The two got instant scare when they heard what I just said.
“What? You are coming to their homes, using their people and facilities, and you also want them to follow your old banners as well?” I calmly met their questionable gazes with a calm smile over my face.
“Time changes, and you have to adapt or fall behind and rot,” I kept pouring buckets of cold water over their heads, “tell me then, what can your companies provide except for old and obsolete tech and weapons?”
“We…”
“We can give them anything they want!”
“Wrong,” I slowly shook my head, “you have nothing of value to give to those young people here. Money? Wealth? Esteem and prestige? A highly honoured position in your company? Come on, be a little realistic please. In such a time and world, you have nothing of value to offer that they didn’t already have.”
The two looked at each other and at the other people beside them in silence and hesitation.
“I’ll give you such a good offer out of my good will,” I planted my glaive on the ground, leant over it using both hands, “you have five hours to consider this. If you agree, then you’ll have to form new teams with these youths. Any team will be led by them and one representative of your companies. You’ll have at most twenty percent share in their teams, not a single percent more.”
I was doing this to protect the young minds from the polluted interests of those old dudes. In this world, it wasn’t easy for anyone to abandon all their old beliefs entirely. Not when they lived most of their lives based on these useless and corrupted things.
Fame? Power? Success? Working at big names? Wealth? These were all obsolete. In this age, only strength mattered. Even with coins anyone could go to a short length and would eventually stop.
Those companies depended entirely over their past glory, something that wasn’t of any use here. Just looking at Wolf made me inwardly sigh. Even after meeting me and talking for a long time, even after all the demonstrations and proving what they had in mind was wrong, that dude was still looking in greatness towards the steatlh bombers.
They were hopeless in my eyes, needing more time to adapt than the youngsters here. I wouldn’t let the brilliant seeds here be ruined by such a bad way of thinking.
I needed these companies to provide guidance and more help to my geniuses here. But that didn’t mean I’d allow them to take over or be the ones in control.
Or else things would end up by replicating the same old weapons without much changes in them. I’d not love to see such a result, not after paying much of my time and materials to them.
Time was our deadliest foe. For example modifying such a rocket launcher before the upcoming big battle would be much greater than modifying it by the end of the fourth quest.
And if they took much longer than this, then its value would decrease a lot. I had lots of places to use such weapons in the upcoming quests. Not to mention the golden quests I was looking for.
Thinking about modifying any weapon before the start of the big war in a few days was delusional indeed. But if they managed to do it before the start of the fifth quest or the golden quests, then it would be a great help to me.
I had to be ruthless, protecting those young people from the greed and stubbornness of the older ones. If these companies knew what I really offered here, and realised for real how terribly bad their situation was, then they’d not hesitate to agree on my offer.
After all, I wasn’t shutting them down totally from the new world regime. They just had to make more compromises, and try to work their dirty tricks to gain more loyal followers from these youths than the other party.
Even if they all refused, I still had the normal military arsenal under my disposal. I’d have to ask for Karoline’s help here again, hopefully she’d manage to pull some strings and bring many weapons for these youths to study.
It wasn’t the best plan, but it was the back up one.
“Sir, I have a question here,” Wolf’s face was all dark as the faces of the rest here. Yet Moore showed the difference in intelligence between him and others as he added after I gave him the permission by a simple nod.
“If we agree, does that mean our CEOs will lose their control over us?”
That dude was smart indeed. He guessed what I was doing so damn fast and even came up with such a direct and very important question.
“Any general is valued by the strength of his army and the victories his army brought under his leadership,” I slowly answered, before adding, “if their people managed to work together with the youths here and bring me good results with their support and help, then they’ll have a place in my final big project.”
“What project is that, sir?” Moore kept asking, while Wolf and others had an abrupt change in their faces. Instead of feeling played and looking dejected and even a little angry, they showed a look of interest and anticipation.
“What do you think I’m doing here exactly?” I didn’t directly answer and instead threw the question back at them.
“Well… Perhaps building up a major force?”
“A big army? Want to become the biggest arm dealer in the apocalypse?”
Well… I had to admit, both of them lacked any imagination about this.
“Wrong,” I shook my head before slowly adding, “I’m going to build a country, a kingdom to be more precise.”
“A country?!!!” they of course didn’t know the difference between a country and a kingdom in the apocalypse.
A country was a small thing that was built without the support of the system.
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