Season episode 3 chapter 110
The Obsidian Card
Salesh waited for the laughter to die down before stepping forward. His practical, serious demeanor returned, but his eyes were shining with intense excitement.
"Well, because of this massive federal tip-off," Salesh announced, reaching into the inner pocket of his tailored suit. "The DI'an government formally issued us this."
Salesh pulled out a sleek, heavy, completely matte-black metal card. It was engraved with the supreme golden crest of the DI'an Presidential Council.
Kniya and Malesh both stopped smiling. They stared at the metal card, completely stunned.
"Wait..." Kniya muttered, his eyes widening. "Is that..."
"The Obsidian Card," Salesh confirmed, placing it gently on the iron workbench.
"What exactly does that mean?" Filoska asked, her eyes narrowing in highly calculated interest.
"It means that Kavilson Steel, Kniya's airlines, Malesh Energy Limited, and my company are now officially federally recognized at the highest possible tier," Salesh explained, his voice filled with absolute awe. "It means we get the absolute top priority in every single government tender and federal deal. It doesn't mean the government will automatically blindly finalize every deal we propose, but it guarantees that our contracts will always be looked at first, and favored above all competitors."
Malesh stared at the card. A massive, entirely unprecedented avenue for corporate expansion had just opened up in front of them.
"We can secure hundreds of massive government infrastructure deals this way," Malesh calculated instantly, his deadpan mask hiding a fiercely turning capitalist brain. "It is a phenomenal tactical advantage for us."
Kniya let out a loud, victorious whistle, aggressively picking up the heavy metal card to inspect it under the blue light of the laboratory.
"Yeah, that is an absolutely phenomenal reward!" Kniya cheered, his chaotic energy reaching a fever pitch. "It will easily allow us to rapidly grow our empire while we finish building this machine!"
Kniya looked up at his board of directors, a psychotic, wildly ambitious smirk stretching across his face.
"And let me tell you the best part," Kniya declared proudly, holding the Obsidian Card up like a trophy. "Only three companies in the entire world have ever been issued this card. And as of today... we are officially the third. Let Leon and his pathetic royal bloodline rot with their seized ships. We have an empire to build."
The 70 Trillion Silence
The heavy industrial air of the Northern East wing of the Kavilson Steel R&D laboratory was buzzing with absolute energy. The fourth prototype was no longer an incomplete skeleton; it was currently humming flawlessly, bathing the room in a brilliant, limitless blue light.
Kniya and Malesh casually strolled right through the heavy steel security doors, returning straight from their federal negotiation.
Salesh and Filoska were already waiting inside the lab. Shuntesh was nowhere to be seen, likely having wandered off to take a much-needed washroom break after pulling a grueling all-nighter to finish the flawless machine.
Salesh immediately looked up from his clipboard, his sleep-deprived eyes locking onto the two billionaires.
"So?" Salesh asked, his voice tight with corporate anxiety. "How was the deal?"
Kniya and Malesh completely froze. They didn't say a single word.
They just stood there in the middle of the laboratory, entirely silent. Malesh smoothly adjusted his Dragon-themed silk tie, his face an unreadable, deadpan mask. Kniya shoved his hands into his pockets, staring blankly at the concrete floor.
The silence stretched on for five agonizing seconds. The climax building in the room was absolutely suffocating.
Filoska's aristocratic composure completely snapped.
"What happened, Kniya? Malesh, what happened?!" Filoska demanded, stepping forward with her eyes wide with panic. "We are actively asking you what happened! Why are you not telling us anything?! Is there anything wrong?!"
Malesh slowly looked up, his dark eyes locking onto the Vice President. He took a long, incredibly dramatic pause, letting the tension absolutely peak to its breaking point.
"Well..." Malesh started, his voice completely flat and low, before suddenly accelerating his speech to a lightning-fast, deadpan blur. "...wefinallysuccessfullysignedthedeal."
Salesh and Filoska aggressively blinked, their brains completely short-circuiting.
"What? What? What did you say?!" Salesh asked frantically, leaning forward.
Before Malesh could repeat himself, Kniya aggressively jumped forward, his chaotic, unhinged energy completely exploding into the room.
"Yeah, we signed the deal!" Kniya yelled, throwing his hands high into the air in pure, capitalist triumph. "We secured the deal with the absolute price of seventy trillion credits!"
The Literary Confusion
Filoska physically stumbled backward, her jaw dropping as her brain tried to process the astronomical number.
"Wait a fucking minute," Filoska gasped, entirely dropping her royal filter. "Seventy trillion?! Are you guys completely mad, or is this a massive verbal mistake?!"
"There is absolutely no mistake," Kniya grinned, his eyes gleaming with psychotic ambition.
"But you told us you were going to sign the deal at sixty trillion credits!" Salesh shrieked, violently rubbing his temples as his stress spiked in the opposite direction. "So why the hell is there a ten trillion extra margin?! And how did you even manage to make the federal government agree to this much massive amount in a single afternoon?!"
