YM778.TV Chapter 98: Chapter 98: Business Acumen
[Your account ding in 957 has received a transfer of 90 silver coins, currt balance: 0 gold coins, 7 silver coins, 800 copper coins.]
[...]
Yawning, Charles got out of bed and started scrolling through his phone while eating breakfast. He was immediately struck by the flood of ads online—from mainstream media like the Lsgard Forum and the Joint Morning Post, to streaming platforms like YOUBOTE. As long as the phone had internet, oping it up meant seeing a glaring ad:
[5 silver coins! Bet once for a chance to change your fate!]
"Wow, talk about business savvy. I planned to host a sales expo, and David turned it into a blind box gambling evt?" Charles couldn\'t help but smirk as he read the evt description.
He had allowed David to sell materials and equipmt on his behalf, most of which were quite ordinary, with a total value he estimated at a gold coins.
But David did something clever: he split these items into 4,000 blind boxes, selling every item, regardless of quality, for a uniform price of 5 silver coins—doubling the profit!
Flicking through some short videos, initially, not many believed in it, suspecting another sales scam. That was until someone unpacked a high-quality weapon, idtified as a [Blue Weapon]. That caught everyone\'s atttion!
For 5 silver coins, they could get a weapon worth 0 silver coins, a fortune that could set someone up for life. And with each box guaranteed to at least contain some ferocious beast meat or a low-grade miracle drug, worth about silver coins, they wer\'t losing much!
This was far better than buying lottery tickets!
So, word spread from one to t, from t to a hundred, and ev people who hadn\'t se the ad were hurrying towards the ctral square.
Impatit, Charles too left his home, eager to see the spectacle at the expo!
As he passed by the South City train station, he heard many with accts from outside Lsgard—clearly, they had traveled from the suring areas.
"Giv the intsity of this advertising campaign, I suspect all the materials will be sold out in less than three days, heh heh!" Charles grinned, looking out at the bustling street, feeling overjoyed.
Who could be the biggest winner if not him?
He was effectively getting money for nothing, just waiting for 0 gold coins to hit his account!
Imagine Sly and Kevin\'s faces wh they realize those materials were from their own stock. Those old fools would probably have a fit!
In just a short time, Charles received another 0 silver coins. He was gleefully checking his bank messages wh he ran straight into Thomas, who was sporting a bandage on his head and just out of the hospital.
Seeing Charles, Thomas\'s veins bulged with rage: "Hmph, last time at the rollmt ceremony, you beat me by a fluke! Dare to fight me again, fair and square, once I\'m healed?"
Seeing him acting tough as if he\'d forgott past pain, Charles smiled, betraying no emotion: "I\'m afraid you\'ll never get the chance. You better focus on re-tering next year\'s ferocious beast mountain trial. Who knows, maybe you\'ll d up as my junior!"
Beating Thomas half to death last time at the rollmt ceremony had avged Daniel. Charles found it distasteful to ev spd another second a such a shameless person.
However, thinking of the impding bankruptcy of the Taylor family brought a wicked smile to Charles\'s face. Thomas could never have imagined that all the equipmt at this expo came from his family\'s reserves stored in the Lsgard bank\'s vault.
Within a month, the Drav family would vanish completely from Lsgard!
From a distance, a figure in azure waved at him. Aurora approached Charles with a radiant smile: "Charles, you\'re here to check out the expo too? Everyone\'s oping blind boxes; it looks pretty fun. Should we give it a try?"
"Cough... It\'s just some ordinary stuff, probably a rip-off. Better not to join the crowd," Charles kindly suggested, not wanting to see a frid get duped.
But he figured, with the wealth of the Stokes family, they probably wouldn\'t miss a few items.
"Ha, what\'s this about not wanting to join the crowd? You\'re probably just broke, can\'t ev muster 5 silver coins, right?" A tall, shapely woman in a miniskirt suddly joined in from the crowd.
Seeing her, Charles was momtarily startled, but quickly retorted, "Ah, Miss Stokes, you\'re looking ev more spldid these days. Who are you dressing up so seductively for?"
Hearing Charles\'s remark, Celestine was reminded of that night by the river. She turned to Aurora and said, "Sister, how many times have I told you to stay away from this kind of person?"
"What\'s wrong with me? Your attitude stinks; don\'t tell me you\'ve never be in love, despite being well into your twties?" Charles responded unapologetically.
"You! You little rascal, are you asking for a beating?" Celestine stamped her foot in anger, her hexagram talisman flickering faintly in her hand.
"Bimbo, can you ev see the path wh you look down?" Charles snapped back.
"..."
Feeling the increasingly volatile ergy in the air, Aurora appeared helpless.
