John was turning a pen in his hands and tried his best to stay focused on the presentation he was subjected to. Explanations about economic developments in different barriers across the city, trade outposts and manufactories elsewhere, admissions of criminal activity inside their borders, where they couldn’t deny it, in between.

The board of Amacat directors nodded to themselves with satisfaction, glancing occasionally over the birch table to their guest, from their red leather chairs. John felt like they were stroking their own egos more than they did what this presentation was actually designed to do: impress him. They never stopped advertising how close their working standards were to Fusion already, that they had no problem following the rest if it meant they could have a free trade agreement.

Spinning the pen around his knuckles in a motion he had always thought incredibly useless when the cool kids in class had tried it, but now understood that he desperately needed to occupy himself in some sense, John watched the logo imprinted on the side. Amacat had a level of self-recognition, using the symbol of a cat behind the six letter abbreviation of their full name.

The depiction of a feline, orange between a black pen and golden letters, was likely meant to represent a tiger. To John, it looked more like a common housecat. If it was just a bit fatter, he would have sworn it was Garfield. He had to resist the urge to write down lasagna on the summary handout he had been given, almost a one to one repeat of the presentation, making either it or the papers largely obsolete. Managing to repress that urge, John had to make some sort of joke to balance it out, “Well, if you already agree to all of Fusion’s core principles, why don’t you just join my guild? That’s the best free trade you can get.”

That earned him a bunch of chuckles, people following the intent of his tone, leading to nobody in the room taking the suggestion seriously. They exchanged a few follow-up jokes about how wonderful that would be but that they had to decline. It dragged on way too long, everyone laughing after every sentence said. Loud enough to seem earnest, but not so long that they wasted time. Socializing well trained to be just the right amount between a number of people that evidently had stuck together for a while.

It didn’t take too long for them to get back to presenting John a bunch of data. The whole thing was incredible. John should have been paying the deepest of attentions, they were essentially giving him a rundown of all but the most secret power centres they had. Communication buildings, trade routes, important harbours, with all of that info he could have occupied this whole area effectively in less than 24-hours. Sure, he would have to defend those positions afterwards, but by that time he would already be three steps ahead. Regardless, the Gamer couldn’t help but suppress a yawn of boredom.

There was no reason to think about military engagement. Because it was clear that Scarlett’s scheme for integration would, in some way, shape or form, eventually become reality. There was one simple reason for that: the leaders of Amacat were all, every single one of them, supremely average.

They held a good amount of power, for sure, and John wasn’t about to call them stupid in any way. Oligarchs atop an ordered, reasonably capitalistic society, they adhered to a bunch of rules and a decent amount of ethics. A few of them were apparently businessmen in the mundane world as well. They all had dirt on them, as CEOs tended to when in their world for too long, but not more or less than what was expected or acceptable.

‘And they’re all without ambition or vision,’ John thought as he was shown a chart of expected growth of Amacat as a whole and the ten biggest conglomerates, whose leaders made up the council, in the next quarter. Their plans to invest in new markets others had already established themselves in, thus signifying it was one with a future. Building projects of decent sizes, but nothing world moving. They were all too happy to just continue the status quo and keep making money.

Because Amacat wasn’t actually a guild. It was just a bunch of merchants controlling land and paying a defensive force so they were secured during their trades. John had to recontextualize what he thought the origin of this guild to be. What he had heard made it sound like the Amacat had been a valiant effort of several rich individuals to carve out their corner of the world. Given the current display, he was more convinced it was all an accident.

Much of the Amacat’s core territory was affected, in some way, by minor leylines. The natural (well, semi-natural) flows of Faith tended to follow the path of major rivers, but often took turns and adjusted to cross through major population centres. Their purpose was to feed into the major leylines along the tectonic gaps with as much energy as possible. As such, places where many people dwelled were sort of like smaller magnets on the way to an irresistible pull.

