Chương 49: Final Preperations
After James had cleared up everything with these boys he headed out; it hadn't cost him that much time, in total everything happened in around fifteen minutes, so James wasn't too annoyed about his time having been wasted.
'Okay, now that's finished its time to get everything ready, I guess I'm probably gonna end up staying at the school for a while.'
James headed to see Fletcher while formulating some plans in his mind.
The first thing he needed to do was set the future direction all of his businesses.
"James, how are you. It's been a while. What have you been up to?"
"I've been good thanks, I've awakened mage powers, so I'm doing pretty well. Became an inner-city magus resident recently and managed to get a recommendation to Elanaid Academy, so I have my entry exams coming soon. That's actually the reason I'm here today.
Would it be out of the questions to have you manage my businesses while I am away? I have a plan laid out for the advancements of my businesses and as long as you follow them your shares will give better profits as well."
"I suppose that would be alright. Obviously, I will need to see the plans before I agree to anything, although you have impressed me so far, I don't know if you have the mind to play the long game after all."
After hearing this, James handed over the plans he had mocked up over the past few days, they were missing some of the more delicate details, but most of the groundwork was laid out on it.
After Fletcher received the plans, he began to pore over them. Clearly, he didn't believe that James wouldn't know how to plan for the future or expand his businesses.
"You came up with these plans yourself? Why the hell are you going to school, you could own half the world with your mind for business!"
"That's exactly the reason; if with a business I can own half the world what about the other half? That's where everything else I'm doing comes in."
After Fletcher heard that he realised that once again, he had massively underestimated the young man in front of him, he had never met anyone who wouldn't be content with half of the world. Let alone make plans to take the other half.
"Well, I suppose they do say it's not great for youths to set their sights too low after all. I guess the least I can do is help guide your businesses, you have helped me to raise my standing in the city massively. I've been able to do a lot more business with the nobles now that they want preferential treatment from you, which also helps to increase my standing.
If there are any other ideas you have, then we can keep correspondence while you are at school, although letters do seem quite insecure now that I think about it. We may need to find a different method to communicate."
"Why don't we use encryption? We could use a simple shift cypher, but they are easy to crack after all so we should probably think of something else."
"Encryption? What do you mean by that?"
"Wait, how do you pass messages if you want to communicate with someone secretly?"
"I would usually just pay for extra security to transport the messages, or maybe use birds to transport them."
"Okay, let me show you something them. This is called a VIC cypher, if we both take a checkerboard like this, then we can encrypt and decipher our messages, and in theory, only we can do it."
After giving Fletcher a rundown on how to use the VIC cypher Fletcher was astounded to see such a simple system was able to make the messages more secure than most of the methods he had ever seen.
"This is amazing, this system, do you mind if I use it in the future?"
"I'm fine with you using it but you need to create a new checkerboard for that though, if you use the same as ours then someone else would be able to decipher our messages."
"Thank you; there are some great things I can do with this. I've had worries that my messages were being intercepted by my competitors for a while now, my main competitor the Hull family is well known in the business for their underhanded tactics so that I wouldn't put it past them."
"I see, feel free to consult me on any problems you have with that by the way. I should be able to give some interesting views on most problems you might run in to."
"I don't disbelieve that one bit, but if I let a twelve-year-old handle my problems for me, how could I ever retain my pride as a self-made man?"
A bright look of pride appeared across Fletcher's face as he said this.
The reason Fletcher had never been able to make it into the inner city was the status of his birth. He was the son of a servant for a small family, and as he got older, he was kicked out for a small mistake which lead to the youngest son of the family being hurt.
After he turned twelve, just like James, he was out on the streets.
He managed to survive with the small amount of money his mother had given him, unfortunately, Fletchers' mother had other children she had to look after so she just had to hope that Fletcher would be able to make it on his own.
He began by buying materials he could sell for slightly more money to other shops and when he turned fourteen started his very first business, a tailor.
When Fletcher was younger, his dream was always to revolutionise the tailoring business with innovative designs for nobles. He wanted to see the people he was supposed to look up to wearing clothes he had made.
He had limited successes with this business, but with the money he managed to make he purchased a blacksmith, and after a small renovation hired one of the few friends he had to work with him.
This man over the next few years genuinely grew into his name as a master blacksmith, he created many beautiful swords for the nobles and even made the gate for Fletcher's house as a gift when he was able to buy it.
Fletcher had never replaced his gate purely as a token to his friend that had unfortunately been killed in a drunken brawl started by a rival blacksmith who was jealous of his successes.
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