Schiller's newly purchased farm lay in southern California, about a two-hour drive from Palm Beach, the well-known enclave of luxury estates. There were more than seventy vacation farms in the area, most of them owned by Palm Beach tycoons.
Schiller's farm had been converted from the former Love Farm.
After the Fin Fang Foom incident, the entire area had suffered some damage, and its safety had come under scrutiny. As a result, the prices of all the surrounding farms had plummeted.
It was not that the wealthy had no confidence in their security measures. The key was who they had provoked. If it were merely ordinary armed criminals, or even terrorists, they were confident they could bring them to justice before they caused any harm.
But dragons were obviously beyond the scope of their security capabilities.
Wealthy people around the world did not want trouble involving superpowers. Not only could it genuinely threaten their lives, but it also meant entrusting the safety of their fortunes to S.H.I.E.L.D., whose prices had always been steep. Nick could squeeze oil from a stone.
Rather than spend that money hiring S.H.I.E.L.D. to maintain security, they might as well sell the farms outright. Whatever trouble happened afterward would no longer be their concern.
That worked out nicely for Schiller. He bought three farms at a very low price and combined them into one.
Though there were three farms, they could not compare to the truly enormous farms in the American mainland. Vacation farms were small to begin with, and many owners had built massive houses, dug artificial lakes, created golf courses, and even established Nature Reserves. There was not much actual farmland.
Together, the three farms had about one-tenth the farmland of the Kent family farm. However, one of them had a private beach, a