ALL NOVEL Downfall Of The Council – Chapter 270
You would think that the council would understand how important the traders were. After all, pre-system money made the world go round. Instead, they treated them like pack mules or independent truckers.
Important? Yes, but someone you treated as important? Most certainly not. Though the fact that there were so few of them didn’t help. That is, it didn’t help either side of the equation.
Pre-system the council could have gotten away with screwing over a small number of workers, no problem. That wasn’t the case anymore, as working a few people harder means those few people gain power a lot faster than not. Sure, they weren’t catching up with Ace or any of the other original members of Wolf’s Rest, but sometimes a soft power can get more done.
Now, the farming teams were more on the selfless side. They had basically volunteered to sacrifice themselves to the system so the settlement could be fed. The traders? Not so much. Instead, they were in it for the money.
Money which was coming less and less from the council. Melonie was paying a proper price for the food. Other settlements were paying proper prices for the food. The council? The council looked down their noses at the traders and commented about how they should be happy that they’re being allowed to make any money from food that was rightfully theirs in the first place.
The funny thing from Ace’s perspective when he learns about it, is that they aren’t completely wrong. A large portion of the food extracted from the dungeon comes from one of the council’s teams. After all, Wolf’s Rest isn’t focused on food and other settlements are far enough away that if they don’t have to, they aren’t going to send people.
If only things had stayed like they were before the big dungeon market was set up, there wouldn’t even be traders to argue with. Instead, the second the council figured out that they could push everything onto other people and not employ them, they did. So now the farmers sell their haul when they exit the dungeon and traders in turn buy food to move around.
Sure, some is kept to feed the workers and then sent back home, but certainly not enough to feed the entire settlement. This isn’t even on purpose. Rather, the population of the settlement had been growing. Whether it was people wanting to move closer to the dungeon, but not literally right next it or those who believed in about the same things the council did.
So, as time had gone on the council hadn’t changed how much food was being reserved for them. Oh, and of course they cut down on how much hunting people in the settlement did as well, so they wouldn’t gain levels either. All around a mess that only got worse when they figured out that the traders were willing to trade the food for the system currency and thus they reduced the reserve even further, because why waste “proper” money feeding your workers when you can use a currency they don’t recognize as having value.
Except after a while, the council tightened their wallets and lowered what they were willing to pay. Sure, they had all the excuses. Not having enough coming, the trip wasn’t that long, and of course the fact that the traders should be grateful the council paid so much to begin with so they could get on their feet.
Well, the traders decided to show their displeasure with those same feet. It started small, but soon enough only one in ten traders would stop at the settlement up river. In fact, they could have likely dropped it to almost no one, except they weren’t trying to go too far.
They were traders, after all. There was money to be made in the settlement so they didn’t want to abandon it. Instead, they would stop in and ask if the rules had changed before selling their goods and leaving.
At this point, a less arrogant group would realize their mistake and try to haggle. After all, the traders were still trading, just not as much. It was clearly an issue that could be resolved.
The council didn’t see it that way. To them this was just a few workers rebelling. Sure, a couple of the old men felt sad about not having access to one of the law firms they had used in the past to bust unions. That didn’t mean they couldn’t do it themselves. At least, they thought they could.
They couldn’t. Not just that, but they even stooped to banditry and still failed. After all, it was “their” food so there isn’t anything wrong with them taking it. Except the traders had guards who were capable of bringing the traders through the wilds. Guards which when compared to the settlement’s forces were quite a bit stronger.
And so Melonie’s chance arrived as the council focused all their forces on trying to capture the traders. They had simply gotten too arrogant and ignored the dangers of an undefended settlement. Not that Melonie was going to let them learn from their mistakes.
Right from the start, her people began to save others. After all, even a squirrel can be a deadly threat to children and unleveled adults. This was also why the council discounted needing guards.
When all you hear about is them killing small woodland animals, pre-system sensibility will categorize it all as not being dangerous. Nevermind the stories the guards tell. After all, what’s a squirrel going to do to a grown man?
So, for just under two weeks Melonie and her people acted to save people just in the nick of time. After all, squirrel. Unless a person suffers a little, how could they know the danger they’re in?
