บท 22: It's just good business...
Shoutout to my new Patron:
Vongola Flame
You are a legend.
Now an important notice for all. I won't be updating this fic for maybe a week or two. From tomorrow, I'm turning my attention back to 'Chaos has come to Orario'.
I really need to get to writing that story again. I have a much bigger plan for it than I do with this story. Please if you are interested, read that story and support it because I've been quite upset at how helpless I've been when trying to write it.
I guess because this story was doing so much better I spent three weeks on it and disregarded the other one.
Enough of my rambling now. Sorry if I disappointed you.
Enjoy!
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(Three Days Later)
I rubbed the last lick of paint on the rebuilt walls and stood back in satisfaction gazing at the results of my handiwork. Every single wall I'd knocked down and smashed was filled in again with new bricks. Then I had to rub and smooth clay over them before finishing everything off with a coat of paint.
It had been three days since the meteor strike. The shield I'd put up lasted for a few hours before it disappeared. Once it had gone, the Ganesha Familia as well as the Artemis Familia had gone outside the walls to survey the damage done to Orario's surrounding area.
There had been piles upon piles of hot space rock steaming at the bottom of where the barrier would be, and the ground was littered with craters for a couple of miles around, like it had some serious spot disease.
The forest I'd first found myself in when I'd been teleported here was completely eviscerated, and all the wildlife killed off. One good thing that came out of that was the discovery of some underwater canals, which were already considered being used in some new sewage and aqueduct system.
(For your information, I can't stand using the toilets here. They are utterly revolting most of them. The first time I saw a toilet back in the Horseshoe, I immediately used Orlen to wish that I would never have the need to take a tinkle or a dump ever again.)
I had been included in the efforts to guide the populace out of the Amphitheatron, which I discovered was the proper name of the coliseum. It had taken hours upon hours of keeping people behind lines, and yelling at disorderly and nonconductive people to make sure that they don't cause panic.
And then of course we had issues of thieves and pickpockets casually taking stuff from people which was honestly not unexpected considering that in such tight space, it would go mostly unnoticed.
Then there were the stereotypical upper class citizens that were repulsed at the fact that 'commoners' dared to breathe the same air as them. I was half tempted to go and rip their wigs off and wallop them all with the ridiculous things all the way into their ratholes.
But I had to reign my anger in as Freya sternly told me that they had to be treated properly as they were upper class citizens and kept the power and economy running in Orario. Begrudgingly, I relented.
But seriously, commoners? What, was this place like the empire or something? Because last I checked, governmental issues were dealt with by Ouranos and the guild.
One of the truly bad things that came out of all this was that apparently I couldn't save everything in Orario even though I put up a barrier. The tremors had knocked over some buildings that were built upon very weak foundations. Particularly in the Daedalus slums.
I immediately laid claim to the pieces of meteorite as my prize, which I pushed through Freya's authority to the guild. They were confused at why I made such a request, but with my constant pressure upon them, plus my newfound overwhelming public support which fought tooth and nail to let me take whatever I wished as my payment for saving the city.
The guild caved in and posted an official announcement saying that nobody was to take anything from the meteor fragments. They shipped as many pieces as they could to the various warehouses that my Familia owned once they'd cooled down a bit.
I may have boosted that process a bit by dousing them in water magic and ice magic.
Needless to say, many brows were raised and confused upon why I would request something like that, with the exception of Freya. Because as per my theory, when we cracked the fragments open, we uncovered thousands upon thousands of pounds of meteoric iron and nickel.
All crafting and smithing families suddenly gained ravenous looks on their faces as they realised the treasure trove they'd missed out on, simply because the people of this world didn't know that space rocks contained metals.
The guild were smacking their heads at the realization that they'd been played, but nothing could be done about it as they were written down on paper as my legal assets.
The past day or two had been filled with signing paper work after paper work. I had to put some of those resources away in my Familia's treasury because of the expense of such pure metals from outer space. Then I had to sign up more to contribute a percentage of my earnings from what I sold towards the coffers as well as was the obligation of every adventurer.
Then I had to count up all the material I had left and put aside some for my own uses while the rest would be sold off to different Familia. The richer ones as well as the upper class simply wanted a few pieces and were offering crazy amounts of money for 'otherworldly' metal even though it was the exact same metal we found here.
Meh, more money for me I guess.
The crafting Familia's bought a good few portions of it. And the rest which was about 49% of what I had left of that pile was being sold to the Hephaestus Familia as they adhered to the rule of 'first come first serve.'
After I was done with my job here, I was to go immediately afterwards to one of her offices in Babel Tower to sign up some more contracts and she was to pay me in full.
She was paying literal 'billions' of Valis for the material which shocked me to the core. But then it was to be expected that she was rich like that since her Familia made such income all the time form the amount of commissions and repairs they had to cover for people all around the world, not just Orario.
