Season 3 chapter 65
The Contractual Ink
Kniya leaned directly over the polished mahogany table, aggressively tapping his finger against the empty legal footer at the bottom of the dossier.
"Yeah, look at this specific parameter," Kniya pointed out, his brow furrowing in deep skepticism. "There is a literal fill-in-the-blank space left completely empty right here. Why isn't anything documented under the default clauses?"
Mantouse Adeius didn't look up from his brightly colored paperback. He lazily turned a page of How to Become the Best Idiot in the World, a highly desensitized, cold smirk playing on his lips.
"That is exactly how it is designed to be," Mantouse stated smoothly. "I will tell you the absolute condition right now. At the end of the total calendar year, it is your definitive deadline to physically repay this loan. And if you default... the penalty could be anything. Anything means anything."
Kniya squinted closer at the margins of the paper, his baseline entitlement instantly flaring up.
"Well, look at the primary header," Kniya accused loudly. "In the actual printed document, the final interest rate isn't even professionally typed out!"
"The interest rate is clearly mentioned," Mantouse sighed with profound administrative exhaustion, finally lowering his book to glare across the table. "I personally wrote it in with red ink. It is explicitly stamped at one hundred percent. Why can't your eyes track basic numbers?"
Kniya snatched a custom-machined steel pen from his inner coat pocket. With absolute, unhinged corporate pettiness, he forcefully scratched out the final zero on Mantouse's handwritten margin.
"But look at the underlying paper fiber," Kniya argued shamelessly. "Actually, the original interest rate typed out before your manual edits was a clean ten percent, and you aggressively crossed that out to write one hundred. So look..."
Kniya held the contract up triumphantly, proudly displaying his fresh vandalism.
"I just formally cut one zero from your one hundred percent," Kniya beamed. "So now it is officially ten percent! Yay! You are going to give us this loan at a highly reasonable interest rate of ten percent!"
Mantouse stared at the scratched-out ink, his face dropping into an unyielding mask of absolute, hardened syndicate malice.
"That is absolutely not going to happen, you absolute idiots," Mantouse deadpanned coldly, his voice dropping all traces of amusement. "And if you are not going to entirely agree on this baseline document for the full one hundred percent right now, then I am not going to give you the loan. You get zero liquid cash. Choose your parameters."
Seeing the shadow commander draw an absolute line in the concrete, Malesh smoothly placed a heavy, restraining hand on Kniya's wrist, forcing the steel pen down toward the table.
"Okay, Mantouse," Malesh requested flatly, his deadpan delivery an unyielding anchor. "Can you give us some time to think, actually? Actually, we need to think. It is a really, really big decision. We need to think about it."
Mantouse lazily waved his hand toward the heavy steel bulkheads. "Take your time. The transaction expires when my patience does."
The Sovereign Real Estate
Marching side-by-side out of the briefing room, Kniya and Malesh let the heavy subterranean doors seal shut behind them. The dim, concrete corridor was deathly quiet, insulated entirely from the outer safehouse security details.
The second the latch clicked, Kniya rounded on his business partner, aggressively throwing his hands up in a whiny, panicked whisper.
"Malesh, what the actual fuck?!" Kniya hissed. "Why out of nowhere did you literally pull this massive loan topic off?! Why the hell are we taking loans from Mantouse in the first place?!"
Malesh leaned his back against the cold concrete wall, his ruined charcoal suit jacket hanging open as he looked at Kniya with an expression of soul-deep, unfiltered exhaustion.
"So who the fuck do you think is going to give us that much amount of liquid cash out of nowhere, Kniya?" Malesh analyzed coldly, dropping his voice into a harsh deadpan drone. "Our companies are literally collapsing under the street-level destruction of this civil war. Mantouse actually doesn't know the exact internal condition of our corporate ledgers. He still assumes our combined corporate standing is hovering at approximately eighteen trillion credits based on the public indices. But our physical assets have depreciated much further behind closed doors. What can we even do? He's the only guy who is going to give us the loan for absolutely no reason. He is the guy."
