Optimizing Your Isekai - Progression Fantasy w/ Slice-of-Life and Biz Building Elements

Chapter 38 Part 1 - Optimizing Your Isekai


Excerpt from The Profound and Pretty Princess' Ultimate Guide to Cultivation, Captivation, Cuteness, and Carving Your Way to the Top, English Edition (the worst-selling guide in the history of Putijama)

On Battle Arenas

Of all the cool-ass things on Putijama, battle arenas might be the coolest. Every aspect varies from arena to arena but the thing they all share is a wide range of features to enhance the viewing experience and protect the combatants.

While some spectators think arenas rely on a few enchantments only placed when the facility was created, nothing could be further from the truth. Just the combatant sections typically have over 100 overlapping enchantments that range from how they handle the injuries sustained in actual combat to temperature, smell, and sound controls for the fighters – both from the crowd into the combat area and vice versa.

How could you have a proper gloating speech if the crowd can't hear?

There is also, at least in the good arenas, a lot of redundancy for the enchantments.

As for how injuries are handled, there are two main camps: real or simulated. While all arenas are required by law to prevent – to the best of their abilities – deaths and nearly fatal blows, many go a step further, preventing actual injuries rather than taxing their local healers.

Some fans claim that the only real fights are the ones where there's risk but they do so anonymously rather than to the fighters, at least if they have any brains.

For a simulated arena, if you get hit in the eye, the arena blocks your vision there. Your arm gets 'cut off', you lose its use and the arena starts to put slightly more pressure on you as the fight continues to simulate blood loss but the limb stays attached. But it's all fine once the fight is called, the fighters don't have to deal with anything beyond the haunting memories.

And there are of course toggles for how much of the pain the combatants actually feel.

Turn it up to eleven?

There are also some arenas with enchantments to artificially restrict cultivation levels. This can be finicky in the extreme when dealing with sub-Tiers but many arenas claim they can create a fair fight between a fresh Tier 1.0 and a peak Tier 1.9 where only skill matters.

The best claim they can do so between a Tier 1.0 and a peak Tier 3.9. Thus far, no fight has ever been close when bridging that much of a cultivation gap so even if it's true, no one believes it.

Almost all arenas in the Verdant Kingdom are powered by a large-scale battery where a number of people donate their mana to power it. Some places even allow donating mana in lieu of paying a cover charge.

A few arenas are also large enough to convert the power from mana to qi, which is far more stable and causes less wear-and-tear on the enchantments.

As you can probably guess, the enchantments themselves also need significant upkeep: constantly channeling power through them and straining against them harms efficiency and capability. Imagine a barrier protecting the crowd that is stressed every day for weeks, turned on for a significant amount of time each of those days.

At some point, the enchantments will fizzle if not given enough power and/or tender loving care.

In the Verdant Kingdom, there is a small guild of high-Tier – usually Tier 6 or higher – mages that maintain the arena enchantments over the longer term as they are so incredibly complicated. Many arenas don't want to fall afoul of their combatants and hire local enchanters to keep everything in tiptop shape between the visits every three months by the guild.

So go out there and enjoy the fights knowing just how incredibly complex these arenas actually are!

"What in the absolute shit is going on in there!?"

Uh oh.

Vana was bellowing like an angry walrus while stomping down the hallway of the second floor of her inn.

Hiding the evidence – and the cause – of said anger, I hiked on my most convincing innocent face.

I knew from my glance at the mirror that it was in vain.

Heh, vain by looking in the mirror. Nope, not the time!

She didn't even knock. Somehow, the door was there one second and just gone the next, a very modest shower of splinters reminding me she was at least a high Tier 3 if not mid Tier 4.

All she did was glare.

"Uh, how are you doing this fine morning Vana? You look extra radiant today," I tried.

More angry than a cat who received a surprise bath, she stalked over and grabbed my ear. "What did you kill in your room?! Why does it smell worse than… well, that's an indelicate story for another time," she said with a slight grin before the facial movement caused more air to flow into her nostrils, eliciting a gag.

"Will you let me explain?" I asked, giving her my best puppy dog eyes.

That's when she saw Steve cowering in fear on the bed.

Her face softened.

Usually defiant in the face of anything, I was surprised at his reaction. Then I felt the relief through our link; though I hadn't felt actual fear, just anxiety.

Not sure if he meant to do that but he saved my ass…

"It's a rift reward. I can show you but—," I pointed all around as if the smell was visible. Now that the stench was dissipating, I realized just how bad it was. "I put it in my ring because it accelerates the aging of things. Or something like that. They warned me it stank but there was no expecting this."

