A moment of silence passed before Preston spoke again.
“Do you want to elaborate on that?” Preston asked, everyone hyper aware of Brahim.
“They-”
“I’ll explain that.” Brahim interrupted, giving a charismatic smile. At least, it was an attempt at a charismatic smile. To Teresa, it felt like the kind of smile a salesperson would give when trying to sell you insurance or a new phone plan. “With the System, we’ve been given an opportunity. Injuries can be healed easily, but that doesn’t mean it’s free. It costs Mana, it costs time, and it costs labor. Most dangerous of all, it nurtures complacency. With everyone in good health, what drive is there to work? Restoration Magic alone likely expands our lifespans significantly. With those of us who succeed from internal motivation, we’re able to provide these people with food and water while they have no reason to do anything in return.
“There’s no rush, no competitive drive, and no desire to contribute. People are inherently lazy, and will let others do the work for them if it means living a comfortable easy life. In our situation, we can’t let that happen. Even a level 0 healer can fix minor injuries, with enough time they can heal broken bones. A lot of healers are willing to do this for free, perhaps out of sympathy, not realizing the impact it has on society as a whole.”
Teresa already wanted to interrupt Brahim’s monologuing about his deeply flawed and pessimistic view of people as a whole. The only reason she hadn’t just killed her way into Nouarosso was because she wanted information, and letting the guy ramble would reveal more than making him get immediately to the point. She already didn’t trust him, and while she agreed that a lot of people preferred to be lazy she didn’t like where he was going with this whole spiel. Nor did she see how healing people had anything to do with it.
“If so many people aren’t going to contribute to society, then they need motivation. That’s where healing comes in. Everyone needs it to some extent nowadays, and we can benefit from that. By charging for food, water, childcare, healthcare, you name it, suddenly there’s a need to work. It’s the best way we can get people to contribute. If they aren’t going to fight monsters and become a useful asset that way, then they can at least provide additional funding.”
Okay, so shit costs money. How revolutionary. Still doesn’t explain what happened to the healers, or why the healing seemed as expensive as it was. If Benjamin just had issues with his lungs, Teresa could have fixed that in literally less than a second. He was level 0, the guy could have every bone in his body broken with all of his organs failing and she would still be able to heal him relatively easily in the right circumstances. Meanwhile just fixing some obscure lung issue cost him upwards of ten grand, Teresa hadn’t even made that much outside of bounties and System rewards.
“Not all of the healers were on board with that, many of whom were weak and unimpressive themselves. Even a couple low level healers could destabilize this system we’re building up. So they had to be separated. That’s all.”
“So let me get this straight.” Teresa said, trying to summarize his rambling. “People need money to buy stuff and you really don’t like universal healthcare, so you got rid of the healers.”
“Didn’t get rid of them, separated them.” Brahim clarified.
“Right, right.’ Teresa said. Not sketchy at all. Totally. “Elaborate.’
“They live in a different area away from the others, and work there too. Simple.” Brahim explained. Teresa swore if he said something along the lines of ‘separate but equal,’ she’d punch his face off.
“Wouldn’t implementing taxes cover all of that anyway?” Teresa asked. Really it seemed like a less moral method of implementing taxes.
“We have taxes too of course, though waivers are given to those who prove themselves useful.” Brahim answered. “With something as simple as taxation, people can just leave. Put them into debt, and they owe us. You’re likely unaware of this, but cities have methods of ensuring their citizens do what is expected of them. The System also has methods of ensuring those who owe money are inclined to pay it back. By using debt, they have an incentive to stay and work.”
Teresa knew about a bit of this. It was one of the reasons why she really disliked the idea of being a city Leader. It was possible to give residents basic quests with a cash reward, but it was also possible to make a city quest have consequences for failure.
For example, if Teresa was a city Leader, she could give a group of people a quest to build a house within five days. If they succeed, everyone involved would receive money from either Teresa or the city’s own account. If they failed to do it within the timeframe or failed some other aspect of the quest then it got diabolical. Teresa would be able to temporarily apply debuffs to people, she could take money directly from them, she could put out a quest to kill them for a monetary reward, there were a lot of ways for a Leader of a city to abuse their powers.
