Chapter 472: Whomever I Back Will Win

High above, beneath the stars, a small airship drifted slowly across the sky.

Ambrose lounged contentedly in the cabin, humming some little tune nobody else had ever heard before.

Heki Stone was organizing the past several days' worth of drafts, editing and revising, then copying everything out fresh once more. The longer he worked, the more his irritation grew, until he finally couldn't help himself. "What exactly is that tune you're humming? It has absolutely no musical merit whatsoever."

Ambrose shot back, "Is it better or worse than the sound of your mining pick back in the days?"

The two of them had known each other long enough by now that Ambrose had picked up plenty of background on Heki Stone. Before becoming a vampire, Heki Stone had apparently been a dwarven miner.

Heki Stone said disdainfully, "People grow, you know. Sure, I used to mine. That doesn't mean I'm stuck being a miner forever."

"And growing into a gossip-fiction writer is something to be proud of? Is topping the bestseller charts in some Legendary Spellcraft periodical really so prestigious?"

"You only see the 'gossip' in 'gossip fiction.' You have absolutely no appreciation for the literary craft involved. Honestly, I can't figure it out—how does someone with your complete lack of taste, who only cares about gold, end up reaping so many benefits? I joined the Elegiac Society long before you did!"

This was the part Heki Stone genuinely couldn't wrap his head around.

He'd been in the Society longer. He'd known Gareth longer, and their friendship ran deeper. And yet now even Gareth had become this lich's closest companion, to say nothing of how this same lich had managed to rally Society members from every corner of the world together multiple times by now.

Everyone knew Ambrose was greedy. Everyone knew he swindled mortals and gods alike without a shred of remorse. So why did people keep handing him favors anyway?

Heki Stone simply couldn't make sense of it. He genuinely couldn't.

Finally, he gave up and turned to Ambrose. "Give me some pointers, won't you? I want someone to hand me half their divine power too. I want people showering me with favors as well."

Ambrose glanced over at the dwarf vampire and said, puzzled, "You're not exactly short on gold."

Heki Stone said, with sudden heat: "I'm poorer than you!"

Heki Stone, after all, possessed nothing more than the gold of a single underground city. This lich's wealth, by comparison, had long since become impossible to even measure in gold.

Ambrose just laughed. "Poverty is relative. For a lich like me, with absolutely no artistic talent to speak of, gold happens to be the only kind of wealth available to me. You're different. You're a great artist. Art is enough for you. Spiritual fulfillment is far nobler than the crude greed of a money-obsessed lich like myself."

Heki Stone ground his teeth in fury, but was forced to humble himself. "The wealthier you are, the less susceptible you become to outside influence, which means you can write history with genuine neutrality and objectivity. That's precisely why a serious historian needs to be wealthy! Master, please, teach me. I want princesses and queens and goddesses throwing themselves at me too."

"Throwing themselves at you? What nonsense is that?" Ambrose said, genuinely baffled. "Who exactly has thrown themselves at me?"

Heki Stone gnashed his teeth. "Don't tell me there's nothing going on! Just now, Aige handed over her entire Silent Sea Pirate Company to you! Not to mention she promised to share her divine power with you once she ascends!"

Ambrose pushed back. "I helped Aige get here by bringing the merfolk goddess Ezdolo down for a personal negotiation, securing her a real chance at godhood in the first place. Then I went and conquered the entire Sea of Volcanoes for her, finding her tens of thousands of merfolk worshippers in the process. You really think all of this just falls into my lap because I open my mouth and ask?"

Heki Stone considered this for a moment, conceding that it had some merit, then asked, "What about Black Rose, then? The Umbral Depths is practically your territory at this point too. What exactly did you do for her?"

"Did all those Lyon soldiers die because they got tired of living and decided to hang themselves? Who summoned the githarks here in the first place? Me. Who supported Allen Watson's internal rebellion against Lyon's own command structure and helped him raise his banner? Me. And right now, with the orcs beating Lyon bloody, who's the one supplying them with all those weapons of war? Also me!"

Ambrose couldn't help adding: "You're supposedly a historian. Haven't you even looked carefully into any of this? What exactly have you been writing all this time? Show me."

Heki Stone refused. "Absolutely not. Not until either I'm dead, or you're dead. That's the principle: the final verdict comes only after the coffin is sealed. It's the historian's code."

"Until either I die, or you die..." Ambrose paused. "Have you forgotten you're a vampire and I'm a lich?"

Heki Stone froze as well.

Something... didn't seem quite right.

That code really wasn't designed with the undead in mind. The undead, after all, were immortal.

Still, Heki Stone quickly shrugged off the concern. Given how this lich operated, he'd either ascend to godhood outright or accidentally get himself killed eventually. Either way, the publication day would eventually come. There was no need to rush it.

"Don't change the subject. Are you going to teach me or not?"

Heki Stone still wanted to know exactly what secret technique let Ambrose have people throw gold at him voluntarily.

"What exactly would I even teach you? I've only ever had one guiding principle: never take a losing deal. Calculate your own costs before investing in anything, estimate the realistic return, and pursue only the deals worth pursuing. Skip anything without real upside. Aim for mutual benefit wherever possible, and maintain solid working relationships. That's really all there is to it."

"Mutual benefit? You mean you win twice over, don't you? You're already infamous for swindling people and gods both!"

Heki Stone had certainly heard the rumors. Every god alive apparently knew by now that this lich specialized in fleecing deities, specifically. More than one goddess had already suffered badly at his hands.

But Ambrose shook his head. "That's not business. That's war. I don't go easy on my enemies, but for anyone who genuinely partners with me in good faith, I will absolutely guarantee their interests."

"You expect me to believe that?"

