Chapter 16
The Best Professional Business Negotiator...
The terms of the cooperation were swiftly set. Wine Immortal Overlord would provide Xiye with technological support and some obsolete pieces of equipment. He would even transfer high-quality technical personnel over to help. And in return, Xiye had to provide the Wine Immortal Overlord with 400,000 tonnes of Fire Ant Ores every year at 70% of the market rate.
After the terms were set, the Wine Immortal Overlord bid farewell and left. After all, as an overlord that could afford to buy a dragon-grade ferocious beast, there were naturally many things for him to handle every day. He didn’t have too much time to waste on Xiye.
And the one who came to discuss the purchasing price with Xiye about the things he wanted to buy was actually a golden goblin with yellow teeth!
In the Federation, lifeforms like goblins were very special. They were existences that were already there before the Federation was established and could be considered an ancient race!
In the eyes of ordinary folk, goblins had bad impressions. They were dirty, lazy, with despicable characters and ugly appearances. It seemed that they also had no way to modify themselves!
In the cosmos, goblins were considered one of the few races that couldn’t undergo gene modification regardless of operation or mating. This meant that even if a goblin mated with a female dragon, the babies being born would be goblins as well. The tyranny of their gene was simply overbearing!
This also meant that once you were born a goblin, you would always be a goblin. Even for your evolution, you had to walk down the goblin path. This golden goblin before his eyes was precisely one of the high-grade variants of the goblin race.
In the market, this type of goblins was extremely welcomed. The nature of the golden goblins was completely different from the dark goblins. They had startling business talent and financial sensitivity. Right now, in the best-four merchant schools of the Federation, three of them were created by goblins. Two out of the three also stated that they would only accept goblins!
There were many various great powers established by grand overlords that would employ these goblins to do finance, investment, and risk analysis.
But now, to Xiye, the negotiating party he didn’t wish to meet the most were golden goblins! Because no one would be able to gain an advantage through business discussion with one of them. This was a common logic just like how overlords could only be heavenly deities.
“Oh, respectable Overlord Xiye, according to my overlord’s request, we will provide a batch of excellent-quality mold lathes, including those for refined picks, mine carts, probing vehicles, as well as the various daily necessities. Don’t you worry Sir, the technology we provide will be of the previous three generations. Regardless of productivity or quality, we will never disappoint you!”
(I won’t believe your shit!)
Xiye rolled his eyes. The technology was classified into generations with a period of a hundred years in between. Technology from the previous three generations was roughly above-average technology compared to what ordinary people used. After all, a grand overlord like Wine Immortal would have at least ten thousand life planets under him. Other than the main governing planets and a few commercial trading planets, the other planets were at least over ten thousand light-years away from them. It was already not bad for them to be able to use technology from the previous five generations.
For things that the panda overlord’s subjects couldn’t enjoy, how was it possible for them to sell it to outsiders? In ordinary circumstances, if the items you bought were within the previous ten generations, you would already be extremely comforted. This goblin was truly very devious, making all sorts of verbal promises easily, but on the contrary, Xiye became even more vigilant.
“You can stop with the polite words!” Xiye waved his hands. “Talk about the pricing.”
“Truly, the air of a wealthy overlord!” The goblin smiled and narrowed his eyes. “If the overlords in the cosmos were all like you, subordinates like us wouldn’t need to expend so much effort.” After speaking, the goblin passed over a price list.
Xiye took the list and glanced over it. He almost immediately tossed the price list over.
“So expensive?”
“Sir overlord, which item do you mean?”
“Everything!” Xiye raged. “A mold latte for refined picks will cost me $50,000 deity dollars? Why don’t you guys go conduct a robbery?”
“Sir overlord, your words are too heavy. The manufacturing process of refined picks is extremely complicated. What we used is the latest Gemma Gold Technology, and the refined picks can withstand a prolonged period of use. It is of much better quality compared to the cloudsteel picks in the market. You can say that the other stuff is expensive but this. For this, it is absolutely worth the price!”