If being a Leader was nothing more than a title, Teresa wouldn’t have had a problem keeping the title in the first place since it wouldn’t have any actual authoritative power. With that title, she could give someone an impossible quest and cut their Perception in half for weeks when they inevitably failed it. It would only work for citizens of The Mall, but what counted as a citizen was also relatively complicated. If someone didn’t know how to renounce their citizenship, they wouldn’t be able to, and even if they did Teresa would just be able to make a quest to kill them.
Theoretically, it could be overcome by simply moving to another city. There was also a limit to how extreme a debuff she could inflict, she couldn’t restrict any individual stat below half, but it would still be possible to leave The Mall and migrate to another city where there wasn’t an abuse of power in this hypothetical scenario.
It would be extremely difficult, but possible. However, if there were similar functions available to collect on debt, then it might become even harder to escape.
“So you deliberately put people in debt that they have no chance of overcoming so they’re forced to work and provide you with income?” Teresa asked.
“See, you get it! So long as they keep up payments in intervals, they’re fine.”
“Isn’t that just slavery with extra steps?”
“What? No! What makes you say that?” Brahim asked, sounding offended.
“Making things cost money isn’t the issue so much as the fact nobody has a say in it. If they disagree with how things are done here, they can’t just leave to another city if they’re already in debt. You already said you wanted to make sure people can’t leave. What happens if someone doesn’t keep up with the payments?” Teresa asked.
“Then they can’t buy anything.” Brahim answered, like the answer was obvious.
“Like food and water?”
“How is this any different from how the world worked pre-System?” Brahim countered. “People have always had to work to live, it’s how the world works.”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“Right, but you’re not giving anyone the option to leave and go somewhere else. Even pre-System if you had a job you hated you could quit and find another one… well, depending on the job market but let’s not get into that. Here, you could make people do anything you want, and they have no ability to say no.” Teresa said.
“If they had the ability to say no, they wouldn’t work.”
“They make anyone who tries to leave into an example.” Benjamin said, speaking up. “Just a few days ago, they caught a man trying to sneak out. They brought him down into the city, and started burning him with
“Then don’t go into debt, it’s simple.” Brahim said, shrugging off the fact they tortured someone as an example.
“It’s impossible. We have no safety equipment, and we’re breathing in dust all day, working in tunnels with shitty ventilation. By the time you’ve worked enough to afford paying off the debt from your first healing, you need to be healed several times since then. To keep up with the payments, there’s barely any time in the day to do anything but work!” Benjamin exclaimed.
“So what?” Brahim said. “It’s not like it’s chattel slavery, They aren’t going to be useful anyway, this is the best way these people can contribute. That brings me to you, Rebecca. Nouarosso has some of the equipment available for its elites, something you can benefit from too. You’re vicious, I can tell that much. You’d do great here. It’s not like this is anything out of the ordinary, even by pre-System standards. How do you think half of your shit was made pre-System? Sweatshops and child labor. At least we aren’t employing children here,”
“You want me to work with Nouarosso?” Teresa asked.
“If you do, you’ll see a lot of benefits. Like I said, it’s not chattel slavery.”
“Yeah, no.” Teresa declined. “Separating people by class is already a red flag in and of itself. Then there’s the price gouging of healing, which regardless of your pre-System political beliefs doesn’t make sense here in the slightest. Skills like
Teresa only knew that last bit because someone had defended themselves using that as an argument before. Randall glanced over at Teresa, knowing what she was thinking about. It was years ago, back when her friend Zoey was still alive. That was one of the first people Teresa personally knew who had died, and she only heard the details about the court case after because of the local news.
Nope, now was not the time to think about that. Nothing happened to Teresa, largely thanks to luck, but at the end of the day it wasn’t her trauma. She had no right for that to affect her, and she already had issues before any of that even happened.
Here and now, that’s what mattered. She needed to focus.
