"Ahh~ this is great". What a great feeling, I was feeling right now, paying your employees a small fortune is worth every single penny. The return on investment when you've got a team of hyper-competent, fiercely loyal people who feel genuinely valued? It's fucking magical. The progress they'd made in a single week was enough to make my head spin.
Take Saiko. Quiet, meticulous, unflappable Saiko. Her mission was to acquire a physical headquarters. A big one. My expectation was that she'd secure the abandoned mall on the outskirts of the city. You know, the one I'd pointed out. That would have been a win.
Saiko did not just secure a mall. She secured me an entire kingdom.
I was reviewing the digital deed that Sunday had forwarded to my tablet, my soda halfway to my mouth, when I literally choked. I wasn't looking at a property listing for a single structure. I was looking at a satellite map with a massive, two-kilometer red circle drawn around the damn mall.
"Sunday," I coughed, wiping soda from my chin. "Is this a mistake? This looks like… a town."
"It is not a mistake, Sir," Sunday's voice chimed through my earpiece, sounding almost proud. "Director Saiko has successfully negotiated the purchase of the former Starlight Pavilion mall and all contiguous commercial and residential properties within a two-kilometer radius. The area was formerly incorporated as the township of…"
She paused for a micro-dramatic beat.
"…Pussyville."
I stared at the screen. I read the name again.
"Hahahaha~" Then I burst out laughing, a real, from-the-gut sound that made Mom and Nadia look over from their folding.
"Pussyville?" I whispered, unable to contain my glee. "Are you serious? That's its actual, government-registered name?"
"Indeed, Sir. Municipal records indicate the name was adopted approximately fifty years ago, likely a colloquialism that stuck and was eventually made official."
I just shook my head; a stupid grin plastered on my face. Well, it is what it is. And honestly? I can't say the name doesn't have a certain… charm. A certain undeniable appeal. I'm only human.
The report detailed how she'd done it. The entire town had been written off. It was a ghost town, its soil lightly irradiated, its structures decaying. It was a blight on the city's records, scheduled for a full, state-funded demolition that kept getting pushed back due to budget cuts.
Saiko hadn't just bought a building; she'd done the city a favor. She'd gone to the main landowner for the mall first, secured that, then used it as a foothold. Then, like a legal ninja, she'd fanned out, personally visiting or contacting every single remaining property owner—a handful of stubborn holdouts and distant heirs—and made them offers they'd be insane to refuse. She'd consolidated an entire municipality for the bargain price of one hundred million dollars. The sheer audacity of it left me in awe.
But the real masterstroke was the next part. Kate and Saiko made the calculated decision to stop being stealthy. For this part of the operation, they wanted the weight of the Meteor Studio name to do the heavy lifting. The second Saiko filed the acquisition paperwork under the Meteor Studio corporate banner, magic happened.
Bank approvals that usually took weeks were stamped in hours. City planning officials suddenly found every single one of their concerns miraculously resolved.
Bids from construction and radiation mitigation firms didn't just come in; they came in low. It was like watching a supercar blow past traffic. The Meteor Studio name was a golden key that unlocked every door. The total cost for the entire package—the land, the initial cleanup, and the first phase of construction—came in at a cool, even one hundred million. Saiko was a goddamn artist.
Not to be outdone, Amanda was moving just as fast on her front. Her mission: acquire manufacturing capability. And in this economy, finding a small factory on the brink of collapse was like finding a pebble on a beach. She'd targeted two perfect candidates: a small plastic injection molding plant and a precision textile printer. Both were family-owned, both were drowning in debt, and both were desperate for a lifeline.
Amanda didn't lowball them. She offered them a fair, fast, no-hassle exit. Twenty million dollars total, and she'd even hire on their existing skeleton crews. The relief from those families was probably palpable.
The best part? The factories were almost entirely automated. The "skeleton crew" was just ten guys between them who basically oversaw the armies of robots that did the actual work.
It was no wonder small industry could rise and fall so quickly here. You could literally pack a factory into a few shipping containers. Her plan was to move both operations to our shiny new, soon-to-be-decontaminated plot of land in Pussyville. Just like that, for twenty million, we were in the physical merch game.
I was reviewing the final numbers with Kate via a holo-call when she dropped the timeline on me. "The radiation scrubbers are already on site. The initial construction bots are being deployed. With the level of automation we're using, Sunday estimates a full site transformation in two to three months. Tops."
Two to three months. From irradiated ghost town to functional corporate headquarters. The technology in this world was insane.
This also solved a personal problem. I'd been idly browsing real estate listings for a nice, spacious apartment complex to buy for us all. But why buy a building when you now own the entire town it's in? I minimized Kate's window and pulled up the satellite map of Pussyville again. My eyes drifted to the northern sector.
There it was. A mid-sized apartment complex, built in the last decade, sitting empty. I zoomed in. The specs popped up. It wasn't just apartments; it was a self-contained resort. Multiple swimming pools, tennis courts, a communal farm, even a small ranch field on the outskirts. It was perfect. It was more than perfect. It was a goddamn paradise.
"Sunday," I said, my voice full of glee. "See that complex? The North Star Residence? Draw up the papers…. Buy it. Full asking price. I don't care what it is. That's ours."
"At once, Sir."
Just like that, I had a new home. Or I would, in a few months. The sheer, ridiculous scale of it all was starting to sink in. I wasn't just building a company. I was building a sovereign nation. And I was naming it Pussyville. The thirteen-year-old otaku living in the back of my brain was giving me a standing ovation.