Season 2 chapter 29
The 500-Year Extortion
Before the Kavilson Sovereign even reached the shores of the DI Republic, the two billionaires had to settle the logistics of the newly discovered petroleum island.
They were sitting in the yacht's luxury dining room. Filoska was frantically drafting legal documents while Kniya and Malesh argued over a map of the island.
"I am not letting your uneducated, hammer-swinging SuliBulli apes touch my oil rigs," Malesh stated, aggressively tapping his gold pen against the table. "The extraction of deep-mantle crude requires precision. Malesh Energy Limited will establish the rigs, employ the engineers, and pull the raw crude out of the rock. Kavilson Steel is not an energy company. You stay in your lane."
"Oh, fuck off, you sludge-drinking parasite," Kniya laughed, leaning back with a glass of iced cider. "You think I give a shit about how the oil comes out of the ground? You can hire the nerds. You can run the pumps. But we already agreed on a fifty-fifty split of the volume to fuel my Arvonian factories."
"I agreed to supply you," Malesh corrected, his eyes narrowing. "But I am the one absorbing the operational cost of the deep-sea extraction. Therefore, I will sell you your fifty percent of the crude at standard market price."
Kniya stopped drinking. He slowly lowered his glass, a dangerous, predatory smirk spreading across his face.
"Standard market price?" Kniya asked. "Bro, are you fucking high? We are partners. I literally supplied the SuliBulli drills to find this puddle of dinosaur shit for you."
"Partnership does not equal charity," Malesh deadpanned.
"Fine," Kniya shrugged casually. "Then I am going to increase the price of the structural steel you need to build those 350 Arvonian refineries by exactly eight hundred percent. Let's see how much your fucking profit margins bleed when a single steel beam costs you ten million credits."
Malesh froze. His brain rapidly calculated the catastrophic financial loss of an 800% steel markup.
"You are a sociopath," Malesh whispered.
"I'm a businessman," Kniya grinned, pointing his pen at Filoska. "Filoska! Draft a new contract. Malesh Energy Limited will supply Kavilson Steel with exactly half of the island's total oil output at a permanent, non-negotiable fifty percent discount from whatever the current market price is."
Filoska sighed, her pen flying across the parchment. "For how long?"
"Five hundred years," Kniya smirked.
"Five hundred?!" Malesh snapped, his robotic composure breaking. "That is half a millennium! We will be biologically dead!"
"I don't give a fuck," Kniya laughed loudly. "My great-great-great-grandkids are going to be buying cheap gas from your great-great-great-grandkids. Sign the paper, oil boy, or I am cutting off your steel supply tomorrow."
Malesh glared at him with pure, unfiltered hatred. He grabbed the paper, violently scribbled his signature, and threw the pen at Kniya's head. Kniya just dodged it, laughing maniacally. The ultimate corporate extortion was complete.
The Four-Year Leap (The Year 1434)
Time is the ultimate variable, but for Kniya Anderson and Malesh Bulwadi, it was just another asset to be heavily leveraged.
Four years passed.
It was now the year 1434. They were twenty-nine years old, and the Republic of DI had completely reshaped itself around their gravity.
The Northern Petroleum Island was now a marvel of modern diesel engineering. Massive, heavily armored sea-platforms pumped tens of millions of barrels of raw crude out of the subterranean ocean every single month. Malesh Energy Limited controlled it all. The DI government was so fat, happy, and pacified by the massive employment boom that they didn't ask a single question about the sealed, concrete-filled "geological anomaly" on the second island.
But while Malesh was busy drowning the world in cheap oil, Kniya Anderson had been violently expanding.
He didn't just want to sell raw steel blocks anymore. With an unlimited supply of half-priced diesel flowing directly from Malesh's rigs, Kniya had evolved Kavilson Steel into a terrifying, multi-tiered conglomerate.
The Warlord of Infrastructure
Location: The Executive Office, Antrious Hub.
Kniya was sitting behind his massive desk, currently tossing a rubber ball against the ceiling. The Antrious Hub was no longer just a warehouse district; it was an industrialized mega-city.
The heavy oak doors swung open, and Malesh walked in. He was wearing his usual immaculate, dark tailored suit, carrying a leather ledger.
"You know, Kniya," Malesh stated, not even saying hello as he walked over to the window. "Your new manufacturing plants are emitting an inefficient amount of sulfur into the atmosphere. The smog over the capital is currently thick enough to chew. It is mathematically disgusting."
"It's called the smell of money, you sterile fucking accountant," Kniya grinned, catching the rubber ball. "If you don't like the smog, stop selling me millions of gallons of diesel at half price. Oh wait, you can't! You signed a 500-year contract!"
Malesh's eye visibly twitched at the reminder of the contract. "I despise you on a molecular level."
"Love you too, bro," Kniya laughed, standing up and walking over to the massive glass window. He pointed down at the sprawling industrial yards below. "Look at that. You think I'm just making girders anymore? Welcome to Phase Two."