With all that in mind, the northern east coast being the point where such a leyline flowed into the ocean was unsurprising. Having gathered a lot of power from the middle of the continent, there were a number of monsters that spawned naturally around it and, if left alone for too long, would cause all kinds of shenanigans. Mostly for the local Abyss, since Gaia would eradicate anything that followed its instincts and attempted to meddle with the normal world. The monster got to cause one sort of catastrophe of some level, an outbreak of a disease, a sudden and uncontrollable fire, a very bad idea implanted in the head of a person in high places, one such thing before it was destroyed without leaving any trace.

It was, therefore, a place of great danger. Good thing one could always buy mercenaries to take care of those problems. John could see the self-propelling spiral quite clearly. A man with money arrived in the area, because the mundane side of it was quite pleasant to live around. He doesn’t want the monsters to invade his new residence. Joining up with some fellow, well-off people, he decides to give a number of mercenaries a contract to regularly clean out the naturally spawning barriers.

It works and, even better, the businessmen get even richer off selling the rare remains of the monsters and the materials created alongside them, things unattainable by any other means (unless your title was the Gamer anyway). They grow more powerful, branch out, find similar problems in the surrounding regions, use the same scheme there and then expand further. Somewhere along the way, negotiations with the mercenaries become unpleasant. To become less dependent on them, an army is established that takes the job over; now the mercenaries are just supplements.

Eventually, the people in charge notice that their natural spread comes to a halt. Maybe they are bordering on regions where the leylines have become too weak to regularly spit out monsters that are worthwhile to harvest. Maybe a different force is already taking care of the problem there. Either way, the people in charge just decide to stop and continue making money as they always have. Creating a pretty wealthy and secure area of the world. One that might be able to muster the resources to roll over its neighbours.

Who never would, because it was now based on a decentralized form of government and a military whose main purpose was to pay for its own upkeep. Even if somebody with the necessary ambition was born, the effort it would take them to rise to the top and reform this entire thing into an apparatus ready for war was enormous.

It reminded John a lot of the Netherland Trading Company back in Europe. With the stark difference that they didn’t use their money to propel themselves further. They just took the risk aversion approach and sat contently on their behind. Now they were a pretty developed region that the Gamer couldn’t help but think was a juicy addition to his own rising guild. It wouldn’t cause any headaches, it was already guaranteed to be profitable, and the whole culture was already pretty tame.

‘The whole problem here is that this generation of leaders is WAY too content,’ John thought and looked over the assortment of people again. None of them was younger than fifty, none of them had a level higher than fifty and all of them were here purely because of the money they had, be it by inheritance or their own dealings. ‘I can’t work with this.’

John had a simple way to negotiations. Find a person in high places that felt strongly in some way and use them as the crowbar to pry open the lid of the system, find the weak spots, then exploit the hell out of them. This took several shapes.

In an agreement with Scarlett, he had successfully polarized the area of New York City into two camps, creating a basic unity he could build on after defeating the enemies to the just-landed Collide.

The effort to take over the Little Maryland had all been defined by his struggle with Abraham. Using the president’s own ambitions against him, John had managed to insert himself into their political system as a viable candidate in the elections. That it then had ended in a war had been a misfortune.

Just recently, he had played that game on the double, using both Jeremiah’s impatience as one of the top 5 of the Lake Alliance and creating a traitor in the Small Lake Pact that would serve to, again, polarize things.

The exception to this strategy had been the Hidden Tradition, who had approached him, so that whole procedure had been unnecessary. This time, however, it seemed frankly inapplicable. None of the leading actors here seemed to have any ambition, for or against John or even to increase their own standing in the world. They were all neutral actors, to be swayed by whatever the tides of time would bring to their door.

An easy field to till, all things considered, all he had to do was stay course, be nice, buy stocks, give loans, increase his influence and do it all with a charming smile and the best interest of the people in mind. If he kept all of that up and let Scarlett do her thing in the background, the given five years were really the latest point at which the Amacat was effectively part of Fusion.

