Chapter 218 – Military Headquarters
That part wasn’t anything too complicated. I teleported to Taifau and filled my storage with what people in Alfiro needed, mainly raw minerals and raw materials. The main point was to sell cheaper than local prices. This would be possible for me because I didn’t have any transportation costs. Considering normal merchants would need days or weeks to get these goods, with all the associated expenses for the caravan, horses, escorts, and so on, it was obvious my prices would be very competitive. I wouldn’t get into similar trouble as in 82 either, since I was backed by the chief of internal affairs herself.
I also learned my lesson from Geola and refrained from selling selnic items here. I could resume that part of the business when Geola reopened.
What was more important was trying to open a store in Ekidos. I didn’t have any contact with the authorities there, making it trickier. Nevertheless, it didn’t cost me anything to try.
I went to Ekidos’ military headquarters, situated in the center of the city, the building that served as a city hall here. There weren’t many people going in and out, and my coming attracted a lot of gazes.
Inside, many soldiers in uniforms acted in their respective roles, some guarding the location, some handling folks' needs. They were all in pristine, clean uniforms, standing with their back straight, and watching people carefully as if they thought everyone was a potential criminal in disguise.
I barely took a few steps in when I was stopped by two soldiers.
“Halt! What is your business here, foreigner?”
“Hello, great soldiers. I’m here to discuss acquiring a store in your city.”
They took a step in my direction menacingly.
“Leave. This place isn’t for foreigners.”
“Can’t I just talk to one of the responsible people?”
They now put their hands on their weapon.
“Leave if you don’t want to get into trouble.”
I had no choice but to do so reluctantly. This was even worse than I thought. The kingdom’s citizens accepted foreigners without any issue, but the soldiers had a completely different attitude. Or maybe it was the location that was an issue. The military headquarters, even if acting as a city hall, might still be too much of a military place for outside people to visit.
This hindered my plans greatly. I had no choice but to ask around in the streets again. It soon became clear that, except for the three great merchant companies, no one was allowed to possess real estate in the kingdom. Even the three great merchant companies had to negotiate for a long time to acquire these rights.
These three were the equivalent of mega-corporations back in my world and dominated the continent’s trade. They had been established for a long time, had branches and contacts everywhere, and their merchants traveled all the existing roads. They initially came from Taende, at the time when the empire was still the dominant power in the region, but eventually moved their main offices to Geola, even though it was much less central.
If I had less ambition, I could have tried to become an employee of one of these three companies and live a different life with fewer responsibilities but more safety. However, that wasn’t for me. It was fun to be someone else’s boss, but a lot less if the relationship was reversed. Even if the employer ended up a good person, not being able to make decisions on my own would have made me restless in no time.
Back to the topic, I had a few choices in front of me. I could either try to form a relationship with a high-ranked military commander or become as big and influential as the three great companies. Considering I had no idea where to start for the former, I could only go for the latter for now. At least, I was still allowed to buy any goods I wanted in the country, which was already something.
I teleported back to Alfiro and filled the tables and shelves with samples of what I just bought, leaving most of it in the storage room. Since I was selling raw materials, there was no need to display everything. They could check the quality inside the store and decide to buy more based on that.
Morph was working hard on cleaning the interior. With me having no business here anymore, I told him to pay himself from the gold coin I handed him a few hours ago, and left him to finish his first day at the job. He had a key to the store and could close it when he was done.
The following few days, I worked together with him to finish preparing the store. I initially planned to let him do most of the work, but since my plan to open a shop in Taifau failed, I had nothing better to do.
Finally, we were ready for the grand opening. Or so I called it in my head, but there was nothing grand about it. In the past few days, we had visitors, curiously asking about the store. We always had to send them back since we weren’t open yet. Now, we could accept customers inside, and they could check what we had to offer.
But of course, the number of actual clients was extremely low. It was but retired people or children who had too much time on their hands, coming to see the new fad on the street. Most of them didn’t buy anything, but that didn’t worry me. At least now the word would propagate about my goods and their price.
The rank 4 guard seemed bored, yawning all day, and I couldn’t blame him. My employee, on the other hand, was quite nervous. He would often glance at me when nothing was happening, worried that I would take my lack of success badly. Even when I tried to reassure him, he continued to do so as if I could explode at any moment.
His worries were for nothing. A few days after the opening, some serious clients came to check on the goods. From those, a couple of them even bought a large quantity of minerals, giving us our first real income.
However, all this relative quietness was without taking my trump card into account.
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