The position of Rogue Trader? How dare they! Veil said sharply.
Tantos, what else do you know?
Gao Yi was also curious; it was impossible for them to know about Ludwig's death.
"You might have just sailed out of the Warp and not realized it, but you and your fleet have exceeded your expected return time by a full five years."
Hearing Tantos's answer, everyone finally understood what was happening.
Warp travel is filled with uncertainty, and the time flow between the Warp and the real world has massive disparities. Under normal circumstances, you won't encounter this situation if you are in a relatively safe shipping lane, but once you hit Warp turbulence, the time of your return to the material universe will experience slight disorder.
This is also why warships that went missing a century ago, deemed destroyed or lost, occasionally return from the Warp. To the warships inside the Warp, perhaps only a few years or even a few months have passed.
"Tantos, gather more intelligence for me, and I will give you the reward you deserve."
"I am already doing so, and it is my honor to serve you! I have already arranged quarters for you in the Court of the Monarch. Please follow my attendants to rest first. I imagine this journey of yours has not been very pleasant!"
The news of the replacement and return of the Mongert Family's Rogue Trader also spread rapidly with Gao Yi's arrival.
Although the Mongert Dynasty was not the most powerful dynasty in the Expansion Zone, it was far from comparable to other minor dynasties.
Gao Yi's succession and arrival at the Landing Port practically had an impact on everyone here.
Walking on the road to the Court of the Monarch with the combat-suit-wearing soldiers by his side instantly attracted the attention of those with ulterior motives.
Looking at the bustling Landing Port, Gao Yi even saw the presence of some xenos, which was nearly impossible to see within the territory of the Imperium.
After a night of rest, Tantos also sent people to deliver various reports.
The situation on the Capital World made Veil eager to return. Before Gao Yi was fully awake, he had already been woken up by an attendant.
Reluctantly moving the fair arm and thigh draped over his body, Gao Yi then put on his clothes and came to the reception room.
"My lord, I am sorry to disturb your rest, but I think we should rush back to the Capital World as soon as possible."
"Did Tantos mention any intelligence?"
"Agathos has stopped all external trade. This group of short-sighted fellows is cutting off the lifeline of the Dynasty. Fleets wanting to trade have even seen fires on the planet, and Agathos is also refusing all starships from docking."
"Civil war?"
"Though I do not wish to say it, Agathos has indeed likely suffered a civil war."
"How much longer does the Golden Ram need for repairs?"
"That is precisely the most serious problem I wanted to mention. It is impossible for the priests and mechanics on our warship to repair the entire vessel by themselves, so we invited the priests of the Landing Port to conduct an evaluation together. However, the result of the evaluation is that it will take at least four months for the warship to be repaired to a state where it can sail safely.
I have already asked them whether they can speed things up, but you know the pedantry of those priests. During normal repairs, they insist on appeasing every single Machine Spirit, and the appeasement rituals take time, which is also an important reason for the slow repairs."
Gao Yi was not too worried about the warship's problem; this was a problem that could be solved with money. However, this money was not Throne Cents or other currencies circulating in the Landing Port, but the psionic crystals in Gao Yi's pockets.
Gao Yi believed that as long as the quantity of SCVs was large enough, their formidable performance would allow him to complete the repairs to the warship without any help from the Adeptus Mechanicus.
After all, even when a warp engine was damaged, the repair speed was extremely fast.
Gao Yi even felt he could make money relying on the repair capabilities of SCVs. The knights of the Knight Family, the divine machinery of the Titan Legion, or the damaged power armour, terminators, and dreadnoughts of the Space Marines chapters—not every chapter is wealthy; chapters that are so poor they can only scrape things together or rely on looting are everywhere. It is very reasonable for me to repair some things for you while you exert some effort for me, right?
Of course, all of this had to be built upon the foundation of being sufficiently powerful oneself.
Glancing at his psionic crystal balance, Gao Yi directly warped in 100 SCVs, consuming 5,000 psionic crystals.
