Chapter 128: The Strange Economics of a Dungeon
Ging Freecss was genuinely impressed by what he was looking at.
As someone who did everything purely on the basis of personal interest, Ging had ended up in the Ruins Hunter field simply because restoring and exploring ruins happened to line up with what he actually enjoyed. Doing that kind of work gave him the feeling of playing and clearing a game's challenge stages.
He had been through all kinds of ruins by now, large and small, starting with the Lukuruk ruins. High-danger, low-danger, he had seen them all. But he had never seen an outdoor open-air ruins site that had developed this kind of symbiotic economic relationship with the surrounding human population.
Not in terms of what was dangerous inside it, but in the fact that it had formed a strangely functional balance with human activity on the outside.
What caught Ging's eye immediately: the monster units in this place, which should by any normal logic have been eliminated on sight, actually had drop mechanics almost identical to Greed Island, the game he and his collaborators had created. And unlike Greed Island with its strict carry-out restrictions, this place seemed to have almost none. Throwing axes, throwing knives, gold coins could all be taken out freely, all with genuine material value.
If not for the fact that whoever created this place had clearly already paid an extremely steep price for doing so, this would imply that Castlevania had become part of the world itself, no longer needing its creator's ongoing ability to maintain the basic rules, the way Greed Island still did.
These valuable drops had drawn two kinds of people. Ordinary people who just wanted to try their luck with the gold coins. And Nen ability users willing to take on greater risk by pushing deeper, for the possibility of ancient Nen tools somewhere in the interior.
Ging decided to call them adventurers for now.
Then there were the traveling vendors who had spotted the adventurers' most basic needs and come running with food and water to sell at a markup. Then a step beyond that, traveling merchants dealing in weapons, armor, healing supplies, and tents. Together, they had formed a small market.
Castlevania, adventurers, traveling merchants. The three had produced a strange but stable balance between them.
At a glance, this symbiotic economic structure looked reasonably healthy. But Ging understood clearly: everything here was built on the premise of Castlevania being profitable. The moment these ruins were sealed, the balance would collapse instantly.
There was also an unavoidable problem that hadn't fully surfaced yet: as time passed, would local authorities or organized crime start looking at this as territory worth controlling?
The ethical end of that: simply drive off or absorb the traveling merchants, take control of this small zone, keep the supply and pricing in their own hands.
The unethical end: deploy force to seal off the entire outer perimeter, restrict access to their own people or charge entry fees to everyone else.
Either option required having Nen ability users on your side as enforcers. Ordinary local or criminal-organization firepower alone couldn't stop a group of professional-grade Nen users who had come here for profit or treasure.
A rapid sequence of thoughts moved through Ging's head, but the excitement on his face was visible to anyone watching.
Ruins: his home territory and genuine passion. Mechanics that strongly resembled an actual video game: essentially a perfect fit. Naturally, he was going to take a walk through it.
He entered the Grand Cemetery perimeter with a completely unhurried, almost leisurely quality, as though he were strolling through a park.
Old Drac, are you really not coming back? If you don't come back soon, today might actually be Castlevania's demolition day.
Ross watched Ging move through the mix of people and monsters with the easy fluency of a fish in water, hands drifting here and there in a way that was not entirely honest, and noticed that quite a few Castlevania local goods had accumulated in those hands before long. He let out a silent internal cry.
Ging might approach things with a researcher's mindset and conduct a thorough investigation. But Trevor was here for one thing: to take the castle apart.
Then something clicked.
Ross suddenly felt like he had made an error somewhere in his thinking.
Trevor had exactly one objective: kill Dracula, demolish Castlevania. But Ging didn't.
From everything Ross knew about him, Ging's track record with ruins was "restoration," not "destruction."
Castlevania was dangerous, certainly. But it was currently within manageable limits. More importantly, it showed no signs whatsoever of outward expansion, and the three-way balance between the castle, the adventurers, and the market had actually given it a certain functional reason to exist.
From Ging's perspective, the priority of studying and preserving Castlevania's existence should rank higher than directly destroying and sealing it.
Which meant: if Ross let Ging know that Dracula's death equaled Castlevania's demolition and arranged for him and Trevor to meet, their positions on what should be done with the castle would almost certainly come into direct conflict.
But Ross had no intention of doing that.
He had basically already written off True Castlevania. He was even, quietly, looking forward to watching everyone's expressions when Trevor officially walked into Dracula's throne room, defeated the Dracula projection, and the entire castle collapsed right in front of all of them.
He could see now, in some small way, why Hisoka enjoyed stacking card towers high just to knock them down without mercy. It really did satisfy something that could only be described as the desire for destruction.
And so Ross, the thoroughly irresponsible sub-landlord, was not only not going to help the real owner stop Trevor, he was going to actively assist and speed up the demolition process.
Creator Authority: activate.
The three branch route areas of the sixth major section, Route A's Moat Bridge, Route B's Underground Catacombs, and Route C's Ghost Sunken City, had all of their BOSS units replaced with the simplest possible pseudo-BOSS elites: Skeleton Warriors, Mummies, Cyclops. Advancement difficulty, sharply reduced.
At the same time, the seventh major area, the Castle Courtyard, where all three routes converged and which was the last barrier before the main castle interior, was no exception. The three large BOSS coffins were all loaded with Skeleton Warriors.
The three areas of the main castle interior itself, the Castle Main Hall, the Castle Inner Sanctum, and the Castlevania Top Floor, had special configurations that prevented Ross from adjusting the BOSS units. But as long as he had a controller in hand, even the strongest combat AI was going to stand there and take it.
The genuine intent was simply to speed Trevor along. But the effect was that Trevor, finding enemy after enemy mysteriously weaker than anything Dracula's castle should contain, was now in a deeply suspicious and unsettled state.
Dracula's forces couldn't possibly be this weak. Something is wrong here.
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