16 - Chapter 15
While she considered what cold steel weapon to pick, she booked a first class flight to KL for 7 days. She also booked herself a suite at the Mandarin Oriental in KL. As soon as the bookings were confirmed the first quest marked as completed.
Quest 1: Book a flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for seven days time
Book a flight and hotel for exactly seven days.
Reward: Location to further investigations into your family accident
Status: Completed (complete quests 2, 3 and 4 to claim rewards)
As she thought, she needed to complete all the other three quests to find out the next steps. That led her back to thinking about cold steel weapons. She needed a high quality weapon, and one she could train in for the next 6 days. That only left her the sword as the easiest option. Sure she could find someone who could make another weapon, and probably train her too, but it would take longer and be more of a risk. She decided to stick with the sword for now.
Instead of having one made she looked online for places that supplied high quality katanas for collectors. After looking she found a few places that sold katanas that could be used in competitions. They were not even very expensive, and made of high quality steel. She purchased 10 and asked for them to be sharpened and delivered the next day.
Checking the quest, it still showed as in progress.
Quest 2: Commission a cold steel weapon
Commision and receive a high quality cold steel weapon
Reward: Location to further investigations into your family accident
Status: In Progress
She figured it would complete once the swords were delivered. She then spent time looking around for intensive sword training. She found the best palace would be the fencing club, that offered available instructions and training rooms. She found several and picked one based not far from her hotel. She called them to book the rooms and set up a series of trainers. She also spent time reviewing katana training videos on youtube.
When she took a break, she called in to see Sunny and James. She told them that getting the SEZ agreed and setting up a state of the art satellite monitoring station just went up the priority list. She was willing to spend whatever it took to get that moving forward. She asked them to make a £1M donation to the political party in charge to get access to the prime minister. Sunny promised to get her the details for the payment and speak to the party head office to move things forward. She also told them that she would be busy training most of the week, and that she would be flying out to KL at the end of the week for an indeterminate amount of time.
She also called Anita to find out about the accounts for the business and the foundation. They were set up, but not quite ready to be used, but the important thing was that the verification for adding signatory had been completed and was being processed. She asked Anita to transfer £200m into each account from her main business account and also confirmed the request in writing. That would let the team get on with things even if she was busy.
She decided to call it an early night and went to bed so that she could purchase more stats from the store. As she had thought she could only purchase 9 stats at a cost of 270 QP each or 2,160 QP total. She received the same warning, but the time was significantly longer.
Stat points needed to reach 39 in all attributes 72 - will require 14 hours to assign.
Please ensure you are in a safe space and a comfortable position before proceeding.
Assign now? Yes / No
She clicked on yes, and went through the excruciating pain before passing out. She came to, more sore than ever and dragged herself to the shower.
While she acclimated to her new stats in the shower, she also brought up her full status.
Name: Tasha Andersen
Race: Human (Tier 0)
Class: Rouge (Tier 2) - Level 0
Profession: Technocrat (Tier 2) - Level 0
Strength: 39
Dexterity: 39
Proprioception: 39
Constitution: 39
Intellect: 39
Will: 39
Charisma: 39
Soul: 39
Luck: Locked
Quest Points: 40
In navigating to her status, Tasha noticed a new option on the main screen.
1, Status
2, Message History
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
3, Quests
4, Shop
5, Drawdown funds
6, Close
When she opened the drawdown funds option, it just gave her a simple number box with a Bn at the end and a simple confirmation box. She played with it and the box maxed out at £999Bn. So the system would let her draw down any amount up to £999Bn. She was half tempted to draw it all down, but knew it would cause a lot of trouble if she did. She needed £35Bn to buy the bank and a lot more for the projects she already had in the progress. She decided to draw down £99Bn and leave the rest for when she needed it.
She wondered how long it would take. She set the box to £99Bn and then confirmed the transfer. After the shower, she opened her banking app on her phone and checked the balance. It showed a balance of £99.2Bn and change. The transfer had arrived in real time. Again she was shocked, a transfer of that size could not just show up.
Just as she was thinking through the implications of the transfer, her phone started ringing. It was Anita.
“Hey Anita, I guess you are calling about the transfer,” asked Tasha.
“Yes it came as a shock, normally transfers of that size are notified in advance and require approval,” replied Anita, “No one is even sure how it turned up, but all the paperwork is in order. Kevin was complaining about how it was meant to be his account, apart from that its fine. Just please give me a heads up next time.”
