Chapter 30: Money Troubles

Alright, I have posted all my want ads and will start interviewing or something tomorrow morning. I still don’t know how that will work. However, I have consulted my road maps and have decided that I am going to have to have more Hub Cities than I first thought. The satellite city list is also growing. I need more money fast. I have not even started on my town list and I already need close to 200 million gold pieces just for basic set ups. If I include towns and teleportation networks the cost becomes staggering. I mean I have not even added basic sewers to the package, which would inflate each city price by at least 500,000 to 1 million gold pieces.

It looks like I will need a minimum of 500 million gold pieces to set up just the basics or close to 1 billion gold pieces to do it right. I only have around the equivalent of 200 million gold pieces in all denominations and gems right now. I thought that would be plenty. I can either scale back my plans and leave thousands upon thousands of people to die, or I can get more cash quick.

I may have been optimistic on my new plan to get wealth. The Great Game after fees and transferring requires about 2,000 U.S. dollars per gold piece. This means I need to collect 100 Billion dollars in U.S. currency or its equivalent in precious metals and gems in less than a week just to reach the basic level. I will need to double that amount to do it right and triple it to have some sort of treasury for emergencies. Most small town banks only keep between $10,000 and $20,000 dollars on hand. ATM’s can have $3,000 dollars. The average mall size jewelry store has between $200,000 and 1 million dollars worth of inventory. Major retailers have between $10,000 and $20,000 cash in the store.

So I need to rob, I mean liberate either 7 million ATM’s, 2.5 million small town banks or stores, or 100,000 Jewelry Stores. That number is ridiculous. I do not know if there is even that much available. I did not get everything from the mints, or the bullion depositories so that should help out tremendously. The diamond exchange in New York and Philadelphia are supposed to have over 1 billion in jewels at any time. My main problem is time. If I had a year, I could dig out money from mines and everywhere else. But I will be down to five and ½ days after interviews.

My resource teams are going to have to be able to fly or teleport or something. I will have to advertise for transportation service short contracts now as well. Well there is nothing else I can do except loot everything I can locally while I wait to start interviewing and sending out the resource teams. I will travel to Asheville NC and see how much I can get by myself tonight if I work through the night. That should give me an estimate of how much each team should be able to find in similar sized towns.

After 2 hours of traveling I arrive at my first bank in Asheville. I hit every bank in the small towns on the way and a couple of big box stores, supermarkets, and jewelry stores. Already I have realized a couple of problems I am going to run into. First how are people from other areas of the Great Game going to even recognize or know what buildings to go into. Next even if I teach them where to go they are sure to miss quite a bit. This means the efficiency by my teams are going to be very low. In just over 2 hours of smash and grab through smaller towns I was able to accumulate around 1 million dollars in inventory which translated into 500 gold pieces. This means each team should accumulate around 3,000 gold pieces in scavenging each day if they can scavenge for 12 hours. While this sounds impressive it means I would need 34,000 scavenging teams in order to hit my goal in time. That’s not going to happen.

I hope that a larger town will increase the efficiency of the looting. I already noticed that I need to set priorities. Jewelry stores first, banks second, and finally large stores. This will maximize what I can get. I need to keep brainstorming. There has to be a way to at least get close to my goal. The more safety spots I create the greater the survival rate. I feel like I am missing some large piece of the puzzle. I hope whatever it is occurs to me soon.

As I work my way through Asheville I realize how the change over has influenced my thinking and priorities. I am the greatest thief of all time, no one will probably care, or at least they will think that it is a good thing because it could save lives. My morals seem more flexible. As long as the ends justify the means, and the “greater good” is served, I do not seem to have a problem with many activities that I would never have tried before. Maybe I could implement a reimbursement plan for locals who can prove their ownership of anything I liberate.

