[CEO's Cheat Sheet]
Supply Blockade: Cutting off access to raw materials to an opponent's territory to cripple their economic engine.
Market Disruption: Destroying an existing market by launching a new product that is far superior and unrivaled.
Panic spread faster than a lethal plague.
That morning, the courtyard of Winterhaven Castle wasn't filled with the usual enthusiastic songs of the workers. Hundreds of refugees stood with deathly pale faces, whispering in terror. Vespera wrung her apron anxiously near the main doors, while Titus and Rufus paced back and forth in front of the massive pile of hunted game.
"Big Boss!" Titus immediately exclaimed when he saw Stephanie gracefully descending the stone stairs, followed by Revista who walked casually with his large hands in his pockets, completely unbothered by the cold. "The news of the Duke's boycott has already spread! Without salt shipments from the capital, these five hundred kilograms of wolf and deer meat will rot in three days!"
Rufus nodded in sheer panic, his teeth chattering. "Duke Malakor really wants to kill us slowly, Boss! The ground is frozen solid, and we have absolutely no access to the sea! Where in the world can we get salt?!"
Stephanie walked right past them without breaking her elegant stride. Her face showed absolutely no worry. Instead, she radiated the absolute, chilling calm of an executive who already had a master backup plan.
"Titus, prepare two empty cargo carts. Ornn, grab your tools," Stephanie ordered briskly while buttoning up her luxurious white fur coat. "Revista, call Vortigern. We are heading to the Bitter Lake at the western edge of this territory."
Ornn's heavy footsteps stopped instantly. The dwarf's eyes widened in sheer horror.
"Bitter Lake?! Boss Lady, have you finally gone mad from desperation?!" Ornn exclaimed, tightly gripping his hammer. "The water in that frozen lake is highly toxic! Even starving wild beasts won't lick the ice there. It tastes incredibly bitter, sharp, and it violently twists your stomach until you die!"
"That's not a lethal poison, Ornn," Stephanie answered flatly, stepping out of the iron gates and gracefully mounting the waiting giant Frost Wolf. "It's simply water with an excessively high concentration of magnesium chloride and calcium sulfate. Mineral impurities."
Ornn blinked, completely unfamiliar with those strange, advanced terms.
Stephanie looked down at the confused dwarf with a calculating smirk. "...And where there is an abundance of salty and bitter mineral impurities... there is raw salt just waiting to be extracted."
Bitter Lake truly lived up to its ominous name. Its massive surface was frozen solid, reflecting a gloomy, lifeless gray color. Not a single tree grew around its perimeter; the land was barren and heavily coated in dirty white, frost-like crystals.
Stephanie stood bravely at the edge of the lake, taking a deep breath of the freezing air. She opened her glowing blue System screen.
[Activating Salt Purification Blueprint (Basic)...]
The blue hologram radiated brightly from the screen, projecting a massive, complex 3D design of a giant distillation furnace equipped with multi-tiered filter layers directly onto the barren ground.
"Ornn," Stephanie pointed an elegant finger at the glowing hologram. "Build that exact filtration structure using the excess bricks from the castle and the active charcoal from our factory furnaces. I want three solid layers of filtration. Do not skip a single detail."
"Give me half an hour, Boss!" Ornn, who was always burning with enthusiasm whenever he saw new structural designs, immediately started hammering rocks into place, assisted frantically by Titus and Rufus.
After the crude but highly efficient distillation structure was completed, Stephanie turned to Revista. The silver-haired man was leaning his broad back against a dead, frozen tree, watching Stephanie's every move with intense, unwavering focus.
"My personal furnace," Stephanie called softly, stepping closer to him. "Time to work. Break the ice on this lake and boil the water. I need stable, continuous heat, not a destructive explosion."
Revista smirked, a deep, rumbling purr vibrating in his massive chest. He absolutely loved it when this brilliant woman needed him.
Without another word, Revista stepped right to the edge of the toxic lake. He pressed his scarred palms flat against the surface of the thick ice. Instantly, fiery red, scorching heat flowed rapidly from his arms. The meter-thick ice cracked violently, melted into a pool, and immediately began to boil within mere seconds.
Hot, thick steam billowed high into the freezing winter air. The boiling, toxic lake water was channeled directly by Ornn's system into the clean sand and charcoal filtration installation he had just built.
The distillation process went incredibly fast thanks to the extreme, unnatural temperature from Revista's Abyssal Curse—which he could now control with frightening precision thanks to the expensive suppressant Stephanie had bought him.
The dirty water, previously gray and pungent, dripped out of the very end of the filter as a perfectly clear liquid, before immediately evaporating due to the intense ambient heat Revista directed at the final stone container.
The water droplets completely evaporated, leaving a growing pile of solid crystals at the bottom of the basin.
Stephanie stepped forward and picked up a tiny pinch of the crystals. The color wasn't brownish, murky, or dirty like the low-grade salt usually consumed by even the highest nobles in the capital. These crystals were flawlessly, blindingly white, sparkling under the pale winter sun like freshly crushed diamonds.
She offered her hand to Ornn. "Taste it."
Ornn was highly hesitant, but he carefully licked the white crystal off her gloved finger. The dwarf's eyes instantly widened to the size of saucers.
"By the sacred forge of my ancestors..." Ornn whispered in absolute disbelief, dropping to his knees. "This isn't bitter! This... this is pure, flawless salt! The saltiness is incredibly perfect and clean! Even the salt on the King's own dining table isn't this white!"
[Ding! Item Created: Pure White Salt (Quality: SSS).]
[Passive Production Reward: +50 WP per 10 Kilograms.]
Stephanie elegantly clapped her hands together, dusting off the remaining salt grains. Her beautiful face reflected nothing but absolute, terrifying victory.
"Titus, Rufus. Load this pure white gold into the cargo carts. Starting today, we won't just be preserving our own meat," Stephanie ordered, her voice ringing with newfound power.
She turned her gaze towards the far south, directly towards the capital where her biological father sat on his arrogant throne.
"I heard Duke Malakor is incredibly proud of his murky salt mine business that monopolizes the northern market," Stephanie said, her tone as cold and sharp as the winter ice. "Ornn, make me premium pine wood boxes. We will package this White Salt and our Lavender Soap exclusively for the high-end market."
Revista stepped closer, standing tall right behind Stephanie like an absolute, indestructible shield. "Are you going to attack your father's territory?"
"Not with swords or armies, Revista," Stephanie smiled cunningly.
We are going to execute a brutal market disruption, she planned inwardly.
"We are going to choke his financial lifeline," Stephanie answered out loud, her eyes gleaming with a ruthless capitalist's ambition. "We will bleed his monopoly dry until he begs for mercy."
[Nymphaearoot the Author]: Pure White Salt SSS Quality unlocked! Duke Malakor intended to starve Stephanie, but he ended up handing her a new monopoly field with quality far above the capital's salt. Prepare for a massive price war in the next chapter!