"So?" Theo locked his arms over his chest as he leaned back in the chair and looked back at the capitalist-looking merchant with a slight smile dancing in the corners of his lips, "what will it be? Deal or no deal?"
Kremy didn't reply right away.
It wasn't even a matter of professional pride as a merchant, to take a deal as offered.
Such pride had no place in dealings with a royal, even if Theo was the youngest and least significant of his family.
No.
For Kremy, it was all about appearances, about silent negotiations that were never brought to the level of words.
A battle of wits that, if the deal would go through, would decide his standing in Theo's service to which he was obviously trying to recruit the man.
And so, the two of them waited in silence, Kremy pretending to be in a deep thought while Theo balanced on the two legs of his chair with a relaxed smile.
'Come on man!' On the inside, however, Theo was growing more and more impatient with every passing second, 'stop wasting my time and just agree to it!'
Regardless of Theo's wishes, however, the silence extended for the full two minutes before Kremy finally heaved a long, deep sigh and shook his head as he leaned over the table before resting his forehead against his cupped hands.
"My wife is going to kill me," he muttered while gritting his teeth before raising his face and looking back into Theo's face, "but he who doesn't risk it, doesn't get the gambling level of money."
With that statement on his mouth, Kremy rapidly stood up from his chair only to then move to the side where he fell down to one knee and lowered his head in a slight yet respectful bow.
"I, Kremy Ignacios, would like to accept the deal you've offered, your highness!"
'This…' Theo squinted his eyes, looking at the man from his slightly elevated position on the chair while dealing with the feeling he never really experienced before.
A feeling he actively avoided in his past life and was never qualified to witness in his current life.
The feeling of wielding a near absolute authority over the other person, a multifaceted authority that came not only from the bounds of business, but one that reached much deeper than that.
And right now, expressed in his simple bow, Kremy's position filled Theo with this feeling of control he now had over the man.
A control he had over him as a royal exercising his right to command his subject.
A control he had over him as a business partner. A control he had over him as someone with superior level of knowledge and insight when it came to the directions industrial development would take.
It was the manifestation of the type of control Theo sought for in his bid to achieve his goals. And while his dealings with the sect patriarch could also be brought to the level of control… Just the fact that the Slevian leader was about to advance beyond Theo's current level of cultivation deprived Theo of the factor of control when it came to their relationship, advancing it to the level of mutual benefit and cooperation.
"Sir…? Should I start explaining what you asked about…?"
Noticing the strange tension on Theo's face, Kremy asked with uneasiness in his voice.
An uneasiness that was perfectly justified given how he just surrendered his fate right into Theo's hands and whims.
"That won't be necessary," Theo shook his head, both to answer Kremy's question and to shake this weird excitement out of his head.
'This isn't the time to get a control hard-on,' he thought, slightly annoyed by his own reaction to something as insignificant as gaining one, potentially unruly subject.
"For now, I want you to focus on the easy task. Sugar, salt, pastries and booze, then the transportation and finally looking for an alchemist capable of purifying the sugar. Oh, and…" Theo set all four legs of his chair down on the ground before standing up and moving away from the table himself.
"While I need you to bring most of the supplies directly to my sect, I will need a sizeable pouch of both sugar and salt for myself, along with three days' worth of travel supplies," he requested, "preferentially, by tomorrow's dawn."
"It shall be done," Kremy lowered his head again. "As for the coins…"
"Just fifty will do. And feel free to just add them up to the main supply run to the sect," Theo countered the point while waving his head to indicate just how little he cared about money itself. "Oh, but you can give me ten coins, just in case something out in the city will catch my eye."
"Ah, yes! Most certainly!" With his decision already made, Kremy wasted no time proving his willingness to serve Theo. "Here you go, your highness!" he lowered his head again while stretching his hand out with a pouch on them… One that was visibly heavier than what Theo asked for.
"Just ten gold coins will suffice, man. By something catching my eye I meant a meat skewer or a fancy pastry, not some pricey artifacts," Theo explained, grabbing the pouch only to pull its strings open, pull out ten coins he mentioned and then drop it right back into Kremy's hands. "Where I'm going tomorrow, money will be of no significance and only add more weight for me to carry around," he stated with a sigh before turning around and heading for the doors.
There, just a single step away from leaving the meeting room, Theo stopped before turning his head back to the merchant.
"Before I go, I need you to understand one thing. Stay loyal to me, and money will soon lose most of its significance to you, with how much of it will be flowing through your hands."
Theo wasn't exaggerating here.
With just the spirit stone factory and clever distribution of such valuable produce, he could easily become one of if not THE richest man in the whole kingdom.
'And that's all just a beginning,' he thought, letting out a sigh at the mere thought of what the future had in store for him.
But future… was just that - something that had yet to happen. And after today's meeting, Theo craved nothing else but some good, oily food that he could stuff himself full of, even if it came to bite him in the ass later on.
A perspective lessened by the way his body, not only more youthful but also now reinforced by mana, would have a lot easier time accepting such a cheat day than it would back in his old life, when a single oversalted dish would be enough to send him keeling over the intense, acid-reflux born stomach pain.
'Now then, what should I…'
Even though all Theo wanted to do was wash down all the talking he did for the day with some overpriced and definitely not healthy food, fate clearly had some other designs for him. Because the very moment he left the building and stepped out into the city's road, he ended up crashing into some sort of an entourage.
And one big enough to imply quite the hefty significance of the person at its center, who turned out not only to be a weirdly unassuming girl… but what was even worse, it turned out to be the exact person Theo crashed into!
And if all of that STILL wasn't enough, rather than jumping away, stepping back or just yelping in surprise like any normal person would, the very moment the girl laid her eyes on Theo's slightly dreamy face, her own expression sank while her eyes froze, only for her to stumble a few feet to the back before screaming out in a freakishly high tone,
"YOU?!"