Birth Of The Crafts-God

Back to the present...

Emery wasn't the only one who discovered that the Silverine Factory had just partnered with the Seven Stars Springs Dealership. Because the news was released via official sources, practically everyone in the industry was aware of this development.

This information was drastic and for a moment, the stock market began to panic.

The insiders who knew about the secret battle between the coalition and the Dawn-Spring Arrow Company began to consider the situation carefully. Some of them even began selling off their shares in the Versailles Group and the Prestige Star Ltd, both of which were companies directly affected by this development. Even though nothing else had been announced, they could sense that something was brewing with this announcement.

When other traders noticed this strange occurrence, it triggered off a wave of panic selling, leading to the two companies stock prices declining sharply.

The Oder family's Prestige Star Ltd still had it better as it was a weapon-type vestige company, so not many people believed it would be drastically affected by this development. However, it was worse for the Versailles Group, which was the most concerned company related to this news. Even the Novanio Tech company wasn't spared either.

The reason for this seemingly unwise decision to sell off the shares of the two companies was simply because of what the Seven Stars Springs Dealership signified. This was a dealership almost wholly owned by another entity, the Seven Sparks Forge store.

It had only been less than four months ago when the Seven Sparks Forge store was at its heyday. Back then, it supported a dealership founded by the Novanio Tech —the Legacy Crafts dealership.

Apart from supplying the Legacy Crafts dealership with weapon-type vestiges, the Seven Sparks Forge store had also produced modified versions of Novanio Tech's flagship stellar processor, the Orion Core. These modified versions had a 38% increase in performance, which stunned the market and broke benchmark records. Many wanted to get their hands on the modified processors, but due to an exclusivity clause, these chips could only be sold to the Legacy Crafts dealership.

The Legacy Crafts dealership utilised this advantage in monopoly and produced a series of communicators alongside the Seven Sparks Forge. Even though they were less than one hundred of these devices, they were entirely sold out as soon as they were released, with some having been pre-ordered behind closed doors.

The upgraded Orion Cores, which became known as SS chips, had stunned the stellar processor industry. As stellar processors, their usage wasn't just limited to computers or communicators, but even weapon-type vestiges.

For instance, another product of the Seven Sparks Forge launched by the Legacy Crafts dealership was a vestige called the Adjudicator. It was shaped like a minigun except slightly bigger and much heavier. However, its firepower was incredible. The Adjudicator relied on the SS chip for improved accuracy, heat-tracking capabilities, and Artificial Intelligence auto-shooting.

The second and main vestige that used this processor was the wrist-type communicator vestige, the Claudia 9; and it came in three models.

Even after the fall of the Seven Sparks Forge months ago, the SS chip was still an unbeatable product. The Novanio Tech had even relied on the popularity and fame of these chips to steal some shares of the market away from the Silverine Factory and the Versailles Group. And all of this was thanks to less than a month of the SS chips being in existence.

Now that the Seven Sparks Forge had revived, many people were looking forward to the SS chips version 2. It was only natural that this announcement scared shareholders of the Versailles Group and Novanio Tech. After all, the records of the SS chips version 1 were still unbeaten. If a version 2 came out, would there still be any space left for competitors?

And unlike before, it seemed like the Seven Sparks Forge would remain for a long time, so one could imagine how much damage would be caused in the stellar processor industry.

"What is he thinking?" Emery frowned as he sweated bullets while reading the announcement.

In fact, he wasn't the only one that had such a reaction and was boggled by the current scenario.

The revival of the SS chips was something that everyone had expected, but how it played out had surprised a lot of people.

Some had speculated that, in order to reach the performance levels of the SS chip version 1, the Seven Sparks Forge would partner up with the Versailles Group to gain access to their flagship stellar processors. Only the Versailles Group's KY chip could compete with the Novanio Tech's Orion Core. If the Seven Sparks Forge was to use the KY chip as the base material for upgrade, the Forge would be able to produce a new series of SS chips that could surpass the version 1.