It was just incredibly boring.

And slow.

And boring.

Slow by John’s standards anyway. For the peaceful takeover of a country, five years was not terribly long. History was full of examples for those conquests taking immense stretches of time. Although these things tended to happen much faster, like almost everything, in the modern age.

‘It would be optimal if I had someone young and dynamic in this council who was sympathetic to joining Fusion,’ John wished to himself. The joke earlier had been to see if there was someone here who was at least that last thing, since nobody filled the former two. As it had been shown, people were as much open to joining as they were content with staying as they were. If John gave them enough reasons, they would just do it, but until then they would keep their feet still and bother with their own businesses. ‘Some hot, self-made girl,’ he continued to wish, nodding along as if he was truly interested in the ongoing presentation, ‘that would sell really well with the public.’

“So, what do you think, President Newman?” one of the councilmen asked. John didn’t even care that much who.

Putting up his nicest smile, the Gamer responded swiftly. “It’s a number of good projects you have planned for the future,” he spoke in a much sweeter tone than he felt, and the room hung on his lips as if he had a monopoly on honey and used it exclusively to coat his words with it, “very reliable in their profit generation. Fusion will be happy to hand out loans just a few percentage points above what we give our members. I could even be convinced to fully finance a few of the projects, as long as Fusion will be given partial ownership by the end.”

The leaders looked at each other with a series of grins, before orderly exchanging contact information with John and making some first appointments. Even in this, they were all in agreement that it was fine to just make their business when it was comfortable. If this was a room full of ambitioned people, they would be on John like a swarm of locusts, all trying to get his attention first so his resources would mostly be guided towards their huge new undertakings.

At the same time, those kinds of people were pretty unlikely to have outlawed slavery and the generation of energy in mana factories utilizing that immoral practice. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be too sad about them being a bunch of boring old men,’ John thought as he turned his attention to the summary paper he had been given along with the presentation. “I have just one question, if I might.”

“Always, always, mister president,” Berden encouraged the Gamer to just ask away already. Being called by that title was one of the few things John found a bit odd.

“Please, John is enough,” he therefore said before tapping on the page. “If I look at this breakdown of the economy correctly, and I mean no offense by this, the people here aren’t actually the CEOs of the top 10 companies,” he gave them a look over. “It’s the places 1 to 8 and then 10 to 11. Is that correct?”

Everyone looked towards the person who had the rank 11. Not to assign blame or anything, it seemed they were just in agreement that they didn’t want to be the one to take the responsibility. Clearing his throat, the mid-fifty suit of a person, rocking the same look as Richard’s human form, but with way less style, the explanation was as simple as it could get, albeit not as short.

“Yes, my conglomerate, General Temerity and Associates, while a strong and stable company in their own right,” he just had to put that in there, John guessed that the self-aggrandisement was there to assure him that Fusion’s willingness shouldn’t waver because of this, “has recently been overtaken in total value by the newcomer company Planned Spikes… is something the matter?”

“No, no,” John waved off while pinching the bridge of his nose. Immediately upon hearing the name out loud he had groaned. ‘Terrible, terrible pun,’ he thought, having immediately deciphered this situation. He had already had a hunch, but that just confirmed it. Next chance he got, he would strangle the person responsible. Something they would likely enjoy. “Continue, please.”

“They made it quite big, especially recently, despite their odd name,” the person continued. John could only think that ‘temerity’ also wasn’t a word he would use to describe the speaker. “We invited them, or tried to, anyway, but they have declined, saying they prefer being unknown by the public.”

“I see,” John was all too happy to drop the topic now. “Anyway, that was all I wanted to know… I guess this is another question, so pardon me, but do you want to discuss the potential of having some of your people learn on my dockyards? Now would be the most opportune time, people from the Netherlands are instructing over at my dockyards for another three years.”

“Of course, of course!” Berden most quickly agreed.