All Glory to Umbrella

In September, Umbrella Corporation acquired Isis Pharmaceuticals outright for £930,000 and completed its restructuring within the same month.

In mid-October, the animal trials were approved, and the Medical Safety Committee issued a clinical trial permit.

At the same time, the standardized industrial production line for Cloud White Medicine was completed. The first trial run successfully filled one hundred bottles of Cloud White Medicine, and the efficacy of the industrially produced drug was verified.

In late October, a temporary license was issued, allowing the drug to go on the market. Patrick immediately launched an overwhelming advertising campaign across nearly every mainstream media outlet, including The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, and the BBC.

In early November, the first batch of orders came from several pharmacies that trusted Patrick, totaling five thousand bottles.

That afternoon, 2,600 bottles of the medicine were produced.

At the same time, the raw materials ran out.

In the new Isis Pharmaceuticals factory, Patrick looked at the dozens of crates of Cloud White Medicine in front of him and frowned.

"Our raw materials were only enough for this much medicine?" he asked, somewhat incredulous.

Murphy was a little embarrassed too. He had already bought out all the dittany in Diagon Alley, and had even gone back twice afterward to replenish the raw materials, but he had still far underestimated the enormous gap in production capacity between industrial manufacturing and a hand workshop.

The materials he had scoured up, enough to supply Diagon Alley for a month or two, were used up in the pharmaceutical factory in two hours—and the machinery and equipment had not even been running at full capacity.

Compared with the Muggle world, the scale of the wizarding world was still far too insignificant.

"Can you get more raw materials?" Patrick asked.

"I can, but it'll take time, and it may not be sustainable for now."

Murphy wondered whether he should consider searching other countries and wizarding settlements.

"So the raw materials are this rare. No wonder I've never seen a medicine this effective before."

Patrick was rather open-minded about it, and even felt a little more at ease.

If that were not the case, he really could not understand why this kind of medicine had not been discovered by someone else, but had instead come from the hands of a boy with no formal pharmaceutical training—where would that leave all the pharmaceutical researchers in the world?

"We have to think of a way to solve the raw material problem, but what matters right now is how to fulfill the orders."

Patrick pondered for a while, then said, "Dilute it."

Murphy was a little shocked. "We can do that?"

Patrick nodded. "That's exactly what we'll do! Right now, every bottle of Cloud White Medicine is thirty milliliters, but for treating ordinary small wounds, one or two drops are enough. Thirty milliliters is far too wasteful."

As he spoke, the idea opened up in his mind. "In fact, we have to dilute it. How many external injuries can an ordinary family have? If one bottle of Cloud White Medicine is enough to last several years, how are we supposed to keep selling our medicine?"

"No, dilution alone isn't enough. Cloud White Medicine is too effective. There's almost no need for continuous dosing. Then we'll make it into single-use drops, or single-use sprays, single-use bandages, and so on. We're going to sell the medicine by the drop!"

Murphy thought for a moment and said, "That makes sense, but you already agreed on the price with them before, didn't you? Our pricing wasn't cheap to begin with. If we reduce the dosage, will it still sell?"

As for whether this kind of profiteering behavior—reducing the amount without reducing the price—was unethical, Murphy did not think that way. He was mainly worried about sales.

"The order only states the content. In any case, they don't know the composition ratio of the medicine. For this batch of orders, we'll make the medicine bottled for now. Each bottle only needs to be enough for one or two treatments, and then we'll include some single-use doses as free gifts."

As Patrick spoke, his thoughts became clearer. "Have the pharmacists test it. Reserve 0.2 or 0.3 milliliters of the original solution in each bottle, and dilute the rest with water or alcohol, then see how effective it is."

"These raw materials must be very expensive, right?" Patrick asked.

Murphy calculated it. He had spent a little over a hundred thousand pounds buying gold, which he had exchanged entirely into Galleons, and two-thirds of it had been used to buy dittany.

Therefore, the cost of this dittany was close to ninety thousand pounds.

Yet it had only been made into a little over two thousand bottles of medicine.

On average, the raw materials alone cost around thirty-five pounds per bottle.

In other words, the cost was about 1.2 pounds per milliliter.

And using relatively expensive medicines at present as a reference, they had priced one bottle of Cloud White Medicine at only fifteen pounds.

Previously, Murphy had had no concept of how much medicine his materials could produce. Now that he calculated it like this, if he really sold it according to the original dosage, he would indeed lose money all the way to his grandmother's house.

