The Path of Ascension Chapter 343

Chapter 343

Matt was fighting a battle of epic proportions when his [AI] alerted him that relief was about to arrive, and he happily stood from his desk, letting the projections of paperwork fade away as their seneschals were about to arrive.

It had been close to fifty years real-time since Matt had seen Cato in person, although that meeting had been very brief when they came out of the rift for a quick press tour, and to read him in on Matt’s real Talent. The seneschal had been hardworking and vetted numerous times, along with agreeing to more stringent measures than AI backed oaths to keep Matt’s secret. Some of them had not been used since the last dynasty. Not that Matt expected they’d need any of them. All of their possible seneschals had been well vetted and deemed trustworthy enough before even making it to their desks. And Matt did trust Cato. They had been in, if not constant contact, regular contact over the years as he prepared things for Matt once the war ended, which had built a lot of familiarity.

Frankly, without Cato taking care of things on the outside, Matt would have turned into a hermit the moment the war ended, as a million and one responsibilities were suddenly heaped onto him. Let alone starting a guild, Matt wouldn’t have dared open a sandwich shop.

After their family reunion meal, the three of them gave into necessity and started going through a century and a half of backlogged paperwork. Most of it had been already taken care of, but a part of the correspondence couldn’t be handled by their seneschals, and even that had taken a few hours of concentrated work to push through.

That was annoying, but not awful; it was what followed that had been overwhelming and made Matt want to pull his hair out.

Liz and Aster didn’t have it nearly as bad, as they weren’t trying to create a guild with the express purpose of giving things away while also hiding the fact they made realm changing amounts of mana. Cato had done most of the leg work, but even just reviewing the convoluted legal structure that his seneschal and a team of Empire lawyers had put together had taken Matt five hours to parse through.

In the end it boiled down to him opening a charity, not for the purpose of creating a charity guild, which would necessitate too much openness with their budgets, but just to hold all the patents they would create.

The workers would be hired by a separate corporation with a contract that was nearly identical to a charity guild contract, but had the advantage of secrecy clauses. In exchange for not being able to take a piece of the eventual revenue of any products made, which was the typical contract for researchers, his researchers would be paid three times over the standard royalty based contract, with payouts for each project they were a part of that met standard breakpoints.

As was explained in the brief, research teams needed to be able to fail without fear of reprimand, else dead projects had the habit of never ending and wasting resources, so there were payouts even for failures. One of the clauses that he had wanted to add was that in the event of successes, Matt would even fund the researcher’s own projects that they could claim personal rights to, so long as they weren’t directly derivative of what they created with his guild. He didn’t like the last addendum to the clause, but as was pointed out, it wouldn’t do for someone on one of his teams to create something, leave it half assed, and then create their own complete thing on Matt’s mana. And of course, the guild kept right of first refusal to any results of these products. It would go rather against the point of it all if they funded research that then got sold into the same locked ecosystem that so much else was stuck in.

That wasn’t what his guild was meant for.

He wanted to help people. Preferably low Tier people, who needed all the help they could get.

All of it wouldn’t have been possible without the Emperor effectively rubber stamping the venture via the express method of adding his wife, Carissa, to the board of directors. She had already sent in a letter that due to her pregnancy, she would be unavailable to show up to any meetings, and temporarily relinquished her rights to Matt.

Anyone foolish enough to look at that and then try to mess with Matt or his guild deserved whatever disaster fell into their lap.

It wasn’t the only oversight he was given, as Harper had contacted Cato and made it clear that a few of their operatives would need to be given jobs to prevent spies from getting too close to things the Empire deemed important.

Matt didn’t like the open ended nature of that, but he also acknowledged he had little recourse to refuse if he wanted to keep his mana source hidden.

No, that was taken care of. But instead, there was a larger issue that Matt needed to talk to Cato about. Better yet, now that Cato was here, Matt could hopefully blast through the remaining paperwork with his assistance.

Together, the three of them met the three seneschals at the estate’s front gate and escorted them in. They could have left that to the staff, but it had been so long since they had seen them, it was good to see them in person. And Matt, at least, needed the excuse to get out of the office.

All three were exactly as Matt remembered them, with the exception of Liz’s seneschal Isabella, who was now Tier 25, having graduated and been rushed to the break point while the war was ending. Tier didn’t directly tie into competence, since thinking faster didn’t make one smarter or more knowledgeable, but it did increase perception, which crammed more moments into each second.

Aster’s seneschal, Alice, was still Tier 41, and had an uncanny resemblance in demeanor to Luna that always caught Matt off guard. She was also the only one carrying anything. The binder was perfectly ordinary, not even spatially expanded, but Matt felt Aster’s wince upon seeing it. It was sure to be unpleasant to go through that much paperwork.

Matt wanted to gloat, but he was sure Cato had more than his fair share of the same.

Proffering his hand, Matt broke protocol. “Nice to see you again, Cato. How have you been?”

Cato blinked at Matt’s outstretched hand in a subtle rebuke, before taking it and shaking firmly. “You break protocol, My Lord.” Having said that, he bowed slightly after taking back his hand. “It is my duty to show my fealty upon seeing you after so long.”

Matt had wanted to avoid exactly that, but he was distracted by Liz who cleared her throat.

“Before we go our separate ways, we intend to host a party to celebrate the end of the war, our noble houses’ founding, and Matt’s guild’s founding. We want to bring in everyone relevant. It’s a bit last minute, but should be workable.”

