![City of Desire [Kingdom Building]](https://at-global.global.ssl.fastly.net/at-global/cover/67f0960bc1d9793202a144dd.jpg?time=1743820299570)
“My apologies, Master Silver, but we will not be able to serve your fine establishment,” said the bald, middle-aged man with a fake apologetic voice.
I could even sense a faint hint of mockery flickering in his eyes.
“It is fine,” I said with a smile and walked out boutique with Carla and Eudo following behind me.
“It was the sixth and last high-end boutique on river street that refused to sell us,” said Carla with a sigh of regret. River Street offers the best boutiques in the city, each belonging to a powerful merchant house, and that is why they are so direct in rejecting our business.
We were out shopping, while the dresses my father had brought were good, but Eudo had changed things. The dresses looked pale compared to his skills, and while he could enhance the effect of dresses by skills; I want to buy the better dresses
“Now we either will have to go into the boutiques of orville market or go the Deerpond if the boutiques of the city had refused to sell us,”
“I am sure the boutiques there wouldn’t have any problem taking the business from a brothel,” said Carla. Deerpond is the closest city and the capital of the Renwell region; we should not have any problem getting things from there, but it will waste time and cost more.
“Master silver, if you are willing to listen, I know a place that has good designs,” said Eudo with hesitation.
“You don’t sound confident, Mister Angestel?” I asked, sensing the hesitation, “It is not boutique; it is not even at Orville market,” he said.
“It does not matter where it is; as long as it has goods we need, I will even buy from the dump,” I said, waving his concerns away.
“It has good dresses, no worse than the boutiques we have visited,” he said, and this time, he sounded quite confident, which couldn’t help but bring a smile to my face.
I have seen his skills, and they are great, and since he is telling me there is a shop that has dresses to match his skill, then, as I had said, I will buy them even from the dump.
Fifteen minutes later, the carriage rolled into the hawthorn market; it is one of three markets in the city and developed to be the biggest one.
It already got the unofficial name, the commoners market.
The whole market is bustling; huge beasts of different kinds are pulling the big carts loaded with goods of all kinds. The city will be officially inaugurated in little more two weeks, so people have an urgency to set up a shop to profit from the tide of people that is coming here.
The prince had bet a fortune on this city; he had built it from scratch instead of taking one of the old cities like his siblings did when the Empire captured the region.
It is a great gambit, but if it succeeds, it will bring him a huge fortune.
All of it will depend upon the success of ambassadors sent by the Emperor to the merchant cities; it would be great if the trade war stopped, or at least both sides took some concrete steps to end it. If that happens, Greltheaven will be the first to benefit from it.
A few minutes later, the carriage stopped in front of a small two-story building; it was obvious the first floor was a shop while the second floor was to live.
The shop had wooden doors and glass windows, but one could not see through them as blinds were in the place. The place is new, like all the buildings here, but there are boxes lying around outside with a boy of fifteen-sixteen keeping eyes on goods.
“Is this the place?” I asked, “Yes,” Angestel replied before opening the carrying door and walking out inside; Carla and I entered behind him.
Roger, like a good bodyguard, appeared in front and opened the door of the shop before entering inside. We followed behind a second later, and the scene I saw couldn’t help but surprise me; no wonder the windows had blinds on.
The place is a mess; boxes of clothes are lying around, and the racks are placed confusingly; one would even be hard-pressed to walk around this place.
“Customers wel,”
We were looking around the shop when a red-haired woman came out from the back but stopped midway in her greeting when she looked at us.
“Eudo!” she said in surprise, “Weren’t you going to leave Greltheaven yesterday?” she asked before her gaze shifted toward us, and immediately, her dust-laden clothes became clean, and all the wrinkles on them straightened up.
The scene once again amazed me; the skills are really magical.
The woman was medium height with strawberry red hair and looked to be in her early thirties. She has a pretty face in the girl next door way that anybody would find pleasant.
“I was, but I had accepted a job at Master Silver,” he replied, and the woman’s eyes became immediately serious.