Malesh crossed his arms, his dark eyes deeply serious as he laid out the absolute ground truth.
"Just the interest rate is high, and we need to manage this off," Malesh continued. "I don't know how we are going to do that, but it is our only option. We need to arrange this money immediately. The Gleb operative explicitly told us it is strictly required for the mission. We literally need this massive volume of liquid cash to systematically buy out all the religious towns in this country to legally save them from the government before they get seized and obliterated. I don't think we have any other option left."
Kniya slowly lowered his hands, the baseline reality of their mission parameters settling over his features. "You are right about this thing."
"What other option did we have?" Malesh asked flatly.
Kniya aggressively scratched the back of his neck, his brow furrowing with intense suspicion. "But there is one massive problem. Should we actually trust this guy? I don't think we have any other option left, sure. But if we told him the truth, I think it would be really dangerous because he might be working directly for the Royal Family or anything else, or for any secret organization. Because if a guy is capable of providing a thirty trillion credit loan at once out of nowhere, he's really, really powerful."
"Okay. You are right, Kniya," Malesh agreed, steadying his posture as he pushed off the concrete wall. "I think we should take the credit from him. Let's take the loans from him."
The Apex Counter-Condition
Pushing the heavy double doors open, the two corporate warlords marched back into the center of the briefing room. Mantouse Adeius was still kicking his boots up on the mahogany wood, casually flipping a page of his paperback.
"So," Mantouse drawled smoothly without looking up. "Have you thought about it?"
"Yeah," Kniya announced, stepping directly up to the table with absolute, uncompromising CEO authority. "We have thought about the loan conditions and everything else. And we are entirely agreeing upon you."
Mantouse smirked coldly, snapping his book shut and dropping his boots to the floor bulkheads.
"Excellent," Mantouse chuckled with highly sinister, shadowy malice as he tapped the fill-in-the-blank space on the paper. "Remember the exact phrasing. After exactly one calendar year expires, I am legally authorized to demand absolutely anything from your inventory to settle the margins. The blank space could be anything. I could literally auction your physical bodies to the salt mines. Hah,hah,hahaha…"
Kniya didn't flinch. Instead, he leaned over the desk, a massive, highly unhinged smirk spreading across his face as he launched a final verbal counter-offensive.
"We accept that," Kniya stated smoothly. "But before we sign, we also have one condition, you know. And that is... you have to marry Leon Debestez."
Mantouse's face instantly twisted into an expression of pure, unadulterated horror and absolute psychological rage. Leon Debestez wasn't just a standard aristocrat; he was the definitive, absolute head of the Royal Family, the supreme shadow patriarch who held absolute life-or-death authority over every ruling bloodline in the Republic. Proposing a forced romantic entanglement with the absolute apex predator of the state was a completely suicidal concept.
Mantouse violently slammed his fist down onto the contractual red-stamps.
"You absolute fucking gay idiots!" Mantouse shrieked at the top of his lungs, his elite overwatch composure entirely liquidating. "I am not going to obey any of your conditions! I am giving you the loan, not you giving me the loans! And I will only have the conditions! If you are acting like that, I am going to have the condition in my loan that you have to marry Leon Debestez, and then you are getting the loan, you fucking idiots! Shut your mouths!"
Kniya instantly threw his hands out wide, cackling obnoxiously at the complete destruction of the commander's baseline dignity.
"Well, I was just kidding!" Kniya laughed loudly. "I also don't believe in gay love or boys-love literature. My actual condition is that I want the money now."
Mantouse let out a ragged, deeply desensitized breath, aggressively sliding the document and a fresh ink pen straight toward them.
"Okay," Mantouse deadpanned coldly. "As soon as you sign this document, you will get the approved amount of transactions in your bank accounts."
Kniya and Malesh exchanged a final, highly skeptical glance. Despite the desperate state of their ledgers, they still heavily doubted that a multi-trillion credit wire could execute with the instantaneous speed of a stage trick.
But with zero alternative options remaining to secure the religious towns and fund their shadow war, Kniya and Malesh smoothly picked up the pens and signed the documents.