Re: Tales of the Rune-Tech Sage Chapter 915: Diversification Contingency II

CH915 Diversification Contingency II

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"You didn’t do anything too underhanded, did you?" Alex raised an eyebrow.

"Nothing too much. Reveal rival secrets here, take advantage of prior knowledge of a change in government policy there, use acquired information to convince, leverage or blackmail on the side, and so on..." Alpha shrugged lightly.

"However Intel can be used, I probably used it," she admitted.

"Be careful. Don’t overdo it. I don’t want my organisation to become tainted with bad Providence," Alex said.

"Don’t worry, Master. Anyone we used underhanded tactics with was not innocent," Alpha replied.

"I will take your word for it." Alex nodded.

"Anything else to report?" he asked Haggleworth.

Haggleworth tapped on the magic table.

"As you instructed, I took the liquid funds in your name and used them to create the ’shell’ and ’sleeper’ companies you wanted.

"My team and I have currently created thousands of shell companies that exist solely in documents and are meant solely to move funds around while obfuscating their origin. We also have tens of sleeper companies that exist physically but merely operate above the bar with nothing special about them. Only when you need them will their true value be revealed," Haggleworth reported.

Looking at the complex cluster of title deeds and company permits, Alex couldn’t help but smile.

Having a network of shell companies to veil the flow of funds was standard practice amongst multinational companies like the one he worked for in his past life. And this was in a society where trade was done electronically, making hiding or laundering money difficult.

In a society like Pangea’s, where most trades were done physically and could only be tracked through written ledgers and physical receipts, the network of shell companies managed with Orion—an AI—at its core was overkill.

However, Alex didn’t want to take any chances.

’There is a cloud of conflict hanging over the Fury Lands, the Virellian Empire and the greater Arun Continent as a whole.

’This network of companies will help further obfuscate my assets whenever I need it.’

’As conflict intensifies, the greed of the higher nobility will only continue to grow. They will want to stretch their hands into where they don’t belong. Unless I want to engage in all these conflicts, my best choice is to hide the true extent of my wealth from everyone, even in the event that my true identities are made known,’ Alex mused to himself.

Alex thought through his worst-case scenarios. One of them was the attempted takeover of his holdings while he was away.

His holdings were too concentrated within the Golden Palace. While the Dragonslayer’s infamy kept most enemies at bay currently, such external strength must not be relied upon in perpetuity.

The Golden Palace was one of, if not the, hottest cakes on the continent. Many people surely salivated at the riches it controlled.

Alex couldn’t guarantee that a committed enemy couldn’t take control of the company from him. So, diversifying his wealth away from it was of utmost importance.

As long as his wealth was outside the Palace, even if some enemy managed to take control of it, it would be useless to them.

After all, the Golden Palace only functioned because he—who controlled the Rune-Tech platform—allowed its products to function.

It took no more than a thought now to take back what he had given.

Essentially, the Golden Palace was nothing more than a support group established to aid the proliferation of his Rune-Tech products within Pangea.

If the Palace was taken, he could easily establish another similar organisation at any time later, as long as he retained control of his funds.

The only pity in such a scenario would be the talent he would potentially lose.

’Then again, that’s what Cradle and Echelon are for,’ Alex thought to himself.

"Continuing with your instructions, we have discreetly acquired various diverse companies, from mining to tourism, across the continent—most of them with what remained of your personal funds. We covered the rest with disposable funds left over from the company’s black accounts," Haggleworth continued.

"We are also in talks to acquire Class 1–3 Planes with suitable time dilation, open for trade on the market," he added.

No one in the room had any hope that Planes open for trade still had any significant material resource value that could be exploited. However, Planes remained valuable in and of themselves, so they were always sought after.

For example, with the right time dilation, such Planes could become excellent locations to set up a school or training barracks. Even if the time dilation made them unsuitable as the primary location for a campus, they could become periodic training locations for students or soldiers, acclimatising them to various environmental conditions and plausible scenarios.

Another potential use was as resource-production or workshop locations. Taking advantage of the time dilation between Planes, needed constructs such as weapons, refined raw-material products and finished goods could be produced on the Plane before being shipped wherever needed on Pangea.

There was even more exotic value that could be derived from such a Plane. For example, in the archives of the different royal families, there were records of some researchers experimenting to see the reaction of the Natural Order of Planes under different scenarios.

Most of these experiments were relatively tame, but there were madmen who tested the reaction of the Natural Order in extreme scenarios.

These include— if the dominant intelligent species was killed, if all the denizens of the Plane were wiped out, if the terrain of the Plane was rapidly transformed—such as testing its reaction to destructive terraforming—and many other hellish experiments.

There was even a Legend who destroyed a Class 1 Plane in order to absorb the Providence and Cosmic Energy released by the event.

There was rarely ever a useless Plane. As long as it landed in the hands of the right ’owner’, any Plane could prove useful—most times in more than one way.

Haggleworth rolled out the other plans achieved during the time Alex was away on Verdantis.

When viewed from a holistic point of view, it became clear that the main goal of many of these plans was to diversify and obfuscate Alex’s holdings as much as possible.

’I might have little knowledge of financial institutions, but what I know should allow me to hold my own in this world,’ Alex thought to himself.

Then he turned to Alpha for Dark Water’s update.

If his planned contingency for Haggleworth had him help Alex diversify his holdings, Alpha’s focus was on covertly expanding his military and intelligence superiority and the means to project them whenever needed.

***