Book 4 – Learning Chapter 13 – The Endless Strip
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Spread across over a dozen different worlds between the three Earth universe groups and the Mint universe group is the extraterritorial nation of the Endless Strip. The Endless Strip itself is primarily compromise of eighteen Las Vegases, each on a different world: six Earths, evenly split across the three Earth universe groups; six worlds from the Mint universe group with one being from its Om-Ge-In hub for Financial Colosseums that resides in the Will Center mayor layer of reality group, one from its Mobal hub for Babels, one from its Stripa hub for Hidden Cities, and three from the noir rated Financial Colosseum of Vagesal; two worlds from Earth I universe group’s Argtilium hub for Planes of Existences; two worlds from Earth II universe group’s El’Vega hub for Financial Colosseums; and two worlds from Earth III universe group’s Gobva hub for the Tenebrous Web. Each Las Vegas possesses two sets of trios of World Bridges which form the three interlocking möbius strips that the nation is famous for with the two Babels and public Hidden Cities each city has only fortifying these interworld routes. Due to each Las Vegas having six public modes of transportation, the population for each is around fourteen million, not counting for the hidden ones that dot the nation. And with Pulmonary Clustering being so prominent within the Endless Strip, the nation actually expands beyond its titular namesakes into other worlds in the form of other offshoot strips, both public like the Silver Strip and secret like the Venus Strip; this is further expanded by the powerful blackzones, divergent distortions, and system lairs that either affiliated with with the nation or pledge full allegiance to it.

With special locales and dungeon-like distortions in spades, the Endless Strip attracts countless delvers, mages, dunjologists, and system researchers alongside the entrepreneurs that seek to partake in duels under the scope of the Asset System and the gamblers and tourist that seek out its extravagant sites, resorts, and casinos. This sheer influx of foreigners moving through the Endless Strip on a regular basis has allowed the nation’s otherwise excessively diverse political parties to find common ground on one thing: money. By leveraging government owned and co-owned companies along with sales, land, and corporate tax as allowed the nation to surprisingly do away with income tax and instead give a dividend to resident citizens. Through this dividend which value is in flux from citizen to citizen based off various metrics, the Endless Strip is able to entice many investors, both manalogical and mundane, into migrating to its glyph-covered cities while causing a circulation of income and wealth within the nation to keep a good working relationship with the gold-collared divas, the gods with divine portfolios derived from the Asset Systems.

The primary income of the Endless Strip is broken into four industries with each industry enough GPD to outdo nations of similar populations. At the forefront and most recognizable of the industries is the tourism industry with the over ten thousand resorts and casinos that line the individual strips of the nation that span over five hundred miles, with hundreds more miles and countless more resorts and casinos hidden away from the public populace due to the nature of the metaverse. The runner-up industry is the delving industry that sanctions both delvers and adjacent careers such as hunters, corpse hunters, porters, and escort & mapping experts to delve in the nation’s countless sanctioned and regulated dungeon-like distortions that are primarily composed of blackzones, divergent distortions, and system lairs. The next industry is the Asset System industry, fueled by duels, trades, and investments done by entrepreneurs within the scope of the Asset Systems and indirectly filling the nation’s coffers via specially made contracts. Finally there is the transport and investment industry where large corporations, both manalogical and mundane in projects, exploit the many modes of transportation spread across the Endless Strip and allow easy access to the greater metaverse. This four industries are closely governed by six different major departments: the department of gold overseeing the tourism and Asset System industries; the department of obsidian overseeing the delving industry along with the Asset system industry also; the department of opal overseeing the internal aspects of transport and invest industries; the department of departments overseeing the external aspects of transport and invest industries; the department of exchange which oversees industries involving in systems other than the Asset System; and the department of commodities which manages all other industries.

