Chapter 7075: The First Barter Coordinating the trades was a bit troublesome. Since Ves was no longer the patriarch of the clan, his current status in the clan was that of a mech designer who operated beyond Gloriana’s authority. That turned him into a free agent inside the clan, but also separated him from the hierarchy and its many levers. In practice, that meant that Ves had to ask Casella for permission if he wanted to borrow key personnel, retrieve a valuable resource from the strategic vaults or draw upon a huge amount of clan funds. The good news was that Ves did not have to turn to the clan for everything. He had amassed a huge personal fortune. The problem was that money alone was not enough to exchange the rare and precious goods on offer. For the first time in centuries, the MTA credit and the CFA credit had become subject to inflation. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞 It couldn’t be helped. The RA and the RF no longer maintained absolute dominion over human space anymore. They could no longer extract tribute from the Terran Alliance and the Rubarthan Pact. Their spending continually increased. They exceeded every deficit limit that they previously imposed on themselves and went deeper into debt to produce more war materiel and train more soldiers for the wars raging across the borders of human-occupied space. The Red Two also pressured their researchers and developers to innovate and develop new wonder weapons to use against the native aliens and the mutated voribugs. All of that cost a lot of funding as well. Many R&D institutions had turned into black holes where money kept disappearing without producing anything of substance in the short term. Whether that might change in a few years was anyone’s guess. Increased spending and decreasing revenue were not the only reasons why the top human currencies fell from their thrones and began to roll around in the dirt that they previously tried to avoid. People simply lost confidence in the value of the MTA credit and CFA credit. This was an understandable reaction. During times of crisis, stacking lots of money in a bank account was one of the least useful ways to protect oneself. This was just hoarding wealth without converting it into anything concrete and useful enough to win the necessary battle and ensure one’s own survival. This was also why the Red Two spent so much even if they knew that they were contributing to the hollowing out of their own precious currencies. Compared to maintaining the value and confidence of the MTA credit and the CFA credit, the mechers and fleeters would much rather obtain more mechs and warships to defend their borders and squash any alien invaders that attempted to chip away at the Red Ocean Union! There were many ways they could come back from a debt crisis and a hyperinflationary spiral if it came to that. What they could not recover from was to see all of their territories devoured by the aliens and their armed forces shattered beyond recovery. In short, during a time of war, it was better to have lots of mechs and warships on hand rather than piles of unused cash. While few people would argue that the mechers and the fleeters made the wrong decision, the reality of the situation was that a lot of other people effectively paid for their profligacy. Inflation of the more unusual and unexpected variety was a tax on everyone else who possessed and depended on cash. They might still earn the same amount of money in terms of numbers, but when their value had dropped by 30 percent, then the Red Two effectively robbed them of all of that wealth and used it for their own purposes! The only reason why few people objected to this behavior was because it was for a good cause. The Red Two ultimately spent their money wisely and did everything in their power to defend the core territories that maintained their allegiance to the old order. That did not mean that everyone was happy that they were being exploited by the current economic reality. Suffice to say, the people and organizations that suffered the most from this hidden tax or more nefariously a form of legalized theft were those that possessed a huge cash reserve! Ves and to a lesser extent the Larkinson Clan fell into this category. It sucked because Ves was rapidly seeing his real wealth diminish by the day. His reluctance in spending his money on real estate and colonization may have saved him from concerns about the native aliens razing his expensive efforts into dust, but it also left him bereft of more value-retaining resources. Hard currencies such as phasewater, strategic resources, mechs and warships mattered a lot more these days. The biggest players increasingly eschewed cash as an exchange medium and resorted more and more on barter to obtain what they needed the most. It was a primitive and inefficient means of exchange, but this was the best that they could do under the circumstances. Ves had no choice but to play by the rules of the game. That became very clear when Ves entered a luxury hotel and entered a small and elegant conference room in order to meet with the seller of the damaged imperial banner. The Rubarthans had already half-taken over the hotel. They replaced all of the security personnel with their own troops and they had even found a way to station their mechs at the perimeter. Naturally, the mechs of the Bluejay Fleet arrived as well and constantly kept an eye on their Rubarthan counterparts. Ves arrived in his most formal outfit which was the one he wore during the transfer of power to the new matriarch. Lucky accompanied him as well. The gem cat would rather spend time with the kids, but Ves needed his pet in order to help him examine the imperial banner and verify its material composition. "Meow." "Don’t worry about it. These mechs and soldiers can’t do anything to us." He said with a reasonable amount of confidence. The possibility