Kenji (Narrator): The Great Hall of the Royal Palace was a testament to acoustic inefficiency. It was a cavernous chamber of stone and stained glass... designed to make small men feel important and important men feel like gods. Currently it was amplifying the screeching voice of Goro the Quartermaster turning his lies into a sonic weapon that drilled directly into my frontal lobe.
Goro: Treason! I call it treason!
Kenji (Narrator): Goro stood at the foot of the empty throne his face a mask of sweaty indignation. He had recovered remarkably quickly from the shock of us raiding his vault. Now surrounded by the confused Royal Guard and a gaggle of nervous nobles he was playing his home field. He wore a robe of purple velvet that looked expensive enough to feed a village for a year.
Liora: The only treason here is yours Goro.
Kenji (Narrator): Liora marched down the center aisle her boots ringing against the stone. I trailed a few steps behind her checking my mana levels. The Conditional Formatting spell in the archive had drained me more than I admitted. My head throbbed with the dull ache of a caffeine withdrawal headache.
Liora: We have seen the ledger. We know about the double billing. We know about the payments to the Shadow Guild.
Kenji (Narrator): The Council of Elders... three men with beards so long they could have been used as mops... leaned forward. They looked at the scroll. They looked at Goro. They looked confused.
Goro: Numbers on a page! The Princess has been bewitched by this... this foreigner! This Auditor! He conjures ink to slander a loyal servant of the Crown!
Kenji (Narrator): Goro pointed a fat finger at me.
Goro: Look at him! He wears the clothes of a peasant. He speaks with strange words. He claims to see invisible inventory. Is this the man you trust over your Royal Quartermaster?
Kenji (Narrator): The Captain of the Guard a man named Kaelen who looked like he chewed granite for breakfast shifted his grip on his spear. He looked at Liora then at me. I could see the doubt in his eyes. To them I was a stranger. To them a spreadsheet was just a piece of paper and paper could lie.
Kenji: They don't understand.
Liora: Make them understand.
Kenji: I can't just tell them. Goro is a master of soft data. Emotion. Rhetoric. If I argue with him I lose. I need to use hard data. I need to visualize it.
Kenji (Narrator): I remembered a rule from Excel Data Analysis: when raw data is overwhelming the human brain shuts down. To communicate insight instantly you must use visualization tools. I needed to turn the abstract concept of embezzlement into something physical. Something heavy.
Kenji: [clear throat] Captain Kaelen? You believe the Quartermaster has supplied your men well?
Captain Kaelen: He tells us the treasury is empty yet he finds gold for our wages. The equipment is... serviceable.
Kenji: Serviceable.
Kenji (Narrator): I looked at the rusted spear tip in Kaelen's hand. I looked at the frayed leather of his brigandine armor.
Kenji: Goro claims he spent fifty thousand gold crowns on Military Upgrades last month. Let's see where that value went.
Goro: Silence the sorcerer! Guards! Seize him!
Liora: Hold! Let him show you.
Kenji (Narrator): I closed my eyes. I reached out to the Grid. It was always there overlaying reality waiting for a query. Select Range: Great Hall. Entities: All Persons plus Equipment. The blue grid lines flared into existence visible only to me at first then intensifying until the air in the hall shimmered with electric potential. I focused on the variable of Monetary Value. I wanted to compare the cost of the gear the soldiers were wearing against the cost of the clothes Goro was wearing. I needed a comparison that was impossible to ignore. I needed Data Bars.
Kenji: System. Apply Conditional Formatting. Data Bars. Solid Fill. Blue.
Kenji (Narrator): Thrummmm. The sound was a low bass note that vibrated in the chest. Suddenly pillars of blue light erupted from the chest of every person in the room. It wasn't a hologram. It was a hard light projection tangible and bright. The bars floated horizontally above each person's head extending to the right like a physical health bar... but measuring gold.
Crowd: [gasp]
Kenji (Narrator): The soldiers gasped backing away from each other. Above Captain Kaelen's head a blue bar hovered. It was short. Pathetic. Maybe three inches long. Value: 15 Gold. I looked at the other guards. Their bars were equally tiny. Stubs of light representing their rusted mail and dull spears. Then I pointed at Goro.
Kenji: And now... let's look at the Quartermaster.
Kenji (Narrator): BOOM! A column of blue light exploded from Goro's chest. It didn't just hover; it shot across the room like a battering ram. It stretched five feet. Ten feet. Twenty feet. It smashed through a wooden room divider. It forced the nobles to duck. It punched a hole through the physical space of the room a dazzling pulsating monument to wealth. Value: 54,000 Gold. The contrast was staggering. The visual weight of Goro's bar made the soldiers look like paupers. The sheer length of the bar physically pushed people back creating a vacuum of silence around the Quartermaster.
Kenji: That. Is. Where. The. Money. Went.