“Is that so?” Xiye coldly pointed to another item. “Even the assembling mold for mine carts cost $10,000 deity dollars?”
“You might not know this. Right now, the core product we from the Pandaria Planet can take out is the engine. In the second and third-grade free market, the engines sold by us are not inferior to any local products. Our reputation is rock solid. You should know about Norsas Overlord, right? His battleships are well known to be numerous in the Federation. Now, he is also working together with us. Also, the latest poison fang mecha models are using our newly developed pandaria 18.0 optical turbo pressure engine. It’s a product that packs a real punch, so isn’t it normal for us to sell it at a slightly more expensive price?”
Xiye was shocked by what he heard. He naturally knew who Norsas Overlord was. This person was ranked five out of the ten grand overlords in the Federation and was the overlord with the strongest battleships. Being able to work with him was a really impressive matter. He had also seen the latest model of the poison fang series. The engines used for such mechas naturally wouldn’t be lousy. By being able to provide such technology, senior Wine Immortal’s capabilities had developed to a point that was more terrifying than what he had imagined!
(But what had that got to do with the mine carts? Are you saying that the engine technology of your mine carts is also the same as the bla-bla-bla pandaria 18.0 turbo engine?)
“What about lodging then? You want to sell this at $50,000 deity dollars? Isn’t the price a little over the top?”
“Not at all!” The goblin waved his hands and continued, “That is the pure handiwork of the Bronze Race, regardless of stacking, sturdiness, interior decoration and design standards, it is absolutely worth this price…”
“No, no. no…” Xiye hurriedly waved his hand. “I only need temporary lodging for ordinary subjects. There’s no need for it to be so luxurious. It will do if you just give me the blacksteel assemble houses at $100 deity dollars for one.”
“What? Blacksteel assemble houses?” The goblin’s bronze-colored eyes bulged out. “How could you let your subjects stay in those jokes? Even for ordinary citizens, you shouldn’t give them such bad living conditions. I’ve always thought that your cooperation with my overlord is a far-sighted venture. Could it be that you don’t know that bad living conditions would be severely disadvantageous to the long-term development of your subjects?”
“Eh...this…” Xiye was dumbfounded when he heard that. He then continued, “My subjects are all people who are hard-working and can endure hardship.”
“Do you hear what you are saying?” A moment later, the goblin spoke to the players behind Xiye. “The subjects being able to endure hardship is a good thing, but is it a reason for their boss to treat them so strictly by giving them bad living conditions?”
The players all shook their heads upon hearing this.
The goblin satisfiedly turned over and continued, “As an outstanding overlord, sir have to understand that there’s a limit to the goodwill of the people. Resentment would accumulate day by day, stacking together. When all the anger and resentment erupt one day, you will understand that by saving this small amount of money now, it would completely not be worth it. The gains do not make up for the losses!”
Awe could be seen on Xiye’s expression, what a goblin full of righteousness, speaking out for the good living of the workers!
“But isn’t all this too extravagant? How can I still slowly increase their welfare if I give them everything at one go?” Xiye weakly rebutted.
“Mn, being able to consider this problem means that you are definitely not a shallow overlord!” The goblin waved his hand and smiled. “How about this? For these lodgings created by the Bronze Race, you can use it as a future reward. Once there are subjects with outstanding performance, you can allow them to be the manager of the lodging to reward them. I will also then recommend another set of lodgings made by tree elves. The designs are exquisite and beautiful, and the price is quite cheap…”
Damn, because he was too wordy, he would soon be cheated out of another sum of money. But the main point was that the words of the goblin were backed up by solid logic. Xiye didn’t know how to refute it.
And just like that, Xiye felt his head spinning as he signed the bill of over three billion. The fees for employing technical staff and original materials weren’t included yet!
At the start, he thought that he had loaned too much money. But now, it seemed that there might be a problem of his funds not being sufficient.
(Damn, after this daddy becomes rich, I also want to get a high-grade goblin to negotiate business terms for me!)