God of Zero Cost

Ethan did not look down at the dirt. He kept his eyes on Bochim’s ibex-horn bow, his mental calculator running the numbers down to the final decimal point.

Fifty percent of his yield was an absolute non-starter. If he gave away half his fangs and hides, he wouldn't clear enough to cover the smart-meter's midnight surcharges. But if he ran, the seventy-two-hour market ban would kill Grandma’s air supply before dawn.

"Fifty percent is the standard rate for an unassigned laborer working a guild lease," Ethan said, his voice flat, completely stripped of emotion. "But I don't use guild-issued arrows. I don't draw from your ration boxes. This is a nahal—a dry watercourse. Under the local customary code, raw alluvial materials cannot be fully owned by a tenant. It’s an Arayut context. A sharecropping partnership."

Bochim adjusted his grip on the oiled sheepskin wrapping of his bow stave. His brow furrowed slightly as the game engine’s localized legal glossary registered the archaic term. "I don't care what the ancient dictionary calls it, Etan. You pay the infrastructure maintenance fee, or I flag your ID."

"If you flag me, the report enters the palace system log," Ethan said, taking a single, unhurried step forward, into the long shadow of the wall. "The palace scribes will see that a Pixel Rex officer is manually collecting private silver weight outside the official municipal gates. That violates your guild's primary commercial charter with the king. They’ll revoke your inner-city trading license. We both lose everything."

Silence fell over the ditch. The hot breeze rattled the dry terebinth leaves above.

Bochim’s lips thinned. The micro-muscles around his digital eyes twitched as the advanced AI computed the administrative risk to his own corporate evaluation sheet. Ethan had him pinned. He couldn't report the exploit without exposing his own personal shakedown.

"Thirty percent," Bochim hissed, his knuckles whitening against the horn bow. "That's my final sheet. You drop the fangs at the base of the gate tower at the end of every cycle."

"Thirty percent," Ethan agreed smoothly. "But we cut a formal verbal berit right now to lock the system parameters. A traditional covenant of co-tenancy. You provide the security blanket—meaning your squad doesn't clear this brush, and you ensure the garrison guards don't reset the culvert's pathing grid."

"Fine," Bochim muttered, opening his hand to initiate the system's verbal contract recording. "We cut the treaty. Thirty percent of your physical harvest weight goes to my private chest."

"State your terms for the ledger," Bochim commanded.

"Etan provides the manual harvesting labor within the southern drainage sector," Ethan recited, his inner voice screaming with a cold, stingy glee. "In return, Bochim guarantees absolute operational sanctuary and maintains the structural state of the local pathing architecture. Under the ancient rules of Arayut, all accessory costs incurred to preserve the shared asset are fully deductible from the primary party's yield before the final split is calculated."

Bochim snorted, not recognizing the linguistic trap. "Accessory costs? You don't have any gear to maintain, F2P trash. You use a hemp string and river rocks."

"Terms accepted," Bochim said aloud, sealing the digital prompt.

Bochim turned his back, hoisting his expensive Syrian composite bow back over his leather shoulder piece as he stepped off the corbel onto the wooden rampart walkway. "Don't be late with the silver weight, Etan. I’ll be watching the ledger."

Ethan stood alone in the shadow of the crumbling mud bricks. The moment Bochim's boots clattered away down the stone battlements, Ethan let out a short, sharp chuckle that sounded like a cash register clicking shut.

Sucker, Ethan thought.

The corporate manager knew how to read a modern spreadsheet, but he hadn't read the server’s underlying creation code. Under the game’s strict Bronze Age simulation rules, "stamina" wasn't just a green bar that recharged for free—it was computed as a biological energy asset derived from the body's internal physical resources. Swinging a heavy hemp sling through a three-hour shift burned massive amounts of metabolic fuel, triggering the system's "Fatigue" and "Hunger" penalties.

To clear those penalties without spending copper on tavern porridge, Ethan would have to buy expensive grain or rest for hours under a tree—seconds lost that cost real money.

But under the Arayut clause he had just tricked Bochim into signing, the engine classified "Stamina Restoration" as a mandatory accessory cost required to preserve the harvesting labor asset.

Ethan pulled up his newly updated contract ledger. A pristine, automated system line had just cracked open at the bottom of his balance sheet:

Ethan’s grin stretched across his dirt-stained face until his cheeks ached. He hadn't just saved his leveling node; he had legally forced a corporate middle-manager from Pixel Rex to pay for his in-game meals. Bochim thought he was extracting a premium tax from a helpless F2P gold-farmer, but he had just signed a covenant that transformed him into Ethan's personal financial subsidiser.

He dropped back onto his knees behind the terebinth bushes, his fingers wrapping around a fresh, heavy limestone pebble.