Dragon Quest IV -- #45. A Fool and His Money
0...will surely spend lots of quality time together... right? ...right?!
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I'm telling you, running a business is hard... you have to... keep track of... numbers and things! The king wanted a whole extra suit of armor beyond what I bought?! How can I possibly be expected to account for that?
If you thought the payday was big when you had Tessie at the helm... let's just say that royalty doesn't seem to know the value of a gold coin. Norman went and spent way more than sticker price for some relatively mundane equipment. Especially what with the bridge to Ballymoral and relations therewith so handily repaired as they are.
No, no! Don't tell him! This will be more than sufficient payment for the delivery fee included!
...it's also... suspiciously convenient, given that there's one more big-ticket purchase we can make around this dead-end continent, and nothing much else to do with that amassed wealth. You know, besides live off it for the rest of your days and never shall you nor your family want for anything ever again... ... ... but that'd be silly!
Oh... poor Hardie... the life of a mercenary is a hard one, I suppose.
I didn't really expect him to say anything about the job well done, but I definitely didn't expect to have something proper noun dropped on me: the Zenithian Sword is a legendary blade indeed... so legendary, that I don't know that we've heard anything about it prior... nor do I really see the connection between rare antiquities and actual arms dealers. You can only trade in an item that (apparently) rare once, then you're done... you can't build a business around that!
And yet, apparently it was always meant to be Torneko's dream. After getting a shop of his own, it's only natural he should thirst to fill it and his life with nice things. I guess. I don't know. The script says so, so it must be so. I'm just trying to fill in the blanks here.
At any rate, we're absolutely flush with cash beyond our wildest dreams, more than ever before... and it just so happens that the King's ransom is equivalent to the cost of resuming a privately-funded public works project. Maybe the King should've spent all his money on this instead of worrying about outfitting the guards who barely put up the pretense of guarding anything... Then again, Shamus can get to Endor again, so maybe it's better safe than sorry for a change.
One of the laborers mentioned that the casino has finally reopened... at extreme highway robbery exchange rates for its tokens! Alena and friends only had to pay 10G per token... 200 is... it's madness!
I think Torneko singlehandedly broke the economy, that's all. Rampant inflation will do that to the gambling biz, I suppose.
The interesting thing you might've noticed is that Torneko automatically has Alena's stash of tokens for some reason... I guess it's one part of the game they didn't see fit to compartmentalize between Chapters... so it IS technically not the worst idea in the world to convert all that extra cash we won't be seeing after we say goodbye to Torneko... ... ... but it's quite a price to pay after how generous the bunny-eared ladies were to Alena...
Alternately, a business-minded gentleman may wish to stock up on all manner of expensive goods to sell in that shop of his... but alas! The event flags have cruelly marched on! Paying that old coot apparently made it unnecessary to continue making money, and it's all Tessie will talk about is pursuing Torneko's seemingly random new "dream"... ... ... maybe she's got a thing for swords, and this is her way of trying to get him to go for it?
Oh well, I guess there's no helping it... there's only one more thing to do around here. Literally, now! Guess we'd better go check on that suspiciously fast-dug tunnel. I sure hope it's up to code! Then again, Archie O'Tect was similarly instantaneous about his bridge situation...
Oh, wait... ... ... the... "Extravagant Excavation"? ...was THAT what the name of the chapter was again?! Was I supposed to remember that indeed, this random money sink WAS the goal?! ...because I honestly didn't consider it much of an excavation, as the word implied to me more of like... a treasure or historical dig, not like... digging to GO somewhere!
... ... ...and that's it, I guess. Now we're done with Torneko!
I told you it'd be mercifully quick, even if it seemed like I was totally wasting your time not that long ago!
What a very strange chapter for a JRPG... especially for such an EARLY instance of the genre. Dragon Quest might seem like a fossil to our modern sensibilities... and even back when it was forging new ground, it was careful to avoid making things seem TOO different for their own good... ... ... but it really did manage to sneak in a lot of innovation into its simplistic and unassuming little package.