Chapter 115: 115

The fallout was contained.

The Grand Chancellor, who had been briefed on the operation in advance, ensured that the legal proceedings moved quickly and quietly. The families’ crimes were exposed, their assets seized, their titles revoked. The death was recorded as a duel of honor—technically accurate, officially sanctioned, and diplomatically convenient.

No one asked who had provided the evidence. No one asked how a middle-tier saint had been able to bypass the defenses of a noble’s estate. No one asked because the answers were obvious, and the people who might have asked were already calculating how to position themselves for the redistribution of the fallen families’ assets.

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Maxwell’s transformation was, in the Consortium’s internal culture, a subject of considerable interest.

It had begun in the third month, when Michael had decided that a subordinate who could not defend himself was a liability. Maxwell had been, at the time, S-ranked—genuinely talented in commerce, genuinely dangerous in a narrow operational context, and genuinely unimpressive in every physical regard. The man was soft in the way that people who spent their careers behind desks tended to become soft: rounded at the edges, slow to exert himself, constitutionally opposed to anything that required sustained physical effort.

Michael had used knowledge he had—refined from Anton’s extensive repertoire—to channel his essence as a saint into stretching Maxwell’s potential thin. The potential of all parameters, when stimulated with the right resources, would have granted him sublimation to break through his previous threshold of talent—the same resources the group searched for Kai and Aaron. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

The side effects of this method were why Michael could not do the same for them.

By the fifth month, Maxwell had reached mid-stage saint. The advancement had cost him, in Michael’s assessment, approximately everything his cultivation base could give. The ceiling was now visible and fixed—no further advancement was possible, regardless of what resources were applied. Michael had pushed the man precisely to his limit and stopped there because nothing could be gained by going further. Any higher would showcase Maxwell’s inefficiency as a saint and draw too much from him. In essence, Maxwell would not be able to keep up with saints his own stage, and his lifespan would be vastly reduced. That much highlighted the gap from mid-stage saint to the higher stages. Even now, Maxwell would have issues with mid-stage saints, though he could handle early-stage saints with ease. Not that it mattered—he had been pushed to this stage not for his fighting skills, but because Michael simply could not stand to see his fat physique every day, and the figurehead of his organization could not be a weak S-rank.

What the advancement had also done, in ways that Michael found mildly interesting from a biological standpoint, was reshape Maxwell entirely. Saint-level cultivation, accelerated and intensive, had the side effect of forcing the body toward its optimal expression. The softness had gone first, burned away by the metabolic demands of rapid advancement. The weight had redistributed. The posture had changed. The man who emerged from five months of Michael’s resource allocation was, by any reasonable measure, unrecognizable as the round, sweating merchant who had signed the subordination letter.

He had, since then, been a noticeably more effective subordinate. Whether this was because of the power or the mirror, Michael had not yet determined.

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The expansion of the Consortium through months four through eight followed the logic of compounding interest—each acquisition made the next one easier, and each new ally made the ones after that more likely.

The two noble houses that had attempted to undermine the Consortium in its early months found themselves, by month five, formally integrated into it. The integration was not hostile, exactly. It was simply that by the time Michael presented the terms, the alternative to accepting them had become considerably less attractive than it had been when they first started making trouble.

A regional trading company in the empire’s northern provinces, which controlled the majority of the cold-weather goods market, was acquired in month six through a combination of a generous purchase offer and the quiet communication that declining the offer would result in the company’s primary banking relationship being reviewed. The company’s owner accepted the offer and retained a senior advisory position that paid well and required very little.

A shipping consortium operating along the empire’s eastern river network came next. Then a guild specializing in the authentication and appraisal of magical artifacts. Then a firm that had been, before Michael’s arrival, the primary competition to Maxwell’s original operation.

Each acquisition was documented, filed with the appropriate imperial commercial authorities, and integrated into the Consortium’s operational structure within thirty days. Michael had, by month seven, established a reputation in the empire’s commercial circles that could be summarized as follows: he moved quickly, he paid fairly, he did not negotiate twice, and the people who had tried to fight him were no longer doing well.

