Durandal stared at the A4 paper she'd pushed across the desk toward Mobius.
Aside from the bold header—"Trade Manifest"—the page was a complete blank.
Mobius's lips twitched. Well, well, she thought, this girl doesn't play around. Mobius had only been after Honkai Beast genes, but Durandal was looking to uproot Fire Moth's entire foundation.
Still, Mobius wasn't one to show mercy to her old employer.
There were plenty of things back there that she could use freely when she was with Fire Moth, but since moving to Schicksal, she hadn't even been able to find a vendor for them.
There were even some secrets that not even she, a founding member of Fire Moth, could touch.
Now that the opportunity was staring her in the face, why wouldn't Mobius fleece this fat sheep for all it was worth?
Most importantly, Mobius knew exactly how much weight the Honkai suppressants and vaccines carried. She understood better than anyone just how terrified of death those old fossils in the Council were.
If proof were needed, look no further than that human experimentation lab in Nagazora City that Durandal had smashed to pieces.
Now, Schicksal was offering medicine and vaccines specifically designed for Honkai sickness. Even if they only worked against low-to-mid levels of infection, they were practically a miracle cure.
After all, the average Honkai energy concentration on Earth wasn't actually that high yet. To save their own skins, those people would do anything.
"Give me another sheet of paper," Mobius said, after scribbling for a while and looking up at Durandal.
"Here."
Durandal could clearly see that Mobius hadn't even filled the first page. But if she wanted more, it was just a piece of paper; Durandal wasn't about to be stingy.
Soon, Mobius was writing feverishly on the new sheet.
Once she had finished listing her demands on both, she handed them back to Durandal.
"The items on the first page can be negotiated openly with the Fire Moth Council. As for the second page... I'll contact the right people later. You can handle those talks behind closed doors."
Durandal only needed one look at the two lists to catch her drift.
It was simple. The items on the public list weren't exactly available on the open market, but the Fire Moth Council could be persuaded to part with them if they gritted their teeth hard enough.
But the second list... to put it in terms of the world where Durandal was a college student, these were the "core technologies" of a global semiconductor alliance. They were strictly non-negotiable.
However, just because the Council as a whole wouldn't approve the trade didn't mean individual councilors wouldn't betray the organization for their own private gain.
Furthermore, Durandal planned to lay her cards on the table during the negotiations.
Himeko and Dystopia had been busy in Sapphire City and Nagazora for so long that even if they returned to Fire Moth, they'd likely be met with suspicion and sidelined.
It was better to just pack them up and bring them into Schicksal, just as they had done with Mobius.
Of course, when it came to personnel, things wouldn't be written explicitly on paper—much like when Durandal had "borrowed" Mobius to inspect the labs.
Instead, it would be settled with a casual remark in the middle of formal talks. After all, people weren't cargo. Explicitly writing down their transfer as a trade felt a bit too undignified.
Once Connie contacted Fire Moth to inform them that Schicksal had the Honkai suppressants and vaccines, Fire Moth didn't hesitate. They dispatched a floating battleship to Nagazora City immediately, arriving in less than two hours.
Watching the massive ship descend, Durandal couldn't help a twinge of envy.
Back in the day, she was the Captain of the Immortal Blades and could command a fleet at a moment's notice. Now, getting around was a chore.
Short trips were fine with a private car, but long-distance travel via commercial flights was a massive headache.
Vill-V had already put the construction of their own battleships on the schedule, but the woman only had so much energy. A project of that scale wouldn't truly get moving until the Third Honkai Eruption was dealt with.
With that in mind, Durandal didn't hold back. With a swift stroke of her pen, she added "three floating battleships" to the public negotiation list.
With the guidance of Mobius—a woman who knew where all the bodies were buried at Fire Moth—the negotiations went remarkably well.
After all, Durandal wasn't just asking for handouts. Everything was either being paid for with the value of the vaccines or through the low-interest loans Schicksal had secured from the governments of Sapphire City and Nagazora. The main goal was simply to force Fire Moth to open up its restricted inventory.
If the public talks went well, the private ones went even smoother.
Public negotiations had to be recorded, so the Fire Moth Council spent ten days haggling just to maintain their dignity. But the private deals? Those were settled over the course of a single dinner.
It was almost impressive how quickly those councilors would sell out their own organization without so much as a blink.
Thanks to the "selfless" and "unwavering support" of the Fire Moth Council and its members, Schicksal entered a period of explosive growth.
The lack of foundation that had plagued the organization since its inception was largely resolved by Fire Moth's "generosity." The rest would just have to be settled by the passage of time.
A month passed, and Mobius's lab saw one breakthrough after another. However, creating a Stigma that could surpass Durandal's own still felt like it was missing a certain spark.
When Durandal heard that Mobius had hit a bottleneck, she contacted Mei and asked her to help out in the lab.
Mei already had a complete grasp of high school curricula; she could pass the entrance exams for Nagazora's top university tomorrow if she wanted to.
It was better to let her talent shine now, helping Mobius refine the Stigma system—a field of research that, in another life, the two of them had perfected together.
With Mei on board, the research in Mobius's lab began to flow like water.
Meanwhile, Vill-V's Helix Workshop was yielding magnificent results.
New models of combat armor and weapons—and even "Urban Flight Vehicles" that hadn't existed in the original Honkai world—were being churned out.
To put it simply, these vehicles were essentially flying motorcycles. In a city where a Honkai outbreak had turned the streets into a nightmare, such a transport would be an absolute game-changer.
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T/N: If you want advance chapters, you can find it at [email protected]/AspenTL