that this might be an elaborate attempt to assassinate him was not zero, but Ves was confident that it wouldn’t work. Even if the mechers were completely caught off-guard and reacted incompetently to an ambush, Ves still had plenty of ways to defend himself. He was a lesser phase lord and had plenty of tricks up his sleeve. If it came down to it, Ves did not mind letting Sev out of his cage and rampage to his heart’s content. That shouldn’t happen today. The Rubarthans were in dire straits and needed all of the goodwill they could get from others. Even rogue elements among them had to restrain themselves in order to save their newly independent polity from collapsing. As Ves entered the conference room after going through a thorough but ultimately useless security inspection, he encountered a familiar and unfamiliar face. "Good morning, Ves." Raul Ottaviani said as he made a short bow. "You have come just in time. Let me introduce you to one of my Rubarthan trading partners. This is Mech General Harman Rader-Kavaliauskas, patriarch of the Rader-Kavaliauskas Family and its most senior military official. The Rader-Kavaliauskas Family or R-K family for short has always been a loyal retainer to the Smokestack Principality." "It is a pleasure to meet with you, general." Ves extended his hand. The older and much more stockier man gripped his hand tightly and shook. "You honor us by your visit." The Rubarthan gruffly responded. As they went through their introductions, Ves discretely used his cranial implant to pull off information about the general from the galactic net. Any Rubarthan that was prominent enough to become a mech general in the hierarchy of the Rubarthan Pact should definitely have a large public profile. According to the information that Ves obtained, the Rader-Kavaliauskas Family existed for a long time, but only became prominent after the Smokestack Prince elevated it into a trusted position. This was an important detail, as the Smokestack Prince was the strongest rival to the Inferno Spear Prince in the competition to ascend to the recently-made Red-stained Throne. In any case, the 476th Prince raised the R-K’s to become his guard dogs, which meant that he could easily put them down if he wished. This put the family in a rather precarious position. They had long attempted to branch out, but they could not do so openly for fear of earning Prince Titus’ mistrust. The mech general standing in front of Ves was known as a strong and unflinchingly loyal retainer of the Smokestack Prince. This was important as the latter’s non-military inclinations left him with relatively few trusted military officials by his side. The reason why Major General Harman traveled to Yernstall at this time was to engage in the mass procurement of essential goods and services to help the Rubarthan Pact survive the difficult months ahead. In order to fund all of these procurements, the Major General brought plenty of stuff that the Rubarthans had stashed in their vaults and museums for a long time. The imperial banner was just one of many trade goods that they sought to use as barter. After Ves and Harman completed their superficial chatter, they quickly moved on to business. Both of them were busy people and neither of them liked to waste their time. The general and the trade broker led Ves to the center of the room where a highly secure protective container floated in the air. General Harman solemnly proceeded to undergo the rigorous steps to unlock the container. Once its lid shifted open, Ves was able to behold the folded banner in all of its glory. Its impression in reality was so much richer and more vivid than the high-resolution image capture that Ves had studied previously. The banner was indeed in bad condition. It used to be fairly large, but so much of it had burned away that the intact amounts of fabric were much smaller in size. Ves did not touch it, but he could feel the weight of history and the complex sentiments attached to this broken symbol of authority. He could already tell its material qualities were excellent, but what Ves valued just as much was the hopes, dreams, disappointments and loathing that a huge number of Rubarthans had directed towards this banner and the sovereign it used to represent. That accumulation of multiple generation’s worth of humans subtly elevated an object that had no right to be an artifact into a relic that possessed a disproportionately strong spiritual weight. Ves could make use of that. He could rely on his specialization and spiritual engineering to convert this dormant and unused reserve of complementing and contradictory energies into a powerful application. He already began to entertain a lot of ideas, a few of which were more dangerous and risky than others. While his desire to obtain this imperial banner had spiked, Ves tried his best not to let that show in his reactions. He maintained a neutral stance and demeanor and did his best to pretend that the banner was useful but anything but essential. "What do you think, Lucky?" "Meow." Lucky did not show the slightest amount of interest. The banner was made out of organic fabrics. Even if the threads were laced with strong metallic exotics, that did not change the fact that it used to be the fur of a long-dead exobeast. Lucky would rather eat a lump of weapon-grade superdimensional matter rather than take a bite out of reprocessed hair! "So what do you want for it, general?" Ves asked directly. "What most people want from you and your clan. Superdimensional matter, the high-grade variety." Ves immediately grimaced. "No. Out of the question. As interesting as this historical object may be, it is not worth any quantity of the strongest resource in the Red Ocean. You can settle for the mid-grade variety or ask for an entirely different good, but we will not exchange armor or weapon-grade superdimensional matter for this exchange."