Sim felt like he was practically a genius.
With nothing more than a few figures on paper, he had predicted his neighbor's next move.
The moment he discovered this, he immediately had his salesmen buy up stockpiles of copper ore, sulfur, and other war materials from nearby mines.
The Horseshoe Trading Company's warehouses now held 1,200 tons of copper material. By his calculations, every million full-power rounds produced by the New Alliance required roughly sixteen to seventeen tons of copper.
A local battle would require at least one or two million rounds of ammunition. Taking the entirety of West Continent City would require no fewer than ten or twenty million rounds.
After all, the raiders were not idiots.
Under the tutelage of those Legion instructors, they had learned to dig trenches and hunker down in cover. Red River Town had fought the Serpent Clan for months and already knew how troublesome those people were.
Because the Horseshoe Trading Company had raised its inventory target, increased its purchases of copper ore and other materials, and reduced its shipments, copper ore prices in Red River Town had already risen by twenty percent, while sulfur had risen by over thirty percent.
And this was only the beginning.
He was still in the buying phase. Once he was done buying and his warehouses were packed with copper ore, he could choke off supply and exploit the lag before mines increased production. Tripling copper prices in the short term would be no problem.
Of course.
He could not pull off this business alone.
The trading company had no authority to issue notes. That authority belonged to mine owners, while they were merely distributors wedged between slave owners and merchants.
To drive up the price of copper ore, he had to bring at least one or