Even in the worst case scenario, many had presumed that the Seven Sparks Forge store would mend their relationship with the Novanio Tech company with the help of the Mertens family. After all, the two sides had once allied before and were familiar with each others technology (in the eyes of the public). Also, in the business world, there were no permanent enemies and only interests.

Few might have considered the Silverine Factory as an option to work with, but that was only those who didn't know much about the industry. They were also those who understood a bit about Lucas' personality and knew that the Versailles Group was part of the coalition. But this category of people were in the utter minority.

The majority were still of the opinion that, even if Lucas still held a negative opinion of Novanio Tech, he would still partner up with the Versailles Group; it couldn't have been more obvious in their opinion. In fact, many of them had even rushed to buy Versailles Group's stock in anticipation of the rise, and this trend had led to an upward growth of the company's value and share price.

However, reality proved them wrong. The Seven Sparks Forge had instead partnered up with the unlikeliest of all options, the Silverine Factory.

The combined effect of the massive dump of shares as well as the negative speculation of the company's future resulted in the Versailles Group's stock price dropping down rapidly. Within a few hours, it was already below its value from four months ago, which was when the first SS chips were launched.

Those who were late to sell began cursing their luck. Some of them cursed the company while others sent their anger towards the Seven Sparks Forge.

Why couldn't the store just go with the flow and do as everyone had expected?

Regardless, Lucas wasn't concerned by any of this. Even if he knew of their sentiments, he wouldn't hesitate to do the same if he went back in time.

On Kikao, Baylands city-state's largest social media network, many discussions had propped up about the announcement.

In the current era, vestiges were an important piece of technology that affected everyone's lives directly or indirectly. Since the recent announcement was related to a general-purpose type of vestige, it wasn't strange that it got the majority of the public talking.

"Ahh. Damn it. I lost everything. My portfolio is down by 56%! Guys, that was my school fees. Give it back to me (⁠ノ⁠｀⁠Д⁠´⁠)⁠ノ⁠彡⁠┻⁠━⁠┻ "

"All hail the Seven Sparks Forge. Just when everyone thought they could predict their movements, the Forge stuns us all ＼⁠(⁠°⁠o⁠°⁠)⁠／"

"Upstairs, take care not to make me more pissed than I am already."

"Lmao. You fell for the tricks of those capitalist scum and now you're whining. Cry louder."

"Here we go again with the economic debates..."

"Why is someone still in highschool playing around on the stock market??"

"Ahh. My money. That was my boss' money!"

"So is it your money or you boss' money? ( ⊙⁠.⁠☉ )"

Various conversations filled Kikao but it was roughly divided into three; those who lost money, those who mocked the losers, and those who were there for fun or to spectate.

"So much drama over a mere announcement." Lucas disapproved of the entire situation as he turned off his communicator.

"What do you know? A mere announcement? You literally just turned the entire market upside down!" Vergil stared at Lucas with wide eyes, stunned as to how the latter could remain calm.

"And how is that my fault exactly? I simply picked the choice I felt best with." Lucas shrugged.

It was true that he didn't think much of his decision. When it came to battle instinct, material science, vestige-smithing and even engineering, Lucas was basically a one-of-a-kind genius. It would be next to impossible to find someone else as good or as adept as he was. However, the same couldn't be said about his experience in finance and business, although he was familiar with some of the terms.

This was kind of contradictory especially since in his first life, Lucas ran a small business. However, that 'business' of his was basically Lucas living a nomadic life and taking orders he was interested in; his focus wasn't on earning money but improving his skill. As he got better at creating magic weapons, the value of the items naturally rose and Lucas made more money. Hence, it wasn't wrong to say that his business management intelligence probably wasn't any better than a highschool student.

Nonetheless, the current situation still favoured Lucas. After all, his plan was to ruin all those who stood in his path, and the Versailles Group had done the same.

A short while later, a knock was heard from the door.