Chapter 259: Negotiations

Words : 1117 Updated : Sep 29th, 2025

Chapter 259: Negotiations Marshal Julian was not sure if he wanted to laugh or cry at the absurdity of all this. Contrary to what the others were expecting, DG did not actually pose unreasonable conditions. And if anything, they were the ones that set the limiters before the negotiations even started. Like not being able to outsource more helping hands past the number of official guild members. And this guild only had five people. The facility’s total staff count? A grand total of ten. That alone barred them from entertaining too many clients, and so how could the military expect them to prioritize handling the soldiers on top of the pro-bono cases and the sponsored beasts? And yet their guild leader, unexpectedly, the shortest of them all, actually said that they had no problems with adding such a contract provided the military was willing to follow a few conditions: 1. Prioritizing those in dire need. 2. Appointments must be kept, and the number would be based on the number that the guild could handle. 3. The military must agree to honor trade secrets. 4. Agree to settle for appropriate compensation. Deputy Officer Curtis was actually surprised at these items, while they still don’t know what kind of compensation it was, they managed to actually get their foot in the door. At least there was something to negotiate on. Honestly, the reason why they couldn’t be as specific, was because while they only had ten people right now, the next Mercenary Exam was actually this coming Friday. And while they weren’t sure if they could find suitable guild members, they couldn’t leave out this possibility forever. But at the same time, the area they actually allocated for this was rather specific as they needed to make sure these people were sedated before treatment began. Even then, the duke recommended building a similar facade around the Purifying Chamber in case someone’s constitution was hardcore enough to survive getting knocked out by the purifier. And so they were ready to accept contaminated soldiers as clients; they just wouldn’t know that they weren’t out there for energy rehabilitation but for decontamination instead. This was part of their plan to prolong their time to figure out ways to scale their operations. Right now, these people were the ones approaching them for an entirely different treatment, which saved them from having to convince people only to prevent them from speaking up. But if they do it this way, people would have to fill in the stories by themselves and all that they had to do was to wait for the CP, err, the people, to come in. "Then Lord Luca, about the compensation..." Started Curtis nervously. "Around how much are we talking about for this Job Contract?" There. He said it. They should congratulate him because, frankly, no one wanted to ask this part for fear of hearing the response. Now, Luca, the resident money grubber who had not been paid for his services in his past life, almost hiccuped at the question. And in his distress reached for the cuff of Xavier’s uniform and clutched it while he attempted to ask for payment. He wasn’t sure if it was empowering or nerve-wracking, or maybe both, but having to name his price like this was really something else. They were going to get paid! A crazy low amount! But only when compared to the VIP members as well as given what they were actually planning on curing. However, it was not the military’s fault, for all they were signing up for was to bask in energy. And more than anything, Luca was looking forward to the CP they would be getting. That was the true yet hidden compensation they were after. Although they really scaled this down after realizing the number of soldiers both active and inactive that they would have to actually deal with. And if you count that sheer number, they should honestly scale it even lower! But Xavier said no. And so they ended up with 20,000 Star coins and 5,000 Credits per soldier. Or whoever they could accommodate from the roughly 2 trillion soldiers in the hypercluster. However, while the number sounded large, to begin with, only 200 million of them would have qualified as mecha pilots. Right now, they only have close to 10 million active pilots, or one pilot per 75 planets. A horrifying value. That was why they needed to conscript. They needed to gather these possible pilots before the overreaching corruption devoured their planet. It was a race against time. Luca needed a moment to steady himself. He didn’t really know. It wasn’t something he could easily visualize before he heard that prior to the onset of corruption, major human planets would have about 20 million soldiers each and would fight amongst themselves. But with all of this going on, people barely had time to prioritize infighting. Heck, they barely had time for any fighting! Obviously, the majority of these soldiers were planet-based, and only the best were taken under the Imperial Army after graduating as pilots. Which was exactly why a few pilots have gotten cocky about being one. And would really be humbled after realizing how fragile that identity was the moment they were forced to retire due to contamination. These critical personnel were the target for this service, and while they would not be able to serve the entire market, they would at least be able to start with a few. And every person they could add back into service was one person more to delay the spread of corruption. "Deputy Officer Curtis, we believe that 20,000 Star Coins and 5,000 Credits per head would be a good start." "Come again?" Asked the Marshal for fear that his hearing had gone bad. And so, Luca, who was now clutching Xavier harder, repeated it again. Was it too much? He asked himself. It was definitely not. And soldiers would even be willing to pay this out of pocket once told about the price. Just like the military representatives who could not wait to sign the contract and begin right away. However, Xavier reminded Luca of one more important thing by tapping at his hand. "Oh! And one more thing!" Blurted the guild leader suddenly which got the celebrating officers to return to a state of fear. "About the Mission Hours, Sir." "Mission Hours?" Clarified the Marshal. "Yes, Marshal. If we don’t get Mission Hours for these, we’d have to attend class instead of tending to the facility." Oh right. These fresh-faced young men were students. And right now, they were negotiating skipping classes and obviously succeeding at it.

Chapter 259: Negotiations

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