Aldred teleported to Folineley and entered Tarrar's room.
Folineley was once Tarrar's city in the Yevileria nation, but Aldred had defeated him, and now he was Aldred's subordinate and the rich city of Folineley became one of Aldred's assets.
Tarrar sat in his office, reading a paper and jotted something on it before grabbing another one.
When Aldred entered his office, Tarrar camly looked at him. "Is there something you need?"
"Everything going well?" Aldred asked.
"The situation is under control. The two companies: Aldred's Golem Mercenary and Aldred's Golem Miner are raking millions of profit per day."
"Is there any problem?"
"None need your intervention. Although we have some Platinum Ranks threatening to destroy us, they didn't do anything."
"Oh, why?"
"Well, if a Platinum Rank from Yevileria wants to destroy us, I tell them that I will not support their war effort, and put the company fully on Paphia's side."
Aldred smiled. Tarra made a smart move.
His golem mercenary had been rented from both nations and it prevented a lot of casualties from both sides. But the cost of his golems weren't cheap. Paphia and Yevileria paid millions of gold coins per day to keep the golems fighting on the field.
It was a battle to see who had the most amount of money, and who dared to spend them. Both nations were rich, so this amount of spending wouldn't take a hit on their economy, but it pissed some of them off because a single person was benefiting so much from this conflict.
Aldred could only laugh at that. Defense companies become rich when war and conflict happen, and now that he dominated the market in this region, all the money went through him.
He wasn't the only company that offers mercenaries and weapons. There were a lot of domestic and foreign companies who wanted to eat some parts of the pie.
Their weapons were very interesting. A particular one that caught Aldred's eyes was a magic pillar that could detect enemies from 150 kilometers away.
This was probably made using an intricate non-elemental magical construction spell. Aldred had this skill, but he hadn't fully developed it yet.
"But we don't have any large competitors," Tarrar said. "We can keep expanding steadily, and I have some plans to expand to more nations."
"Expand to Ceraisian and Montcresia," Aldred said.
"Are you sure?" Tarrar asked. "You are a soldier of the Ceraisian Empire, no? Won't you make a lot of enemies from your people if you helped Montcresia?"
Aldred smiled. "Expand to Montcresia under a different name. That way I can just say that it's not my company."
"I will do that."
"What about the mining company?" Aldred asked.
"Aldred's Golem Miner received a lot of mining sites. The contracts wildly varied but most of the time we are offered 20% of the materials we mined. We also bought some abandoned mining sites."
"Why buy abandoned mining sites?"
"These mining sites are abandoned because of dangerous hazards most of the time. Your golems don't care about hazards."
"They're the perfect tool for this job." Aldred smiled.
"Exactly."
"So what is our monthly income?"
"We get more than 30 billion gold coins per month."
"Wow, so we got 1 billion gold coins per day? I didn't know this business is so lucrative."
"It's not lucrative for others. Developing weapons, paying mercenaries, bribing governments. There's a lot of money needed to be spent through the normal route, but your company is different. You don't need the government, the government needs you. The company doesn't need to pay for anything at all, except a small amount of taxes. But our tax has been reduced to 1% from both nations."
"Why did they do that?"
"When they increased the tax rate, I increased the price. A few weeks ago, they increased the tax to 30%. When that happened, I increased the price 30 times."
Aldred laughed. "The government must be clenching their fist and slamming their tables right now. I am surprised that they didn't kill you yet."
"They're afraid that you will act more discreetly if I was killed. At least now they can see what we are doing and they can negotiate with us reasonably."
"That is true. If the company went underground, the gangs and mafias would have a lot of weapons to fight against the government," Aldred said.
"That is correct. So did you come just to check in?"
"I was thinking of creating another company."
"What company?"
"A food company."
"Food? We know nothing about food companies, and it's less lucrative than what we are doing right now."
"Just hire some chefs to train the worker golems. They might look stupid and can only do simple stuff, but they can actually learn complex things."
Aldred's golem could level up when they do repetitive activities and kill enemies. When they level up, their stats would increase, and they would either get stronger or smarter depending on what repetitive task they do.
Tarrar sighed. "You see this stack of paper? It's height already passed my head, and now you want to add more workload on me?"
Aldred laughed. "You're a vital part of my business, so I will give you 10% share."
Tarrar's eyes widened. "Are you sure about that?"
"I am. You're a valuable employee, so this much is normal."
"I am more motivated now."
"That's exactly my intention. Well, I am going to leave now. I will check on you at other times."
Tarrar nodded as Aldred entered his portal and returned to school.
"Where did you go?" Mareona asked.
"Just handling some stuff. Has the competition begun yet?"
"It will be in a few minutes. Do you think Class F can compete against Class E?"
"Don't underestimate my students. I have put them through hell for this moment."
Soon after, the host excitedly walked onto the stage with a wide smile. "Ladies and gentlemen! The moment you have been waiting for has come! This is the last fight for today. Class E will fight against Class F!"
