With that the situation better explained and Hatchet being fully confident in regaining his arm even if it may take a while for that to happen Ajax calmed down. For the rest of the evening they kept their conversations light, relaxing as they made jokes and generally enjoyed being together again after about eight years.
The sun was shining through the windows as Ajax woke up the next morning. There was something so relaxing sleeping in a place where he felt safe. After the last few months of either war camping or shady cheap travel inns it was a welcome change.
As he turned to get out of bed he noticed the empty room telling him that Alana had woken up before him and decided to let him sleep. She had apparently been in need of a relaxing night as well so they helped relax each other.
A quick wash later he went downstairs where Judy and Alana were discussing while looking over a piece of paper he judged to be a report or some sort.
“Morning.” he greeted them
He knew they were the only people here at the moment, his parents had been living with Judy while they tried to prepare a new place where they could live in the city and their father could smith again. As for Kate and Tom, the former still had some light duties to do for the Healing Union as part of the contract for being taught and the latter was doing morning classes. It was decided that he would be on the fast track after all the competency he showed in the war, some of Ajax’s achievements that had been given to him officially had helped that, but his supar education is something he needed to address on his own time leading to morning classes.
“Morning “ he got from both of them before they let him grab his own breakfast and continued discussing the report. Once he sat down they politely put it away and began munching on their own breakfast.
“I haven’t asked in all this time, but I have to admit I am curious, just how is that initial one hundred gold investment doing?” he asked what he thought was a safe question.
“Depends on what you mean by how it’s doing.” his sister answered cryptically, though the smirk let him know it wasn’t something to worry about. “If you are looking to get yourself a new set of magic gear before you register as an adventurer I have some bad news for you.”
Ajax knew better than to buy anything like that before he had any experience. It would just be throwing money at the problem by buying things that are generally good. While that would help him it was in no way required. Most adventurers got their start at level thirty with little to no gear and while he was a good way away from that level his power dwarfed anyone he had ever heard of under level thirty-five.
“Not just yet, but the size of my coin pouch in the future is something that will influence what team I join and under what conditions.” he said.
“That’s good because in terms of liquid capital we only have fifty gold. Ten of which your brother gave us as being your stipend for conscription, they trusted him enough to give it to you.” Judy said.
“Only fifty?” Ajax was skeptical, was investing with his sister not a good plan afterall?
“There are some mitigating circumstances.” Alana chose to answer, she took the lead when it came to long term and wide spread planning. “We were expecting you to be coming to collect a part of your stake more than three months ago so we made sure to have almost nine tenths of our assets in coins.”
“And then the situation suddenly changed.” It wasn't an accusation or even a retort, just an observation as Ajax put two and two together.
“More so than you think.” she continued. “This skirmish doesn’t just affect one city, it affects everything in the surrounding areas. Normal skirmishes are a pain for trading companies as they devalue everything to half or more as the laws restrict us in what we can do about it. This one was much worse than usual.”
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“How so?” He was genuinely interested.
“Because there is usually a bit of warning before everything gets into motion. This time however the discovery of the resource and the skirmish happened much faster. According to Tom you know the reason why: they were trying to hide the mana-water spring.”
“To say that the market took a dive is an understatement.” Judy said.
“Dropped off a cliff is more appropriate.” Alana muttered.
“But that didn’t affect us since we had divested our assets of anything but the most sure long term things anyway. That is, it didn't affect us until we heard you got drafted.” Judy explained.
“Since we didn’t know when it was going to end and you might need the money we didn’t let the opportunity pass. Being cash rich when the market is down lets you make gains hand over fist, I think we might have tripled if not quadrupled what we had three months ago. It is just that most of it is going to take about six months to break even and then another six to give us our profit.” Alana said.
“Oh” AJax was definitely impressed. Getting three to four times an investment in a year's time was quite a good result especially when you were dealing with larger sums of money. “How much did you have before the market crashed?”
“We had close to eight thousand gold coins, seven of which we had in hand.” Alana said pride clearly shown in the bodylaguage of the two friends as they watched Ajax’s shocked expression hearing the words.
“What … but… I mean…” Ajax was at a loss. Even the original amount was a crazy eight thousand gold, the deal he had with them that split the profits they made 3 to 1 his way meant that he would have six thousand gold. In a year's time this eight thousand would be twenty-five thousand.
“We went from the original one hundred to five hundred in just our first year.” Alana explained “Your sister's talent at appraising valuable objects let us buy overlooked items and resell them for a decent profit.”
“After that we started getting a bit of a reputation, merchants knew about me and were less willing to part with their goods meaning that my skills weren’t as useful anymore for pure profit. But they did allow us to get a lot of connections that year and build our capital.” Judy said. “From there Alana started making bigger and bigger deals. As the deals got bigger they grew less profitable but the experience we gained meant we knew we could argue for better deals. This lets us double our starter just about every year.”
“Last year we had reached our cap on doubling, or so we thought. We had started with five thousand but only made three in profit. We knew that as our amount grew, doubling it in a year wouldn’t be possible. Imagine our surprise that by cashing out in preparation for your arrival we had the perfect opportunity to make a killing.” Alana said excitedly.
“ And the trading company you work for just let you keep that all to yourself?” Ajax asked not sure how they could make such profits with an overhead boss..
“They wouldn’t have, and I bet they are kicking themselves right now.” Alana said with a giggle.
“When they heard someone gave us one hundred gold seed money so early in our careers they laughed and told us to do whatever we want so long as we fulfilled our duties. By the end of the first year we had been moved to contracted parties and started our own smaller organization working with theirs.” Judy said.
“I always had faith you would both do well, but I can’t say I expected anything like this… this is just. Wow” Ajax still had problems adjusting to the amount they managed to make.
“I take it you aren’t looking to take cash out your stake in our company?” Judy teased him.
“No, you can keep working with it. WIth results like these I would be a fool to do anything else since I am not in need of money right now.”
With that statement both the girls exchanged a quick look. “In that case, could you come sign some documents sometime this week?” Alana asked.
“You’ll have your profit calculated to the end of this upcoming year, but after that we were looking at splitting the company with us having 60% of the profits and you 40%. Not only that but you would have to be a silent partner.” Judy said.
“Yeah I can do that. I was going to say our deal is a little unfair considering the results.” Ajax wasn’t stupid nor greedy, trying to keep the deal the same was both, as it would result in their cooperation ending. What they offered was still miles better than what we would expect to get considering their success.
“Just let me first register with the Adventurer’s Guild, that will give me a more solid ID for the documents anyway. I was going to do that today anyway.” he said as he got up and cleared his plate.
“Heads up.” his sister said as she tossed a little bag to him.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Twenty gold coins. It would be a travesty for you to be worth close to twenty thousand gold but carry less than one on you.” she said.
With that Ajax left the house and headed for the Adventurer’s Guild. Unlike last time there was a bit of a line at the reception but it moved quickly.
“Reason for visit?” the same pretty receptionist he saw last time asked.
“Looking to join, hopefully I don’t get conscripted this time.” he said with a smile.
Her eyes grew wide in recognition as her smile turned from the customer service one into the genuine article. “ I remember you, you’re Ajax right?”
The rowdy room turned much quieter as the nearest four tables, all of which were used by adventurer teams turned silent as they heard the name and now looked square at him .