Civilization Chronicles: Rise of the Divine Creator

”Haaa...” Celestina sighed in exasperation before meeting eyes with the young woman, ”Allow me to also apologize for my Disciple’s... overzealous behaviour, but, just as you said, I’m afraid you no longer have a choice in this matter, Lady Moore.”

Shaking her head, Victoria glanced up at the ceiling and muttered, ”No, this isn’t anyone’s fault but mine. I got greedy and tried to have everything instead of settling for just what I needed.”

Lucas, who was now nursing a bump on his head, chose to remain silent. Although Victoria was saying she was at fault, he wasn’t blameless in all of this either.

If it had been before Lucas proposed the Viscount step down and work for him, there might still have been some room to maneuver, like forging an alliance of sorts, one based on enough mutual benefits to ensure neither side betrayed the other.

After Lucas had blurted out so many of his secret plans, however, that kind of amicable agreement was no longer an option.

Victoria now knew too much information for an outsider, so the only solution was for her to completely join their side. That was the only way both Lucas and Celestina would feel at ease.

It wasn’t fair to her, even if Victoria had been the first one to set foot on this path, but life wasn’t fair to begin with. When there was a conflict of interests, the side with the stronger hand almost always won out, and in this case, that side was Lucas’.

*Slap!*

”Huh?” ”Wha?”

Seeing the young woman give herself a hard slap on her cheeks, Lucas, Celestina, and Allina were all taken aback, wondering just what Victoria was thinking, but before they could ask, the Viscount declared, ”Since that’s the case, I can only try to make the best of it.”

Turning to Lucas, Victoria stared at him hard and asked, ”What kind of compensation can I expect from you?”

”Compensation?” Lucas tilted his head, still reeling from confusion.

”You’re not planning on making me work for you for free, right?” Frowning ever so slightly, Victoria questioned pointedly, ”I think it’s only fair that I be paid the equivalent of what my efforts are worth, don’t you?”

”Oh! Right, of course I won’t make you work for free,” Lucas suddenly understood.

Despite what she had said just now about falling into this mess because of her own greed, Victoria seemed to still want to bargain for more benefits. Truly, she was a woman who refused to suffer a loss.

While others might be concerned about having such a clever and ambitious subordinate, Lucas felt differently. As long as he could provide Victoria with enough incentives, he imagined she would work tirelessly to support him.

And, with his inherited memories, if there was one thing Lucas was confident about, it was his ability to ’innovate’ and earn money.

Thinking so, Lucas made an initial offer, ”How does 100 Gold Coins per month, plus 5% of the shares of any company, business, or industry you help me set up and manage sound?”

The first part of Lucas’ proposal didn’t pique Victoria’s interest at all. 100 Gold coins was no small sum, but to a Viscount, it was pocket-change.

If she wasn’t taking care of the Moore Family and only had to worry about her personal expenses, a salary of 100 Gold per month would be more than enough for Victoria to live a lavish life.

If she wanted to advance her cultivation and reach the Spirit Realms, however, that wasn’t going to be nearly enough.

Cultivation swallowed an enormous amount of time and resources, and the faster and higher you wanted to cultivate, the more money you needed to.

In other words, 100 Gold per month wasn’t enough to motivate Victoria to put forward her best effort, much less inspire any kind of loyalty towards Lucas.

The second part of Lucas’ proposal, on the other hand, caught Victoria’s attention as she asked with some confusion, ”What exactly do you mean by ’5% of the shares’?”

”Ah,” realizing he had once again used a ’common sense’ approach from the other universe, which unfortunately had no equivalent in the Rockwell Kingdom, Lucas hurriedly explained, ”Imagine that a business, and all its assets, are divided up into 100 ’shares’, in that case, owning 1 share of the business is the equivalent of owning 1% of the business.”

Thinking it over for a moment, Victoria asked, ”So, I’d own 5% of the businesses I manage for you?”

”It’s a bit more complicated than that, but essentially, yes,” Lucas nodded.

Seeing his potential future employee frowning deeply in thought, Lucas worried that Victoria might be unsatisfied with just the 5% he was offering, but having learned his lesson repeatedly in this brief encounter, he kept his mouth shut and waited for the other side to speak up first.