"Believe it or not, that's entirely your call. But you can't seriously think everyone else is a fool. Look at how many people in the Elegiac Society have worked with me directly. Tell me, which one of them ever came out the loser for it?"

Heki Stone opened his mouth to argue, then realized Ambrose was telling the simple truth. Every single one of his collaborators had walked away satisfied. Something seemed to click in his memory, and he asked, suddenly animated, "Wait, that incredibly high-return investment opportunity you mentioned before, the one you tried to get me into... That wasn't actually a scam, was it?"

Ambrose scoffed. "Of course it wasn't. The drow airship freight business is already up and running. It turned a profit in its very first month. Your investment would have fully recouped itself within six months."

Who could lose profit on a monopoly? To support the venture, the elves had even shifted a large portion of their magical material shipments from teleportation arrays over to airship freight entirely. It was slower, certainly, but considerably cheaper in the long run.

Most magical materials were volatile and contained enormous reserves of raw magic. Transporting that kind of cargo through spatial teleportation inevitably risked interference from the material's own mana, degrading the cargo's quality; at worst, the teleportation might fail completely, leaving the goods scattered in an unknown location. Under those conditions, the elves were forced to package these materials in elaborate, magic-isolating containers before every shipment, and that cost added up fast.

Airships sidestepped the entire problem. The custom-built cargo holds were engineered so thoroughly that not even the airship's own dark magic could seep through. It was an entirely mechanical, manually operated storage with zero magical interference. Magical materials could be loaded and shipped with no special packaging required at all, cutting costs dramatically.

It was slower than spatial teleportation, certainly, but considerably cheaper.

Plenty of merchants were perfectly happy to wait a few extra days in exchange for a far better price.

With that advantage, combined with aggressive promotion from the elves themselves, the Drow Airlines had quickly become the preferred option for a great many merchants. As long as the drow pilots didn't crash their airships through sheer recklessness at the controls, even half a hold of cargo could turn a serious profit.

That was the power of a genuine technological edge. Everyone else might envy Ambrose; none of them had the technical expertise and infrastructure to do anything about it.

After hearing Ambrose's brief rundown, Heki Stone immediately exclaimed, "I want in. I'm investing right now!"

"Ha. At the start, I could've used my connections to get you a small stake. But the line's already up and running now, and we're practically counting the profits already. You think you can just buy in with a fresh round of investment at this stage? You really think the elves are running a charity? They'd jump at the chance to dilute my share if they could. They'd swallow my entire stake whole given half a chance!"

Ambrose currently held sixty percent of the line's total earnings. The elves were deeply unhappy about that split, but with Ambrose holding a complete technological monopoly, there was nothing they could actually do about it.

The moment Ambrose opened the door to additional outside investment, the elves would flood it with capital specifically to dilute his ownership stake.

He couldn't very well let someone else buy in and keep his own sixty percent intact, after all.

The elves would seize that exact opportunity to flip the equity split to eighty-twenty, or even ninety-ten, and force Ambrose down to the position of a minor shareholder. So that particular door simply couldn't be opened, not until Ambrose had already extracted everything he wanted from the deal, or had some specific reason down the line to cash out a large chunk of it all at once.

Heki Stone was practically sick with regret. So everything this lich said really was true? There had been an entire mountain of gold sitting right in front of him, and he'd simply let it pass by.

After a moment, Heki Stone tried once more. "Master Megaman, do you have any other moneymaking ventures going on right now? You absolutely have to bring me in this time. I swear I won't doubt you again!"

"Recently?"

Ambrose thought it over. "As a matter of fact, yes. I just picked up a mercenary unit I'm planning to sell to the orcs as expendable shock troops, but I've genuinely been too busy lately to handle the details myself. If you're interested, you could act as the middleman..."

Ambrose laid out the githark situation for Heki Stone. The dwarf vampire did some quick math and realized that this really was guaranteed profit: if the githarks died, there'd be no compensation owed, since the orcs would be footing that bill, not him. He'd collect his cut without ever setting foot on a battlefield.

Heki Stone said, with genuine admiration, "You really are something else. A little underwater excursion with that Ragetide princess, and you somehow turn the githarks into mercenaries on top of it. The Goddess of Wealth must genuinely favor you. Don't worry, I'll handle it. We'll split the profits fifty-fifty."

"What are you even thinking? I'm the one who found the githarks. I'm the one who arranged the connection to the orcs. I'll probably even have to handle the teleportation logistics myself afterward. Fifty-fifty? Eighty-twenty, at most: I take eighty, and you take twenty!"

"Just twenty percent?!"

"Don't do it, then. You think being a middleman takes any real skill?"

"I'd be in a literal war zone. It's dangerous. I could genuinely lose my life over this!"

"What danger is there in chatting through a magic mirror? Is the Lord of Dawn going to reach through and smack you personally?"

......

The two of them haggled back and forth for a good while, and eventually settling on a seventy-thirty split—Ambrose taking seventy, Heki Stone grudgingly accepting thirty.

Ambrose patted him on the head. "Don't complain about thirty percent. Plenty of people would kill for that cut and don't even have the connections to get it. Besides, this war isn't ending anytime soon. This batch of mercenaries will see real use soon enough. By then, you can quote the orcs whatever price you like. They won't be in a position to refuse."

Something in Ambrose's tone caught Heki Stone's attention. "Wait, what's that supposed to mean? The orcs have the upper hand right now, don't they?"

Ambrose gave a knowing smile. "Lyon's about to launch a counteroffensive. And even if the orcs manage to hold the line, it'll be a brutal fight either way."

"How could you possibly know that?"

Ambrose said, with complete confidence: "Because Lyon has already approached me about a partnership. In this war, whomever I decide to back is going to win."

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