Kenji (Narrator): I walked toward him. The tip of his Data Bar passed over my head.
Kenji: You are wearing the salary of a regiment. You are wearing the repairs for the Northern Gate. You are wearing the food for the winter.
Goro: It's a trick! Illusion magic! He paints me with light to deceive you!
Kenji: Data doesn't deceive. But perhaps a simple bar chart isn't enough. Let's check the performance metrics.
Kenji (Narrator): I turned to the Captain.
Kenji: Captain... Goro claims you are loyal to him. He claims he is the heart of this kingdom. Let's test that hypothesis.
Kenji (Narrator): I focused on the grid again. I needed a different visualization. I needed to categorize the data based on a specific rule. I needed Icon Sets. System. Apply Icon Sets. Criteria: Corruption Level. Rule: If Corruption greater than 80% Icon equals Red Circle. Rule: If Corruption less than 20% Icon equals Green Circle. Execute.
Kenji (Narrator): PING. Above every head in the room a glowing orb appeared. Above Liora: a bright emerald Green Circle. Pure. Above the Captain: a steady Green Circle. Loyal. Above the Elders: Yellow Circles. Cautionary bureaucratic but not evil. And above Goro? A massive angry Red Circle materialized. It pulsed like a warning beacon. It cast a bloody light onto his terrified face. The icon wasn't just a color; it radiated the feeling of Error. It felt like a STOP command given by the universe itself.
Kenji: Red. Critical failure. The system has flagged you as an outlier Goro. You are a bad cell.
Captain Kaelen: Get him!
Goro: No! I will not be judged by a calculator!
Kenji (Narrator): He reached into his robes... not for a weapon but for a black crystal. Liora was faster. She moved like a blur of silver. She didn't use a spell; she used the flat of her blade smashing the crystal out of Goro's hand before he could activate it. It skittered across the floor sparking with purple static. Kaelen tackled the Quartermaster. The impact was satisfyingly heavy. The massive blue data bar flickered and vanished as Goro's assets were effectively seized. The Red Circle lingered for a moment... a final judgment... before fading away.
Liora: Take him to the dungeon. And search his villa. I suspect the Audit Report will tell us exactly where to look.
Kenji (Narrator): As the guards dragged the screaming bureaucrat away the Council of Elders looked at me with a mixture of awe and fear. I wasn't a warrior. I hadn't cast a fireball. I had just shown them the math and it had crushed a man. Liora sheathed her sword. She walked over to me her eyes searching my face.
Liora: You turned him into a graph.
Kenji: [sigh] Visualization is key to executive decision making. Without it data is just noise.
Liora: It was cold Kenji. You stripped him bare without touching him. You treated him like an error to be corrected.
Kenji: He was an error. And the spreadsheet is cleaner now.
Kenji (Narrator): Liora frowned. This was the friction point. I viewed the world as a system to be optimized. She viewed it as people to be led. It was a fundamental disconnect in our values.
Kenji: We aren't done. We caught the thief. But we haven't fixed the problem.
Captain Kaelen: The problem is solved. Goro is gone.
Kenji: No. Goro was just a variable. The equation is still unbalanced.
Kenji (Narrator): I opened the ledger. I pointed to the bottom line—the Total Row. I had avoided looking at it earlier because I knew what it meant.
System: Grand Total: Negative 10,000,000 Gold Crowns. Status: Critical.
Kenji: Look at the conditional formatting. The cell is bright red.
Captain Kaelen: What does that mean?
Kenji: It means we are in debt. Massive debt. Goro didn't just steal the cash; he borrowed against the kingdom's credit. He leveraged the future to pay for his present.
Liora: [gasp] Ten million? We don't have ten million. The harvest isn't in for months.
Kenji: Exactly. We have negative liquidity.
Kenji (Narrator): I turned to the window. The sun was setting casting long shadows over the capital. The Victory over Goro felt hollow. We had removed the corruption but we were left with the corpse of an economy.
Kenji: The Empire is mobilizing in the North. We need weapons. We need food. And we have no money to pay for them.
Liora: So what do we do?
Kenji (Narrator): She looked less like a warrior princess now and more like a teenager who had just realized her parents were bankrupt. I adjusted my glasses. A new notification popped up in my vision glowing with a sinister orange light.
System: New Quest: The Loan of Destiny. Objective: Secure Funding or Default. Difficulty: Impossible.
Kenji: We do what any failing business does. We go to the bank. And we pray they don't check our credit score. Get your diplomatic clothes ready. We're going to visit the Gnomes.
Captain Kaelen: The Gnomes? They are sharks.
Kenji: Sharks eat you alive. Banks just bleed you slowly. It's called interest.
Kenji (Narrator): I closed the ledger with a snap. Arc 1 was over. The warehouse was clean. The traitor was caught. But the numbers... the numbers were just starting to fight back.