The Tycoon's Odyssey

"As I was saying, what are we?"

"We are nothing but public servants. Your troubles are our troubles, your worry is our worry and your pain is our pain."

"But to clear the pain we need to take medicine and for medicine, we need some money, as you know...."

Raj laughed, his smile greedy and sinister.

Watching the man's greasy, pig-like smile, Evan wanted to punch him, but before he could do anything like that, Maria's pincer claws pinched him again, signaling him to hold back.

Evan considered Raj's proposition for a moment before nodding thoughtfully. "Well, Raj, we certainly appreciate your offer. Let's discuss the details further over dinner, shall we?"

And after a heavy discussion, the conclusion was this…

Raj was asking for donations for his party and even more donations for the upcoming elections. In return, he promised to make sure that no legal trouble would come to Evan from the government.

With their support, Evan could do anything he wanted and evade the taxes but a part of those evaded taxes also had to be directed to them…

Since his party ruled the current Utkal State, they wielded absolute authority there.

And not only here, but in various states as well.

His tone made it seem like they were kings and the others, the common people, were their servants.

A truly corrupt politician, one that was rotten to his core.

"Sir Raj, I am thankful for the offer. Regarding the donations we need to have a meeting with the staff, as I need everyone's agreement on this."

Raj rolled his eyes but nodded after a moment.

"Okay, but you need to inform me within 12 days. Otherwise, you know things like these aren't easy to solve quickly, and if you take too much time, it will be you who will suffer the loss."

"That would be enough," Evan answered with a darkened expression.

_____

On the other side, Aria resigned from her position as a teacher at Knox University, breaking the hearts of several students.

Among the group of smelly men wrestling in mud, she was the only lotus that bloomed in their hearts, making the place a bit bearable alas…

Many wanted to organize a farewell for her, but she refused and swiftly took the position of Chief Operating Officer(COO) and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at  Next Gen Innovations, while Evan held the position of CEO.

Celina also withdrew from Tea Box cafe and started managing the Human Resources department.

In this way, Maria became the sole head of Teabox Cafe. During the time it was closed, Maria showed her 'Bloody Mary' side, inspecting everything and dismissing a few people who seemed to have received offers from other sides.

The legal procedures for Next Gen Innovations were still ongoing, as it was an arduous process and took several days but that didn't mean they should wait.

Meanwhile, the latest server ordered by Evan had also arrived.

One was the Dell PowerEdge R900 and the other was the HP ProLiant DL580 G7, equipped with dual Intel Xeon processors, supporting a terabyte or more of RAM, and featuring multiple hard drives configured in RAID for performance and redundancy.

These servers were capable of running multiple virtual machines, hosting websites, and handling intensive data processing tasks efficiently, making them suitable for creating a personal data center or running demanding applications.

He had also ordered a high-speed data-capable fibre from a top company, costing 70,000 per month with speeds up to 2 GBPS.

However, speed irked Evan.

He didn't like the way telecom companies manipulated it.

4G data offered a maximum speed of 50-100 Mbps, but Data had never experienced more than 500 Kbps on his Jeeo sim.

In contrast, 5G offered up to 5 GBPS. Although he didn't have a 5G phone, from what he had observed, it always seemed to offer a range between 5-6 Mbps.

While data speed is advertised as Megabytes, it is actually transferred in the form of Megabits, where each byte consists of 8 bits.

Additionally, there was further loss during transmission due to various factors.

So generally, the actual data speed one received was generally 8 times less than what it was advertised as, which was practically a scam run by data operators.

That's why he didn't believe in all these fake speeds.

In fact, this skepticism also inspired him to come up with an app that could enhance data transmission. Data compression could also be applied here so he noted this idea to experiment further.

Even though the profits had been substantial, Evan had been spreading excessively.

The total staff expenditure reached almost 1.5 million, excluding the top workers.

Maria's salary has been increasing to 200k per month. While Sam, who had taken the position of head chef, earned 150k a month.

Since Celina was working two jobs, overseeing the trade channels, and also working for his IT company, her salary was increased to 400k.

Despite these figures, Evan knew that they were underpaid. It might seem like a lot, but compared to similar positions at other companies, the salaries were almost three times that.

Celina, for instance, used to earn 7.2 MPA (million per annum) when she was working for FabIndra.

Evan opened a separate bank account for staff, but as the finances went haywire, he found it hard to keep tabs on everything.

While managing this, he also gained knowledge and learned two additional skills: Economics and Financial Accounting.

He knew he needed to hire an accountant, but that's where the problem was.

After being fucked up here and there, he had started to lose trust.

While studying computer science, Evan had even thought of creating a super AI that would take over his work and monitor everything, but that was just a childish dream.

However, it seems that if you dream diligently, some dreams may come true.

Taking a pause, Evan took a sip of his tea and then stared at the system.

"System draws the Intermediate lottery."

[Opening Intermediate Lucky Draw Roulette…]

Soon, a fortune wheel materialized in front of Evan

Evan then saw a roulette with thousands of things written on it before it started to spin.

Like before, Evan wasn't able to keep up with its speed and it all appeared like a blur.

"System, slow it down…At least let me read what kind of precious things are on it?'' Evan cried out, alas all his pleas fell into the dead ear.

About a minute later, the wheel stopped spinning.

[DING]

[You have gained a skill Level Up card.]

Evan stared at the screen in disbelief like a frozen doll and after coming back to his senses, he laughed wildly.

"Now that's some next-level shit."