“Sure will do,” said Tasha. “While you are there transfer 8Bn into the company operating account and £1bn into the foundation account. I will send written confirmation shortly,”
Tasha got ready, then went to see James, Sunny and Ingrid. She informed them about the updated bank balances they would have access too, and they all lost it. They couldn't believe Tasha was trusting them with that level of funds.
“If I didn't trust you, you wouldn't be here.” replied Tasha, “I need you to deliver on our mission. Now you realise how much backing we have. I am trusting you to deliver on my vision. I want that meeting with the Prime Minister this week. Make it happen”
After hearing that all three were shocked into silence. They knew that Tasha trusted them and they had become the core of the new business, but they didn't realise to what extent.
They spent some time going through how the new businesses were doing, merging into the new structure. She also asked them what they were lacking. It turned out that to give everyone their own company car would require them to buy a fleet, so they may as well pick a brand and buy the dealership.
Tasha asked for recommendations, and suggested that they go for only electric cars. They picked Kia and decided that would be the company standard going forward. While they could have gone for more expensive cars, they didn't want to make their teams targets. If people started driving around in multi million pound cars, lots of people were bound to notice, and target them for nefarious purposes.
Finally they had finished their discussions and had a general direction of travel for the short term,
During the meeting, Tasha’s order of katanas arrived and was delivered to her room. A hotel porter came to inform her of the fact. She finished up her meeting and asked Hanna to meet her in her room.
Tasha was just checking out her katanas, which looked exquisite, when the knock came.She let Hanna into her room.
“Hey Hanna, thanks for coming.” said Tasha, “We have a lot to discuss”
“No problem Tash, what do you need?” replied Hanna.
Tasha spent some time going through the quests and her suppositions. Hanna, unhappily, agreed with Tashas conclusions. She was unhappy as she would be unable to accompany Tasha, nor would anyone else. Hanna asked Tasha to demonstrate her strength.
Tasha stood and picked up a stool with solid iron legs, and proceeded to bend it like you would a piece of cheese. It was totally effortless.
That more than anything convinced Hanna that she and the rest of the team would be totally outclassed. Hanna asked Tasha to look out for anything that would allow the rest of the team to close the gap. If there were threats on that level out there, even most governments were not equipped to deal with them.
“The last thing we need to discuss is the budget for the new intelligence agency we are building,” said Tasha. “We can up the initial budget to £1bn, and you can tell me if you need more, do it fast and do it right.”
“Are you sure, it's going to get noticed fast.” replied Hanna, “we will end up spending even more to deal with the additional heat it will cause.”
Tasha showed her the updated bank balance, and even having heard about it, seeing it was a shock for Hanna. “I have a feeling we are on the clock, whatever I find in KL, it's going to paint a target on our backs.”
“Ok, I will accelerate our plans.” replied Hanna. With that she left to get things moving.
Tasha checked her quests one more time to see how the progress was looking.
Quest 1: Book a flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for seven days time
Book a flight and hotel for exactly seven days.
Reward: Location to further investigations into your family accident
Status: Completed
Quest 2: Commission a cold steel weapon
Commision and receive a high quality cold steel weapon
Reward: Location to further investigations into your family accident
Status: Completed
Quest 3: Get as strong as possible
Use your Quest Points to purchase as many stats as possible before your travel for Quest 1
Reward: Location to further investigations into your family accident
Status: Completed
Quest 4: Learn to wield a cold steel weapon
Learn and practise the art of wielding the cold steel weapon you commissioned for Quest 2
Reward: Location to further investigations into your family accident
Status: In Progress (rewards from quests 1, 2 and 3 on hold)
As she suspected, the last quest would need to be completed before things would progress. She had finished everything that she needed to. She got ready, picked up one of her new katanas, and headed out for her meeting with her new instructors. She had 7 days to learn as much as he could, and she was going to make the most of it.
*
**Kevin POV**
Kevin was pacing by the riverside as he waited for John to answer his call. He had rushed out to call John as soon as he could. He knew he was being a little reckless, but the news was just so big.
“Hey Kevin, what's so urgent that it couldn't wait.” asked John, he was clearly irritated.
“There has been an influx of funds into the account we discussed.” replied John, “and also a number of payments.”
“I am more interested in the payments Kevin,” replied John, “what's the big deal about the funds coming in, we already know they are backed by an unknown VC.”
“They transferred £99Bn in a single transaction.” replied Kevin. “Still think it's not important?”
John’s silence was the only reply. Just who were these mysterious backers, and how deep did the waters run.