Mystical Fencer

I calmed down and spoke. "I will let them know. But let me tell you, if it would make them sad or if they are going to have any other issues with it, I am not going to ask them to sign it!"

My father chuckled at my response.

"Are you laughing at me, father?"

"I just found it funny how you reacted. You were not opposed to being engaged to them, or married to them, what set you off was the fact that their feelings could get hurt because I wanted them to sign some paperwork."

I sighed, shook my head and spoke. "Whatever! What was the other thing?"

"Yes, there was one more thing I wanted to speak with you about. But before that I want you to know that this is in no way punishment, it's an old family tradition. I never told you about it since when you became of the age that I would normally let you know you were…" He scratched his chin looking for correct words. Several second later he continued. "…you were the way, you were. I had pretty much no expectations for you at that point. So, I was planning to make one of your cousins go through this and inherit our family business, with a contract that would make him take care of you. But now that you shaped up, it changed. I changed my plan and decided that you would have to go through this so that you can inherit our family business after me."

About this time, I was already looking at my father extremely confused. I had no clue what was he talking about. What am I about to go through? Father noticed and spoke with a smile.

"Ok I can see that you are confused enough so let me put it bluntly. In order to inherit our family business, you will have to pass the test. I will cut you from accessing our family funds, you will just receive some starting capital and from there you are going to be required to start your own business. You have two years to build a prospering business from ground up. If you succeed it will be incorporated to our family business once I step down and you will become the leader of it all."

My confusion subsided, but I still had a question.

"How about Rina's pay? Her family needs it."

Father chuckled. "Don't worry, I would never stop sending money to Rina's family. I would also kept on paying Yuki if she was still taking the pay. I want to test you; not make you hate me. And same for the mansion, you can live here, eat here and everything. You just won't have access to my money. "

I smiled. "Then that's going be easy! I already have an idea what I am going to do!"

We chatted for a little longer and then I left with my startup capital to tell everything to Rina and Yuki. They were very curious about what I was going to do but I asked them to just trust me, since I was sure that what I planned is going to work.

Next morning we met with Elizabeth and I had to apologize to her since I could not go adventuring today because I needed to work on my business. To my surprise she asked me if she could join us and since nobody minded her joining, all four of us went to work agency. Once we arrived, we were led to one of the meeting rooms where we waited for our agent.

Agent arrived several minutes later, he was a man that looked to be in his fifties, he was rather short, a little overweight and with large bold spot on the top of his head. As he entered the room, he politely bowed to us and spoke.

"Welcome to the work agency, I am Chaleb. How can I help you?"

"Greetings Chaleb, I am Victor! I am looking for an employee with rather specific skill set."

"What are you looking for?" Asked Chaleb his voice filled with curiosity.

"I need a person that's good with money and managing people. I am planning to start a business and I need a person that would be handling contact with my business partners."

Man nodded and quickly started tapping on the blue sheet of glass, he was holding in his hand. Several minutes later he spoke.

"There is a person that would be perfect for you, but there is an issue."

"What kind of issue?" I asked impatiently.

"We suspect that she registered mostly to spite her father, not to find job. You see she is a daughter of very well-known merchant here in the capitol, the baron Sulywan. She worked for him until they had a huge disagreement during a dinner in one of the restaurants here in the city. She came here the next morning and registered. So, it's hard for us gauge if she really left her father's business or if she just wants him to think that she is leaving and plans to go back."

As he spoke, I remembered baron Sulywan from my coming-of-age party. He was one of the nobles that watched me apologize to Elizabeth together with what were most likely his daughter and wife. 

"I will try her. Is there a way to have a chat with her?"

The agent nodded. "Yes, she comes here to ask if anybody wanted to hire her daily. She should be here in the agency soon for her daily check. Do you want us to tell her that you want to speak with her and that you are waiting for her?"

I nodded. "That would be perfect!"

After this the agent left the four of us in the room alone. I plopped down on one of the couches in the room with Rina and Yuki sitting on each side of me cuddling into me. Elizabeth sat to the side with a weird look on her face and when I tried talking to her, she acted weird, she spoke just the bare minimum, trying to end every conversation on the spot. I was very confused since I was not able to find out why she became like this from nowhere.

Almost an hour later the door to the room opened and the same agent from before led in the person we were waiting for.

"Greetings once again! I brought you the person you were waiting for. This is Trish Sulywan, she worked as assistant to her father, the owner of Sulywan merchantry, baron Patrick Sulywan." He then turned to the woman and spoke. "These are the people I mentioned to you, here mister Victor Balzac is looking for assistant that would help him with his business. Please have a chat, I will excuse myself and let you to it, just knock on the door if you need me."

With this the agent left the room. I quickly glanced over her. During the party she was wearing party dress now it was her casual clothes. She was entirely different now. Her party dress was very conservative and long. What she was wearing now was quite the opposite of that, she was wearing short black qipao without any decorations that hugged her figure perfectly leaving very little to imagination. She had long almond hair and light green eyes. She looked good, very very good. After moment of silence, I decided to speak first.

"Greetings! I am Victor Balzac, as you already know. Please have a seat and call me Victor."

She nodded and quickly walked to sit in the chair in front of us. As she sat down, she spoke.

"Greetings! I am Trish Sulywan, please call me Trish!"

I nodded and spoke. "Let's skip the formalities and get straight to the business if you don't mind. Is that ok with you?"

She nodded. "Perfect, exactly as I like it!

"I want to start a grand party, but I want to make it into a business."

Trish looked at me confused and spoke. "How? Grand parties are just bigger parties. They work exactly like a party, it's just easier to find enough people to run a quest. There is no way to make it into a business!"

She was right, grand parties as they were here, were just big parties, you would grab three other people from the grand party and you would run the quest. At the end of the quest, you would split the spoils. All what the grand parties were good for was to make questing easier, faster and safer. Since you had a pool of trustworthy people at your disposal at all times. But I wanted to change that.

"Well and that is exactly what I want to change. Firstly, I plan on hiring workers, or buying some non-violent slaves and upgrading them to workers. Secondly, I will register them in guild as members of my grand party. Then I will have them form parties and go questing. But outside of registering they will have zero contact with guild. They will just grab a quest from our headquarters and then they will bring everything back to our headquarters. Then we will have people handling contact with the guild, picking out good quests, turning in quests and so on. Then we will have people that will skin and disassemble monsters and lastly people that will handle selling everything directly to craftsmen without the middle man. All the employees outside of you will be either workers or upgraded slaves, that will let us save a lot of money on man power while we maximize the money we receive from each quest since everybody will be working for fixed salary not for quest rewards. What do you say?"

She looked at me surprised for almost a minute. After that she spoke.

"That honestly sounds brilliant! But I don't want to be an employee, I want to be a partner. I will put in exactly the same amount of money as you, I can even do more than you. I want to be your 50/50 partner."

I chuckled and looked around the to see the reactions of the girls. Yuki and Rina looked to be fine with her joining my business they even nodded to me. Elizabeth on the other hand, was hard to read, she still looked somewhat annoyed but I could not guess why and if it became worse since Trish came or better.