Isabella chewed her lip before saying, “That’s possible but the Emperor is expected to return and hold court within a month, which puts a firm date that this needs to happen before. Anything after that date is considered…” She searched for a word before finishing. “Uncouth, and I would recommend against it.”

Alice’s shaven head gleaned as she pursed her dark lips into what might almost be construed as a frown. “In addition, hosting a party with your celebrity on such short notice will force people to choose between your party and any others that are being hosted at the same time. That will step on many toes.”

All eyes turned to Cato, who just flipped his ever present chain around his pointer and middle finger with a snick. “It will step on toes, but if we go big enough and invite literally everyone, you can avoid most of the blowback by dint of ruining everyone’s parties, and letting them mingle with even more people than normal. The higher nobility and—” He turned to Matt and asked, “Do you intend to invite guild and corporation leaders to this as well?”

When Matt nodded he continued. “The higher nobility, guild, and corporate leaders will balk if they don’t have their own exclusive areas to get away from the rabble, but if you flatter them a little, they will be happy for the excuse to mingle with their public rivals while being able to claim inability to ignore your offer, even if they have to mingle down a little at the same time.”

Isabella had been nodding along, but Alice threw a wrench into the plans. “The cost of such a venue and catering it last minute to the degree that those nobles will expect will be exorbitant to say the least. In the realm of ten to fifteen Tier 40 mana stones. Possibly more.”

In raw mana, that was as much as Matt made in two weeks. Of course, his actual mana stones were worth nowhere near that much, but they were rich enough between their status as war heroes, Ascenders, and in Matt’s case a mana generator, that they could afford it even without relying on their higher-Tier connections. They couldn’t make a habit of it, but this was a unique occasion.

The three of them shared a look before Liz nodded. “The event serves a variety of purposes, so while the price isn’t irrelevant, it’s worth it.”

In a mirror of their look, the three seneschals looked to each other, silently communicating. A moment later, Isabella nodded. “I’ll run point on this then. I’ll have a plan prepared by this evening and we will present it tomorrow morning for the lord and ladies’ review.”

Matt, seeing that they were done, turned and started talking with Cato as they walked deeper into the estate. “So, I like what you have set up for the guild, but I’m not entirely happy with the stance on not buying out other people’s guild contracts. A number of the best and brightest are locked into millennia long contracts, and us not offering any kind of buy out feels counterproductive to my larger goal.”

Cato frowned but didn’t disagree, and they walked on in silence until they had reached the office Matt had taken over. “It’s not impossible to offer them, most old and established guilds and corporations in fact ride the line of espionage with their buyouts. Buyouts in general are a bit of a legal loophole more so than intended law. All contracts must have exit clauses and offering to cover those clauses happens, but they are… bad form at best, and will cause the guild to stall if we irritate too many established players before even getting started. While your goals are laudable, My Lord, giving away anything for free is going to make a lot of enemies. Not offering buyouts will cut off most easy avenues of reprisals. We can offer them, but you never indicated a time crunch, so we can simply wait for the researchers’ contracts to naturally end before we hire them after they refuse to renew. It would also allow us to start with a smaller, and therefore less unwieldy, guild structure in the early years, making any growing pains more manageable.”

Matt pursed his lips but didn’t have a rebuttal that wasn’t based in petulance. He wasn’t in a rush, but he didn’t want to wait for all the wrong reasons. He hadn’t thought becoming an Ascender had truly changed him, but his initial reaction was to say he didn’t care and anyone who did could pound sand. That wasn’t how guilds and corporations worked, it was how bull headed Ascenders acted when they thought their might on the battlefield transferred into civilian life.

That was an ego check that Matt took to heart.

“You’re right. I’m apparently still in Ascender mode, and I’m trying not to be. If I suggest something that is bullheaded for no reason, yell at me.”

“Assss you command, My Lord.”

Matt rolled his eyes at Cato’s flat expression paired with a stressing on his snake-like talking.

“I’m not going to yell at you for telling me I’m being an idiot.”

“You’re being an idiot.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Matt paused at the sudden interruption, his jaw working but no words coming out. After a moment, he managed to get out a single word without laughing. “Oh?”

“The idea of making a charity guild is fine My Lord, but those things are small scale and usually for social issues or particular issues that arise on a specific planet. Your intentions will step on a lot of toes of very powerful people. Individually, they might not be able to disrupt you and your plans, but if you create something truly revolutionary that disrupts an established market, you will find the established powers have little remorse or hesitation to come at you from any and all angles. If we simply act as a research guild, and after developing something, patent and sell said patent to the established powers, we can avoid a lot of conflict.”

Matt hadn’t been sure where Cato was going, but he nodded along as he listened. Instead, he inspected Cato and compared it to what he knew of the man. Cato had left his previous noble charge because the man needed a nanny, and Cato wasn’t that. He was willing to steer the train off a cliff if that was his order, but he would recommend a more sensible plan. That was the main reason Matt had chosen the man to be his seneschal, and he valued the fact he was willing to speak up if he thought Matt was going to make a mistake.

Finally, after he was done with his inspection he said, “You are entirely right, Cato, I’m sure I’m going to piss off a lot of the established powers. Not even just my Talent. I already have a discovery nearly ready to ship, that I worked on with someone I knew in the army. This is why I had you look into aperology.”