sort of work you could hand to the ranch employees either.
So Dohyeon had executed a grand shift in thinking: cast off the identity of the irregular necromancer who leaves his Domination and Mana stats untouched.
The stats are sitting right there anyway. No sense in chaining myself to a single playbook.
The plan was to revive exactly as many goblins as his Domination stat of 5 allowed and set them to work as laborers.
Screeeech—
Goldie dragged over a box containing the bones of a single goblin.
"Good work, Goldie! This time, instead of a little brother, I'll make you a subordinate."
Clack-clack!
Knock, knock, knock.
"Director, this is Jeong Siwoo, Team Leader of Climber Support Team 1."
"Come in!"
The Director's office, Jeju Tower Management Headquarters. Jeong Siwoo — the same Bureau official who had visited Hyung's Ranch — opened the door with punctilious courtesy.
Rising from his desk chair, Director Pyo Sangpil settled onto the sofa that ringed the table and gestured to a seat.
"Sit."
"Thank you, sir."
"So. How did it turn out?"
Jeong Siwoo drew the documents from his bag and laid them on the table.
"We succeeded in securing the exclusive contract we were after."
A smile crept across Pyo Sangpil's lips.
"Mm. Well done. And how did Climber Cha Dohyeon seem to take it?"
A small smile touching his own mouth, Jeong Siwoo answered.
"We opened with an outlandish demand using the door-in-the-face technique, and he appeared satisfied simply to have us take the entirety of his output under exclusivity. I don't foresee any complications with the exclusive contract."
The door-in-the-face technique was a negotiating strategy of first making a proposal your counterpart was bound to refuse, then sliding your true proposal through under the guise of a concession. The party who fell for it carried a faint twinge of guilt over having said no, resolved to give ground in return for the other side's supposed concession — and, measuring the genuine offer against the outrageous demand that preceded it, came away feeling that the real proposal was all the more reasonable.
A crease formed between Pyo Sangpil's brows.
"The door-in-the-face technique? I trust you didn't go and needlessly set off his temper."
Brilliant as the technique was at landing the terms you actually wanted, it carried a real risk of souring the other party's mood.
Jeong Siwoo, Team Leader of Climber Support Team 1, nodded crisply.
"Of course not. In name it was the door-in-the-face technique, but the opening proposal was framed as a pledge to support Climber Cha Dohyeon to the fullest extent in his work as a craftsman. He turned it down because his heart is set on climbing higher floors and challenging the Tower on his own terms — it was nothing he could take offense at."
Hmmm.
Only then did Pyo Sangpil breathe a sigh of relief and straighten in his seat.
Climber Cha Dohyeon was an eel slathered head to tail in oil. For now he lay quiet in South Korea's embrace, but the moment he decided to move, he could bolt for the outside world at any time.
"Good. And how did the terms settle out?"
"Climber Cha Dohyeon's outstanding debt to us has been forgiven in the name of a contract payment. As for the price of the Golgu — ah, Golgu is the name of the items Climber Cha Dohyeon crafts. In any case, the price of the Golgu sits roughly here..." He tapped the clause. "He said performance may improve further down the line, so whenever an upgraded Golgu comes out, we're to have Climber Yoo Seolah appraise it and renegotiate the price."
Reading over the clause Jeong Siwoo had indicated, Pyo Sangpil replied.
"Handled it all within the budget we set. Good work. What about volume, though? How much are we looking at?"
At the question, Jeong Siwoo pursed his lips and knit his brow.
"Mm... on that point alone, I can't even begin to guess. I pushed as hard as I could, but I couldn't get a minimum volume written in. That said, reading from his posture across the table — willing to lower the unit price, yet flatly refusing to commit to any minimum quantity — I doubt the volume will be large. He showed no interest whatsoever in making money."
With a soft rasp of paper, Pyo Sangpil lifted the contract to eye level.
"For now, I'll settle for having kept it out of foreign hands... This item is the game-changer that will redraw the board of international power. As for volume — give the man somewhere worth spending money, and it will grow. Your job is to dream up a worthy pretext for Climber Cha Dohyeon to spend a fortune on."
Jeong Siwoo bowed his head deep.
"Understood, Director."
Bag tucked under his arm, Jeong Siwoo opened the Director's office door and stepped out.