Season 3 chapter 100
The United Board
Filoska shook her head, a deeply conflicted look on her face.
"But still, guys," Filoska sighed, crossing her arms tightly. "We know that you are trying to help him. We know you are actively trying to make history. But we are currently losing a massive amount of funds. It is a bleeding asset."
"I don't care about this thing, Filoska!" Kniya declared fiercely, refusing to back down. "If the guy has the motivation to make a completely new technology, we are going to back him! If we have to gather the funds from anywhere, we are going to do that! We will find a way. It is just like that."
Salesh stared at Kniya and Malesh. He saw the absolute, uncompromising loyalty in their eyes. The President of Kavilson Steel slowly let out a heavy breath, his strict financial discipline completely fracturing under the weight of their friendship.
"I didn't think that you guys were so incredibly serious about this thing," Salesh admitted softly. He reached into his coat and pulled out his secure executive datapad. "Well... if it is really like that. Out of the 500 billion credits required for the fourth prototype, I am personally contributing 250 billion from my own private conglomerate accounts."
Kniya's jaw practically hit the floor.
Before Kniya could even process the shock, Filoska smoothly pulled out her own datapad.
"And yeah, I am also contributing the remaining 250 billion credits," Filoska announced, tapping her screen with aristocratic grace. "I think so, that would be more than enough for it, don't you think?"
Kniya stared at them, completely dumbfounded. "Wait... why are you guys helping us? You were literally just yelling at us about losing money."
Filoska offered a warm, genuine smile that completely stripped away her usual strict Vice President persona.
"It is a simple thing, Kniya. You forgot," Filoska said softly. "We are friends with you in the first place. I know that technically we have an employee-boss relationship on paper, but we are friends above all of that. And if you two are so intensely interested in this cause, we are also interested. We can do whatever we need to do so that we can help you. Just take this money and develop the fourth reactor."
With two synchronized beeps, the massive 500-billion-credit transfer landed directly into the R&D department's main account.
Malesh looked down at the ledger, his deadpan mask softening into a look of absolute, unshakeable pride.
"Well," Malesh stated smoothly, looking around the shipping container at his three best friends. "The thing is like that... for the first time ever, we four are entirely united in a single project. And I definitely ensure you guys, you are going to get much better-yielded returns from this investment."
The Methodical Forge
Two days later, Shuntesh Hawada woke up from his mandated rest. His body was healed, his mind was sharp, and the overwhelming despair had completely vanished.
Almost immediately upon waking, a massive scientific epiphany struck him. He realized exactly what he had been doing wrong. The reaction was incomplete not just because of the sludge, but because the kinetic timings were entirely imperfect.
When he returned to the laboratory, his entire approach completely shifted.
During the development of the previous three prototypes, Shuntesh had been working in a frantic, absolute rush. He had been driven by panic, desperately trying to prove himself without giving the heavy machinery the proper time to settle. He hadn't been properly analyzing the major structural flaws; he had just been throwing raw power at the problem. That is absolutely not the way you develop new things, he realized.
This time, the chaotic urgency was gone.
Shuntesh began to work with a calm, surgical precision. He paced himself. Whenever he felt his anxiety spiking over a complex thermal equation, he would literally step away from the workbench, sit down on the concrete floor, and do ten minutes of deep, silent meditation. Only after calming his mind and lowering his heart rate would he return to the blueprints.
He analyzed every single micro-fracture from the previous explosions. He recalibrated the cooling pipes to perfectly match the new, flawless kinetic timings. He accepted that there would always be minor flaws, but he was actively engineering failsafes to catch them before they caused a meltdown.
Five Days Later...
Five highly disciplined, methodical days had passed since Shuntesh officially started working on the fourth prototype.
The Northern East wing of the laboratory was no longer a frantic, screaming forge of chaos. It was a smooth, highly efficient, heavily organized assembly line. The massive containment shell of the fourth reactor was slowly coming together, built not in a frantic rush, but with the absolute, perfectly calculated precision of a man who was finally at peace with his own genius.
The Executive Workforce
When Shuntesh Hawada arrived at the Northern East wing laboratory the next morning, his mind was calm, focused, and ready to methodically engineer the fourth prototype. But as he stepped onto the concrete floor, he immediately froze in his tracks.
Standing in the dead center of the R&D lab, stripped of their bespoke blazers and wearing heavy, flame-resistant industrial aprons over their designer clothes, were the four most powerful people in the Republic.
Kniya, Malesh, Filoska, and Salesh were waiting for him.
"Shuntesh," Kniya announced, slapping a heavy leather welding glove onto his hand with a massive grin. "I think it needs every single one of us to be a part of this project to finish it off. We are all going to help you build this machine."