Along with that, they did more humanitarian work as well, including handing out food. Not that the settlement’s stockpile was already gone or anything. It was just that the council had decided to ration food a bit so it would last longer. Still, for people who basically never felt serious hunger, even a couple missed meals felt like torture.
The council noticed none of this. Why would they? To them, the settlement’s people were a known quantity, just like people pre-system.
Melonie, of course didn’t have to do all this. It was her settlement. She could have just rolled into town with her people and killed the council and all who opposed her. This way, though, she earned the heart of the people.
Well, most of the people. The whole “don’t use the system” nonsense wasn’t simple and had a few diehard adherents already, mostly those who had lost family members to the arrival of the system and could let go. If the council had been less arrogant, they would have gotten more than enough warning from their supporters among the normal people.
In the end, though, Melonie turned over 75% of the people in the settlement against the council as well as getting all the traders and the dungeon farmers on her side. Then things got a little bloody. She didn’t want it to, but a good number of people who didn’t side with her forced her hand. Though ironically, none of the council members ended up dying.
Instead, it was about half the guards and around one in ten or eleven in the general populace. Melonie didn’t even have to call on the remaining guards or any of her normal followers for what followed. There were no mages and most of the people hadn’t even gotten to level three.
Against her team of dungeon hardened fighters and mages, they never stood a chance. A strange thing, though, was that not a single one of them retreated or surrendered. All those who opposed her with violence did so to the death.
Maybe if Ace or Jim had been there, they would have been able to pinpoint the problem. A nascent cult had formed. After all, it was much easier to manipulate people with a lower level. Almost worse was that this cult wasn’t even backed by an entity. This was simply some twisted guy who had pretended to be a priest. He did try to escape, but his followers didn’t allow him to back out as they pushed him into the engagement without even noticing his desire to leave.
As for what happened to the council? They lived and Melonie banished them. A little anticlimactic, but she had to deal with a population that for the most part believed they hadn’t done too bad of a job.
Well, as far as the settlement and even Melonie knew, they lived. The old men packed up their “well earned wealth” of pre-system cash. Melonie had even traded them more of the stuff at a good rate for any system coins they might have. Then set out in the opposite direction from Wolf’s Rest with their personal guards to keep them safe.
They even managed to get to the next town over, though the leader there knew what they had pulled and so sent them on their way. It was only once they had left the sight of that settlement that things ended badly for them. Melonie might have been willing to let them go, but she wasn’t the only one after them.
Jeremy had been following the group the entire time. Neither Ace nor Jim was willing to let their cancer fall somewhere else and potentially regrow. While stuck in their ways, no one on the council had been an idiot. So instead of making it to the next stop, their journey ended short.
News of this never did make it back to the place upriver. Jeremy paid enough to make sure the original news didn’t travel or get written down. A little odd as by now every settlement had started to record where and when monster attacks had happened and it appeared the group had met with a wolf pack.
That wasn’t wrong either, it is just that they met that pack after they had already expired. Either way, as far as Ace was concerned, everything worked out exactly as he wanted. Melonie had ascended to her rightful place in a legitimate fashion and future trouble had been headed off at the pass.
Though back in the dungeon, Ally couldn’t help but laugh at the hoops they had to jump through for this. She explained it to Doyle, but he didn’t see the joke so she explained.
Ally, ‘They didn’t have to bother with all that mess. They never did. This was all because they’re still stuck in some of their pre-system ideas.
‘They’re clearly not bound by pre-system morals or else the council guys would still be alive. So why didn’t they just kill them from the start? All it would take is a bit of stealth and a touch of magic.
‘Ace alone could have covertly knocked them down, one by one, and made it look like a simple heart attack or what have you. None of the people they truly trusted had any sort of magic to check otherwise and those who could check would be suspect number one.
‘And all of that? Only necessary if they don’t want to be a bit more tyrannical. Dungeon towns all seem to end up like this. Despite the power they could wield, they end up as little islands of independence. All they had to do was show up in that settlement and take control by force. No one could have stopped them.’
At first Doyle disagreed with this, but in the end realized he had likely fallen into the same mindset as Ace and Jim. Because, of course, you don’t just walk into the settlement next door with your buddies and take it over. That would just be dangerous and short-lived. Now though? Now there was going to be a good bit of chaos in the world until true order settles again.
