L'anthologie Dystopique des Héros

Chapter 1, Subchapter C

Imagine a young and wealthy farmer named Beth who owned 300 acres of cornfields, sugar and tobacco farmlands, and finally, cotton fields in the suburban outskirts of Vistarion, the capital city of the Alvarez Empire. She left her farm to go shopping in downtown Vistarion to buy more hoes and spades, when she encountered a young man. He introduced himself as Norman Stewart and asked if he can lodge with her for a while. Beth agreed and they left together for her farm. For months, Norman would live with Beth as her roomate in her mansion. Every spring, they went to a nearby cathedral dedicated to Apollo, God of Music, Healing, and most importantly, the Sun. Soon, Beth was blessed with more wealth as her business of selling magical cigarettes, sugarcane, fresh corn on the cob, and clothes boomed. Overjoyed, the two roomates celebrated by going to church every summer and enthusiastically giving thanks to Apollo. The profits that they earned from selling their goods at a marketplace in downtown Vistarion was sent to the bank as mortgage payment for Beth's mansion. Unfortunately like the Sun sets at night, Beth's blessings plummeted one day.

In the faraway mountains of Alakitasia, imagine a hiker who discovered a light brown piece of metal in the ground. He brought it to a nearby blacksmith named Sean McDonald who recognized it as copper. This hiker sold it to the blacksmith who immediately got to work making new household commodities out of copper. After 3 months of distributing ad pamphlets, Sean was overwhelmed by orders from all over the Alvarez Empire. To meet the high demand, he hired apprentices from all over the country to produce millions of household commodities from copper. In the end, Sean grew wealthy and opened a new business of producing magical scythes for farmers. Swamped by orders, he hired more apprentices and he combined his forge and factory into one ginormous sugar mill, powered by lacrimas. Sean then sold freshly ground sugar that were imported from two islands off the coast of Greece in Ishgar called Crete and Cyprus. His business soon competed against Beth's farm and he outperformed her in terms of profits. While Beth only made 1 hundred thousand Liras-currency of Alvarez and Rome, Sean made ten times that, 1 million Liras. In Ishgarian Drachmas, this is about 3 thousand for Beth and 30 thousand for Sean.

Beth was forced to go out of business after weeks of losing profit to Sean. So, Norman offered to go on odd jobs to help pay the mortgage. At first, she declined but after convincing, she accepted his offer. He worked as a mail carrier, dishwasher at a casino, security guard of a shopping mall, and personal secretary of an elite cobbler.