City of Desire [Kingdom Building]

Chapter 43: Negotiations

“Your Deathless,” said the man and kneeled in front of the huge bone throne in a giant silent hall cloaked in twilight.
 
“Hezar,” said the pale man on the bone throne languidly, but his words held a power that no one could resist.
 
“How is the progress in Dekas?” asked the pale man sitting on the bone throne; he is unmoving, like a dead person; the only part of his moving is his mouth.
 
“We are moving steadily, faster than we had thought we would,” 
 
“We will have Dekas in your death domain within six months, as you had desired,” he replied, and the pale man nodded slightly.
 
There was a deathly silence for more than a minute before a faint smile appeared on the pale man's face.
 
“Our small surprise had reached the boundary of the Namdar,” said the pale man on the throne before looking at the kneeling man below.
 
“You still do not approve of this little surprise of mine?” asked the man on the throne with a smile. 
 
“I think it is too risky, your deathless. We shouldn’t antagonize empire and Helen Salazar yet, at least till the Emperor of Harsoth is dead,” replied Hezar.
 
The emperor may be in his last years, but he is still a very powerful man; the power of the whole empire lies in his hand, against even they couldn’t compete.
 
At least not yet.
 
“The empire is not strong as it was a few decades ago, and besides, what can Helen Salazar do? We are not Yressor, where she will bring down her storms,” he said with a smile; Hezar, too, couldn’t help but smile.
 
“You are right, your deathless,” agreed Hezar, knowing too well that if she dared to come to Mayhurst Island, then not even her body would leave its shores.
 
“The Emperor of Harsoth is dying; he is now more concerned about preserving his legacy than fending off enemies,” 
 
“He will not do anything, and whatever he does, it will be purely symbolic, which will be easily able to handle,” said the pale with a grinning smile. 
 
“Your deathless is wise,” said Hezar and bowed deeper.
 
…
 
“I hope everything goes well,” said Santos with a slightly nervous smile as he got out of the carriage.
 
Locke, I, and others followed behind him.
 
The lawyers have already gotten out of their carriage and now staring at the merchant guild with awe; it is really awe-worthy. 
 
A twenty-five-story building, which is quite rare in this world, and not became they can’t build it. 
 
They could do it easily, but it is even easier to shoot it down with a single spell.
 
This is why most sky-scrappers in these worlds are built in well-protected cities, and true skyscrapers, which could go a hundred stories tall, are usually the mage towers.
 
Storm watch, the mage tower of Grand Mage Salazar, is over a hundred stories tall. 
 
“Let's go,” said John Santos, and we entered inside the building; while Lawyers may be awed, merchants are not. 
 
They are from the big mercantile houses; they have seen these kinds of buildings since before they could walk, and their families owned even taller buildings than this.
 
We walked through the huge door and entered the grand lobby; thousands of people could be seen going around their business.
 
It is huge, and there is a freaking flying waterfall here; the water does not touch the ground at all. 
 
Instead, it flew around the lobby, giving the whole lobby a calming presence and showing off the power of merchants.
 
Creating something like that is not easy; one needs at least level 35 or even Level 40 Mage or enchanter to do it.
 
“John Santos from Greltheaven Merchant Guild,” he said to the receptionist while flashing a golden merchant badge.
 
In our delegation, only three people have this badge, John Santos, Locke, and me, only important people of mercantile houses have this, and they are taken away if we do perform by the standards.
 
“Yes, sir, your meeting will be held in the seventeenth-floor conference room,” she said, and a man in his thirties sitting behind got up and appeared in front of us.
 
“Please,” he said politely and took us toward the elevator, whose magical screen disappeared as we appeared in front of it, and we stepped inside on the disk.
 
The disk is big enough to bear us all without feeling congested.
 
Ting!
 
As all of us stepped inside, the energy screen surrounded us and began to float up. 
 
It was quite fast; in less than ten seconds, the disk stopped, and the door of the elevators opened with the ting.
 
We all stepped inside, and the man chauffeured us to the big conference room, which was empty.
 
“The sub-Guildmaster, Carter Adams, will see you soon,” he said and left us alone in the conference room.
 
Nobody is surprised; the powerful Guild behaves as such. If we had been a powerful city, they would have been waiting for us. 
 
It is the reason why the negotiations on their side were led by a sub-Guildmaster, not even a Vice-Guildmaster. 
 
“Well, it takes me back,” said John Santos; from what I know, before coming to Greltheaven, he was in Mirstone, the capital of Randav region.
 
In the merchant guild there, he held the position of Guildmaster of the wool guild. It is a very good position, but he left it, and the reason is the same as Locke, to make something of himself.
 
Nearly all the people from the big mercantile houses have come to the Greltheaven for a similar reason.
 
We took our seats and waited. 
 
It is going to be a challenging day, even more than I had thought; the letter yesterday had messed up all the timing.
 
We have to sign all the contracts today, the general ones and also the important ones, because if not, then we will have to wait for six days.
 
I don’t know whether something important has really come up and is a strategy on their part; the big guilds are not above that.
 
It doesn’t matter; what matter is everything is going to finish today, and it might take a lot of time.
 
Click!
 
We had to wait for four minutes before the door opened, and a group of people walked inside.
 
