1427 The Three Conditions.
Ten minutes later...
Sir. Azravan could be seen sitting on the chair opposite Miss Sanae's office desk.
The door was closed and Felix was leaning against it with his hands crossed and head lowered, some stalks of his golden hair covering his left blue eye.
One snake was in front and the other was in the back...Sir. Azravan gulped a mouthful in fear as he could feel that those two weren't having any good intentions for him.
"I appreciate you dropping by at first notice." Miss Sanae asked with an innocent tone, "Do you want a drink?"
"Let's not beat around the bush, you know why I am here."
Sir. Azravan wasn't in the mood for drinks or anything at the moment as he could feel his life dangling at the hands of Miss Sanae.
"So hasty, fine, let's get into it." Miss Sanae's soft demeanor switched instantly to a sinister one as she waved her hand and the whole recording played in front of Sir. Azravan.
The more he watched, the paler his face became until it was as white as a sheet of paper. That five seconds snippet was nothing compared to the real damage this video had done to his emotional integrity.
That's because the video had even their voices recorded, which both frightened him and confused him to no end.
"How? Just how? We were talking telepathically the whole time! What kind of magic is this?"
"Do you have anything to say to defend yourself?" Miss Sanae asked, not in the mood to explain something she also had no idea about.
"I...I..." Sir. Azravan ended up sighing in defeat. "Name your price."
While he was still absolutely shocked by the existence of this recording, he understood that his life was now in the hands of Miss Sanae and if he wanted to save it, he better pay appropriately.
As for worrying about the court? He knew that Miss Sanae wouldn't have contacted him if she had plans to sue him and ruin his life.
"Before that, I want to know more about that special fruit of yours." Miss Sanae narrowed her eyes coldly, "Don't you dare lie or hide anything from me."
"Fine...It's called Ascend Pear. A hunter under Mr. Zinnar's payroll has found a beast eating it from a tree and when it was done, it obtained a few mutations and then went on its merry ways. The hunter reported the matter to Mr. Zinnar and the next day he plucked the entire tree with its roots and took it to his own private farm. He hired the best intellectual minds in his city and studied the fruit and its tree until they managed to find a method to cultivate a small farm of it."
"When the farm finished its cultivation, he reached out to me first due to my close relationship with him and suggest that we unite our resources to evolve common beasts and sell them for expensive prices to the collectors. He cultivates the fruits and brings me the beasts while I use my reputation and trusted network to sell them to the highest bidders."
"He gets a small part of the final sale for each beast even though I am buying both the beasts and the fruits from him, so it can be said, that he is always winning whether an evolution result in an amazing beast or not."
"For how long were you in this business?"
"About a decade ago?"
"An entire decade, you must have scammed hundreds of rich and authoritative figures." Miss Sanae smirked, "Imagine what will happen to you if they got a whiff of this."
"..."
Sir Azravan remained quiet, knowing that nothing he said could get him out of this sh*thole.
"Now, tell me how does it work exactly? Does it have any side effects on those beasts? I can't imagine evolving them this easily without any issues."
"We have no clue how the transformation works internally and why a mere fruit has such an effect on beasts. What we know is that the evolved beasts end up with emotional turmoil, having Increased aggression, fear, sadness, or even erratic behavior. In addition, it reduces its lifespan by a considerable amount, causing some evolved beasts to lose up to 90% of their longevity."
While it might sound weird that spiritual beasts also have longevity, it was a really necessary option to keep the heavenly plane's balance.
After all, if spiritual beasts could reproduce and do everything that a normal beast would do without the option of death, it wouldn't take them long before they overpopulated the entire plane...Especially, when they couldn't get thrown out of the plane like other spirits.
"How do you explain yourselves when one of those beasts dies in the hands of a collector?" Miss Sanae frowned, "I don't think they will take it lightly."
"Since the evolved beasts we sell can be considered as a new variation, no one really knows its true longevity. So, when we sell them, we simply make them sign a contract that involved no refunds in case anything happens to the beast since we merely 'catch them' in the wild." Sir. Azravan anwsered, not an ounce of shame on his face.
In his eyes, he wasn't doing anything bad since he was investing a considerable amount of resources to pull off those rare variations and whether he hid the truth or not about their origin, the risk for him was still there.
"How devious."
"How so?" Sir. Azravan replied calmly, "I know my clients very well. So, I understand that those collectors would still buy my variations even if I explained their origin and the risks involved."
"The only difference would be the price." Felix continued the idea for him with an indifferent tone.
"Exactly." Sir. Azravan nodded as he looked back at Felix. "Tell me? Is it so bad that I want to get more money from those filthy rich pigs? They play with hundreds of thousands of Lumus like it was nothing while most spirits struggle to stay afloat in the plane."
"I ain't scamming the poor and I never had any intentions of doing so." Sir. Azravan shook his head, "In fact, this operation allowed me to lower the prices of my other beasts and make it possible for even normal citizens to purchase a beast and use it as a transportation method or whatnot."
"You can search the entire plane and you will never find a cheaper cost anywhere else than my shop. Why do you think it's always populated?"
"I might be greedy, but it's not like I have absolutely no morals." Sir. Azravan concluded his speech with a strict expression.
While his speech was moving and would make anyone see him in a new light, neither Miss Sanae nor Felix seemed to care in the slightest about his 'good deeds'.
That's because, at the end of the day, he was still abusing his own servants...This was enough to speak volumes about his true character, which wasn't as rosy and sunny as he made it be.
"For all we know, you have lowered the prices to keep your reputation on the good side to help you get approved by the government and build a franchise across the plane." Miss Sanae replied nonchalantly, "We really don't care about your motives, the issue at hand, is how much are you willing to pay to keep yourself and your enterprise alive."
'Sh*t, why did the video land in the hands of those two emotionless bastards.' Sir. Azravan cursed in his mind at the realization that his Robinhood story failed to land.
Their assumption was correct as Sir. Azravan lowered the prices not for the advantage of the poor, but to help him turn his shop into a enterprise empire.
It wouldn't be possible without a governmental permit, which could be obtained only through the favor of the Spectral Wardens.
"Since you seem struggling to come up with a price, how about this?" Miss Sanae smiled as she forwarded a holographic screen.
The screen showed a short list of demands and conditions that looked like this:
//1- One Million Lumus.
2- 40% revenue from all the sales in the shop.
3- Emeric's freedom.//
It might be short, but it made Sir. Azravan gasp for a quick breath in utter despair.
"This...This..."
"I know, I know, you might think that 1 million Lumus is a lot, but we are generous enough to give you a two-year deadline to either collect the amount or pay through installments." Miss Sanae shook her head, "As for the revenue and Emeric's freedom, I am afraid it's nonnegotiable."
"You are killing me!" Sir. Azravan ended up shouting while clutching his beating heart. "40% revenue? How can I keep my enterprise afloat if I gave away so much?! Without a bustling business, how can I pay the one million fees?!"
"You can make it happen if you made your dear associate Zinnar reduce the cost of the fruits and beasts." Miss Sanae grinned devilishly. "I doubt he will reject your proposal if you threatened to bring him down with you."
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