"Rift near Struva? Ugly-ass flying monsters with tentacles? Yeah… I remember the one. Still, you're paying for a new door and I'm fining you an extra gold since I had to refund so damn many guests." Vana was calmer now though still looked rather sour.

"How many? I took it out less than three minutes ago," I replied, then realized I was testing my luck. "Just curious, I think it's steep but probably fair. Do you have ozone or something to kill smell here?" I wondered aloud.

Isekonsultant Tip to Thriving #51: Sometimes you have to just swallow your pride to soothe the angry lion that wants to eat your head in the moment.

"Only four and they are regulars but yes, it's mostly for the cleaning fees. Have to call in someone with a few skills I know. Two puked in their rooms," she said with a heavy sigh. We heard a retching noise. "Make that three…"

"Weaklings," accidentally slipped from my lips.

I need to not be so casual with my thoughts becoming my speech…

Vana looked like she wanted to be mad but couldn't keep her face straight and nodded slightly. She cleared her throat. "So, your ring accelerates time on what you put into it huh? Have you tried with anything else?" Her eyes lit with greed.

I had considered it but the damn thing just didn't have enough capacity for anything other than small-scale tests. And the few mundane wine bottles I'd tried shattered immediately when I brought them out. My plan for an oak barrel of whiskey was put on hold when I thought about what might happen if it burst while in the ring itself.

Would the item isolation actually hold when it was a pool of liquid or would that count as separate items? What about the remnants of the cask? Would it wash over everything else in there?

Does it kill off things like bugs? Would that matter to something that was fermenting, killing off the yeast involved?

In exchange for not yelling further, Vana agreed to do some testing with me over the coming weeks and share in the potential profit.

I thought maybe the null ate away at things, rather than aging it. The original discovery of how it significantly weakened corpses of rift creatures was interesting but I hadn't really had time to dig deeper, especially as when I summoned one of said corpses from the ring, it was as a last second shield that then exploded. Mostly into my mouth as I recalled.

The first thing we went out to buy at the grocers two doors down were staples to simply see what happened. Bread, fruits, cheeses – both soft and hard to test what happened to things that needed refrigeration – and many more.

We put some things in a crate as that only counted as one item to my ring's item limit to test if that impacted the aging – or whatever the slightly tarnished jewelry specifically did – and had a few small tests on plants and herbs too.

Pretty quickly, we were hitting up against the item limit. While the ring's item limit had started at about 50 when I got it, I could feel it reaching capacity when we were at 58 discrete objects. I promised to channel a bit more essence into the ring – which was not looking nearly as rusty as it once did, I noted – in the future. Vana also directed me to the local essence donation center to see if the economics might work regarding purchasing essence.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Seeing I had mollified the terrifying innkeeper and that the stench was slowly dissipating, if not quite gone, I recommended to my delving team that we head elsewhere for an early lunch.

***

"I've been thinking…" I started.

"Uh oh, that's never a good sign," Inara said. Pavel tapped her elbow in annoyance. "No seriously! Every time I've heard that phrase, something terrible came after it. Well, mostly breakups or whatever but still."

Isekonsultant Tip to Thriving #52: Be better about starting off conversations, especially with wise-asses involved. It can derail wherever you want the discussion to go if you give them an opening for a joke at the start.

After about fifteen more minutes of chatter, I tried again.

"I have something I want to bring up as a possibility. Not saying we should do it but I think we should consider it," I said.

"No orgies," Romie replied with a self-satisfied smirk.

I took three seconds to just blink at them and they finally gave me the universal 'go ahead' nod.

"Fully agree on that last part but not the proposition. Never the proposition. Not today and not ever." Inara gave a fake hurt look.

Rolling my eyes, I continued. "I think we should delve the rift. The one where we essentially all got hurt. It feels like it might give us some closure. I wanted to bring it up. No rush to delve or even answer."

"Wow," Romie said, handing over a silver tenpiece to Inara.

She smiled. At my head tilt, our fearless leader said, "I bet them it was going to be related to delving for or around Velez. Narrow guess so Romie agreed."

I gave her my best 'really?' look and she continued to preen. Finally, she asked, "But…why?"

"I just said. Closure. I know we can do it. It won't be on the edge of breaking. It feels like something that is always in the back of my mind so I thought maybe it was sticking with all of you too. Maybe not since you've been in a lot of hairy situations?"

Romie gave a non-committal shrug and Inara gave a hand gesture that meant maybe. Pavel gave me an encouraging smile.

