God of Technology: Creating the Internet in Another World-Chapter 452: Manufacturing a Villain

That doesn’t sound right!?

Everyone’s first thought after seeing Foster Mining Company’s complaint was exactly that.

But thinking about it carefully, what they said didn’t seem wrong either.

To complete so many orders, they’d definitely need to hire more people.

What kind of people were willing to be miners?

Mining was dangerous and exhausting, with low social status. Normal people would never be willing to mine, so who would?

Slaves! Vagrants! Those bugs and rats living in the city sewers!

Getting these people together was actually easy, but they could easily backfire.

As long as you could provide employment, let them earn money, let them have something to gain, they were indeed decent labor.

But once you couldn’t provide basic survival needs, the force they’d unleash would definitely put you in a very passive position.

Now Foster Mining Company seemed to be in exactly that position.

To complete orders, they’d gathered massive numbers of these people.

And these people would definitely need to be supported going forward.

If steel really became so abundant that it couldn’t all be sold on the market, Foster Mining Company would mine it but couldn’t immediately convert it to cash, so supporting these people would naturally mean operating at a loss.

It really did seem like a very passive situation.

Of course, if you calculated carefully, you’d find the situation seemed a bit off.

Right now there were so many orders on the futures market, and people had actually paid money for all of them.

No matter how much the futures market rose or fell, the money from initial orders always went to Foster Mining Company.

They were guaranteed profits either way, and they’d even sold a batch at high prices!

But right now, the people who’d bought steel futures had no mind to think about this.

They’d already been blinded by "hatred."

At this moment, they only felt that Foster Mining Company was right.

Everyone was a victim.

Everyone had suffered terrible losses because of Johnny the actuary.

"It’s all that bastard Johnny’s fault. If not for him, how would we have ended up like this? I’m definitely going to find him and tear him to pieces!"

"Where do you think Johnny escaped to?"

"I feel like he probably headed overseas. Think about it—Johnny was originally from a small coastal city in the southern border of the Gray Fort Empire. When escaping, people naturally run toward their hometown, and he could easily take a boat to some small island."

"Damn it! That’s actually really possible. I’ll send people to intercept him right away, send people to check the nearby islands."

"If you ask me, this guy probably went to dwarf territory. Dwarves have no shortage of steel—they’d never buy steel futures. Running there would be safest for him."

"By your logic, running to find elves, or beastmen, or some other weird race would be even better, right? Or just run to Dragon Island."

"Ha, then you tell me—where else could this guy escape to?"

"..." 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Viscount Roster stayed up all night, but not because of anxiety—because of excitement.

Of course, he also wanted to clean things up.

Thanks to his efforts, these people’s focus had clearly been redirected.

After a night of commotion, it seemed everyone’s attention had completely shifted to Johnny the actuary.

And right at that moment, another shocking piece of news broke online.

An employee from Enron Mining—which had looked so hot recently—revealed that Enron Mining actually had no iron mines at all. All their trading was done by buying steel futures on the futures market.

Simply put, they’d buy futures expiring in 30 days, then list futures expiring in 60 days for sale. If someone wanted to buy those futures when they came due, they’d just transfer the futures they’d bought. If the buyer wanted to hoard and asked them to hold it, then they’d list double the futures next time.

According to that employee, Enron Mining only had about 200,000 pounds of actual steel, but had sold over 8 million pounds in steel futures.

And because of this steel futures incident, their capital chain had completely broken.

There was no way that steel could actually be delivered.

News quickly spread that the futures market had frozen all of Enron Mining’s security deposits.

The moment the stock market opened, the high-flying Enron Mining instantly crashed through its floor price, and kept falling.

Both the stock market and futures market were disasters. Countless people sank into despair.

The head of the Clarkson family hadn’t closed his eyes either.

In his dazed state he felt disheartened—the stress had aged him overnight. He’d even had several thoughts of ending it all.

But he couldn’t die.

If he died, what would happen to the family?

He was one of the more resilient ones. Many family heads, heads of trading houses, or popes of small churches couldn’t withstand the pressure. All kinds of news kept spreading online.

"Congratulations! Steel trading can finally return to normal. Between the steel futures market and Enron Mining, you probably made twenty or thirty million gold coins, right?"

Nidhogg the Dragon of Despair contacted Viscount Roster around noon.

"Same to you, right? Last time you told me you dragons made 50 million gold coins, and I believed you." Viscount Roster said with a laugh.

"We made 80 million gold coins, purely from the trading market."

Nidhogg’s words made even Viscount Roster pause for a moment.

Purely from the trading market—meaning, not including Dragon Bank—they’d made that much.

That was an absolutely massive number!

As for Dragon Bank, that wasn’t even in the equation.

Dragon Bank had lent out nearly a billion gold coins in total. One billion gold coins meant 100 million gold coins in annual interest.

If those people were unwilling to repay, or unable to repay, then they’d directly acquire assets worth 30 to 40 billion gold coins.

Even if all the human kingdoms united, they probably couldn’t come up with that much money.

Of course, this was because most of the nobles had already been bled dry.

Before Viscount Roster could respond, Nidhogg spoke again: "Don’t think I don’t know what you want. Money’s a small issue. If I’m not mistaken, next you want to buy up all the futures in their hands at low prices, right?"

"Of course. Can’t let all that steel stay in these people’s hands, can we?" Viscount Roster nodded matter-of-factly.

The first ultra-high-speed rail system had long been completed. Once the ultra-high-speed rail system was announced, it would definitely cause the steel market to warm up again.

If they were going to build ultra-high-speed rail systems on a large scale next, wouldn’t that just let these people recover?

He couldn’t do something like that.

He had to quickly collect all the steel futures from these people’s hands.

Draw a final line under this whole affair.