After Gong’s rant about the incompetency and her irritation at the Vermillion Stripes gang as a whole, the group goes silent.

…

Ai is the first to break the silence. “Cough. So, since it seems your spiders will do patrols all over this area, are you getting any monetary compensation?”

With a shake of her head, Gong says, “No, I always have done the patrols for free. If the spiders needed to eat or drink, then I would have to change that policy.

“One reason I don’t face as many issues on patrols, is because people understand I don’t have to do this. Regardless of whether they are a demi-human or human, I help them if they are in danger. It not only provides a better image of demi-humans, it reduces the amount of people who would be tempted to join gangs like the Vermillion Stripes. The moment I accept money, they will distrust it.”

Ai purses her lips, “Normally, I’d disagree that people would rely on goodwill in the first place… but you have a history of helping people to do just that. I can see why they would trust you.”

Her eyebrows wrinkle for a moment. “I could have sworn I heard a rumor, though, that you had a secret deal going on…”

Gong’s stance relaxes a bit, and she rubs the bridge of her nose, as if remembering a headache.

“Well… The Stripes had previously tried to spread a similar false rumor that I was only doing this for back-end payments from a mysterious source.

“It took Big Sis Crane’s help to prove that rumor wrong and regain their trust. The Stripes benefited, because they could push the idea that the only way you can be sure of your safety is to join their gang. ‘At anytime, she could turn on you, so why not join us? At least you will know where you stand’.”

With a shake of the head and a wry smile, she continues, “Luckily, most people realized it was fake with additional rumors floating around disproving it.”

“So, does this mean we will start inviting demi-humans and others to this area soon? That way, they have a place they can feel safer?” Lin speaks up with a hopeful voice.

It’s easy to forget, looking at them now… but they used to be in a dangerous situation.

Ai, trying to hold down the fort with an abusive dad. Lin, going out and stealing money to make sure they have something to eat and perhaps escape from the situation they’re in.

We all saw what the area around their area was like. Even from my eyes, I can tell it is a worse environment in these alleys. I bet she’s wondering if they can make sure others don’t go through what they have.

Gong answers this with a nod. “Yeah, I’m planning on having the spiders clear an area and secure buildings, so they are livable.”

Turning to me, she explains something I didn’t know. “So you know, James, if a place has been abandoned for a long period of time in this part of the city and you’ve got enough support from the city players, you can pretty much claim it as your own.

“That was part of the reason why I needed both Big Sis Cranes and the Yellow Sashes official support. There was an underlying understanding that I owned this area, but now they fully support my claim. This is part of the reason I am doing patrols as well. It helps to establish that I can defend the claim and that it will be beneficial to the city. Big Sis Crane has agreed to cover any costs that come up, if someone wants to cause problems.”

Wow. Big Sis Crane really is a bigwig, if she can just throw her weight around like that. I am curious to who she really is and why Gong is so close to her, but from what I have seen… I’m not sure if I should ever try to find out.

I speak up at this point.

“Since we know the land will be defended, that should mean we are definitely safe to start the aboveground gardens then. How will we get water for the plants and how much would that cost? Even if they don’t actually need it, we will at least need to put on the appearance of them needing it. From our discussions, the underground lake isn’t an option.”

With a nod, she affirms that. “There are some collapsed wells around the area, that has large amounts of water in them. We can use this to water them, though it would be a bit difficult to use at their distances. It might be slow, but we could use the spiders to carry them over.”

“Couldn’t we just use channels and a pulley system for the wells?” All of them look at me sharply. Ai asks, “Wait… I feel like I’ve read about those terms before. Were you a scholar, before you lost your memory?”

Ah right, my world has a higher education than most people have in this world. It seems that even for these three, engineering is way out of what they needed to learn.

“No, I don’t know much, but I think I have an idea on how we could make it work. It will definitely take awhile though. Most likely far past when we have to leave for the sect. However, if you can get it running, you will be able to get water to many more people and to the farms. You might need to look at how to purify the water and how to not draw too much water out of the wells, so that it won’t run dry.”

Over the next hour or so, I help to draw out how some of these systems worked. Honestly, these women are far more intelligent than I and basically figured everything out, just as I was explaining it. There have been examples of these in this world, so they caught on quickly.

They were working together to figure out the best materials for it and using the concepts, to make it better. Ai knew of some books that described how to determine water tables or something and was going to be helping to get the information/engineering aspect on paper.

From what they were able to figure out from the base idea, with some reallocation of the spiders, it looks like the project will be completed just after we leave. Which was much earlier than I had assumed it was going to be.

I was originally thinking of using my scan to get the water table stuff and what stuff to use, but it really is smarter to have them build their knowledge base up. I cannot do everything and to be frank, I’m pretty sure they really don’t need me that much. Like I had originally thought, as long as they were free to live their lives, they would be successful in whatever they did.

Using this idea, we still decided to put a price and a sales limit on the food from the farms.

Charity apparently isn’t encouraged in this world. In fact, it is just distrusted by most people. Unless you are viewed as naïve, which in some ways can be better or worse. It takes consistently regular free help to get people to trust charity. And even then, people will take advantage of you with the thought, “No need to let a fool’s thoughtless actions go to waste.”

The exception is with lifesaving activities. Gong has been doing her thing for a long while, so people assume she does that for personal reasons and expects it from her. It ‘costs’ nothing for her to do, as well. So, they take it as goodwill.

Moving back to the plans, they decide on a garden to feed the local demi-humans, with half the price of normal food, using the spider force to protect local businesses and demi-humans (particularly in the claimed areas, but also in the aforementioned areas), and solving requests using part of the spider force, to clear out infestations/creatures. It looks like I might not need to go monster hunting just yet.

While we go over this, Gong gives us a little more demographic information regarding this area. Near here is the slums (as we’ve already seen). While there is a high demi-human population, there are also a lot of humans. This area of the city is basically where all those who can’t afford to live somewhere, go. A major road still goes through this section, so occasionally carts will barrel through quickly. Near to this section is the demi-human, human, and mixed marketplace. There are also gang controlled markets.

Our focus of influence will be these areas.

The question comes up from Ai and Lin, of why Gong patrolled the area she did near the major areas, near their old shack. Especially since she was centered in this area. It’s definitely far from their old area.

Gong responded with the expected for information gathering. However, she had found that something was going strangely with Lin and wanted to investigate. That strange interaction was a foreign man that was nearly robbed by a local thief. He dragged her into an alleyway, with the unspoken support of nearby people.

I guess I made a bit more of a splash than I thought. Also, that sounds way more suspect than it actually was. And if people saw all of that, why didn’t they help?!

She also explains that she can move insanely quickly, so she can cross the distance easily. What takes us half a day, takes her half an hour. Her tunnels reach across the Depths and Alleys.

With all of this, we are pretty much set to actually start preparing things. So, we head off to take care of different things. Before everyone leaves, I hand them their bracelets from the Yellow Sashes. Gong works on determining which spiders will do what and segmenting them into groups, while Ai and Lin continue refining their personal plans.

I head off to my room, which Gong notified me she had the spider’s setup, to think on my next steps.