But considering the purity of that Iron and obvious quality that was evident even to my own inexperienced eyes, it would greatly reduce the amount of time they would need to make weapons as they usually had to extract the metals from ores which took up a lot of time. The rewards they could reap from it all in a short amount of time would probably bring in more than they spent on it.
Buy low, sell high I guess.
These transactions also gave me some leverage over the commerce of Orario as well because I had kept as much in reserve as I had given away, in fact more if you counted the amounts that went into the Familia treasury.
I was already amongst some of the most wealthiest singular individuals you could find because of how much I made from what I'd already sold, and a large Familia was about to hand over a whole lot more.
So why was I here acting like I was some sort of construction worker?
Well due to all the excitement of that day, the party that had been scheduled at Ganesha's place had been cancelled and postponed. And Freya had 'conveniently' lost the suit I'd bought somewhere in all the chaos.
Due to these turn of events, we all decided to return home, to find a hole going right through the Folkvangr mansion. Of course they all ratted me out on my spar with Ottar. And although Freya wasn't angry at me, she insisted that I fix it up as it was the 'morally correct' thing to do.
So day after day for three days I'd been working in it to get all the walls filled in and painted. It helped that the days were suddenly hot as the clay hardened faster as did the paint.
After finally finishing it all, I picked up all my stuff and walked to my own tower which I'd had to give to some of my Familia members as I destroyed their bedrooms.
At least they'd taken care of the many bedrooms, although some had decided that they wouldn't want to leave now because of how luxurious and comfortable the bedrooms were.
They even offered to pay rent to stay there in those rooms because they were so good. Among them had been Hogni Ragnar who confronted me at first because of the fact we shared the same last name. But as I soon came to learn he was self conscious of people's stares, I gave him a harsh glare and booted him out of the place.
On my way there now, I sensed that I was being watched and whipped my head behind me to see the Gulliver brothers staring at me from behind a corner. But as soon as they saw me, they ran out of sight.
This was all new behaviour for them. Because on the day I began the repairs, they came over to jeer and leer at me that I was handling this 'servant' work. Enraged by their comments, I picked up one of the long wooden-handled trolleys used for lifting the bricks, and swung it like a golf club at the one called Berling.
He certainly went flying like golf ball, the midget prat he was and he landed in the ladies section of one of the public baths.
Needless to say, he had a less than fun time there and came back from the little trip traumatized. After that, the Pallum quadruplets made to stay clear of me. I discovered while talking with Freya in bed one night that one of the reasons they hated me was simply because of my seemingly close affiliations with Finn, the captain of the Loki Familia.
It was then that I remembered reading somewhere that the Gulliver brothers hated Finn because he was the role model of all Pallums in the world. They'd dreamed of being in that position themselves, where they would be revered by all their kind, but Finn took it first.
He was cherished by his people and they hated that. Childish jealousy, but try and explain that to them. Didn't last long before I grew so annoyed that I kicked Alfrigg into the wall of Meteor Tower.
That was apparently the name of my tower now because Freya wanted a fragment of the meteor to be placed on top of it. So the tower acted as a pedestal and the meteor looked like a prize. And a marking of my territory for all to know whose house it was.
Thankfully the tower managed to heal itself with that passive magic again. It was lucky to survive an encounter with such a blockhead.
I scrubbed off the clay and paint and showered, feeling refreshed and lighter again. I didn't take my cape out this time with me. Instead I just wore my usual pants with me and the boots. I wore a leather waistcoat that was open at the front and slung a belt over my body which held Gale in it. The black greatsword would act as a deterrent for any rowdy characters to mess with me.
I'd become the number one hot topic in the city, and children were following me everywhere I went. I didn't walk more than three steps without somebody calling to me to say hi, or to bless their baby or to come see their wares or things like that.
Right from the start it was annoying, but I held patience and went on about my day. It had sunk into most people by now that my power level was true. Most couldn't deny it after witnessing me obliterate a mountain sized rock with one punch.
I detected much wariness of me, but it was overwhelmed by reverence and awe. Still, there were those who vehemently denied it and claimed the whole thing was a setup from the start to just make me look powerful, and that I'd somehow gotten Freya to help in it.
They were mostly just losers from Daedalus slums but lower level adventurers tried the same thing as well, apparently being too dense to realise exactly who they were challenging.
It happened more than fifteen times in the last 24 hours, and I was afraid that I was going to start murdering people now because of it. Before I had to go on full intimidation mode to scare them off and sometimes even use the despair aura. But my patience was running really thin this time.
I still got greetings and hellos everywhere I went, and I could still hear the pitter-patter of small feet behind me as kids followed me or ran up and jumped on my legs and back.