"Have Pavian go find Damon to receive the 100 SCVs. We will finish the warship repairs ourselves!"
"I will notify Pavian immediately."
"Aside from the warship repair problem, there is another very tricky issue."
"Tricky?"
"The cargo for our trade this time was almost entirely lost. Most of it was destroyed in the riots, and the small remaining portion tainted with warp aura is completely untradable. If we sell it secretly, it is also very easy to be targeted by the Inquisition, which outweighs the gains. So we had no choice but to dump all these goods into the void.
And the situation in the capital has also caused many people's trust in our Dynasty to plummet straight down.
Ordinarily, these problems wouldn't be problems; similar situations have happened in the past, but I contacted the Void Concordat, which cooperates with the Dynasty, and they tactfully refused us!
Damn it, how dare they refuse the request of the Dynasty!
We... currently do not have enough funds to recruit enough personnel! If a civil war has truly broken out on the Capital World, the people we have now are far from enough. Manual-labor shipworkers are fine; there are plenty of people willing to join us for a bite to eat, but what we lack most are technicians and soldiers! And the most important astropath!"
Hearing Veil's words, Gao Yi knew that it seemed many people still lacked the proper trust in him as a Rogue Trader.
No... or rather, someone questioned the legitimacy of his position as a Rogue Trader; perhaps someone might think that it was Gao Yi who killed Ludwig before ascending to the position.
Did even some people think the Mongert Dynasty would head toward destruction in this civil war?
Gao Yi had thought of many kinds of difficulties, but he never expected the difficulty to actually be a lack of money!
Currency in the Warhammer world was likewise built upon credit. Nearly every stellar sector had its own currency, and taking such an isolated currency to other stellar sectors would likely cause it to lose all value.
It seemingly entered the cosmic era, but the most effective method remained barter.
Minerals, weapons, technology, and population were the hardest hard currencies with actual value.
Gao Yi fell silent. Making money? How to make money—did he have to sell the artwork in the rooms? Or the fixed assets of the Landing Port? That would be too degrading, wouldn't it?
If word got out, wouldn't he be laughed at by other Rogue Traders?
"Do we have any other potential trading partners in the Landing Port?"
"Yes, well-known factions have almost all cooperated with the Dynasty before. If we can produce suitable goods, no one will refuse us. It's just that past transactions always selected those fixed trading partners so that profits could be maximized."
"What if we bring out CMC Combat Suits to trade?"
"Are you certain you want to sell such precious equipment?"
"No, it's precious to others, but to us, it's not..."
The enhancement of the CMC Combat Suit to ordinary combat personnel was very considerable, and to any mortal, it was a force multiplier.
Gao Yi believed that as long as this kind of thing was brought out to be sold, plenty of people would want to buy it to use themselves or to reverse-engineer the technology within it.
Yet he wasn't worried at all.
He already had his own plans in mind.
He intended to sell the combat suits outward, setting a price that would make everyone's heart flutter.
Of course, the combat suits used for sale would be manufactured using ordinary metal materials, while the combat suits he subsequently produced to arm his own soldiers would be made using much sturdier materials.
The combat suits produced by the barracks would have their armor strength improved according to the input materials.
This could also create a generational gap against the equipment sold to others, preventing people who bought his equipment from turning around and suppressing him.
And even if others truly reverse-engineered the combat suit technology and began attempting production, they would discover that even if they produced at cost price, the manufacturing costs would still be significantly higher than what Gao Yi sold them for—and that was even ignoring the yield rate.
If it were like that, what was the point of producing it yourself? You would need to build production lines, train personnel, face labor costs, time costs, and upfront investments—you might as well just buy them directly from Gao Yi!
The barracks only required metal to be fed in, and it could steadily produce outputs without operation, achieving a hundred-percent finished product rate! This was something others could never catch up to.
Gao Yi intended to forge the combat suits into the punch product of the Mongert Dynasty!
Before you continue