Plowing forward, I continued. "Again, not saying let's do it today, but I want us to consider it. I wouldn't do it without some specific training or anything. It's just… this feels like something that would push us forward, you know?"

While it slightly ruined the mood of our casual conversation, I could see a bit more fire in everyone's eyes at the thought. What had knocked us down, nearly killing at least half of us, we could conquer and put behind us.

I took Steve to his second healing appointment before we had to leave town the following day.

***

"I know, he's not much to look at. Or listen too. Or smell apparently today. So, wait, why are you here?" Tilda asked, turning to me.

"Very funny," I said, using the Verdantese I had been drilling so hard on. The increased essence going to my intelligence also helped. "We installing a gold… thing… here yesterday. I must being here."

Maybe I haven't nailed it yet... I think I'll conduct business in English for now but it's on the list for the next long horse ride.

We were at the Velez fighting pits, discussing with Latif why we weren't looking to put a debit card machine anywhere there but the food stands in the future despite installing a money-changing station.

"Should we really be telling people what to do with their own money?" the extremely broad man asked. "Isn't that up to them to figure out?"

I moved my hand in the motion the locals used for 'kind of'. It was essentially the same as I used on Earth, oscillating my hand side-to-side but with more up and down movement of the hand.

"So, it can lead to really bad consequences if we make it a bit too easy to gamble. I should know… on Earth, I had a bit of a problem… we could bet on just about anything with a few clicks and I ended up losing more than enough to buy a car. A nice car." I had slipped back into English so I brought out my tablet and handed it to Tilda so she could see the translation without me holding it up next to my head.

Instead, she started trying to pull up some pictures of scantily clad men to show me.

Giving the tablet a side-eyed glance, Latif laughed. "Can't trust this one, can ya? But okay, I get it. Last thing we want is some family not able to buy groceries because mom or dad came in and kept pulling out their money. It's still going to piss some people off, which might limit or lose customers."

"Yup, and I'm good with that," I said matter-of-factly. "I'd rather not chase profits at all costs. That leads to soulless corporations and I saw far too many of those. If people would rather deposit with The Purveyors of Platinum, more power to them. The biggest issue from a business side is if we launch credit instead of just debit, people betting on credit is—"

"—a tremendously bad idea, I get it," Latif cut me off and followed with a chuckle.

The large man suddenly switched the topic on me. "So, when are we finally going to do that test fight? I want you in there—" he gestured towards the pit where one person was stretching as another walked out to join them, "—especially in the tournament at the end of next month. Will put some butts in seats. Whether that is just to see you or to see you get your ass beat is a different question." He laughed at his own joke.

"Uh, what tournament?"

"The biannual Tier 1 tournament silly," Tilda said as she had apparently turned back to the translation software for the tablet.

"Wait, biannual meaning twice a year or once every two years?" I asked. "And… I guess I don't really care, it's just a stupid thing in my native language where it can literally mean either. Give me more details?"

Latif sent over a virtual pamphlet about the upcoming event. There was a much bigger tournament every other year in the amphitheater for Tier 1s but mostly, that facility was reserved for Tier 3 and higher fights as it drew larger crowds. Plus, most good fighters went well past Tier 1 quickly so it was a bit strange to stall at Tier 1 just to compete. The pits' tournament was every six months and wasn't a free-for-all bracket of everyone in Tier 1.

The pits were going to be hosting brackets for four sub-Tier groupings: 1.0-1.2, 1.3-1.5, 1.6-1.7, and 1.8-1.9. They did broader ranges lower in the sub-Tiers because there was less excitement from the crowds for those matches – cheering on a bunch of fresh thirteen year olds beating on each other was considered a bit weird, though it certainly had its fans.

I decided to check in with 'The Crew' to see if it was a good idea but provisionally signed my name up for a test fight in three weeks in the Tier 1.3-1.5 bracket.

I might have to do another delving trip or two to get up into the Tier 1.5 range to have a chance. Good thing we're headed to Chazin Mark tomorrow.

On a whim, I decided to sign Steve up for a test fight a few weeks before the tournament too. He had really taken to the magic stick I'd gotten him in Struva and Risto was actually teaching him how to use it. At least slightly. It was still more like the video of the bear playing with a stick than a weapons kata but it was improving.

Latif laughed at the little monster on my shoulder that had been eating a bucket of popcorn every five minutes since we arrived. Since he had been healed further, his eyesight was almost back to normal so he actually caught a decent percent of the kernels he or Tilda threw in the air for him to catch.