The reputation was more useful than any single acquisition.

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The saint hiring continued in parallel.

By month eight, the Consortium’s protection arm had expanded to seven saints. Beyond Reyes, Sola, and Edran, Michael had added four more—two early-stage, one mid-stage, and one who occupied the particular category of saints who were technically early-stage but had been early-stage for so long that they had compressed their cultivation into something that performed above the tier’s normal ceiling.

The last one’s name was Petra. She had the posture of someone who had decided long ago that posture was optional, and she had a habit of falling asleep during briefings. She was also, in Michael’s assessment, the most dangerous person in the room in approximately seventy percent of situations, because she had been doing this for years and had no remaining patience for people who thought experience was less valuable than rank.

She had agreed to join because Michael had offered her a salary that covered her retirement plans and because, as she had explained during the hiring conversation, she found young people with excessive ambition entertaining to observe.

"You’re excessively ambitious," she had told Michael.

"Yes," he had agreed.

"I’ll take the job."

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The issue of Michael’s trial—ranking in the top ten merchants list—had been successful in the third month after the reunion.

The rankings were a section of the front page of the daily newsletter available to everyone who could afford it.

Contrary to how the group had thought the update in the rankings would be shown, it was simply displayed in a newsletter. There was no fanfare following the change. The only ones who reacted to the changes were merchants—either displaced merchants, merchants who had intentions to enter the rankings, and normal merchants—nobles, aristocrats, and normal civilians who placed importance in the empire’s newsletter.

Michael had been clearing his schedule for the quarterly reunion the next day when Maxwell came into his office, holding a newsletter.

A newsletter that, in any society where social stratification exists, offered different privileges and services to the common man, thereby enforcing the gains of one’s attained social class.

It was a newsletter very different from the one normal civilians got access to—a premium newsletter, with detailed and otherwise confidential information.

This newsletter held mini-biographies of the merchant organizations in the top ten list. It also highlighted the internal displacement between organizations that were on the list beforehand.

It showed that the top three merchant organizations had not changed places in years.

Going down the list, Michael saw that previous members had moved up places as an organization in the top ten had disappeared from the face of the empire. One such organization was that of Gerard Fitch.

These displacements placed the Meridian Consortium at seventh place—higher than where Maxwell’s organization had ever peaked.

Maxwell, who had yet to be tempered—physically and mentally—by Michael, had dropped the newsletter and stood by while Michael read it.

Once Michael had read it, he offered Maxwell a smile as he simply gave the command for operations he had held off until the ranking update to begin.

The result of the ranking change was that Michael had an easier time planning Edran’s revenge, absorbing merchant organizations, and even getting the Grand Chancellor to allow the Edran incident to pass.

The Grand Chancellor, as he had told Michael, appreciated the disposal of the rats he would have otherwise disposed of soon enough. He was glad that a saint had regained his motivation now that the war was at hand.

He had warned Michael and his organization not to make a habit of displacing nobles. Even if he—the Grand Chancellor—did not like the rats, they held some importance to the empire.

The meeting was conducted via letters from the Grand Chancellor. No matter how much Michael had grown, he had not grown enough to meet physically with the Grand Chancellor.

A figure whom those in the inner circle knew held imperial law in his hands.

He was said to be the most trusted friend of the Emperor.

Even more than the Emperor’s wives.

That information, added to what Michael had gathered about the Emperor, said a lot—the Emperor loved his wives.

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Michael’s little connection to the Grand Chancellor and his position as seventh in the merchant rankings had graced him with an invitation to the annual assessment of Asterea Academy.

Yet again, it was Maxwell who had brought the letter to him. This time, the plump, round-bellied merchant who had first interviewed Michael now stood at the center of Michael’s office, his frame lean and corded with new muscle.

The assessment was the examination of the students of Asterea Academy, mostly the first-year students. They were assessed on everything they had been taught that year—like normal academic evaluations, but with a ranking system from F to SSS.

Michael, after reading the letter, remembered that the trio and Zeke’s trial involved this assessment.

The assessment was next week.

Michael made sure Maxwell cleared his schedule. He was definitely attending the event.