“Mr. Silver, welcome to my shop, and my apologies for the mess,” she said. “No worries, Miss Cain,” I replied with a smile.
“Elese, I have brought Master silver to your shop to see those designs,” said Angestel, “Eudo, are you talking abo”
“Yes, the designs you have shown in Mirstone,” he said, cutting her off. She looked a little hesitant but nodded when she looked at me.
“Please follow me,” she said and led us through the boxes, and to my surprise, not the whole shop was as messy as I had thought it be. I could see the clothes and other things neatly hanging on the racks; she seemed to be arranging the shop from behind.
She is not alone in the shop; there is a young girl who is about the same age as the boy sitting outside. All three of them share similarities, but I don’t think they are her children unless she had them when she was the same age as this teen.
They are likely her siblings or niece and nephew.
“Please,” she said and invited us into what was supposed to be the viewing room, which was thankfully completely set up.
Roger stayed outside while we went inside the viewing room and sat on the cream-colored cushion chairs while she pulled out a metallic rack with three dresses hanging.
“My apologies, Mr. Silver; I do not have a model to show you the dresses,” said Elese apologetically, “It is fine; Carla will model,” I said, which surprised her, but she nodded as Carla got up.
“I hope you will have something of my size, Miss Eles,” said Carla, ” That wouldn’t be a problem, Miss Carla,” she said and took out a violet-colored backless A-line gown with a masterfully done work.
Seeing the state of the store, I had unconsciously formed a slight prejudice against it, but one look at the dress and all of it had vanished.
Carla took the dress from Eles and walked into the partition made for changing, and came out a minute later looking like a goddess.
The gown wonderfully hugged every part of her body, and that enticingly open back would force one to imagine naughty things; the neck of the dress is a little deep, giving a faint tantalizing glimpse of her cleavage.
“You looked beautiful in the gown, Carla,” I praised and turned to the owner, “Miss Cain, can you show more of your designs?” I asked; she nodded, and for the next fifteen minutes, Carla tried seven different dresses of a different kind; all of them looked amazing on her.
“You have very good designs, Miss Cain,” I said, and it was not empty praise; they are good enough to match the designs of the high-class boutique we have visited.
“Thank you, Mr. Silver,” she replied with a professional smile. “How many dresses do you have?” I asked, which caught her by surprise, and she looked at Angestel for a moment before turning back to me.
“Forty-one in total,” she answered; it quite surprised me, as I had not thought she would have these many, but I am happy, as these dresses would be enough.
With Eudo’s, these dresses would be worn by most of the ladies; he had the skill to adjust the dress sizes. He could do it
“Good, bring them all out; I will buy them all if they are good as the seven designs you have shown us,” I said, and her professional smile slipped for a moment as surprise appeared on her face, but she quickly gained back her control over her emotions.
“Ok,” she replied and was about to walk out when I stopped her for an important question. “You don’t have any problem selling to a brothel, are you?” I asked, and the surprise that appeared on her face was really something to watch.
“The business is business; it did not matter from where it came,” she said and walked out the door.
To the boutiques, it is important to know what kind of customers they serve; serving the wrong person could give their business a wrong rep, and it affects the business.
It is the reason why those bastards refused to sell us.
Elese returned with two teens I saw earlier, each of them holding boxes in their hands. It took them three turns to bring out all the boxes before she started to show her designs, and all of them were amazing; some of them were even better than what Carla had tested.
“How much are you asking for each dress, miss Cain?” I asked; she did not answer immediately. “Each dress is between fifteen hundred to three thousand crowns,” she said after a few seconds of silence.
The prices were high, the same as the boutiques we have visited; Eudo told me that this woman had worked for fifteen years in one best boutiques in Mirstone before she left to start her own store.
The dresses are expensive; a single person lives comfortably for a year at the price of one dress. The dresses which my father brought were double the number but would not even cost a quarter of these dresses.
“It is nice doing business with you, Miss Cain,” I said and shook her hand before walking out of the store with others.
After a few minutes of negotiation, we agreed on the price of two thousand crowns per dress, a total of eighty-four thousand crowns, a very high amount.
