Chapter 143

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Translated by Heavenly Cat

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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“Chancellor. Gwangwoon sent new negotiation terms.”

German Chancellor Olaf let out a deep sigh.

His mental preparation was already done.

Unless Gwangwoon were fools, they wouldn’t keep the price at triple like last time.

They would surely demand even more money.

Looking at the current soaring market price, hadn’t it already risen to nearly 7 times?

Gwangwoon would definitely want around that price.

“How much?”

“77 dollars per mmbtu.”

“…?”

Chancellor Olaf blinked.

“Did I mishear? 77 dollars? That’s 11 times the original price?”

The secretary general delivering the report also squeezed his eyes shut.

“Yes. 11 times higher than before the Russia-Ukraine war broke out.”

It was so absurd he wasn’t even angry.

“Does this price make sense? 11 times, right now? Those guys are truly insane.”

“The opponent is Gwangwoon. They always only do abnormal things.”

“Absolutely not! Even robbers don’t extort 11 times! Just look for another market instead.”

“But other markets have also raised prices by nearly 7 times.”

“That’s still better than 11 times!”

“The problem is even buying at 7 times the price, we can’t meet the demand needed for all of Eastern Europe.”

Chancellor Olaf narrowed his brow.

Price was one thing, but ultimately the problem was volume.

The one holding the most natural gas right now was Gwangwoon.

Other places were working hard to produce natural gas, but they couldn’t solve the holes that needed immediate fixing.

“What about sending ships to Russia to get it?”

“That’s also a big problem. We’ve never brought natural gas by ship before. If we try to bring it by ship, we need special vessels for natural gas transport. The problem is to request that transport, we have to use Gwangwoon Shipping.”

“What? We have to rely on Gwangwoon even for that?”

“Yes. Gwangwoon has almost complete control over shipping. Even if we request from Gwangwoon, they won’t accept. They need to sell their natural gas.”

In the end, it meant they couldn’t obtain natural gas without going through Gwangwoon.

“But still, 11 times! You want us to pay 77 dollars for that? Absolutely unacceptable.”

But the price had far exceeded the line.

“But there’s no other way…”

“Find another way no matter what! Honestly, having to pay 7 times right now already feels like blood rushing backwards, but you want us to pay 11 times? So look for another market!”

11 times was an amount they couldn’t pay even on pain of death.

Of course, Gwangwoon was holding all the natural gas now, but wasn’t there a saying?

We will always find a way.

————————————————————————————————————————

“So they couldn’t find an answer at all and ended up sending an SOS to the EU?”

“…”

Germany seemed to be working hard on the natural gas problem, and the Chancellor confidently said he’d find an answer, but reality’s wall was cold.

“You know that the Chancellor stirring things up actually raised natural gas prices further?”

“Wh-why is that my fault?”

“Because you made such a fuss, news spread that Gwangwoon proposed 11 times, and everyone raised their prices.”

Chancellor Olaf had nothing to say to EU Chairman Sharol’s words.

Germany overturned negotiations in response to Gwangwoon’s absurd price and looked for other markets.

The problem was that as rumors spread that Gwangwoon proposed 11 times, everywhere holding natural gas drastically raised prices.

“If you want to buy now, the lowest price is over 70 dollars. The problem is there’s not much volume on the market right now, and they’re trying to buy up even that.”

“Don’t you have to take some action?”

“What action? The EU can’t decide natural gas prices as it pleases. If you had just signed with Gwangwoon when they offered triple, this wouldn’t have happened. Why did you join hands with Russia back then…”

“Are you saying this is our fault? If we had paid triple, how much damage would we have suffered!”

“So how is it now? We have to pay 11 times higher.”

“Chairman Sharol is right. The EU was carefully coordinating negotiations with Gwangwoon, but Germany stabbed us in the back like that—would Gwangwoon come out nicely?”

Chancellor Olaf ground his teeth.

He thought the EU was on the same side.

But they were just an alliance in name only.

Everyone was just moving for their own interests.

But they weren’t wrong.

If they had signed with Gwangwoon then, this wouldn’t have happened.

No. All of this happened because Nord Stream was blown up.

“Have you caught the ones who blew up Nord Stream?”

“Several experts from various countries have been sent, but it seems practically impossible to catch them.”

“Anyone can see it was those Ukrainians! It seems clear Gwangwoon is behind Ukraine too. But you can’t catch them?”

“There’s no evidence. We have circumstantial evidence, but how can we pin the culprit with just circumstantial evidence? Above all, America is claiming Russia did all this.”

At this point, Olaf was also getting angry.

“This is clearly Gwangwoon’s conspiracy! We should be thinking about punishing those bastards immediately—does it make sense to drag this out?”

“I told you. There’s no evidence. Plus, if we really punish Gwangwoon, what are you going to do about natural gas? If Gwangwoon doesn’t release volume now, the 11x price could jump to 20x. Can you handle that?”

“That’s…”

Natural gas at 20 times.

It wasn’t a joke.

If they became enemies with Gwangwoon like this, it could really happen.

“Plus, Gwangwoon has a very good image externally. Those cunning bastards sprinkle donations on a large scale whenever they cause something.”

Moreover, Gwangwoon was steadily distributing donations through their foundation.

Also, they always exaggerated related matters on SNS, so their external image was very good.

“This time too, Gwangwoon sent 100 million dollars in environmental donations to the Baltic. They also made videos about it and mass-distributed them on SNS. Have you seen the video? It’s made so touching and moving. The comments there are a sight. Everyone’s praising that only Gwangwoon cares about the destroyed environment.”

Gwangwoon sends donations before causing something, or after finishing something.

It was a kind of ritual.

Before causing something, like a warning letter.

After causing something, like planting a flag.

It was a donation that looked shameless but was terrifying for those on the receiving end.