The one leading them is a handsome man in his early forties with silvery blond hair and pale blue eyes.
 
“Gentlemen, my apologies; we were held up with something,” he said charmingly, and immediately, I felt all the irritation and the faint anger I had toward him dissipating.
 
It had alarmed me, and I immediately became cautious. This man is very dangerous; what he used were just his passive skills, but they were controlled and powerful enough to work without alerting my senses.
 
I watched him cautiously as he took a seat directly opposite John Santos, and after him sat the six people he had brought.
 
“It is fine; we weren’t waiting for long,” said Santos with a relaxed smile. 
 
“Most of you have already known me, but let me introduce myself to rest; I am Carter Adams; I will be responsible for the negotiation between our guilds,” he said, looking at us before turning to Santos.
 
“It has been a while, John,” said Carter Adams, “Yes, about one and a half years,” replied Santos, keeping a light smile on his face.
 
“Since we have only one day, let’s move quickly,” he said without changing that charming smile off his face.
 
“These are the general contracts,” said John Santos and moved the pile forward; Carter took the pile and divided the contracts between six people and himself and began to read it.
 
Fourteen minutes later, the last one of them had put down the contract and given the nod to Carter.
 
“Everything is well and good,” he said and began to stamp the contracts and sign them. 
 
A few seconds later, I felt the contract click, and a few seconds after then, another contract had been clicked, few seconds after that.
 
I have attached my skills to every contract here, it had given me quite a headache due to the scale they represent, but I bore it; even now, I am bearing it as it touched the contract.
 
This is a great opportunity to level up my lawyer skills, and I am not going to waste them for a little headache.
 
Finally, the last general contract clicked.
 
“Now that we have done with the general contract, let's move to the important ones,’ he said and took the first contract from the second pile, which had quite a lot of contracts.
 
“We will start with the consumer goods taxes,” said Carter Adams.
 
John Santos nodded and took the copy consumer goods contract; Rip and I also took ours.
 
Three of us will lead the negotiations, while others will aid us if they can think of something, but most in skill, especially reinforcing us.
 
We began a second later, and within a few seconds, I saw the power of Carter's skills, and it was so great that it slowed down my thoughts and compelled me to agree with everything he had said.
 
John Santos had good skills and high leveled, and Lawyers, including Rip, had piled up their skills to resist it, but it was still hard.
 
This is his forte, and while Rip and John Santos are good, the man in front of us is better, which is not surprising considering how powerful the guild is and how influence works much little here than in Greltheaven.
 
Namdar is a powerful city, and its warden is even more powerful, who could easily ward off the pressure from the empire and powerful mercantile houses.
 
This helps her in choosing the best people for the merchant guilds; the connections and backings are important here, but more important is the ability. 
 
Without it, she would not give you a position in the merchant guild, even if you were the son top merchant house of the empire.
 
It had actually happened; she had rejected the son of the head of the house of Bale a few years ago. It was quite a shame for the most powerful mercantile house of the empire, but they did it with a smile on their faces.
 
Even with all their wealth and connections, they could do nothing.
 
In the first minute of the negotiations, my back got drenched with the sheer pressure of skills I was resisting.
 
He made offers, and we countered; his words were held such a compulsion that we wanted to agree with everything but resisted as much as we could.
 
This is the hardest negotiation I have done in my life, and I am very grateful that I studied the contracts such vigorously that I nearly memorized them, which helped me tremendously when his skills tried to confuse me.
 
“You all lead tough negotiations, especially your young silver; you do not leave an inch,” he said as we agreed on taxes on consumer goods.
 
He signed the changed contract before sending it to us; all three of us studied it, and only then did John Santos sign, and the contract clicked.
 
“The seconds are taxes on th...” he said as he took out another contract, and we resumed the negotiations.
 
Hours passed as we negotiated one contract after another; jugs of water ahead of us emptied and filled again, but I did not feel my bladder getting filled.
 
As all the water was released through my head and back.
 
It is not just me but also John Santos and Rip; they are, too, under extreme pressure, but we are moving ahead.
 
“Next one i….” 
 
“I think we should take a break; we have been negotiating for more than five hours, and all of us are feeling a little tired and hungry,” said John Santos, cutting him off.
 
“Very well, we will take a break of an hour before resuming again,” he said with a never changing, charming smile and got up and left with his people, leaving us alone in the conference room.
 
“Bastard, he is tougher than we had thought,” cursed John Santos, though not really angry.
 
“Yes, he is tough, but we were able to sign a good number of important contracts, and it is just an afternoon,” I said with a smile.
 
All the contracts we have signed are satisfactory; if they had not, we wouldn’t have signed them.
 
Just like those two contracts, we were not able to agree on.
 
The terms are good, a little better than we had expected, which had put a smile on our faces.
 
“Remus, you are good; I truly did not think you would be this good. I am really happy you have come with us,” he said with a big smile while Rip and the others nodded.
 
“It is all thanks to you, vice-Guildmaster; you have given me ample time to study them,” I said humbly, and as I expected, his smile got even bigger.
 
“Let’s go and eat something; I don’t think Carter Adams will let us have dinner on time tonight.” He said, and all of us got up and walked out of the conference room.

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