Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

"You say some… worrying stories," Banjay spoke, carefully measuring what words he was using.

'It's been a while since I had a conversation this important, huh?' he thought, his eyes twitching the tiniest bit. 'So why do I feel right back in my element?'

The first out of the three strangers to introduce himself during the greeting was a man from the empire. For all the possible reasons; a different empire from the one at war with the Patriarchate.

That man's… No, Sir Claudy's introduction was something Banjay was familiar with. And as elegant and courtly as it was, it held absolutely no weight or information.

On the other hand, the initial introduction of the other man within the group of strangers couldn't be any more different.

Sure, he used some words that Banjay had to actively work hard to interpret properly on the go. And sure, contrary to Claudy's introduction, Peter's greeting was full of vagueness and repeated uncertainty…

But despite its nature, it also came bearing quite a lot of information as long as one was listening keenly enough to catch the implications of Peter's words.

To no surprise, upon sitting down and moving on to the proper debate that had to precede the negotiations, it was this other guy who took the leading role, quickly attempting to explain the situation through some weird stories.

And once again, despite speaking in indirect ways, his words somehow carried the condensed, practical knowledge Banjay needed to start making some preliminary calls about the situation and those strange guests.

"What can I do," taking his sweet time to respond in any way to Banjay's small remark, Peter opened up his arms and put them to the sides before shaking his shoulders. "We live in worrying times, do we not?"

This smile…

Just like a lot of his words, Peter's smile was empty. Yet, strangely enough, it was empty in a way that made its nature obvious.

In a weird way, Peter was honest about his dishonesty. That's what his initial remarks during the greeting phase served to establish, after all. And it was this honest dishonesty of the man, Banjay found both familiar but also so damn easy to fall for.

"Does that mean things are not going great down south too?" Banjay mentioned with a smile, matching the spirit and rationale of his counterpart.

"I never said we come from the south," Peter quickly retorted, his fake smile frozen on his face.

"Where do you come from, then?"

"Didn't you claim to come from the empire?"

Banjay's mouth twitched when he sensed he managed to outmaneuver the other party.

'So they don't know we are fighting with the empire too!'

Isera never mentioned bringing up the name of their enemy up. And being a patriarch's ear, she was one of the very few whom Banjay would trust to be careful with the wording they used.

"And that's what you get for acting the way you do, Claudy," Peter muttered, his small smirk wiped by a hint of displeasure as he glanced over to his companion. "Either way, where we come from doesn't really matter. What does matter, though, is what we can do for each other."

'If only things were ever that simple…'

Even if what Peter said was true from his perspective, it would never be factually correct on the patriarchate's end.

'First, there's the question of whether or not you actually have the ability to do anything you mentioned. But looking at that thing…' Banjay turned his eyes over Peter's shoulder and at the flying vehicle that was now parked in the middle of the fortress basin. 'That part,' he gulped his saliva down, 'I somehow don't find to be all that unreasonable. But…'

Banjay took a deep breath.

"Assuming everything you said thus far is true, then I will have to disagree with your last statements," Banjay stated, earning himself a startled look from Isera and a nod of approval from Salicious. "Keeping those assumptions, what we should be asking is, what do we do to be on the right side of things, isn't that right?"

Banjay beamed his smile with all of his strength.

This was the first, unspoken rule of the negotiations. It mattered not whether one's smile was fake, empty, or genuine. What mattered, was to keep that smile up, for whoever broke the polite persona first would be revealing far and wide they failed to hold against the pressure of the meeting.

And generously followed this unspoken agreement, Peter's smile never vanished, even if it changed the underlying tone a few times by now.

"Wouldn't it rather be… what do we do to make the changes affect us the least?" Peter pointed out, acting as if he were a teacher correcting a student.

And on this particular point… Banjay had no other choice but to agree.

"First, let me make things clear," Peter spoke again before Banjay could even gather his thoughts. "The first and main change that's going to happen, is your entire country growing so rich, you won't know what to do with your money. And sure, it will take some time, but growing overly rich will be the first issue you will have to face and figure out on your own."

