“Aoi, how much were you planning to pay the villagers?”
“Oh, hmm.”
Tough question, especially given that, like I’d just mentioned, I was pretty bad with money. I’d kind of gotten a rough idea for a ballpark figure, but now she was asking for hard numbers.
“They’ll be commuting from their village and doing physical labor all day. How much is that worth to them, and to you?”
“I was thinking four thousand DL for one day’s work.”
That would be a lot for a rural area like this. Right...?
“But Aoi, what about people who aren’t super strong like the mayor? Will they still get paid the same?”
Ann yanked on my sleeve and suggested a concern I hadn’t thought about before.
“Not everyone can be good at everything. For instance, it’s not Aoi’s fault he’s a weakling.”
Ugh. That smug grin on Mary’s face was getting on my nerves.
“Will they get any days off?”
“Let’s see. It’d be bad if they don’t get enough rest, and just as bad if they get too much. I would like them to have the market day free, at least. It won’t be much of a break, but it’d disrupt their normal lives too much to miss out on participating.”
So, one day off per week? They had to get at least that much, since we couldn’t very well take market day away from them. Milt didn’t have a general store, so that was the only day the villagers had to barter for and purchase food. I was a bit concerned about the pay. Forty-five people at 4,000 DL per person came out to 180,000 DL per day. Tally up that much per day, six days a week, for three months, and it came out to a whopping 14 million DL. It was really hitting me that my daily expenses to support myself and Ann were a world apart from what it was going to cost me to build this labyrinth. I would’ve liked to economize, but if I didn’t pay a fair wage, their motivation would drop and the quality of their work along with it. Not to mention, it would be bad for the villagers themselves. I really didn’t have any good choices here.
There was this one MMORPG I played where I was the mayor’s advisor in a vast, unexplored world. The game was called Harvest Rune, and the game’s main hook was that you didn’t just go out slaying dragons or whatever, you actually cleared out a spot in the wilderness and set up your house there, wherever you liked. Now sure, there were plenty of games where you could build a house, but in this one, natural events like snowstorms, floods, and monster attacks wore down whatever you built. Maintaining your house and your fence and whatnot was hard work! If you upgraded to a mayor’s house and got approval from a majority of the players with houses in the area, you could become the mayor, incorporating all the surrounding structures into your jurisdiction. At that point, you’d set up tax rates and collect them, and then use the money to fend off threats, maintain roads, improve infrastructure, and so on. It certainly was a unique game.
So, anyway, I was the advisor to one of these players who’d made themselves a mayor. Doing the accounting, like figuring out what taxes were coming in and how much was being spent on various maintenance projects, turned out to be a nightmare. Add that to the monster invasions, not to mention actual combat and stuff, and it left both of us with our fair share of sleepless nights. I had one fond memory of both of us, bags under our eyes, asking ourselves if we were sure this was really a game, rather than our job, and then laughing our asses off. The village we operated grew to be a little over the middle of the pack in the overall ranking and was considered a medium-sized rural town in terms of development, which was good enough for us. But I remember hearing a rumor about the highest-ranking players, who apparently took a different approach. Rather than raising taxes, they’d actually hire the town’s residents themselves, paying them high wages to develop the area, maintain the town, and boost the economy.
If I was going to be paying for the labor on this project out of my own pocket, I wanted to hire the people of Milt so that I could improve their quality of life. Hiring a bunch of unknown workers from across the country just didn’t sit right with me. That said, it wasn’t like I could just give out money willy-nilly. I wouldn’t have minded paying outrageously, if the only consequence were that I personally went bankrupt, but I had to plan for the future. I had to establish a reasonable rate now, in case I needed to hire them again sometime down the line. Figuring out what qualified as reasonable was easier said than done, though.
Well, if I was still agonizing over this, it was probably time to turn to my last resort.
“Ann, I want to pay the villagers an amount that they’ll be content with. How much do you think I should pay them per day?”
I whispered my question to her. This was my secret weapon, which I’d dubbed “Teach me, Master Ann!” It was incredibly convenient and highly reliable, but if I resorted to this option too frequently, I felt like I was leaning on her too much, so I usually avoided it.
“Uh, hmm. Lessee. You said four thousand DL a day before, right? I think that’s fine. You could go a little lower for the people making the food, but I think they’ll be happy to all be paid the same.”
Hmm. Well, it was true that slaving away on the construction all day was going to be a harder job than hauling, preparing, and serving food. That said, I wasn’t offering a big pay raise for the construction workers, compared to what they would make working in the fields. Overpaying a little for the food prep would be my way of boosting the total amount that went to the village.
“Four thousand DL per person per day, whether doing construction or preparing food. What do you think?”
“I’m certain they’ll be happy to hear that.”
Mayor Hopper nodded with a gentle smile on his face. It seemed my offer was good enough. Ann watched with a proud grin as the mayor and I shook hands. Hmm. It seemed that when we were outside the labyrinth, our positions reversed.