This is starting to get monotonous. Travel down road, look for stores, break into the stores safe, have money converted. I have been doing this for hours. Asheville has only a population of 80,000 but it is taking forever. If only there was a way to just teleport where I wanted to go. Wait, teleport, I was thinking about that earlier. What if my resource teams can teleport? I know that teleportation is a thing in the Great Game, I saw it as an option to add teleport stations to my cities I am going to build.

I wonder if there is a way for me to learn teleportation quickly? Does it have to be to another portal? I need to stop and process this. I will finish up the next bank and check the Great Game. I quickly run towards the Bank of America sign down the road. I quickly perform what has become routine. I use the Warhammer to crack the teller drawers and just walk into the safe. Most of the safes in the banks have been left open because no one cared enough to close them before teleporting away. It has definitely made collecting the money easier. I have also randomly been opening up a few safety deposit boxes. I have not found much and to open them all in every bank would take forever, but it is kind of fun and lightens the monotony of what I am doing.

I stack a couple of desks in front of the vault and sit down inside for a quick review of the Great Game store and help system. Help on.

“Help can anyone operate a teleportation portal or does it require specific magic knowledge?”

“To use a teleport portal an organism only needs to transfer mana and think of the destination portal.”

“Help, Is there a common method of teleportation without portal networks?”

“Yes.”

OK, bad question.

“Help, what is the most common method of teleportation used without portals?”

“Scrolls of teleportation”

I quickly search through the Great Game store. Yep, there they are. The description reads:

Scroll of Teleportation: Comes in 100 mile (50 gold), 500 mile (250 gold), 1,000 mile (500 gold) and 10,000 mile (1,000 gold) versions. User must have a clear vision of destination for the magic to work. Discounts for bulk purchases.

This seems like it is definitely a luxury item. I have more than enough gold to purchase what I need, but I need to make sure that the payoff is more than the expenditure. That shouldn’t be too difficult. Even with what I took out of the mints, bullion depositories and mines from my earlier wealth redistribution trip there should be more than enough left to justify the expense of teleporting to those sites again to clean out the rest. I can even add a few more that were too high profile before. No one will ever know unless I tell them.

I will still send out the scavenging teams, but I will have to hope that I can make some large scores quickly in order to come close to my goal. I first check on the bulk discount before buying. 25 scrolls at a time gets you 10% off. So if I buy a bundle of 1,000 mile scrolls and a bundle of 10,000 mile scrolls it will save me several thousand gold. I have several places I need to scavenge both inside the United States and around the world. This should be perfect. I can hit the U.S. sites today, interview or hire tomorrow morning, and start a world-wide blitzkrieg of areas that afternoon with a goal of returning and buying everything I need on the last day before the arrival of the tutorial people.

I wonder if I can travel to a place I have never been if I have a good enough picture? I need to try that out first. It would really expand my search area. I quickly purchase a bulk set of 500 mile, 1,000 mile and 10,000 mile teleport scrolls. I then head to the local college to use the library. This would be a lot easier if the internet was still working. However, without it I will have to do some old school analog research about new gold deposits, gem areas, and hope that there are pictures and that I can teleport with them.

I stop by the student store on the way to the Appalachian State University library and grab a couple of postcards of areas I have not been to for the picture experiment. Here we go, sliding rock and triple falls are well within the 500 mile teleport range. I have heard of them both but have not had the time to go and see them in person. I study the picture of sliding rock first. I concentrate as hard as I can on that picture while I rip the teleport scroll to activate the teleportation magic. I feel the uncomfortable pull of teleportation, it is working! I have arrived at sliding rock. I need to double check this just to be safe. Next I study and concentrate on the triple falls post card. It worked again.

This means if I can find the pictures of where I need to go I can just teleport straight there saving a ton of time and be able to travel to more locations in the short amount of time I have. Last experiment, I concentrate on Disneyland in California and tear a 500 mile scroll. Nothing. Well I may have ruined a scroll, but at least I know that there is no backlash for trying to use a scroll to travel farther than its range. Come to think of it, that was pretty dumb. I am the only one here, what would I have done if there was a backlash?