Switching back to the reason we were there, I handed over the deposit for the money-changing station: ten gold and a thousand silver, mostly in tenpieces.

"We're going with way less at the other two locations but I figure you have a lot of money volume, even on a slow day." I indicated towards the two fighters who were just starting to lightly spar in the ring; the pits wouldn't open to the public for another few hours.

"I think we've also got a fair bit of our clientele who wouldn't be caught dead going to that nerdy store and are banned from Vana's," Latif said, slapping me jovially on the back.

Is Nikolaj's store considered nerdy? Weird.

Tilda perked up. "Well, make sure to send everyone who wants to deposit money to me. I'll even cut you in on a deal. For every ten gold deposited at my store, I'll give you a silver," she said with a wink.

"What's her cut?" he asked me without even looking at her.

"One percent," I replied.

"Traitor," Tilda said to laughs from both of us.

As we left, Zdenka met up with us. We headed down the road to one of her booked appointments: a moderate-sized apothecary.

"Any reason you didn't join us at the pits?" I asked.

Zdenka sucked at her teeth. "Bad family history there. Well, with betting in general. We probably wouldn't be on the verge of non-nobility – our family was pretty prosperous once – but my grandfather and especially his father were a bit too into their vices of gambling and pleasure houses respectively. It could cause issues if anyone saw me entering, no matter what for."

I nodded as that was quite a good reason. "Well, we'll still count the food cart there as one of your 50 businesses a week that you need to hit. Where are you on that?"

When I'd given her a weekly target of 50 businesses and 500 people signing up for the debit card system, I had forgotten Putijama had a five day week. She'd need to sign up an average of twelve and a half businesses four days out of five just to hit her quota, but she hadn't blinked at the number when I tossed it out.

"I have commitments from 36 businesses with deposits for the machines and another 100 or so meetings over the next week and a half," she replied calmly.

If I had any liquid, I would have done a spit take. It was only the second day after we'd brought her on board.

"Wait, when did we start taking deposits for machines?" I asked, slightly confused.

"Eh, someone saying 'yeah, sure, I'll take one' doesn't feel like it counts enough. So, since the machines are only a few gold each, I took a one gold down payment for the first twenty and then 50 silver for the rest since it will take a while to deliver," the young woman said nonchalantly.

Wow, we really got lucky with this one.

Tilda made an indignant noise. "But that means fewer people who will deposit with meeeee," she whined. "I'm supposed to be special."

Zdenka nodded as if she weren't being petulant. "Well, I have a few large group meetings later today you can attend though I expect you'll want to be running your shop. Yesterday, around 200 people seemed interested from my discussions and it's only you or Vana's inn. If you aren't open, that's a lot of lost deposits."

My eyebrows shot up, but Tilda nodded like it all made perfect sense.

"How are you booking these meetings so quickly?" I asked.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Zdenka replied.

"As your boss, yes, it's kind of my business to know. Do you think you can keep this pace?"

"Why, thinking of raising my quota so I have to close more business?" she asked with a slight frown.

Isekonsultant Tip to Thriving #53: Even in another world, consistency and predictability are very important for a company, especially in a business with a moderate to heavy upfront services component. Understanding your needed capacity for people is crucial to not over or under hire.

"Just the opposite," I laughed. "I'll get into it later but I'm wondering if the pace you're going is sustainable. The last thing we want is to get a ton of preorders and then stall out. I've seen what happens there."

Zdenka nodded. "Makes sense."

Getting excited to talk through my reasoning, I said, "Though I guess our business model is slightly different, it can cause some lumpy business results and I don't want to have to deal with tons of installs all at once, hiring a bunch of people, just to then have a ton of unused capacity. And using contractors for a short period is not usually a great model."

Tilda yawned. "Boring!"

I paused, trying to figure out how to make it less profit-focused. With a heavier tone, I continued, "Promising people work and then pulling it away is a truly dick move if you can easily avoid it. They changed their lives to work for you, the least you can do is respect that. If they quit another job to join your company, firing them can upend everything for them."

Zdenka halted in the middle of the road, putting a hand on my shoulder to stop me too. Tilda was back to looking at men wearing quite little on my tablet and walked on without noticing.

"You actually mean that, don't you?" she said, looking me in the eyes.

"Yes, why wouldn't I?"

"Well, it's just that's a bit wise beyond your years. It's not something I expect from someone younger than me," she said with a smile that said she got me.

Goddamn Barry and putting me in an 18 year old's body…

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