While the Endless Strip is influenced by many systems, Asset, Planar, Corruption, Tower, and Vox, and home to many different hybrid, derivative, and derivative hybrid systems due to the Crossover System Effect, the Asset System reigns supreme. This is primarily due to the fact that three of the Las Vegases of the Endless Strip proper are located one of the three five thirty world-large noir rated Financial Colosseum of Vagesal, dwarfing the six fifteen world-larged platinum rated, the twelve seven-and-a-half gold rated, the twenty-four three-and-a-three-quarters pearl rated, and the many hub-sized club-rated Financial Colosseums in size. And this influence from the Asset System is furthered by the fact three more of the Las Vegases are also located in the Mint universe group, the de-facto origin and hub of the Financial Colosseums: the primary special locale known as the ‘place of gambling.’ Due to this, not only does the nation have a larger than normal populace of partial-neo-sentients and neo-sentients but is also home to many different independent assets, the special locale-based race category aligned with the Financial Colosseums.

Through their connection to the Financial Colosseum, independent assets deal with a manalogically impacted immune system like other special locale-based race categories and possess a variety of forms, primarily humanoid with some alterations. They also possess a natural aptitude toward using the Asset System and have instinctive expertise in the fields of finance, economics, and psychology. This leaves them as natural born businessmen on top of entrepreneurs within the scope of the Asset System.

Those who specialize in using the Asset System and interacting with the Financial Colosseums are called entrepreneurs, entres for short. As for the proxy devices used to interact with the Financial Colosseums via proxy bodies, they are called OTMs, operated transfer machines, and using them is called operated investing. The Asset System itself is an account-regional-and-connective-type system meaning various things: account means it makes use of special accounts attached to the connection that can be used to exchange for goods, services, and even abilities and is primarily used as magical back accounts; regional means each instance of the Game System has unique features and stylines and has their own connectivity material needed for it; and connective means that proxy bodies, real-to-proxy transformations, and the likes can naturally handle the user’s full portfolio of mandala sbetter than their non-connective counterparts without any special additions and modifications, but still experience strain from cross-karmic retribution to a degree.

Despite every instance of the Asset System being different due to its regional nature, it possesses two mainstays: the existence of assets, a type of spirit that is naturally tied to system slot’s and Alternate Source’s connections that link to the system, and the fact that value and mana is interchangeable. The Asset System can convert currency, potential, material possession, and even temporary access to attributes, mana generation, and parts of one's portfolio of mandalas into Asset System-codified value: the codified value is used to fuel the specialized spells and systems casts of the system, flations. Flations come in a variety including the basic microflation, mezzoflation, and macroflation along with more exotic ones that require empowerments from other system slots, mandala, and non-mandala counterparts like exoflation, hyperflations, and hypoflation; each flation has an ideal ratio of mana and value with pushing closer to either end of the ratio cause the overall cost of spellcasting to increase.

The main differences of the Asset System’s instance are broken into four parts: the average ratio of flation’s costs, the common trend of assets, the common ability of assets, and the common ability of entres. While all three main instances of the Asset System on the Endless Strip share an average ratio of 60% mana 40% value with roughly the same amount of relatively-forgiving growth in cost for moving away from ratio and the common trend of mechanical assets, the rest are different. El'Vega gives melee weapons to entres and shielding abilities to assets. Vagesal gives ranged weapons to entres and also gives shielding ability to assets, but elemental in nature. And Om-Ge-In gives sigils to entres and wellspring and element mimicking abilities to assets so they can draw on their entres' class specialties.

With the use of the Asset System and delving happening on a national scale, improved and fortified with countless enchanted contracts of double digit tiers, the Endless Strip has secured its borders while allowing itself to exist within many other nations and welcome in millions of tourists and potential investors every day. It doesn’t matter if a person’s career and expertise is manalogical or mundane in nature, the Endless Strip offers excitement and opportunities to everyone under its massive glyphs in the sky that range from cooling enchantments to wellbeing improvement and glowing neon displays and illusions. And naturally this attracts all kinds of folk in life to enjoy themselves, increase their tier, and potentially amass wealth worthy of the cities of economic and manalogical powerhouses.

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