Besides, in his opinion, 5% was extremely generous, so he wasn’t prepared to up his offer any further.

For her part, Victoria was trying to wrap her head around this new concept of business shares, and also trying to calculate how much this 5% Lucas was offering her was actually worth.

Most of the plans and proposals Lucas had mentioned were too foreign to Victoria for her to make much sense of right now, so she fell back on the most familiar example to use for her estimates, 10 million Gold worth of sugar is legally imported to the Redwood Kingdom each year, if I help this boy completely take over that market, and he compensates me with 5% of that...

Needless to say, it didn’t take long for Victoria to realize that while 5% ownership of Lucas’ future businesses didn’t sound like much, if she played her cards right, it would actually be an astronomical amount of money!

After all, 5% of 10 million Gold was 500,000 Gold!

And that was for just 1 year!

Now, Victoria knew that it wouldn’t be that straightforward. As the head of a noble family that primarily made money through commerce, she understood that the final sale price wasn’t the same as the profit one earned.

She also quickly realized that owning 5% of a company wasn’t the same as having that much money in her pocket to spend.

If she ’sold’ her shares to gain that Gold, she would lose them and no longer be able to benefit from them in the future.

It was like Lucas was giving her an orchard of 100 fruit trees to manage, where she owned 5 of those trees. If she held onto her trees, she would be able to collect fruit from them each year. A yearly harvest of fruit might not be worth nearly as much as the tree itself, but over 10 years, 20 years, 100 years...

This whole concept of shares fascinated Victoria, and it once again gave her a peek into just how deep and profound the knowledge buried in Lucas’ head was.

From the way he casually mentioned giving her shares in his businesses, it was apparent he didn’t think he was doing anything special, yet to her, it was a revolutionary idea. If this was what counted as ordinary to Lucas, Victoria could only imagine what something extraordinary might be.

All of a sudden, working for this boy didn’t seem like such a big loss to her after all.

Feeling she probably wouldn’t get a better offer than this, and having just been burned for trying to snatch too much, Victoria swiftly nodded, ”Good. I agree to your terms.”

Still, wanting to leave herself a way out, she quickly added, ”For now, at least.”

”Of course, of course. As long as you continue working hard for me, I won’t mistreat you and there will be plenty of opportunities for you to benefit,” secretly breathing a sigh of relief, Lucas commented casually, ”Like when you break through to the Spirit Initiate Realm, we can switch how you get paid from Gold Coins to Spirit Crystals instead.”

”Heh,” Victoria snickered lightly, ”You make it sound like it’s guaranteed I’ll reach the Spirit Realm in my lifetime.”

”Prove your worth, and your loyalty, and within 20 years I promise you you’ll be a Spirit Initiate,” Celestina declared from the side.

”Wha...” Victoria froze, her pupils dilating sharply when she heard this.

If the prospect of great wealth had been enough to get Victoria interested, the promise of breaking through to the Spirit Initiate Realm totally captured her heart; and why wouldn’t it?

Honestly, Victoria had been planning on spending most of the money she earned on her cultivation anyways, all in the hopes of reaching the Spirit Initiate Realm within the next 60 years, before she became too old and frail to continue advancing.

Out of over 6 million people in the Rockwell Kingdom, only around 1,000 of them had reached the Grand Spirit Realm.

Incredible personal strength, wide-ranging respect, universally accepted influence, a multi-century lifespan, all these things would be Victoria’s if she could break through to the Spirit Initiate Realm.

Even if she was no longer a Viscount, or even a member of a noble house, no one in the kingdom below the Spirit Realms would dare to slight her!

What’s more, this promise was made to her by none other than Celestina Balfour, a woman whose word could move the very kingdom they lived in.

Despite knowing that, though, the young woman couldn’t help asking, ”A-Are you serious, Lady Balfour? Even with my modest Innate Talent, can you really promise me I will break through to the Spirit Initiate Realm so rapidly?”

”If this had been 2 months ago, I wouldn’t have been able to make any guarantees,” figuring this was the best chance to secure this young woman’s complete loyalty for her Disciple, Celestina met eyes with Victoria and stated unequivocally, ”However, with the help of what Lucas’ knows, forget about the Spirit Initiate Realm, as long as you’re determined enough, even the Spirit Adept Realm won’t be beyond your reach.”