But there was no way to sanction it.

They’re giving donations for good causes—how could you refuse saying there’s bad intent?

“So what’s the conclusion? You’re telling us to pay 11 times and buy natural gas?”

“There’s no other way. Germany keeps taking a negative stance, so there’s no progress on the contract.”

Chancellor Olaf frowned at President Perom’s words.

“You hated Gwangwoon so much, but with the reelection date approaching, you can flip your attitude like that?”

“I’ll admit I put on a bit of a show for reelection. But the situation is different now. I’m genuinely worried. If natural gas really shoots to Mars, how are you going to handle all the resentment and blame?”

Perom also pushed the EU negotiations for reelection, but there was no room for that now.

If natural gas prices jumped further here, it would lead to an unmanageable situation.

“…”

Olaf also realized it was no longer time to be stubborn.

How to describe this feeling right now?

It felt like becoming a loser signing a surrender declaration.

————————————————————————————————————————

I don’t usually use SNS much.

I used to only browse gaming communities in the past.

But these days I try to look at SNS and communities carefully.

Because the trends that emerge there surprisingly reflect the current situation well, and sometimes they develop into investment ideas.

“But was this video made by our side?”

“Pardon? Ah, this one.”

That’s when I happened to see a video floating around on SNS.

It was none other than about donations being conducted by our Gwangwoon Foundation.

“There was a separate Baltic donation video too.”

“Yes. As far as I know, Chairman said since the Gwangwoon Foundation is doing good work, shouldn’t people know about it, so he had the marketing team produce videos. If you do good work, you deserve praise.”

‘Don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing’—is actually an old saying.

Now the right hand has to exaggerate and widely publicize what the left hand did.

Because that becomes a factor in raising corporate brand image.

“Looking at the video quality, quite a bit of money must have gone into it.”

“Yes. Apparently he told them not to spare money on video production. And even I think it’s really well made. It’s a short video, but it has emotion and clear points. Most importantly, people’s reactions are good.”

Even to me, the video quality was very good.

Just, since I’m running the foundation and didn’t do it to show off, it feels a bit cringey, maybe?

“But I think it’s a good thing long-term. In my view, we should make more marketing videos and spread them. Our foundation employees work so hard going into such harsh regions—we can’t let that go unknown.”

Hearing that, she was right.

The videos show employees genuinely helping people with effort.

For their sake too, making videos seemed like a good idea.

“Please tell them to make them more actively going forward. So that the employees are shown well.”

“Yes. President. Ah, and the EU says they’ll do the final signing.”

“Then… they’re buying the natural gas?”

“Yes. When we first proposed 11 times, I thought they’d absolutely never accept. But other places also got information that we proposed 11 times, and everyone raised prices like crazy. The EU side must have thought we colluded on prices.”

Even to me, 11 times was an absurdly unreasonable price.

I thought the EU would never accept that price unless they were crazy, but market logic was different.

Due to the Nord Stream pipeline explosion, natural gas prices kept rising, and our 11x proposal delivered the decisive blow.

Current analysis was that if the EU didn’t accept our proposal, natural gas could soar to nearly 20 times.

“As expected, you knew everything, President. You perfectly exploited the market price vulnerabilities. The 11 times price was exquisitely positioned too. I’ve been under you for a long time, President, but I still feel there’s much to learn.”

I also honestly didn’t expect things to go this far.

But whatever happened, if it turned out well, wasn’t that enough?

“Then please handle the EU side like that. As soon as it’s finalized, have ships ready in advance so they can receive natural gas supply immediately.”

“Yes. I’ll make sure we can unload all the volume. Plus from wheat to nickel. Shipping is going to be really busy.”

It felt like finally offloading burdens that had been piling up.

Since last year, holding that much volume meant storage costs kept going out significantly.

“President. This came from KW Exchange.”

But as soon as one matter ended, the next task came in.

I opened the document Hye-rin handed over.

“Isn’t this… what we did before?”

Coin candidates to list on KW Exchange.

Since corona, coin listings had increased dramatically.

As the representative of KW Exchange, I decide which coins to list on our market.

Employees first judged whether coins were legitimate or scams to narrow down candidates, then the review was passed to me.

Then I’d select appropriate coins according to my intuition and list them on our market.

“The coin market growth was tremendous from the corona special. So competitor coin exchanges sprouted up everywhere. One of them is this place called FTX, and their scale is growing unusually.”

Our KW Exchange is the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange.

But recently, with Robinhood’s bankruptcy allowing foreign stock trading, we were increasing influence by expanding the market.

But perhaps we’d been somewhat neglectful of the Bitcoin side—various competitor coin exchanges were catching up frighteningly.

Among them, the most threatening was this place called FTX.

“The reason FTX is getting attention is they have more listed coins than our exchange. They’re also accepting lots of meme coins and such. Of course, there are many scams because of that, but still, more members are joining looking for a big hit, so their popularity is tremendous.”

There are various types of coins.

So-called meme coins became trendy, and too many operators had been making a killing and running.

That’s why our exchange examined things a bit more strictly than others.

“FTX is indiscriminately listing coins to increase member count. So there are many problematic ones. But members are flocking because of that too. For that reason, our exchange employees selected candidates from listing coins or coins only on other exchanges and sent them to you, President.”

It seemed they wanted to increase our coin count too since members would keep leaving to FTX at this rate.

Since it was a reasonable argument, I looked through the candidate list.

“…”

But whether employees had relaxed the review standards too much, not much caught my eye.

Everything just reeked heavily of fraud.

As I checked a few decent ones and scrolled down the list—

“…?”

Something caught my eye.

But it wasn’t because the coin looked good.

Among this list, it was the coins mixed with the darkest darkness and chaotically red colors.

Coins, rather.

“Luna, Terra?”