Shuntesh blinked, thoroughly bewildered. He looked at the pristine, aristocratic Vice President and the highly stressed President of Kavilson Steel strapping on heavy steel-toed boots.
"Sir, but there is absolutely no need for your helping," Shuntesh protested, quickly stepping forward. "I think you all would be far too tired. You literally run a global empire, and there is already way too much corporate work for you to handle!"
"No, no, Shuntesh," Kniya dismissed aggressively, pointing a gloved finger at him. "We are helping you, and you have to take it. That is a firm, executive mandate. It is absolutely necessary."
Shuntesh looked at Malesh, hoping the voice of pragmatic reason would intervene. Malesh simply picked up a heavy iron wrench, his deadpan face completely devoid of any reluctance.
"What should I even say to this?" Shuntesh muttered, completely out of his depth.
Filoska strapped a pair of protective goggles over her eyes, looking sharper and more efficient than ever.
"You don't need to say anything, Shuntesh," Filoska stated warmly. "Yeah, let's get started. We need to complete this thing."
"Exactly," Salesh agreed, rolling up the sleeves of his expensive shirt. "Point us to the raw materials. We are your workforce now."
The Nine-Month Mark
The timeline shifted, and the days blurred into weeks. The heavy industrial smog of Seistain continued to blow across the capital, marking a massive milestone: nine months had now passed since the end of the civil war.
Over the course of those grueling four months of development, the R&D laboratory had transformed into a masterpiece of collective labor. The Managing Directors of Kavilson Steel weren't just supervising; they were actively bleeding for the project.
Filoska had completely taken over the logistical engineering. She organized the raw Fisluation sand deliveries with aristocratic precision, ensuring the chemical baths were perfectly timed. Salesh, using his elite financial and analytical brain, cross-referenced Shuntesh's incredibly complex thermal limits, double-checking the math to ensure a massive reduction in the kinetic pressure backup.
Malesh became the ultimate heavy lifter. With his terrifyingly calm, deadpan efficiency, he hauled massive iron plates and locked the heavy containment geometry into place without ever breaking a sweat. And Kniya, driven by pure unhinged enthusiasm, aggressively manned the welding torches, showering the floor in blue sparks as he fused the hyper-resistant alloys together, laughing like a maniac the entire time.
At the center of it all was Shuntesh Hawada, orchestrating the genius of the machine with a calm, surgical precision.
And finally, it stood before them.
The fourth prototype was a monolithic, terrifyingly beautiful piece of heavy machinery. The exhaust valves were perfectly widened to handle the toxic sludge. The internal compression chamber was flawlessly aligned. It wasn't just a prototype anymore; it was the blueprint for a commercial power grid.
The Liquidity Crisis
Then, Malesh let out a slow, exhausted sigh, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
"However," Malesh admitted flatly, dropping the brutal financial reality onto the table. "I also know that we are currently lacking the liquid funds. I know that Kniya promised him a huge amount of funding for the fourth prototype, but actually, as you are fully aware from your own ledgers, Salesh, we absolutely do not have that much liquid money available in our immediate accounts right now. We need to gather some money and just give it to him."
Salesh aggressively tapped his heavy stack of dossiers, his financial panic flaring right back up.
"I know about this exact thing, guys!" Salesh warned loudly, throwing his hands up. "That is exactly why I am warning you! Our liquid reserves are stretched completely thin, and pouring another five hundred billion into a melted crater is absolute madness!"
"Yeah, we have the responsibility of way too many things right now," Kniya intervened, his voice dropping into a heavy, stressed register as he acknowledged their mutual financial burden. "It has only been exactly five months since the civil war ended. Our company is literally just reviving out of the ashes. You know exactly how much humongous capital we are pouring into redeveloping our shattered factories, rebuilding our destroyed warehouses, and paying out massive employee compensations just to get the domestic supply lines running again."
Malesh nodded slowly, staring at the corporate dossiers Salesh had just dropped on the table.
"Exactly. And as your financial reports indicate, Salesh, beyond our industrial sectors, we are actively draining our reserves on massive charitable infrastructure. We are continuously running dozens of newly built orphanages and shelter homes, and funding the complete redevelopment of the religious cities that were leveled during the war. We are spending massive amounts of capital simultaneously."
"We suffered a huge loss in that civil war!" Kniya emphasized, throwing his hands in the air. "We are just recovering from it! We are not immune to everything else! The financial bleeding is real!"
Kniya took a deep breath, his unyielding determination returning instantly.
"Yeah, Malesh, I don't know how the fuck we are going to gather that amount overnight. But still, we have to find a way, certainly."