Side Quests for Harem and Power 3: Horrifying Facts (Patreon)

We found the perfect drug for the plan in hand. 

Before we found it, we went through a list of drugs, and there had been many chemicals. 

The first candidate had been called feranimi, it was an easily aerosolized drug but hard to synthesize. Omni-tools had an “app” called “omni-forge,” which was a low-key molecular forge. Low-key because it couldn’t synthesize anything too complex. Feranimi, an extremely powerful sleeping “aid” often used by Batarians for their Asari slaves, was a complex chemical that required … a lot of infrastructure or a dedicated lab to make. I had neither, and sale was heavily regulated. I was sure that Cortana could move the commodities around a little bit to get us exactly how much we needed, but it would needlessly expose to the rest of the Citadel Council extranet. 

The second candidate, and the one we settled on begrudgingly, was fentanyl. 

Yes, one of the narcotic drugs that plunged so many lives under six feet deep. 

It was also great because humanity never grew out of narcotics, and while they added a lot of new ones with the exposure of the entire galaxy to sample new and wonderful drugs that would eventually break their minds, humans never removed - as in no longer use, market, buy, and sell - the old ones.

And fentanyl was … pretty widespread. It took a simple cursory look around the extranet to find an app similar to Earth’s dark web browser Tor, and on and on the extranet deepened all too similarly to the internet.

Lo and behold, I found out that it was a drug that apparently worked good enough as narcotics for the most of the galactic species to the point that Batarians - again, the biggest customer of narcotics - used a lot of it to keep much of their slave population docile and addicted. 

There was a reason why the Citadel Council didn’t want to force the Batarians to give up on their slaves: all of their slaves were, on some level, addicted to drugs. Releasing how many billions of former slaves without education into the wider galaxy who are all addicted to drugs? Some addicted to more than a few? 

(I was pretty sure that there was a sick Batarian out there somewhere who forcibly addicted a select few of their slaves to a boat load of drugs just to “experiment” how absence of one narcotic did while others were still given to said slaves)

Goodwill or not, most governments did not want to dirty their hands with that. The Citadel Council did not want to handle that because it would lower their popularity. Particularly the Asari. 

“You honestly think that the Asari Republics are the force behind the Citadel Council’s unwillingness to attack a slaving civilization?” Cortana asked.

“Yes. Think about it. The Asari live a long time. For them, taking care of a single addict takes tremendous resource, but what would happen to their republics if a literal hundred million addicts came? A hundred million addicts without a purpose in life, brutally mistreated, sexually abused, butchered, tortured, and addicts on top of that?”

“... The republics don’t have the manpower or money to support them long term.”

The Asari Republics were perhaps the greatest economic powerhouses. All together, they must be worth the rest of the galaxy combined! One of the reasons for this dominance was their planet’s element zero mines, and the second reason was their long lifespan. Therein lies the problem for the republics. 

Asari could be cold yet they were also empathetic. If they saw the shivering, hungering, and mistreated slaves in front of them, then they would demand their governments to help them. The only logical solution to achieve this would be to increase tax. Yet they would refuse such increase in tax to cover said healthcare, just one of many ways that they were similar to humans: similarly paradoxical.

Even if they agreed, asaris lived for centuries longer than the rest of the galaxy’s species. Assuming that the state take care of the medical costs related to addiction for a single non-Asari individual and the cost for said care was a hundred thousand citadel credits over the course of their entire life. 

Humans, Turians, Elcor, or even Batarian, it didn’t matter. Asaris lived at least ten times longer. Now, that cost for a single individual’s healthcare related ONLY to addiction jumped to a million citadel credits.

And if there were a billion such individuals suddenly coming into society? 

Pentillion credits! Only for the treatments related to addiction! 

“‘One is a tragedy, but a thousand is statistics,’” Cortana grumbled. 

“And many of them will go back to those drugs, whether they know better or not,” I added. “And if, because these people are too troublesome to care for, the governments don’t bother with them-”

“They’ll form a new unofficial caste of people that destabilize society.”

“Yes. Again, it’s not their fault but Batarian’s, yet it doesn’t change the fact that there is no miracle cure for physical and psychological addiction. They’ll keep coming back for it, especially when they don’t have anything else to do but live with the trauma of being a slave.”

“And you want to use the same drug on this Benezia woman?”

“It’ll be aerosolized and diluted. There won’t be any addiction just like how anaesthetics don’t immediately cause addiction.”

Back to fentanyl… Yes, it was the most easily obtainable drug that I could aerosolize to knock out an Asari because most human drugs don’t work. It would also knock out a lot of the guards, so that was a bonus.

“Is it ready?” I asked.

Cortana sighed and nodded. “The fentanyl bottles are being shipped, and I already downloaded the blueprints for aerosol cans onto your omni-forge.”

I nodded in thanks.

“Promise that what we’ll do saves people?”

It was easy to give the promise because I believed it too. “I promise.”

It was time to leave my world for a bit and bring a Benezia home.

-VB-

Not too long after we received the fentanyl bottles under different chemical names, I packed up a travel bag with some essentials and left. I would be back.

I got on the courier shuttle without hassle; the guards working for the courier company didn’t even check my baggages. I found my seat, a comfy first class seat, and settled in for a day long ride. It didn’t take long for the rest of the riders to enter the ship and it took even less for the ship to take off. 

It was breathtaking to see first hand the ship leaving the atmosphere so smoothly. 

‘I would gather allies and women in peace…’ I thought to myself as I closed my eyes to sleep the voyage away. I felt the transition of the Mass Relay (something I remembered from my body’s memories but first time feeling it “in person”) -.

BOOM

My eyes shot open, surprised by the sudden turbulence I shouldn’t be feeling in a spaceship. Alarm klaxon rang throughout the ship.

“[Our shuttle has come under attack from pirates. Please remain cal-]”

BOOM! Krrr…. KLANK

‘Amendment. I wanted to do this in peace and quiet,’ I thought dejectedly as the hull of the shuttle shook again as something grabbed onto us. 

But then the pirate nation attacked.