Chapter 175 : Super Enterprise, the Wokingmeh Consortium.
Chapter 175: Super Enterprise, the Wokingmeh Consortium.
Early morning
John Rawls opened his eyes on time, pushed away the snow-white buttocks beside him, put on his robe, and left the luxurious bed. He took a bottle from the liquor cabinet, poured himself a glass, walked to the balcony, sat down, and slowly savored it.
He slumped into the sofa and raised his head to look at the sky. Whenever it was deep and quiet at night, it was easier to think things through—at least, that was the excuse he gave to the beautiful female spy who shared his bed but not his dreams.
In truth, this was to check whether the Kingdom had issued any new instructions.
At present, John Rawls was the only “invisible man” within the Seris intelligence network operating inside the Church’s territory. Even the spy agencies themselves were unaware of his existence. He was completely on a single-line contact.
Usually, spies of this kind were extremely difficult to control and very likely to lose their original intentions in the latter half of their missions.
Seris had given him a good education, lofty ideals and visions, and, of course, sufficient利益.
From all the profits exchanged through his hands, John Rawls could take 5%. This was an extremely considerable income. From the真假置换 of Glory Silver Coins alone, he had cumulatively received profit shares amounting to one hundred million Alliance currency units.
This money had long since been transferred into accounts he had set up for his family. As the Seris Alliance gradually launched its actions against the Church, he would receive even more profit shares.
Perhaps, aside from being unable to step onto the stage and receive public commendations, he had a very high probability of becoming one of the top ten wealthiest figures secretly ranked within Seris—pure cash flow at that.
Mitia had always been exceedingly generous in her dealings. What she revered was the principle that if you wanted a horse to run, you had to let it eat its fill—not only eat enough, but eat well!
As long as the interests of both sides were deeply bound together, this was far more effective than any number of formal declarations of loyalty.
John Rawls raised his head and casually swept his gaze across the entire firmament. Suddenly—
A meteor far brighter than the other stars slowly streaked across the sky. John Rawls’s hand that was swirling the wine paused ever so slightly before he drained the glass in one gulp.
【Echo-1 Radio Communication Satellite】
There was no electronic equipment inside it at all. It was simply a large-scale space radio signal reflector. The material used was a gigantic polyester film, compressed to a thickness only one-tenth that of a strand of hair.
The entire sheet of film was cut into over a hundred long strips. Each layer, inside and out, was covered with a thin layer of aluminum foil, making its surface brighter and more reflective.
These strips were then bonded together to form a standard gigantic sphere. Inside, several blocks of solid benzoic acid were installed.
As for how it was sent into the sky…
The Alliance’s largest airship carried Mitia up to its designed maximum ceiling of thirty thousand meters.
Finally, Mitia used divine power to apply a violent initial acceleration and a protective barrier to it. Combined with a Laval nozzle rocket at the tail, it completed the final leg of the journey and surged past one hundred thousand meters.
At an altitude of one hundred thousand meters, the rectifying shield formed by divine power would slowly dissipate, releasing the folded satellite within.
The aluminum foil absorbed the Sun’s heat, the benzoic acid powder was heated and sublimated from solid into gas, and then expanded it into a complete spherical shape with a diameter of forty meters.
On land, to keep such a balloon inflated would require injecting nearly twenty tons of air. But in outer space beyond one hundred kilometers, only a few kilograms of gas were needed.
Within the atmosphere, maintaining a spherical shape meant resisting atmospheric pressure, requiring more air to counteract it. Outside the atmosphere, there was no such trouble.
Although the design was simple, the effect was astonishingly good. Now, Seris no longer needed long-distance magic arrays to send and receive information, and it was far more covert.
On John Rawls’s side, as long as he had a small receiver, when Echo-1 passed along its orbit and briefly aligned with the receiver, he could receive information continuously repeated by Alliance signal stations within the Kingdom of Suria, thousands of kilometers away.
This round and adorable little thing was not merely for communication; otherwise, it would not have been worth Mitia expending such effort.
Its greatest function was as a precision measuring instrument, allowing Alliance scientists to conduct an accurate measurement of the entire magical planet.
Mitia was absolutely certain that the old maps were one hundred percent inaccurate, with errors of at least several hundred kilometers.
When measuring distances using Echo-1, however, the error could be reduced dramatically, to roughly one-tenth of the previous margin.
The theory was simple: two different locations sent signals to Echo-1. Based on the time it took for the signals from each location to propagate, the distances between each point and Echo-1 could be determined.
Then, by measuring the precise angles between the two points and Echo-1, and finally applying trigonometric calculations, the actual distance between the two locations could be computed.
