VMMM…
Outside of a two-storey building, a magicar slowed down, stopping by the curb.
CLACK
Cæ emerged from the magicar, closing the door as he studied the building with an introspective gaze. It was on the outskirts of the inner city, quite far from the Elendir Institute of Magic.
The building was a grim gray, extending for several dozens of meters in its length. It was panned with grilled and barred windows, just as Cæ had specified to the Feidin when he began searching for the headquarters of the business.
The door opened as Feidin smiled with excitement. "What do you think, Cæ? I bought this building because of its solemn gray theme that reminds me of you. Rather thoughtful, don't you think?"
Cæ raised an eyebrow with a light scoff. "Your sentimentality touches my heart, Feidin."
His curious gaze returned to the building before him. "Admittedly, this does seem even better than it looked in the pictures you sent me. I want to check the internals myself."
"By all means."
Cæ quickly hopped into the building with a curious gaze, directing his scrutinizing eyes across the entirety of the complex around them. The ground floor was a massive empty space stretching a good distance, divided into ten tracks, each comprised of a production line, each across the length of the building.
Each production line was comprised of conveyor buildings that passed through several sections comprised of enchanted machines bolted to the ground surrounding the conveyor belt. They were covered in runes, darkened by the absence of magical energy flowing through the enchanted item.
"Just as you asked, Cæ," Feidin flashed a pleased smile. "A base that had ten production lines specialized towards accommodating both intricate engineering and complex alchemical technology."
Cæ nodded with satisfaction. "This is good. This is exactly what we need. What was the estimated production rate of each assembly line again?"
"Sixteen hours per unit with one worker per production line," Feidin answered. "We should be able to produce about thirty units every two days."
"Ah, you're here," Seliphaz' voice grew delighted when she spotted Cæ from the second floor, "come on up, let me show you the second floor, it's really nice!"
Cæ's eyes lit up as he directed a sweeping gaze across the second floor.
It was a spacious office space comprised of several individual office spaces, as well as a conference hall with a large table and a screen.
"Honestly, I still can't believe that the Elendir Institute of Magic gave you such a solid lump sum of money for your application to the extra-curricular sponsorship program," Feidin remarked with a pleased tone. "Even if this building is in the outskirts of Colohen City bordering the slums, to be able to afford such a factory headquarters before we even complete the final registration process, let alone earn from sales, is a privilege most businesses cannot afford."
"Privilege? Give me a break," Cæ muttered. "I almost got buried alive today and may yet be so, depending on how things unfold. Getting such generous funds was not for free or due to luck."
He had conceded to being used as a political prop and a political shield for a controversial policy that had pissed off a bunch of powerful people. Still, after seeing just how good their new base and factory were, he had to admit that he was pleased by the end outcome that allowed them to afford indulgences that would normally not be affordable.
He shook his head. "Alright, more importantly…"
He turned to Seliphaz with a meaningful gaze. "You reported that you had finished adding the final touches to the product a few days ago, yes?"
She nodded diligently. "I just finished adjusting the optimal amount of a particular adhesive that is not available within Elendir and needs to be imported from the Durmen Principality."
Cæ narrowed his eyes. "Elendir charges a fourteen-percent tariff on imported raw materials from the Durmen Principality. Which is… unfortunate."
She nodded with a grim expression. "I have tried alternatives, both engineering and alchemical, b-but…"
"It's fine…" Cæ shook his head. "Before we proceed with the main business today, I want a final breakdown of the material inputs per unit and…"
He turned towards Feidin, "…the corresponding supply chains and show me that the final product adheres to the constraint of one thousand leenars."
The two exchanged a glance expectantly before turning back at Cæ, nodding.
"Follow us."
Cæ eventually found himself seated at the very other end of a long table while Feidin and Seliphaz stood on the opposite end, evidently having already prepared a presentation.
BZZZT
The screen lit up, featuring the final iteration of the hybrid solution prototype that they had decided to go ahead with.
Cæ's eyes lit up with delight as he beheld the micro-housing unit with enthusiasm. It had a classy modern design with a light blue color theme to it, with several streaks of white flowing across the product. Its structure resembled the fusion between a doghouse and a tent, with a gable-style rooftop.
"I love it," Cæ nodded. "It looks like a more refined and aesthetically pleasing iteration of the previous updates that you have shown in the past few months. I'm assuming that the design engineers whom the two of you have hired have done well."
She nodded enthusiastically. "They made what was otherwise a visually unappealing model look rather homely. I think a lot of people living in the slums will love it!"
"It certainly will appeal to them more than any of the alternatives at their disposal," Cæ remarked. "Now, what are the material input requirements and the corresponding supply chains? I have only followed this so far as each individual update, I have yet to see what our inputs look like as a whole."
Seliphaz nodded, switching over to the next slide, displaying a large number of substance names, their market prices, availability, and the corresponding supply chains that Feidin had researched and procured.
