Was Lucius Malfoy Such a Gambler?

After returning to his dormitory, Manus unfolded the letter and began to read it carefully...

As Manus read through the contents of the letter, his eyes gradually filled with astonishment.

He wasn't surprised that Malfoy wanted to bet on his side as well; the Malfoy family had always done this, and he even suspected that Malfoy and the Order of the Phoenix had some kind of deal.

However, Manus had assumed that Malfoy would leave more room for maneuver in the letter... by making the narrative more vague, ambiguous, and so on.

Given the Malfoy family's status and resources, unless there's overwhelming evidence, Voldemort wouldn't want to lose such a capable subordinate who could generate money and recruit people for him—especially since such talent is rare in the Wizarding World. In the end, he'll most likely just punish him with the Cruciatus Curse as a minor offense.

However, the wording in this letter was somewhat too direct, even bordering on obsequious.

In his letter, Malfoy, or more precisely Lucius Malfoy, did more than just express a desire to join the Wizard Sage Party.

Judging from his choice of words, it also implies something like, "Why didn't you establish the Wizard Sage Party earlier? If you had established it earlier, I would have joined long ago, instead of having to go through a roundabout process to apply to join after graduation."

It wasn't really a reprimand, but rather a kind of obsequious flattery.

"Has the Malfoy family always been like this?"

Manus now realizes he hadn't quite understood Malfoy before; if he remembers correctly, they didn't actually have much interaction in the past, did they?

Although there were indirect interactions through Katria and the suspected involvement of the Malfoy family in Staky's incident, these interactions should not have existed from the Malfoy family's perspective.

Katria had no reason to mention Manus to Old Malfoy, Staky had even faked his death and gone abroad to seek refuge. It couldn't be that Dumbledore told Old Malfoy about Manus.

So, where did the Malfoy family get their confidence to place such a heavy bet on him?

Or was this simply Lucius Malfoy's own decision? Such a gamble?

"Although the Wizard Sage Party are not absolutely opposed to the Death Eaters, Lucius is the only son of the Malfoy family and does not have the same need as Ignis to give up absolute stability for higher profits."

What does he want?

Manus put the letter away. Lucius had left his contact information in his letter, clearly indicating that Lucius also knew that joining the Wizard Sage Party required passing a test...

Or perhaps he simply wanted to use this opportunity to meet and talk with Manus?

Manus considered a possibility: what if he arrived there only to find Voldemort waiting for him?

If that's the case, it's not impossible to kill Voldemort beforehand. As for Voldemort suddenly disappearing in the eyes of others... who knows what happened?

For someone like Voldemort, it wouldn't be hard to understand if he accidentally killed himself while researching Dark Magic, would it?

Lucius wrote a reply to Lucius and sent it to the address Lucius had left. In it, Manus included a contact method that would prevent him from being monitored or tracked—a method he borrowed from Nicolas.

Manus originally didn't need this, but as his business in the Muggle world began to take shape, he found himself gradually needing a secure channel for transmitting letters.

It's used to handle necessary communication in situations where it's inconvenient to do things directly using one's real identity.

Since he'd already done all that, Manus decided to create a fake identity for himself as well. This would be useful for those who knew he was the person they were in contact with, but didn't want others to know it was him.

Speaking of which... it's almost May now, so things should be back to normal in the Muggle world by now, right?

With his business just starting out, Manus only dabbled in his own fruit and vegetable cultivation and waste recycling projects to keep the company afloat.

The staff was all there, but it was mostly fake. Manus found it incredibly easy to obtain identities in the Britain —and after paying a fee, these identities were completely legal.

Aside from the fact that these people don't actually exist, all their information and data are verifiable in the government's database.

Even if these people actually exist, due to various historical reasons, most of them do not have these identities that can withstand such a comprehensive investigation, and there are more or less missing information.

Manus would even pay taxes on all their daily expenses and income.

So after spending a little money, Manus successfully built a "large" company, or rather a group, with hundreds of employees on its books, but less than ten employees excluding outsourced workers.

Several laboratories and research institutes were also built to lay the groundwork for future research in fields such as seeds, drugs, materials, and medical devices. These were the main positions where those non-existent people were concentrated.

For at least the next three years, they will remain in this non-existent state and will not produce any substantial output.

The reason for doing this, besides making the results in these areas more reasonably available, is that Manus also knows that given the profits and importance of these areas, simply having the ability and the ability to produce results is not enough to run them well.

Therefore, Manus will only have enough time and energy to deal with the initial issues after he graduates.

Of course, it would be best to find relevant, capable, and reliable talent, but such things are rare and hard to come by.

Manus mainly deals with people in the Wizarding World, but aside from using these ventures to cover for Lily and Petunia, he has no intention of getting involved with any Wizarding World forces.

The best approach would be to cultivate these talents from a young age, but Manus doesn't have time to take care of his child right now; everything will have to wait until after he graduates.

"However, the preliminary preparations can already begin, and this will also solve the problem of providing cover for Lily and Petunia."

In Britain today, the vast majority of children leave school at the age of fifteen to enter the workforce, but the quality of their education is generally worrying, with some not even completing secondary school.

Manus plans to propose a special talent development program for teenagers, starting with investing in the establishment of universities, and directly targeting these teenagers with basic knowledge to cultivate the talent needed by the group.

Of course, this goal may not sound so appealing.

Changing the slogan to "Improve the rate of knowledge dissemination so that more children can enter universities and become talents, rather than entering factories and becoming consumables" seems to be a more appropriate choice.

"After signing the indenture—oh wait, I mean, they call it an employment contract here—the school can waive part of their tuition and provide them with three meals a day..."