[527] An Ally (3)
An off-the-books depreciation deal.
Fermi extracted magic from sellers, packaged it into chips for buyers, and took a commission for the service.
Magic was also subject to depreciation—the value steadily fell over time.
Basically, because the buyer paid the seller and Fermi only took a fixed fee, running the operation required no capital. But when Fermi himself acted as the buyer and made a deal with a seller, a restriction applied: contracts could only be made using the profits he had already earned from depreciation transactions.
At present, Fermi's total off-the-books commissions came to roughly 600 million gold.
Of course, he still had to buy chips regularly to keep up with school life and his broker activities.
For example, the chip he used to score a perfect on all twenty items of the specialty exam was an "Air-series Basics" chip he bought from a retired certified mage—about 10 million gold for a three-month contract.
That left him with operating funds of roughly half his net profit—around 300 million gold—which was far short of what Fermi was aiming for.
And then a deal showed up that could earn him six hundred times his current operating capital.
Fermi rarely showed emotion, but this time he couldn't help but give in to Miro.
"You extract the magic safely through depreciation, then use the profits to strengthen it. Depending on how you use it, it's an extremely efficient ability. The problem, of course, is the commission. I don't know how much you've earned, or what kind of magic you developed this to buy, but the fact you still haven't graduated school means you haven't reached your goal."
Fermi's eyes grew cold.
"But I offered a deal worth a staggering 190 billion gold. With a 99 percent commission. That means over three years, 188.1 billion gold would go into your hands. Are you honestly going to pass up a chance to buy things that are on a completely different level from what you've gotten so far?"
"Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!"
Fermi threw his head back and laughed.
Even Miro couldn't tell what emotion lay behind that laugh.
The sound stopped suddenly, and Fermi smiled broadly.
"Correct. As expected, you can't fool Aunt."
"Of course not. So don't bother with petty tricks. Again, I didn't come looking for you because of magic extraction. If there's no way to lift Shirone's moratorium, we'll have to find another off-the-books operator. Of course, that 190 billion would then hang in the air."
"All right, all right, I get it. Just tell me."
She said it, but her mouth stayed shut for a long moment.
Hunched over with his chin on his hand, Fermi let it slip as if it were no big deal.
"There isn't no method at all."
"I figured as much. What is it?"
Fermi scratched his head with a troubled look.
"But it's extremely difficult. I tried to pretend I didn't know because it's not that I want more—it's that you shouldn't even have to think about it if possible. Setting danger aside, it's terribly inefficient."
"Hearing that would make Adrias's blood boil."
"Some magic loan sharks try it occasionally. Mostly when the subject has died. In such cases there's only one option left."
Fermi snatched up the contract on the table and pointed to the signature line.
"Forge the signature."
"Ah."
Miro gave a hollow sound of surprise.
"But how? If it's a magical contract, the subject's will must be present, right?"
"That's why illegal methods are needed. If Shirone's avatar is in a moratorium, you get a copy of that avatar to sign."
"How do you copy an avatar? Even for an off-the-books operator, you can't do anything while Shirone's avatar is asleep."
"You don't replicate it. It's already been replicated 'somewhere.'"
Arius jerked his head up.
"Surely not?"
Miro turned to him.
"You knew about this too?"
"It's the same principle as when I found Miro's trauma in Drimo. A human mind flows into Drimo through dreams. So what happens to the mind of someone who's dead?"
Miro blinked.
"The mind of a dead person no longer produces new, productive information; it fractures into fragments and fuses with other information. In that process, scraps that can't combine settle to the lowest layer. Mental mages call that information 'minority conception.'"
Fermi picked up the thread.
"Minority conception is the unnecessary information that makes up the world. It's either so common it doesn't need to combine with anything, so distinctive it becomes isolated, or so grotesque it's rejected—those kinds of pieces end up there. The world that forms from these deposits at the lowest level is called The Abyss."
Arius continued.
"That's why it's serious. Information can't have independent meaning; it gains meaning by combining with countless other bits. For example, if only the concept 'apple' existed, you wouldn't know what it meant. It's the related bits—'red,' 'fruit,' 'tree,' 'sunlight'—pointing to one another that finally define 'apple.' Minority conceptions are the pieces rejected by those combinations. Most of the information that builds this world refuses them. The world might tolerate things like 'murder' or 'torture,' but anything below that is the province of the minority."
"So that conglomeration of rejected information is The Abyss."
"Yes. And of course any information in this world can eventually become a minority conception. Over time, information entropy falls and new information replaces it. The Abyss is like a tomb where the world's information ends up."