"Our inputs comprised twenty-six raw materials and eleven non-magical technological components that we do not have the production capability to manufacture," she explained. "Of the twenty-six raw material components, about half are naturally occurring mana-active substances, and another half are artificial alchemical substances. And…"
She turned to Cæ with an eager smile, "About six of the alchemical substances that comprise our input are personally designed and patented by me. I had designed many for none of the existing libraries of patented alchemical substances possessed properties that I needed for this housing project."
Cæ's eyes widened with surprise. "So you just invented six brand-new substances because the existing alternatives fit your requirements?"
She smiled with flustered, abashed pride. "It wasn't as impressive as you make them sound. In reality, I made minor modifications to existing substances that were deviating enough to warrant patenting for this project."
Cæ's expression lit up with intrigue. "I see, so it didn't require the rigorous grounds-up alchemical development that you mentioned when you first presented your progress regarding the product development."
She nodded. "The lower the deviation, the lower the change. Regardless, coming back to the main point. Half of our materials are artificially synthesized alchemical products, which means that we need a lot of raw magical energy as input to create these products in the alchemical synthesizer machine that you saw down the manufacturing lines below. But…"
She winced, "Our magical energy bill will be very high."
Cæ shook his head. "Don't worry about that. You guys have already done the production testing to verify that this model consumes the least amount of energy across the entire process of production. It will be offset by savings we make on material costs."
He turned to Feidin with an expectant gaze.
The man hurriedly began his segment of the breakdown. "We have a lot of raw material and component input, and I have spent the last six months digging across all suppliers on the market for each of the raw material inputs that the production process requires. And…"
He shifted to the next slide, featuring a map of Southern Gruonia, of which Elendir was on the southern coast. Much of their direct suppliers were within this local geopolitical sphere, featuring the Vrannouan Kingdom and the Suraria Republic to the northeast, the Kharkara Emirates, and the Durmen Principality to the north.
"Thankfully…" Feidin began, pointing to a point in the North of Elendir, "The most extensively used raw materials for the very structure of the micro-housing unit all come from suppliers in North Elendir. I have already signed mass supply contracts with some of the largest suppliers in Elendir to procure what will constitute much of the final product in weight."
[Adanbami Steel Suppliers.]
[Felmonent Grava Industries.]
[Lormana Sormentine Mining Enterprise.]
…
Cæ narrowed his eyes at some of the names on the long list of suppliers that Feidin managed to broker deals with.
Some of those names were among the top corporations of Elendir, inevitably making them stakeholders in the Elendir Institute of Magic and part of the board of directors that owned a part of the institute that he went to.
He was not comfortable being dependent on such an entity, but unfortunately, he didn't have much of a choice. The viability of his business would come into question if he didn't take the cheapest options at his disposal.
"I'm guessing most of them centered around the Mohendar Mines," Cæ remarked.
The Mohendar Mines were a massive array of mines in North Elendir just short of the mountain range at the border that contained a vast variety of both mana-active and non-mana-active minerals and substances and was one of the reasons that Elendir was a net exporter of raw minerals and surrounding products.
Feidin nodded. "Thanks to that, we can get our hands on much of what we need within the Democratic Republic of Elendir, and this is something that Seliphaz has been mindful of during the product development phase so that we can avoid tariffs, customs, and security checks and other protocols that can slow down the production of our product. Unfortunately, despite our greatest efforts, not all materials could be procured from within the Democratic Republic of Elendir."
He turned back to the marked map. "We have one supplier in the Durmen Principality, one in the Kharkara Emirates, one in the Vrannouan Kingdom, one in the Republic of Suraria…"
Cæ heaved a sigh as he considered the complex geopolitical relationships between the Democratic Republic of Elendir and these nations.
History was complicated.
There had been times when these nations were at war and times when they had brokered peace. Fortunately, there was no war in recent times, and nothing overtly wrong with what he was seeing. For better or for worse, the nations bordered each other, forcing them to exist in some compromised status quo.
"…And our most distant supplier of the Courmanium Adhesive substance in the product is all the way over in the Ellantra Continent," the map zoomed out as he featured a distant dot on a continent further south of the Gruonia Continent that they inhabited. "A week of processing and preparing, another two weeks for travel time, and another week of customs and other importing protocols, making for a whopping month for final delivery of our suppliers."
He turned to Cæ with a complicated expression. "This will be our greatest time constraint as far as supply chains go. We will need to buy massive stockpiles of the adhesive substance and store them here in our base serving also as our warehouse of inventory."
Cæ heaved a sigh. "We will have to make sure that we have enough of this before we even get started. Last I recall, you already ordered one mass shipment of supplies from these suppliers, right?"
Feidin nodded. "It should arrive soon enough."
"That should last us around five thousand units based on these numbers," Cæ remarked. "More than enough to last us until the next set of supplies arrive."
It wouldn't be easy, but as long as they planned carefully, they would be able to get away with it.
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