With this spent, I have less than twenty thousand crowns on me.
We got out of the store and walked inside the carriage, which took us back toward the establishment.
“If Leonard Sands arrive before five, ask him to wait. Though, I should be able to return before that,” I said to Carla as the carriage stopped in front of the mansion.
“I will make him wait till you arrive,” she said and walked out of the carriage behind Eudo, “James, to the Repose and Bulwarks office,” I said to the carriage driver, and second later, the carriage began to roll again.
While the carriage ran, I reviewed some of the documents, mainly of the expenses, which ballooned with new requirements, but there was nothing I could do about it; cutting a single expense would create a domino effect, and I couldn’t allow that.
“We have arrived, mister silver,” said James as he stopped the carriage, “Thank you, James,” I said and walked out of the carriage.
In front of me is a five-story building with a big board reading Repose and Bulwark bank. It is a huge bank, one of the biggest on the continent.
I walked inside the huge luxurious lobby and stepped into the elevator for the third floor. The elevators of this world are different than earth; they are magical in nature rather than mechanical and are expensive to install; it being here shows how wealthy the bank is.
The black disk I was standing on stopped on the third floor, and the energy screen covering it disappeared, and I walked out of the magical elevator toward the long desk behind which a woman in a black dress was sitting.
The secretary turned toward me as I appeared in front of her; she was a beautiful woman with blue eyes and dark brown hair cut into a clean bob, which suited her well.
“Mister Silver, vice branch manager Shaw, will see you in ten minutes,” she informed without me saying anything; I nodded and sat down in the waiting room, which is quite luxurious.
There were a few people sitting in the room, but none I knew, so I picked up the newspaper.
Most of the news is related to the huge war that is going on the strategic Mayhurst island, where the Lich is waging the war.
All the kingdoms on the island are involved in the war, and they are even receiving aid from others, but despite that, the Lich seems unstoppable.
There is also news that the Emperor might send the imperial armada against Lich’s navy, but not many think that would happen. He might have done that a decade ago, but not now; with his health, he will need all the empire forces in the Empire.
The newspaper did not have only bad news; there is one good news. The ambassadors that the Emperor had sent to the free cities were making progress, especially with the city-state of Meldhorn, against which the Renwell region shared the boundary.
I truly hope they succeed in their negotiations; the city’s future depends on it.
I was busy reading the newspaper when the secretary appeared in front of me. “Mister Silver, the vice branch manager Shaw, will see you now,” she said and led me toward the office with thick wooden doors with beautiful engraving done on it; it is clearly an elvish work.
She opened the door and led me inside, where a middle-aged man was sitting; he had broad shoulders and big hands that would make anyone mistake him for a warrior.
He is sitting behind a huge desk and a big office with a great view of the financial district.
“Mister Silver, it’s good to see you again,” he said business smile, “I hope everything went well with my application, Mister Shaw?” I asked as I sat in the seat in front of him.
“You are a Silver; the waiting period was just a formality,” he said with a loud laugh that seemed pleasant to ears. I could feel one passive skill of his that makes everything he does natural and pleasant; it is a skill to make people drop their guard around them.
“Please check the loan form and see if everything is right,” he said and forwarded me the form. I took the form in my hand and began to read each word and line carefully.
Many people, even in this world, barely read what they sign or do not read carefully enough, which is a grave mistake.
They should read it; it had a hundred ways to screw you over if things went wrong.
Within a few minutes, I finished reading up the contract, and it was good, a few ways they could screw with me, and I could deal with them if they tried to do that, but they won’t. I am only borrowing half a million crowns from them, which is not a big amount for their bank.
The interest they are charging is more than what banks do on earth, and the period is also lower, 20% for one year, which is not surprising considering this is a volatile world, where the client could die at any time and countries are always at war.
“Thank you, Mister Shaw,” I said as I shook his big hands, which are as soft as women. “It is my pleasure, Mister Silver; I hope you will always choose our organization for your business,” He said.
“Of course,” I said replied before walking out of his office.
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