Information was the material of the world.
Miro understood exactly what it meant for information to reach its final destination.
"Is it the last possible future the world can reach?"
Arius nodded.
"Apocalypse. In short, it's a virtual world that embodies the end of the world."
Fermi added, "When the present changes, The Abyss changes too. But the fact that it's a world of endings doesn't change. It's the accumulation of abandoned information."
"And Shirone's information could have sunk down there…"
Fermi circled back to his point.
"It's possible. The reason The Abyss is called hell is because the information of the dead becomes minority conception and piles up there. But when someone like Shirone is in a moratorium, you can't know how much of his information was captured as minority conception. It could be intact, or it could be severely damaged."
"If you recover that information and form the contract, would it be as valid as if the real Shirone had signed it?"
"If it's properly restored, yes. It's information no different from the Shirone in reality."
Arius stayed skeptical.
"But how do we get there? Even if we enter Drimo as productive information, we don't fall into The Abyss. To go there you'd have to die or destroy your mind through severe shock. But if we did that, we couldn't carry out the operation."
Fermi smiled meaningfully.
"You can go—while still in one piece."
Miro and Arius both turned to him.
"You can? How?"
"Information that enters Drimo binds with other information. The patterns of those bindings—where extreme numbers tangle—are infinite. Even if they seem strange by human standards, information can weave itself into a vast world. Only the information rejected there gets flung out of Drimo and accumulates in The Abyss. So…"
Fermi's conclusion was simple.
"We just need to get flung out. Exit to the outside of Drimo. People who play in this field call that place the ."
Even Miro had never heard the term.
"Those who handle minority conceptions are extremely closed-off. For them, reality doesn't matter much. They create their own worlds inside the Undercoder and play—your Aunt might find it unfamiliar. If you go, you'll be surprised. There are some pretty interesting worlds."
"In short: perverts. Well, I won't ask about your tastes. So how do we enter the ?"
"I can't tell you that yet. Right now, going to The Abyss would be pointless. To restore Shirone's avatar you need people who shared a close bond with him. But we… don't, right?"
"Hmm, then why not ask your Magic Academy friends?"
Fermi held out his hand.
"That won't do. The school is my livelihood. Find someone who had a close bond with Shirone outside the Magic Academy. And they need to have a certain level of mission capability. Those are the two conditions I'm setting."
"You're making demands? Don't you want to make money?"
Fermi, for once, shook his head.
That he wouldn't compromise the school even for a 190-billion-gold deal said his ultimate goal wasn't simply money.
But with awakening Shirone the priority, arguing more was useless.
Anyway, to bypass the moratorium they'd have to accept Fermi's help.
At that moment a maid called from outside the door.
"Young master, dinner is ready."
Fermi straightened and stood.
"Let's eat first. We'll spend the night here and leave tomorrow morning. I'll finish preparing to go to the in the meantime."
"Deal set."
Downstairs, the smell of meat pie filled the air.
It was dough spread with tomato sauce, topped with bacon and vegetables, sprinkled with cheese, and baked until the cheese stretched.
Miro opened her mouth wide, bit into a slice with the cheese stretching, and closed her eyes in bliss.
"Ah, it's so good. I went through so much to be able to eat this."
"You'd make someone think you were starving for days."
At Enrique's remark, Miro held up two fingers.
"Twenty years."
While trapped behind the dimensional barrier she had been free from bodily functions, but upon returning to the world her metabolism had come back to normal.
A secret passed down by Gehofin.
This was likely why Shirone could borrow against the results of 127 years.
"Forge a contract. Find out what Shirone's collateral is."
To solve those two problems they needed someone who had formed a deep bond with Shirone.
'I'll have to go to Kashan. I'll need to get the signature anyway.'
Enrique asked outright, "So when are you leaving this house for good?"
Miro fell silent in thought, and Fermi answered for her.
"I'll be coming and going for a while. I have consultations to handle. Right, Aunt?"
"Huh? Oh, yes. I thought you weren't graduating and were just fooling around, so I'll teach you a bit."
"That's something to look forward to—being taught by the world's greatest mage."
Enrique eyed them both suspiciously.
Keeping secrets from family meant some sort of arrangement had already been made. And the fact the other party was Miro made it obvious they were involved in something extraordinary without asking.
'First tormenting me, and now dragging my child into it?'
Enrique sighed and resigned himself.
Though being entangled with Miro had brought ridiculous situations, he'd never found life so entertaining.
'Fine. Let it be. She's not going to drag me to hell, is she?'
It was a fairly warm, convivial dinner.