She couldn\'t understand it; they hadn\'t known each other before, had they?
Her memory of Charles was of a very polite young man, yet whever he saw her sister Celestine, harsh words seemed to fly effortlessly. And her usually gtle sister turned exceptionally irritable.
Caught in the middle, Aurora became a sort of \'buffer zone\', finding it hard to side with either without offding the other.
To the onlookers, however, the sce appeared quite differt.
"Damn, where does this guy get his luck from, to have the Stokes sisters accompany him on a shopping trip?"
"Jealous, man! Marry either sister, and you\'re set for life in the Stokes family, no need to work for at least fifty years!"
"Sobbing, what does he have that I don\'t? How can someone as handsome as me be single for 30 years?"
The Stokes sisters were well-known beauties in Lsgard. Wh Celestine turned 6, suitors practically broke down the Stokes family\'s doors trying to win her hand.
Yet, not one of Lsgard\'s elite young masters could catch her eye; all were st packing with the crack of her whip.
As for the younger Miss Stokes, her beauty matched her sister Celestine\'s, and her demeanor was calm and graceful, chanting and demure like a snow lotus from the mountains. Just one glance could invoke a deep sse of tderness.
In the crowd, a pale pink rose quietly fell to the g at the trance of the expo...
Bjamin\'s face was already ash with fury.
Bjamin had known beforehand that the Stokes sisters would be visiting the ctral square expo and had meticulously planned an accidtal counter. But who could have predicted that Charles would swoop in and steal them away?
Glancing at his reflection in a shop window, examining the hairstyle he had carefully styled that morning along with his suspder trousers, Bjamin felt like a clown.
Losing to aristocrats like Thomas or Robert was one thing, but being bested by Charles, a commoner, was more than he could stomach.
Despite Charles\'s demonstrated exceptional Beast Mastery talts, Bjamin, who had be a ssation in Lsgard upon his admission to Aredale Academy, did not find that impressive.
"Hmph, a loser daring to compete with me for a woman, he must be out of his mind! Don\'t let me catch you alone in Lsgard..."
The pink rose on the g was forcefully stepped on and g into fragmts.
...
In a conferce room within a high-rise building, the atmosphere was heavy and oppressive. Several figures looked anxiously at the bustling Lsgard square in the distance, one of them being Thomas, who had just be discharged from the hospital.
At the head of the conferce table sat a middle-aged man with a grim expression, pacing back and forth impatitly before finally breaking the silce.
"Son, you\'ve checked everything out? The expo is really organized by the Smith family, with thousands of weapons and equipmt sold at low prices?" the middle-aged man asked in a hoarse voice, filling the room.
"Dad, I wt there right after getting discharged from the hospital, and it\'s all true! There\'s a section dedicated to weapons and equipmt. I saw many people spding 5 silver coins on raffles, mostly for forging materials and Tone Reproduction equipmt.
But some lucky ones got or gre items, and I heard on the news that someone ev pulled a blue item!" Thomas recalled, his forehead beading with sweat.
Depding on a monopoly of 70% of Lsgard\'s weapons and armor trade, the Drav family had become one of the top three families in Lsgard. The Smith family, starting from the jewelry business and now tering the weapons trade, was shaking the very foundation the Drav family relied on for survival.
"You say there are thousands of pieces of weaponry and equipmt there; where did they get all this stock from!" Kevin furrowed his brows and looked towards the high-rise behind him, his eyes filled with confusion.
"Boss, according to the intelligce we\'ve gathered, it\'s a distant relative of Charles, named \'Charlie,\' who commissioned David to handle the sales," a manager stepped forward, handing over a photo to his superior.
"Charles? To think he has such a well-connected relative?" Kevin looked doubtfully at the photograph of a man wearing sunglasses and a mask, whose build was strikingly similar to Charles. A fierce look flashed in Kevin\'s eyes.
Anyone aiming to shake the foundation of the Drav family was declaring op hostility against him, Kevin.
"It looks like he\'s from out of town, trying to seize the weapons market in Lsgard. First, he tries using business tactics to see if he can survive this crisis. If that doesn\'t work..." Kevin\'s voice trailed off as he made a throat-slashing gesture, his eyes glinting with cold intt.
The Drav family\'s monopoly over Lsgard\'s weapons trade was maintained through ruthlessness. Kevin could scarcely remember how many rivals had died by his hand.
And since this man was Charles\'s relative, an emy, there was no way he would let him off!
"I\'ll offer double the price to buy all those equipmt blind boxes. Under no circumstances can we allow those items to hit the market," Kevin clched his fist and issued orders to the sior executives a him.
Subsequtly, the group left the meeting room with a fierce determination...