“Well, if you want to take Benjamin here something needs to be done about the money he owes.” Brahim said, seeing that recruiting Teresa likely wasn’t going to succeed. “Even if he leaves, the System still recognizes he owes someone money. That won’t change until he pays it off.”
“Then where can I find the healer to whom he’s in debt?” Teresa asked.
“Who’s your healer?” Brahim asked Benjamin.
“Jeffrey.” Benjamin answered.
“Then I can lead you all to him, you’ll pay him off, and we can all go on our merry way.” Brahim said, his jovial attitude gone now that it was apparent his sales pitch to Teresa was a lost cause.
They followed Brahim through the city, and Teresa subtly cast
Nouarosso was deeply flawed. It was led with an abuse of power that directly harmed the weak. The Mall may have implemented laws requiring people to reach level 5, but at least there were multiple methods to do so in a safe manner. Even if someone refused, they could simply leave The Mall. That would likely result in their deaths considering that would mean they were reluctant to even hit level 5, but they were living in an apocalypse. Not a first world country.
It couldn’t be compared to this however. From the brief moment Teresa’s Mana had flooded into Benjamin, she gained an understanding about the state of his body. The majority of the muscles in his body were strained and overworked, his hands were blistered and scraped raw, his lungs were in poor condition again and had something clogging his bronchioles that would require
to fix, and overall was in worse shape than he let on.
He was also underfed and showing signs of dehydration. That wasn’t something Teresa could fix, she couldn’t cure hunger with Restoration Magic. It wasn’t excessive, but she could intuitively tell he was losing weight.
It was something she had picked up from healing so many people in the Contaminated Zone. The constant use of her Restoration Magic resulted in her becoming familiar with the sensations that came with healing people in different conditions. She couldn’t point out any specific signs that he wasn’t eating enough, but she was familiar enough with the sensation of healing someone who was hungry. If she was more familiar with the human body and medical stuff in general then maybe she could point out specifics, but from what she could feel Benjamin had needed that sleep he had been getting before they arrived.
He was downplaying his own physical condition in front of his son, even if the exhaustion on his face was apparent enough. Teresa didn’t need a medical degree to see that much. Benjamin was almost completely healed within an instant, at least regarding the things that
Teresa was also aware that people had been following them for a while now. It was really hard to hide the sound of footsteps from someone with 141 Perception, which was about 28 times higher than the Perception stat Teresa had started out with in the Tutorial. Sarah also seemed aware of this, and everyone in the party had been subtly signalling each other to be ready for a fight.
After walking through Nouarosso getting closer to the palace in the center, they eventually reached a building right outside the palace. Brahim knocked on the door, and was greeted by a light warrior archetype that was level 49.
“What do you want? We’re about to head out.” The man asked, sounding annoyed.
“We’re here to see Jeffrey, it’s about one of his debtors.” Brahim said.
“Great.” The man responded, his tone making it clear he did not actually find the situation great. “Jeff! Someone's here for you!”
After a few seconds and some stumbling around inside, a healer archetype appeared at the door, level 44. Teresa spotted the rest of a party behind him, all similar levels.
“What do you want?” The healer, presumably Jeffrey, asked.
“We’re here to pay off this man’s debt.” Brahim said, gesturing to Benjamin. Jeffrey looked at Benjamin and grinned.
“Great, what was it exactly? $10,100.65 including the interest? Perfect, I wouldn’t mind a lump sum right-”
Jeffrey never finished his sentence as Teresa acted, having made up her mind on what she was going to do back when she was talking with Brahim.
The only ones with the mental stats to react in time was the mage, but he didn’t have the physical stats to do anything about it. The light warrior archetype started to move, showing signs that he invested at least a few points into his mental stats, but he still didn’t react fast enough.
Nobody was able to dodge her fists in time, and her Strength stat made sure every hit went straight through someone’s head. Earlier that day, she had been worried about her reactions to things. How she was becoming more prone to violence. How her actions had consequences. How she was so willing to kill, sometimes even eager. Teresa didn’t want to be a murder hobo, but in that moment one thought was going through her head that washed away all the others.
Sometimes, a motherfucker just needed to die.