Precise data was extremely important to Seris.
The Alliance could use this to create more detailed and reliable maps, to lay the theoretical groundwork for true space launches in the future, and at the same time this marked the beginning of guided weapons.
While driving the development of Alliance technology, it also provided top-tier spies like John Rawls with tremendous security. The technological barrier between the two sides ensured that the natives of the magical world would never realize that the bright meteor was actually an artificial object.
Even if some high-level magical creatures saw through it, they would not care. There was nothing inside it; in essence, it was merely a dead object orbiting the magical planet.
It was nothing more than a miniature moon, closer to the planet, with a function similar to the magical planet’s moon.
Because it was a single-line, long-term mission, John Rawls could check his tasks whenever he pleased, without worrying about being investigated. Within the Church’s territory, he could be said to have completely let himself go.
His nights with multiple women were already considered relatively restrained by his own standards. Words like indulgence, extravagant spending, wine pools and meat forests were still insufficient to describe his life.
As for the female spies planted around him by the Church or the Kingdom, he accepted them all without exception—and enjoyed himself even more.
After all, no matter how he toyed with these female spies, nothing would happen. Under heaven, there were no girls more obedient than them. When necessary, they even had to protect his safety…
And precisely because of his conduct and frankness, the King and Farhad Francis and others—who had previously grown worried because John Rawls controlled all foreign trade enterprises and fleets with the Alliance—trusted him even more.
Through this unconventional style of monetary manipulation, John Rawls’s network within noble circles also expanded at a breathtaking speed.
As for his ultimate goal in mingling so wildly with the aristocracy every day—it was the general silver coin minting right of the Church!
At the same time, this was also the final preparation for the second phase Mitia had told him about: the trial operation of stocks.
At present, after one year of paper currency operation, United Bank’s currency had actually appreciated by 15%.
That meant the value of his currency had already surpassed the value of Glory Silver Coins by 15%. Glory Silver Coins were no longer as valuable as his banknotes, and the populace trusted his paper currency more.
In theory, this was actually a good thing, because the reserve funds required for issuing national currency were greatly reduced.
But the plan Mitia gave John Rawls was not so kind-hearted.
A 15%–20% appreciation of the currency was inevitable. When people began to trust paper money and were willing to use it for payment, a certain additional premium would naturally appear. This was normal.
And the second-phase plan Mitia gave John Rawls was to directly decouple the currency from Glory Silver Coins!
The Dmitria Church had never been idle—or rather, its neighbor next door never gave it a chance to be idle.
The rise and development history of the Church State could be said to be a process of continuously encroaching upon the lands of the Tsarist Nation.
At the very beginning, the two sides had originally been one country. The Tsarist Nation had once been extremely glorious, being the first on the continent to achieve a quasi-empire where the royal family concentrated the vast majority of national power.
It was only when internal strife among the princes plunged it into chaos and weakness that the state religion, the Church of the Goddess of Light, suddenly betrayed it, seceded with territory, and shattered the Tsarist Nation’s imperial dream.
From then on, the two sides fell into a prolonged tug-of-war.
If Mitia, who had thoroughly read continental history, were to evaluate it—
It was a war where the grassroots soldiers on both sides could not even eat their fill, one side driven by violence, the other relying on spiritual victory, beating each other like elementary school students.
However, as time passed, in this competition of who was worse, the Tsar proved to be even worse. In naval warfare, the Tsarist Nation suffered a crushing defeat, and in a single battle forged the fearsome reputation of the Church’s Invincible Fleet.
It completely lost its trump card to continue fighting Dmitria, and more and more land fell.
Then, as if a golden pie fell from the sky, only a few years later, the Seris Federation Navy sent the Church’s main fleet to the seabed, instantly slowing the Tsarist Nation’s collapse.
Now, the two sides had entered a period of relatively peaceful confrontation.
And John Rawls’s objective was to use those undeveloped lands won by Dmitria in its war against the Tsarist Nation as the medium for issuing currency.
Recently, John Rawls had already submitted his bill to the King’s Council. Using the future revenues of four colonial states along the line from Wokinsk to Pemeh as expectations, the Kingdom, the Church, John Rawls, and the noble groups would jointly invest to establish an entirely new company.
【Wokingmeh Company】
By monopolizing the vast future trade and natural resources of the four colonies to form a new currency-backing pool, Dmitria would become the largest commercial empire on the magical continent—in John Rawls’s hands!
To this end, John Rawls even promised that as long as the corporate consortium could be successfully established, he would take a portion of the profits generated by the company to help the Kingdom repay foreign debts and purchase new weaponry.