They stopped though when I finally made it to Babel Tower. Looks like kids knew to stay out of there. Probably had to do with the fact it was a mall/slash headquarters for some of Orario's officials.
I also had an inkling that their mother's would give them bedtime stories where they warned them not to go in, otherwise monsters will escape from the basement floor where the entrance to the dungeon was, and those monsters would gobble them up or something. I don't know, but small kids definitely avoided the tower like a plague.
I took the elevator up to the dark smithing floor of the tower and began looking around for the door that was supposed to lead into Hephaestus's office space. I finally found it and knocked on the door.
Footsteps approached before the door opened and someone I was not expecting to see opened it.
Tsubaki, the Captain of the Hephaestus Familia.
"Well look who it is? If it isn't the most powerful adventurer in the world." She grinned at me and opened the door to let me in.
The level five was indeed quite a tomboy, especially with that eyepatch. Her skin was dark, and she wore simple sandals on her feet. Those teeth of hers were ivory white, and some of the cleanest I'd seen.
Then again, I'd credit the toothbrushes of this world. It was literally a branch with was chewed on and the splayed into different fibres. The fibres would act as too the brush bristles and water mixed with saliva and the moisture in the branch made a the toothpaste. It actually cleaned a lot better than toothbrushes in my old world.
In fact, if I remember correctly, they still used that kind of stuff in the middle east back on Earth. I think they called it a 'Miswak' or something like that. Whatever the case, I found that I never woke up with morning breath ever since using them so good for me.
"Its nice to finally meet you Captain Tsubaki." I returned the grin as I walked inside.
"Hoh? You know about little old me?"
"Kind of hard not to when you are the captain of such a large and influential Familia."
"Anything else you might have heard about me?"
"That you like perverted comments about you?"
"Oh really? Am I under the assumption you intend to do the same with me?"
I shook my head.
"Nope. I'm a committed man. If I had an interest in you I'd say it outright and save us both the waste of time"
She looked at me for a few seconds before she swung an arm around my shoulder and laughed out loud.
"You know what? I like you. I'm sure well be good friends."
"Glad we find something to agree upon immediately within the first few second of knowing each other."
She laughed again before her hand gripped my neck and her fingers prodded the muscles there. Her eyes closed slightly as her fingers strained, trying to push the muscles inwards but to no avail.
"Damn Garth! You feel like you're made out of steel. You sure you're even human?"
"As much as you Tsubaki."
"What's the secret?"
"A lot of fish and meat, as well as a healthy amount of milk and eggs."
She raised a brow at me. "That's it?"
"That's it. Now where can I find your goddess she and I have to discuss a deal."
"Sure. She's right through there." She pointed at another door. "Good luck."
"Thanks." I said as I walked towards it.
"Oh and by the way." She called out to me. "Nice sword."
She pointed at Gale strapped to my back. I flashed a thumbs up before knocking on the door.
"Come in." came a muffled voice.
I walked in and saw a desk on one side of the room and a bookshelf on the other. Hephaestus was sat at the desk sifting through papers and drinking tea. She looked up at me and smiled.
"It's a pleasure to finally meet you Sir Garth."
"Just Garth will be fine Lady Hephaestus."
"Sure."
She was exactly as I imagined her. That eyepatch covered the right side of her face but did little to hide her beauty. She had a sort of motherly air around her that also felt it could become stone cold the moment she was angry.
My eyes danced over the eyepatch for a millisecond, wondering what the eye would look like. It was something she'd carried from the upper realm. So would any of my spells work on it?
"I understand you called me here to discuss a contract regarding some of the meteoric metals I have in stock." I said sitting in a chair opposite hair, not before taking Gale off an leaning it against the desk. I saw here eyes hover over it before they returned to my face.
"Yes indeed. Shall we get straight to it? You don't appear to be a kind of person that likes small talk before business."
"Your intuition is correct. I don't. So, about the price..."
We haggled for an hour over the price. She presented her sides of the argument for dropping the price of my resources, and I countered with it's unique nature as well as the heavy amounts of pure refined iron in those rocks. Not to mention it's rarity and that I had to remove the pieces from the rock to make it easier for transport, yada yada.
Business talk appeared to be a lot less simple in this world than it was back home. We finally agreed upon a price which was still in the billions range. It was lower than my original price but still higher than what she had wanted it to be.
It was a healthy transaction though, and we both had content smiles on our faces, me for the dough I was getting and her for the insane amounts of high quality metal that was falling into her lap now.
I signed a contract which she signed as well. I pocketed one copy while she pocketed another. Once we did that, she folded her arms on the desk and leaned towards me.
"With that out of the way, can I ask you for a small favour?"
"Yeah? What is it?"
"Can I take a look at that magnificent sword you have there?" She gestured over to Gale.
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