In the end, Banjay lost.

His smile was the first to vanish when he was faced with such a ridiculous statement.

"Are you actually for real now?" Banjay muttered, shaking his head as if to sober himself up from some sort of daze while struggling to figure out if he really heard what he believed he just did.

"Claudy, can you verify?" Instead of answering directly, Peter turned over to the other man in his group.

By now, it was obvious that while working together… they didn't exactly belong to the same group. Just the different ways in which they introduced themselves was a good enough of a hint of that.

"As much as it pains me to admit, those guys speak truth…" Claudy sighed while hanging his head down and shaking it to the sides. "In two months, they've built a city that outproduces all the settlements in the whole region. It's hard to notice because they put all of what they produce right back into use and further growth, but…"

Claudy shook his head and turned silent.

"Your friend's face… doesn't really seem to be encouraged or happy with what he just mentioned…" Banjay pointed out, raising his eyes as he turned them from Claudy and back to Peter's face.

"I think it's because his empire is no longer the biggest dog around?" Peter guessed with a smile followed by a shrug of his shoulders. "Or maybe he's stunned, now that he took a step back and actually compared how things started to how things are right now?"

The smile on Peter's face only grew at the cost of the troubled smile on Claudy's face.

"I'm sorry man, but I don't need you to try to voice my own thoughts out," Claudy commented in a slightly harsher voice than he used thus far. Yet, rather than keeping his angry expression, he quickly turned embarrassed as he averted his eyes and mumbled, "But yeah, the last part was right on the money."

Banjay raised his eyebrow.

'Yeah, that has to be a load of crap…' he thought.

For a city to produce so much, it had to have buyers. And if there were buyers, someone would have long since created a city at such an opportune location.

From what those strangers said, though, they made a city from scratch.

But again, what could that kind of city produce, if there were no buyers for their products? How could they overcome the very problems that currently starved the entire patriarchate and started when their one last ally and trading partner fell to the imperial push and became nothing more but their chai farming colony?

'Still, the way they talk about it…' Banjay gulped down his saliva, 'it's really easy to believe them.'

"You think we are lying," Peter spoke out, now bearing a casual kind of smile. "I'm not here to convince you otherwise, though," he then added, shrugging his shoulders for yet another time.

"And why is that?" Banjay inquired, baffled by such a statement.

'We are trying to negotiate. Shouldn't you be trying to build up trust with me?'

"Because the methods we used over in the empire, are not the methods my group shall potentially use if we decide to expand in this direction," Peter explained without even a hint of hesitation as if he was revealing a great soup's recipe over the motivations and patterns in which his group operated.

"You are not?" Claudy asked, equally as taken aback by Peter's revelations as Banjay himself.

"Of course not!" Peter exclaimed as if the need to explain this bit was the most shocking thing he heard today. "We are not at war with them, so how do you reckon we would get enough manpower to do our bidding?"

Peter shook his head, clearly trying to hold back laughter.

"In the empire, we used the captives because that's what the situation called for back then. But here?" Peter's smile only deepened as he leaned back in his chair and cast a sweeping glance at everyone gathered in this negotiating circle. "Here, it's much easier to just pay them to do what we want instead."

"So you think it's going to be that easy to buy us?" Banjay took his turn trying to hold back his laughter. "Don't you think our enemies haven't tried that already?"

Somehow, Peter's words struck a sensitive string of Banjay's soul.

Bribes and torture were how half of his family turned into the sixth imperial division lapdogs, after all.

"Oh, it all depends on one thing," Peter ignored the changes to Banjay's expression or even the changes to the tone of his voice and opted to further his smile even more.

"And what is that, if I may inquire?" Banjay, feeling the first tingles of anger starting to tempt him, asked in a voice overflowing with irony.

Yet, as if to mock him, Peter continued to give out his careless, unbothered smile.

"It all depends on what we are trying to buy you with."