Kniya popped a piece of mint gum into his mouth, leaning casually against a heavy iron workbench.
"Well, we thought that sixty trillion was absolutely not enough," Kniya explained smoothly, waving his hand as if he were discussing the price of a cheap cup of coffee. "Because from that exact amount of money, we were only able to completely repay our massive corporate loan. We needed actual profit. So, I had to dig deep."
Kniya tapped the side of his head, offering a devious, highly lethal smirk as he looked over at his best friend.
"Malesh, do you remember I had an idea for a book which was named Blackmail: The Part of Life?" Kniya asked cheerfully. "It was an idea developed in comparison to Malesh's book idea, which was basically Bribe: The Essentials of Life. Well Filoska and Salesh, I don't think so that you guys would know about this thing."
Salesh and Filoska completely froze. They exchanged a look of pure, unadulterated bewilderment.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Salesh demanded, his voice cracking with sheer confusion. "What books? We have literally known you for years, and neither of you has ever written or published a fucking book!"
Malesh smoothly adjusted his tie, entirely unfazed by their confusion.
"They are unpublished, entirely imaginary conceptual frameworks," Malesh explained to the executives in a perfect, flat monotone. "We developed the titles and the core economic theories in our heads when we were eleven years old, sitting on a public park bench. We never actually wrote them. They were just ideas."
Filoska stared at him, her eye twitching as the absolute madness of the situation dawned on her.
"Well, so you are telling me," Filoska whispered, her voice laced with absolute horror and disbelief, "that basically, you literally blackmailed the government with an imaginary idea you developed from a fake book you never even wrote?!"
"Exactly!" Kniya laughed loudly, his chaotic energy bouncing off the concrete walls. "Since the book never existed in real life, the government had absolutely no defense against the theory! I directly threatened the Head of the DI'an Energy Department that we would sell the entire reactor monopoly to Arvonia if they didn't pay up the seventy trillion! It worked flawlessly!"
The Ten Trillion Bonus
Salesh and Filoska stared at the two billionaires, the sheer absurdity of their negotiation tactics finally settling in. The panic slowly drained from their faces, instantly replaced by a profound, exhausted respect.
"Well..." Salesh sighed heavily, dragging a hand down his face. "You guys are really unbelievable. I genuinely didn't know that you would actually pull something like that off."
Filoska crossed her arms, a reluctant, aristocratic smirk breaking through her shock.
"I have to admit, the names of those imaginary books are actually quite cool," Filoska conceded, shaking her head. "But still, you guys are really, really smart. Pulling an extra ten trillion out of thin air is a flawless corporate maneuver. So, what are you going to do with the extra money?"
Malesh smoothly adjusted his tie, his dark eyes locking onto the executives with absolute, deadpan precision.
"I have already mathematically partitioned the extra ten trillion credits," Malesh stated flatly. "From the remaining amount, we are going to distribute exactly four trillion credits to you, Filoska. And we will distribute exactly four trillion credits to you, Salesh."
Salesh's eyes practically bulged out of his skull. He physically stumbled backward, grabbing the edge of the iron workbench just to keep himself upright.
"Wait..." Filoska gasped, completely dropping her royal composure. "Four trillion?! Each?!"
"Yes," Malesh confirmed, his voice devoid of any emotion.
Filoska blinked rapidly, trying to process the astronomical wealth that had just been casually handed to her. "And... the rest of the two trillion credits? Are you going to keep that for yourselves?"
"No," Malesh replied mechanically. "We are going to give the remaining two trillion directly to Shuntesh, because he was the mastermind behind the entire reactor."
A heavy, stunned silence fell over the laboratory.
"Wait," Filoska said, her voice dropping into pure bewilderment. "So, you guys are literally not going to take any amount of money from this extra margin?"
Kniya leaned back, popping a fresh piece of mint gum into his mouth. His chaotic, unhinged energy softened just a fraction, replaced by a rare, genuine corporate loyalty.
"It is exactly because of the reason that we do not want to earn a single penny from this deal for ourselves," Kniya declared smoothly, gesturing directly to the two executives. "We don't want any extra money from this. You guys worked incredibly hard. When we didn't have the massive funds of 500 billion credits to actually make the fourth prototype reactor, you guys literally supported us by contributing 250 billion and 250 billion out of your own personal pockets. And not just that, you guys even executed a really dangerous mission by exposing Leon's illegal wealth transfer to the government and the rest of the world. You guys really did a lot for us and treated us like friends, not like corporate colleagues, it was never like that.. We are literally, genuinely grateful for that. So yeah, just keep this as a bonus, I think so, what we can call it."
Salesh and Filoska were completely speechless. The absolute ruthlessness of Kavilson Steel was only matched by the sheer, terrifying generosity of its founders.