Malesh looked down. The yards were packed with massive, terrifying new machines.
"I bought out the automotive and military sectors," Kniya announced proudly. "Kavilson Steel is now mass-producing heavy diesel-powered tanks and armored transport trucks for the DI military. They are completely addicted to my supply. And for the rich aristocratic pricks? I'm manufacturing luxury, fuel-powered sedans. Leather seats, brass trim, V8 engines. I am putting the horse-and-carriage industry in the fucking grave."
Malesh adjusted his glasses, analyzing the tanks rolling off the assembly line.
"Your luxury sedans look like aerodynamic bricks," Malesh critiqued deadpan. "They possess the turning radius of a dead whale. Who the fuck is buying those?"
"Everyone who wants to look better than you," Kniya shot back. "And that's not even the best part. Look at the eastern rail yard."
Malesh shifted his gaze. Lined up on specialized heavy-freight trains were massive, terrifyingly large artillery cannons and mountains of brass munitions.
"Heavy artillery," Kniya smirked. "I remembered our childhood making 'Stone Guns.' Now, I am literally forging naval cannons and artillery shells. Kavilson Steel is the official defense contractor for the entire Republic. If the government wants to shoot someone, they have to pay me for the bullet."
"So you have monopolized automotives, military weaponry, and structural steel," Malesh summarized. "A violent, highly destructive portfolio. Very on-brand for your psychological profile."
"I also build things!" Kniya argued, offended. "Look at the Seistain skyline! I expanded into Mega-Infrastructure. Kavilson Construction is currently building massive steel- suspension bridges, paving hundreds of miles of concrete roads, and erecting skyscrapers that actually touch the clouds. I am literally physically rebuilding the Republic."
"Yes, using my diesel to power your cranes," Malesh noted smugly.
"Which I buy for fifty percent off," Kniya instantly fired back, completely wiping the smug look off Malesh's face.
Kniya walked back to his desk, grabbing a bottle of expensive imported water.
"I am officially a conglomerate, bro," Kniya grinned. "I build the roads, I build the cars that drive on the roads, and I build the tanks that can blow up the roads if the government ever tries to cross me. I am untouchable."
"You are a chaotic logistical nightmare," Malesh sighed, opening his ledger. "But your massive expansion is generating an astronomical amount of capital. Which brings me to the reason I am standing in your smog-filled office."
Malesh placed a single, highly classified document on Kniya's desk.
"The global market is stabilized. The government is deep in our pockets," Malesh said, his voice dropping into a serious, calculating register. "It is time to look beyond the Republic of DI and Arvonia. It is time for a hostile takeover of a new continent."
The Skyward Ambition
The smog over the Antrious Hub was particularly thick, casting a permanent industrial grey shadow over Kniya's massive executive suite.
Kniya stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, holding a cup of black coffee, staring up past the smog. Below him, thousands of workers were assembling heavy-diesel tanks and luxury sedans, but his eyes were locked onto a massive, heavy-propeller commercial airliner slowly cutting through the clouds.
Malesh was sitting on the expensive leather sofa across the room, quietly reviewing a stack of offshore banking ledgers for his oil monopoly.
"Bro," Kniya said, taking a slow sip of his coffee. "We have been running the dirt for five years now. We own the roads. We own the fuel. The ground is getting too fucking crowded."
Malesh didn't look up from his ledger. "If you are suggesting we buy the ocean next, I am not interested. Deep-water real estate is a logistical nightmare."
"I don't give a shit about the ocean," Kniya grinned, turning around and leaning against the thick glass window. "I am bored with the surface. It is time for me to start the one thing I have always wanted to achieve. I am going to start my own airline company. I am going to completely dominate the airspace. And we are going to call it Kniya Airlines."
Malesh finally stopped reading. He closed his ledger with a sharp snap and looked at Kniya.
"An airline?" Malesh asked, his dark eyes narrowing. "Commercial aviation has an astronomical barrier to entry. Building a fleet of heavy-diesel planes and securing federal flight routes from scratch would take a decade."
"I am not building it from scratch, you idiot," Kniya scoffed, walking back to his mahogany desk. "I have been researching this for months. I am going to buy out an existing fleet. Have you looked at the domestic aviation market lately?"
"I only look at the fuel consumption metrics," Malesh replied flatly.
"Then you should know about Thullibulli Airline," Kniya declared, dropping a thick, highly classified dossier onto his desk. "They are the absolute largest airline company in our country. They have a total monopoly on domestic flights and the best airport terminals in the Republic. Globally, they rank as the 13th largest aviation firm."
Malesh stared at the dossier. "If they are the largest in the country, their board of directors is not going to just hand you the keys because you asked nicely."
"I'm not going to ask nicely," Kniya smirked, dropping into his leather chair. "Their management is bloated. Their executives are lazy legacy brats who don't know how to survive a real corporate war. We buy them out, strip their branding, paint the entire fleet crimson and black, and slap 'Kniya Airlines' on the tail."