But if they followed Patrick's method, each bottle of medicine would contain only 0.2 to 0.3 milliliters of the original solution.

Then the cost of each bottle would directly drop to below 0.4 pounds. Even if the price were lowered to the most competitive level of around five pounds, he would still have a profit margin of more than ten times.

The clever part was that this amount of medicine was already entirely sufficient.

Even for treating relatively serious wounds, only two or three drops of Essence of Dittany were needed.

And one drop of liquid medicine was about 0.05 milliliters.

An original solution of 0.2 to 0.3 milliliters was about four to six drops, enough to treat two serious external injuries. Given its effectiveness, it was more than enough to meet the needs of an ordinary family.

He roughly described the costs to Patrick, then could not help reaching out and patting him. "Patrick, you're a fucking genius!"

The two of them then discussed the uses, positioning, and pricing of various single-use products for quite some time.

"All single-use products must be individually packaged, and the packaging has to be exquisite. The best contents also need the best exterior in order to gain recognition."

"Finally, and most importantly, every product must have our trademark printed in the appropriate place. Boss, that red-and-white umbrella-shaped logo you drew before is very recognizable. It will definitely leave a deep impression."

Did that even need to be said?

The hundreds of millions of corpses surging across a post-apocalyptic wasteland would show you what the pressure of Umbrella Corporation really meant.

Thinking that the streets would one day be filled with Umbrella Corporation's logo, Murphy was already starting to feel a little worried.

Merlin's balls nearly shriveled from fright, all right?!

In short, from now on, he would never touch virus research no matter what!

Still, Murphy was very supportive of the proposal. Steve Jobs's aesthetics had already stirred up a trend in the business world, and Patrick was clearly one of Steve Jobs's devotees.

And he really did possess quite a few traits similar to his idol's.

After a round of discussion, Murphy no longer had any doubts about whether Cloud White Medicine could be accepted by the Muggle market.

He took a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Patrick. "I wanted to give this to you yesterday. Five percent of the shares. Don't think it's too little—others couldn't buy it for five million pounds."

But to Murphy, Patrick's role was in fact far more useful than Jim's five million pounds.

Patrick took the share certificate, his expression calm.

"What, think it's not enough?"

Patrick shook his head. "I just did the math in my head. With a conservative estimate of a fifteen-times profit margin, this order alone can let us net over seventy thousand pounds. And this shipment volume is less than one-thousandth of London's demand. Across the entire United Kingdom, it's not even one ten-thousandth. But given White Medicine's effects, it's bound to become wildly popular worldwide."

"This five percent will be worth hundreds of millions within a year, and it will continue to climb. How could I think it isn't enough?"

"It's just that, compared to the glory of personally bringing a product like this to the world, hundreds of millions of pounds don't seem to count for much."

Murphy was a little surprised. "I didn't expect you to be an idealist."

But that was not especially unexpected. If Patrick had not had that tiny bit of idealism, he would not have been recruited by Murphy back then, a mere greenhorn pulling off a business with no capital.

"Haha, I think we'll go down in history!" Patrick's eyes shone brightly.

Looking at this middle-aged balding man, Murphy suddenly thought he was a little cute.

He smiled. "Since what you want is honor, and money doesn't mean much to you, give me the shares back."

Patrick's face stiffened, and he hurriedly pulled the share certificate back toward himself.

"I misspoke just now. All glory belongs to Umbrella, and to you, boss. I'm just hitching a ride. What glory? Nonsense."

Glory was glory, but a man still had to eat.

Murphy laughed. "Relax. No one can take that five percent from you. Besides, in the future, Cloud White Medicine probably won't be our only product. You're likely still underestimating the value of those shares."

Patrick suddenly thought of the notebook Murphy had taken out when he had previously told him about White Medicine's experimental procedure.

White Medicine was only one page that Murphy had casually torn from that notebook.

Perhaps Murphy still had one or two other medicines on the level of White Medicine in his hands? Even three or four? Or more?

"Whew." Patrick finally managed to suppress the wild fantasies in his heart.

He solemnly placed the certificate into his backpack, thinking that he would frame it later.

"Thank you for your generosity." This time, Patrick's expression was much more serious.

Murphy smiled. "All glory belongs to Umbrella."

But Patrick stared at Murphy with that somewhat uncomfortable gaze. "All glory belongs to the boss!"