"Sure, I brought my two good friends, Landy and Andy, to meet you."
"Siblings?" William muttered, but Landy scoffed as she corrected him.
"A husband and wife!"
"Then prepare a contract the same as the one between the two of us," William paused, moving his eyes over the husband and wife, "one that involves their shop."
"Who said we are going to work with you?" Landy kept acting aggressive, but William already saw through their little game here.
One kept his silence, observing and analysing, while the other kept teasing and taunting. "If you don't want to sign, then you are free to go. I hate wasting my time more than anything…"
William didn't stop there, turned towards Alfred as he added, "and you are still obliged to bring me other artisan shop owners to sign the deal."
"I already…" Alfred was about to defend himself, but William simply gazed at him and crossed his arms, in a move that made the latter pause and swallow what he wanted to say.
"Alfred, why are you acting this nicely with such a kid? He is a kid!" Landy seemed to be absorbed in her role to look like the bad one.
"That's because he spread ill rumours about me, right Alfred?" William kept his stance firm as he looked at Landy, "and if not for what he did, you two wouldn't have been informed wrongly about me."
"We heard the truth, and we only care about facts!" Landy argued, and William snorted.
"Per facts, I'm offering you a golden chance to raise your business without paying a single penny in return for it."
"I told you, it's too good to be true!"
"But it is!" William rolled his eyes, turned to Andy, who kept his silence all this time and added, "what's your final decision? If you don't want to, I'm pretty damn sure lots of others are willing!"
"..."
Andy looked at his wife, and Landy scoffed and didn't speak. William knew he didn't give any of these two a reason to be suspicious about this deal. Even if they felt something was off, they couldn't pinpoint what it was.
And frankly there wasn't! William was just aiming towards absorbing their business alongside Alfred and starting something huge.
He didn't just aim for wealth. He knew after this betting event, and coupled with the upcoming auction of his cores, he wouldn't think about spirit crystals for a long time.
He wanted nothing right now more than to have a strong foundation for his guild and teams. He didn't want his teams to just have normal gears and potions. He wanted them to have the strongest gears and most useful potions in the entire world.
Not to mention using these two shops, he'd start slowly pulling the higher ups in this fort towards his side. William knew dreaming about luring this fort under his arms was going to be impossible for now. But that wouldn't prevent him from laying out the foundations for his future plans.
"We will sign the contract," as Landy kept her silence, despite showing her discontent, Andy knew she agreed on closing the deal.
They thought they could pressure William using such an attitude. But when they dealt with William, they knew how futile such an idea was.
"Provided that it's the same conditions as Alfred!" Andy added, as if she wanted to add her touch on everything.
"It's the same kind of deal," William rolled his eyes, "but first… Tell me how big your place is? How many artisans do you have? And what's the mainstream products you got? And the strongest?"
William asked about the general information about their place. And as he heard what Landy said next, he got to learn about how bad their situation here was.
It wasn't any better than the situation of Alfred's place, and it was just the overall bad state of the entire forging situation in the fort.
By logic, being in the heart of such a great trading route, it was a great chance for evolution. However, facts and reality proved otherwise.
As they always got compared with other grand places, they sucked in securing any great deals for generations! The strongest gears they could make were dark gold, but they were all common weapons and gears.
They didn't have blueprints of any great gears, not to mention the boosts given by these gears and weapons weren't that great compared with others made by outsiders.
That made the general sales plummet and not be enough to keep many artisans in their place. Not to mention the struggle to get materials with good prices, and that made them establish their own mining groups.
"... We hire lots of people to go out and excavate mines. We buy the entire mountain and risk paying a high price without knowing what really laid in there in the first place," Landy ended her long talk by saying this.
And hearing this point made William's eyes shine.
"So you have many mining groups? How many exactly?" The three didn't get what was special about that look on William's face. But to Thomas who just returned from placing his bid, he realised his master found another great chance. And he planned to not let it slip by his hands.
And that was what William intended to do right now.
"We have enough," Landy didn't get why William was asking about this point, showing interest in such useless groups, "but they are useless! Out of all of the mountains we bought, we only gained ores from less than ten percent of them. And these ores were all low-grade ones to begin with."
William didn't place any of what Landy said in his mind, "so it's safe to assume that you got enough to work on several mountains at the same time?"
"That's what we do," Landy shrugged, "that's what all of the artisan groups here do. But it's not a good thing, I'm telling you, it's a bottomless pit for money."
"Cool," William made plans for such groups in the future but kept such plans and thoughts in his mind. Only his shining eyes exposed his intentions over to Thomas, as the latter inwardly sighed.
"My master is like a treasure hunter, anywhere he goes he'd find a way to extort people and gain profit… Does he hail from a merchant family or what?!"
Updat𝓮d fr𝙤m fre𝒆webnov(e)l.com