"Labour is the most volatile asset. Left stored, it rots into resentment. Invested, it compounds into infrastructure." Kael, Year 0.
Day 10.
The basement of the Science Building was no longer cold. In fact, it was sweltering.
Kael wiped sweat from his forehead as a warning siren wailed softly from his laptop speakers.
[ALERT: Core Temperature at 85°C. Throttling Performance.]
The "University Credit" system had exploded. What started as a few hundred transactions a day had turned into a torrent. The psychology of scarcity had taken over. Students, realizing the Credit was the only stable currency in Voransk, were hoarding it. They were trading old textbooks, tutoring hours, and even dormitory cleaning services.
The old Soviet-era servers couldn't handle the traffic. They were cooking themselves alive.
Kael stood before the server rack. The fans were screaming, spinning at maximum RPM, but it wasn't enough. If the servers melted, the Ledger would crash. If the Ledger crashed, the trust would evaporate. And if the trust evaporated, Vadim would break his fingers.
Kael needed a cooling system. A professional liquid cooling setup would cost 50,000 Rubles—money he didn't have, for parts that didn't exist in this city.
He looked at his screen.
Active Users: 3,800.
Engineering Department Users: 412.
Kael cracked his knuckles. He didn't need money. He had a localized workforce of bored, desperate geniuses.
He opened the "Quests" tab—a new feature he had coded at 3:00 AM the night before.
[New Quest Posted: Admin]
Task: Design and Install Emergency Liquid Cooling for Server Room B.
Materials: Scavenge from the defunct HVAC lab.
Reward: 500 Credits + 1 Week of Hot Showers (Priority Access).
Time Limit: 4 Hours.
He hit enter.
Twelve minutes later, the basement door banged open.
Three students stood there. They were wearing grease-stained coveralls and looked like they hadn't slept in days. One of them, a tall girl with shaved hair and thick glasses, was holding a wrench like a weapon.
"You're the Admin?" she asked, eyeing Kael skeptically.
"I am," Kael said. "You're here for the contract?"
"500 Credits is a lot," she said. "That's two weeks of food. And hot water? The dorm showers have been ice for a month."
"If you fix the heat down here," Kael said, gesturing to the smoking servers, "I can route the waste heat into the water boiler system for Dorm Block A. Hence, hot showers."
The girl looked at the servers, then at the pipes running along the ceiling. Her eyes narrowed as she did the thermal dynamics in her head.
"Heat exchange," she muttered. "Use the servers as the boiler element. That's... actually brilliant."
"It's efficient," Kael corrected. "Can you build the loop?"
"We need copper piping, a pump, and a radiator," she said, already moving toward the back of the room. "Oleg, strip the fridge in the breakroom for the compressor. Sasha, go steal the radiator from the Dean's broken Mercedes in the parking lot."
"The Dean's car?" Sasha hesitated.
"He's not driving it," Kael said calmly. "No fuel. Take it. I'll authorize the asset seizure."
The team went to work.
Kael watched them. He wasn't just watching them fix a machine; he was watching the birth of a Guild.
In the outside world, these students were unemployed liabilities. In the Loop, they were high-value contractors.
Value is subjective, Kael thought. Context is everything.
Two Hours Later.
The screaming of the fans had died down to a hum.
A Frankensteined contraption of copper tubes, a car radiator, and a refrigerator pump was bolted to the server rack. Coolant—a mixture of water and stolen antifreeze—pulsed through the veins of the machine.
[System Status: Core Temperature 45°C. Stable.]
Kael nodded. He picked up his phone and transferred 500 Credits to the girl's account.
Ping.
She checked her phone. Her eyes widened. "It cleared. Instant."
"My word is my bond," Kael said. "What's your name?"
"Lena," she said. "Third-year Mechanical Engineering."
"Lena," Kael said, typing a note into his user database. "I'm designating you as a Tier 2 Specialist. From now on, you get priority on all infrastructure contracts. I need this basement reinforced. I need the power grid optimized. Organize a team."
Lena straightened up. For the first time, she didn't look like a starving student. She looked like a foreman.
"We accept," she said.
Just as the engineering team left, the basement phone rang. It was a landline, the only connection to the Dean's office.
Kael picked it up. "Admin speaking."
"Kael," Dean Volkov's voice was tight. "We have a problem. The City Grid just announced a Rolling Blackout. Sector 4—our sector—is being cut off in twenty minutes."
Kael froze.
The University generator was running, but it was only supplementing the grid. It couldn't power the entire campus and the server farm at full load. If the city power died, the generator would stall within an hour.
"How much fuel do we have?" Kael asked.
"Enough for six hours at current consumption," Volkov said. "After that, the lights go out. And your little economy dies."
Kael hung up. He didn't panic. He analyzed.
Problem: Energy Scarcity.
Asset Required: Diesel.
Asset Location: Vadim.
He pulled up the Vendor Logs. Vadim had been selling cigarettes and vodka like crazy. His digital wallet held 12,000 Credits. He was rich in the Loop, but he couldn't eat Credits. He needed to offload them.
Kael dialed Vadim's number.
"What?" Vadim answered on the first ring. Background noise of shouting and heavy lifting.
"Vadim," Kael said. "The lights are going out in twenty minutes. City blackout."
"I know," Vadim grunted. "My freezer is full of meat. If the power dies, I lose stock. Why are you calling me? Fix it, wizard."
"I can keep the power on," Kael said. "But the generator needs fuel. I see you have a surplus of Credits."
"Yeah, useless numbers," Vadim spat. "I can't buy gas with Credits. The gas station only takes Gold or US Dollars."
"Wrong," Kael said sharply. "The gas station owner has a son. His son is a student here. First-year chemistry. He's failing."
"So?"
"So, I just checked the system. The son needs tutoring to pass. The professors accept Credits. You transfer your Credits to the gas station owner. He transfers them to the professors to save his son's degree. He gives you the diesel. You bring the diesel to me."
There was a silence on the line. Vadim was processing the complexity of the trade.
It was a Triangular Debt Swap.
Vadim pays the Father. Father pays the Teacher. Teacher teaches the Son. Son passes. Father gives Diesel. Diesel powers the Generator. Generator saves Vadim's meat.
"You..." Vadim whispered. "You are a devil."
"I'm an accountant, Vadim. Do we have a deal?"
"The truck is already moving," Vadim growled.
Twenty Minutes Later.
The overhead lights in the basement flickered and died. The hum of the city grid vanished, plunging the room into silence.
Three seconds later, the backup generator roared to life. The lights snapped back on. The servers didn't even blink.
Kael watched the power consumption graph. It spiked, then stabilized.
The truck had arrived. The fuel was flowing.
He looked at the code scrolling on his second monitor. It was the script that managed the power distribution—the one that decided which buildings got light and which stayed dark.
It was becoming too complex for manual inputs. He needed it to predict the load.
Kael highlighted the code block: Power_Management_Subroutine.
He renamed it.
> OMNI_v0.2 (Alpha)
He typed a new command line:
// Objective: Survival of the System. Prioritize assets that generate value. Cut power to liabilities.
He hit Enter.
On the screen, the graph shifted. Omni immediately cut power to the Arts & Humanities building and rerouted it to the Science Labs and the Cafeteria.
It was a ruthless, cold decision. It was exactly what Kael would have done.
"Good boy," Kael whispered.
[System Notice]
User: Kael
Infrastructure: Stabilized.
Workforce: Organized (Engineering Guild).
Energy Source: Secured (The Vadim-Logistics Loop).
Net Worth: 850 Credits.
Influence: Absolute.
The dark winter of Voransk was pressing against the walls, but inside the Ledger, the fire was burning bright.