This would continue to expand the war against the Tsarist Nation in exchange for more national interests, while also encouraging merchants within the Kingdom to lend money to the state in return for trade privileges in the four colonies and any newly conquered colonies thereafter!
Was the future John Rawls painted feasible? Yes! And the probability of success was not low.
For these newly occupied regions, the Church needed population and believers; the Kingdom needed tax revenue; the Wokingmeh Consortium needed expected future profits.
It was equivalent to allowing the Kingdom to gain more income in addition to extra taxes, while other small and medium nobles who could not get a share before now had a chance to get on board.
Moreover, as nobles who were also merchants, they needed places for cheap raw materials and for dumping industrial goods they could not sell to the Seris Alliance. These newly occupied colonies were undoubtedly an extremely suitable choice.
The obstruction to progress was not because John Rawls’s idea was bad, but because—why should they bring him along? If there was money to be made, would it not be better to earn it themselves?
Who cared who came up with the idea? That was unimportant. Whose fist was bigger—that was what mattered.
At the subsequent King’s Council meeting, John Rawls suddenly proposed the concept of a stock trading system.
He proposed pooling the funds of the Kingdom’s populace to re-equip the Church’s forces on a mass scale, seize more colonies, and obtain broader markets for dumping products.
More public investment, stronger Church forces—a positive cycle. If operated well, in theory the Kingdom and the Church could obtain vast territories and battle-hardened soldiers without spending a single coin.
And this point was precisely why John Rawls was confident he could definitely get on board. Apart from him, no one understood how to make this logic run. Moreover, he currently controlled Seris’s trade channels; they could not bypass him.
Why could they not bypass him? Because unlike other church merchants, he could often smuggle into the Church State products banned by the Alliance for countries outside the Kingdom of Suria.
Such as cost-effective medium mortars, bolt-action metal-cartridge rifles, and even horse-drawn field guns. If the money was sufficient, John Rawls could even get them tanks.
Otherwise, why would both the Church and the Kingdom be so frightened that they planted spies around him?
The current relationship between the Church and the Alliance was extremely delicate. Everyone knew a war between the two was inevitable, but no one knew exactly when it would break out. Privately, however, trade between the two sides had always been smooth.
The Alliance did not care whether there was a war or not, while the Church was simply because it had no money…
A massive fleet needed rebuilding—money. Fallen soldiers needed compensation—money. Retraining the navy—money. New equipment—money.
Moreover, due to the collateral impact of the total annihilation of the Invincible Fleet, the Tsarist Nation had recently begun to stir again. According to intelligence, it had conducted several major deals with the Empire, purchasing a considerable amount of mechanical body equipment.
Restarting the war required money. Not fighting was also impossible, because the other side was attacking them. There was not a single coin that could be saved. If the Tsar of Roshek bit down and refused to let go, things would become interesting.
It was possible that within ten years the Church would have no ability to launch another transcontinental expedition against the Alliance. They might be willing to accept that, but the Goddess of Light would probably bind them to the stake and burn them for fun.
And John Rawls’s concept was undoubtedly an entirely new path. If handled well, after defeating the Tsarist Nation, Dmitria’s military strength would basically be restored to its peak.
At the same time, surrounding threats would be eliminated, allowing them to turn their guns and focus on contending with the Alliance, rather than being constrained on both sides as they were now.
In the end, John Rawls continuously spent money bribing Farhad Francis. With the backing of the Grand Duke, the King’s Council passed a series of John Rawls’s proposals.
They agreed to jointly establish the Wokingmeh Consortium. The Kingdom, through minting rights, and the Church, using already occupied colonies as shares, would occupy the positions of the two major shareholders.
The Kingdom’s noble merchants provided the Kingdom with high-interest-free loans in exchange for trade privileges in the four states and future new colonies. John Rawls merged his companies trading with the Alliance into the new Wokingmeh Company in exchange for the third shareholder’s stake.
The four parties jointly invested and held shares, forming the first super-giant enterprise in the history of the magical continent to simultaneously control Kingdom minting rights, trade privileges, and Church military forces.
At the same time, the continent’s first stock exchange was also established in the Church’s royal capital. For now, however, only the shares of the Wokingmeh enterprise were being sold.
Many people merely watched. Hardly anyone actually bought. Frankly speaking, ninety-nine percent of Dmitria’s people had never been to those lands they had occupied. Only a fool would believe John Rawls’s grand talk.
Moreover, the Wokingmeh enterprise also bore a burden like a ticking time bomb—that John Rawls had promised the Kingdom he could solve employment for twenty thousand people.
Twenty thousand people? On what basis did this newly ennobled count dare to boast like that?