We're Going Bankrupt

"Your work mainly consists of two tasks. The first is brewing Beauty Potion. Make as much as you can, and I'll pay you by the bottle."

"Although your fixed monthly salary is sixty Galleons, you can earn far more than that."

As a qualified boss, Murphy had already grown thoroughly practiced at painting rosy pictures.

The job sounded excellent. Alex nodded hard. "I'll work hard!"

"Good. The second task. This bag is full of medicinal ingredients. Some of it is dittany, and the rest are other herbs. You need to crush all the ingredients in this bag and mix them together. Grind them into powder, so no one can tell what the original materials were."

"Once they're mixed, put everything into cloth sacks, pack them up, and pile them in this barn. Every Monday, someone will come and haul away the mixed powder."

"After those materials are taken away, you'll go purchase potion ingredients. The most important is dittany, followed by the raw materials for Beauty Potion. I'll make you a list of the other potion ingredients later. Buy as much as Diagon Alley has of these materials."

"On Monday afternoon, someone will bring over some other herbs. You'll mix the dittany you bought with those herbs, then crush them."

"Crush, mix, pack, wait for someone to haul them away, then buy more materials, crush, mix, pack... and keep repeating the cycle. This is your most important job. Do you understand?"

Alex nodded blankly.

"What, is there a problem?"

Alex hesitated for a moment. "The money to buy potion ingredients..."

"I'll give you a sum of Galleons every week. I won't make you pay out of pocket."

Alex let out a breath of relief. It looked as though he had suffered losses in that area before?

"One more thing, Mr. Peter Parker. Is there a fireplace here?"

"A fireplace?"

"It's just... I need to use the Floo Network to go to Diagon Alley..."

Murphy froze. "You don't know Apparition?"

"I haven't got a license." Alex looked a little embarrassed. "I'm afraid of splinching..."

"Useless..." Murphy sighed.

Alex looked pitiful and aggrieved. "I-I can take the Knight Bus here to work..."

"...Fine. I forgot to mention this earlier, but the work I'm having you do needs to stay confidential. My identity, this barn, what you're doing with the materials you buy—everything needs to stay confidential. You can't tell any wizard. Understand?"

"And the Knight Bus... Tsk, forget it. I'll make you a Portkey later."

"Ugh, what a headache."

Murphy sighed. Wizards really were too hopeless.

But on second thought, it was actually quite normal. In Muggle society, not everyone knew how to drive a car or fly a plane either.

With the Floo Network so widespread in the magical world, ordinary wizards had no need to use a risky method of travel like Apparition.

Instead, it was Dark wizards, or Aurors who fought Dark wizards, who used it more often.

"Oh, right." Thinking of Dark wizards, Murphy felt he needed to give a warning. "Be careful when you buy potion ingredients."

The previous two times he had gone to buy materials, he had vaguely felt someone watching him.

But considering he was buying tens of thousands of Galleons' worth of goods at once, it was only natural to attract attention.

"If you show off wealth, it may draw covetous eyes. Be extra careful. It'd be best to change your identity when buying materials. Can you make Polyjuice Potion? Keep some on hand. In short, after buying things, don't wander around. Come back quickly."

Alex was already starting to look uneasy.

"Mr. Parker, c-can I think about it a little more..."

"Monthly salary, eighty Galleons."

Alex had no more problems.

"Then start work today. There are quite a lot of materials in this bag..." As Murphy spoke, he suddenly felt a vibration at his waist, followed by a ringing sound like an alarm clock.

He was stunned for a moment before taking the mobile phone out of another Extension Charm bag at his waist.

This thing had no caller ID, but Murphy estimated it should be Patrick calling.

Sure enough, after he answered, Patrick's voice came through. "Hello, hello, boss? Can you hear me?"

"I can hear you. What's wrong?"

"It's hard to explain over the phone. Why don't you come over first?"

"Fine. I'll be there now."

"Wait, you weren't thinking of coming to my house to find me, were you?" Patrick said. "Come to the office. We just rented an entire floor in Lloyd's Building. The address is..."

Murphy felt somewhat ashamed. As the founder and big boss, he had only just learned his company's address after the move had already been completed.

After hanging up, Murphy was about to leave. Then, after thinking for a moment, he took out a pen, wrote down his mobile phone number, and handed it to Alex. "You know how to use a public phone, right? Call this number if something happens. Owls are far too slow."

Alex blankly watched Murphy use a black brick-like thing to speak with someone, blankly took the note, and blankly watched Murphy leave. He felt as though he had suddenly come into contact with too many things today, and his brain could hardly keep up.

However, when he thought of his monthly salary of eighty Galleons, Alex became happy again.

Mr. Peter Parker was a good man!

I have to work hard!

He opened the bag Murphy had handed him and began pouring out the medicinal herbs inside.

All kinds of herbs gushed endlessly out of the bag. At first, Alex stayed calm. After all, they had specifically hired him to process medicinal herbs, so of course there had to be a lot.

But after a few minutes, Alex could no longer stay quite so calm.

This couldn't be right. There had to be several thousand pounds here, didn't there?

What Murphy had bought wasn't only magical materials, either. There were also large quantities of Muggle herbs thrown in to make up the numbers. Compared with the former, the latter made up the bulk of the medicinal herbs.

By the time the bag was finally emptied, Alex looked at the little mountain of herbs piled up before him and felt his vision go dark.

He felt as if he had never seen so many medicinal herbs in his life!

How long would it take to process all this?

An eighty-Galleon monthly salary really wasn't so easy to earn after all.

Mr. Peter Parker might just be a devil!

Meanwhile, Murphy Apparated to central London, then took a taxi to Lloyd's Building.

Looking at the metal structure before him, Murphy was stunned.

It wasn't a skyscraper, standing less than a hundred meters tall, but its entire exterior was wrapped in steel. Enormous pipes ran vertically through the whole building, and with its exposed metal stairways and vast glass curtain walls, the building looked as if it belonged in 2187 rather than 1987.

"Cool!"

So fucking cool!

After taking the elevator up to the tenth floor, Murphy saw Patrick and immediately gave him a thumbs-up.

"Nice. You've got taste, kid!"

Patrick didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Sure, you're the boss, but my son is almost your age, all right?

"If you mean this building, then I think it's fairly in line with the technological concept you want to achieve. However, at the moment we can only afford to rent this one floor. With staff, office equipment, and everything else, we're out of money. In fact, we still owe the bank a little."

"What's there to be afraid of?" Murphy waved a hand grandly. "'Heaven gave me talent for a reason; spend a thousand gold, and it will all return.' Go ahead and build! If you can build us into bankruptcy, that'll be your skill."

With a pile of potions in my hands that could crush Muggles from a higher dimension, how the fuck could I be short on money?

At most, the early-stage cashing-out speed wouldn't be able to keep up. But that didn't matter. Worst case, I'd just go find some rich idiot and ask for alms again.

Murphy felt absolutely no psychological burden about taking capitalists' money and using it to develop productive forces.

Patrick, however, gave a bitter smile. "No need to build us into bankruptcy. We're almost bankrupt already."

"Hm?"