Reincarnated as the fourth son of a noble and tamed an SS-rank dragon-Chapter 37: Commercial Dispute

Darius hired special rank adventurers, they were children who wanted to be adventurers, but because they were weak or didn’t have a group and age, they ended up taking jobs that most adventurers would refuse, such as shopping for someone, sweeping, or making food. Household chores that were within the city walls and involved no or minimal danger, they were easy jobs to perform and therefore paid little.

Poor children accepted without complaint, even adults in some cases. It was cheaper than going to the Merchants’ Guild and being put on the list of someone who wanted a job.

In this case, each job was counted and when they wanted to they could accept a promotion in rank or continue in the same one and keep those missions.

Darius hired a girl called Nor, she was only 10 years old and wasn’t strong enough for manual labor, her job was to do the shopping for the house and store, she was supposed to buy the groceries and buy what was needed. She helped clean the store and sometimes the house, she was a good helper, everyone liked her from day one.

She was an orphan and lived in a church in a nearby village, Darius accepted her living with the others and decided to hire her from outside the Guild, this wouldn’t be a problem, since all the meat was bought from the Guild, in the monster butcher’s shop, so the Guild’s profit wouldn’t be affected. It would even increase.

The Guild buys some monsters and sells the meat; eating monsters was common, depending on the monster, as goblins and slimes weren’t seen as food. Apart from a few others that were disgusting.

Nor was on his way back to the store with the loaves of bread, Kaly and Darius appeared, they had used teleportation magic and were looking to stock up on more products, Nor helped with the organization.

The store was run self-sufficiently by the staff. Of all the stores, this was the safest, because of the adventurers, Darius was surprised that the stores didn’t have security or safer forms of protection.

The adventurers found the job strange, but for the pay and the work, they didn’t think twice about accepting it.

They each received the same salary, 20 gold coins. That was a very high amount, normally a cleaner wouldn’t earn that even if she worked for two years.

"I see you’re doing a great job here," Darius said as he counted the gold coins.

"Yes, but we have a problem, we get a lot of visits from nobles who sell paper, they always come and complain about the prices and threaten us by saying that the Merchants’ Guild will close the store," Sene said.

"Do you know who these nobles are?"

"Baron Rodri Arman, he’s a paper merchant, his family made a fortune selling paper, as well as pens and ink. Basically, the whole capital used to buy from his store, but they’re buying from ours because of the price and quality."

"They can’t compete on quality or price, he always says it’s unfair competition. The other nobleman who always comes here is Baronet Ast Barn, he’s from the store next door, he complains that the store is always full and we’re stealing his customers."

"I’ll sort it out as soon as possible, don’t worry about it," Darius said as he left the store. He was heading for the store next door, and Kaly was following.

"Are you going to threaten?" 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

"Yes, but just a little, I don’t want to hurt him, just put fear in him and make him not want to do something like that anymore."

They entered the store and asked to speak to the owner, a thin man with white hair walked up to Darius, he looked at him and knew he had seen him somewhere before, but couldn’t remember where.

They went into a room, he didn’t know who Darius was, but by his clothes, he was a nobleman.

"I’ll be brief," he said as he sat down on a sofa in the living room. "I want you to stop harassing my employees, if you keep doing this I’ll have to resort to force, even though I don’t want to."

"Are you the son of the store owner next door?" He looked surprised and frightened, he hadn’t expected the store to be owned by a nobleman, the family name wasn’t on the store, this was common practice among noblemen, they always put their names on it.

Darius had changed the name of the store to just Scrib, he found the old name a bit embarrassing and changed it.

"Actually, I’m the owner. I’m Darius Lestor, son of Count Lestor, and this is my partner, Countess Kalynrae Duskveil," he wanted to strike fear into the hearts of two people with high titles.

Due to his achievements in the coup d’état, Lucian ended up receiving the title of Count, Kael offered one to Kaly, but she couldn’t accept it due to the laws of Drakonia, which forbids any title from another country.

The Baronet turned pale, he didn’t know what to say, Darius sensed the fear in him, so he got up and left the store.

Now he just had to deal with the other.

"What do you intend to do with Baron Arman?"

"In my world, we had something called Black Friday, once a year some stores would run promotions that had very high discounts, I want to do the same, as we are competitors, I want to make our opponent give up going against us, I want to see him bow down asking us to stop making his store lose customers."

"You want a commercial battle?"

"Unlike the one I had with Arcteri, this one I’m going all the way."

He did start a trade war with Arcteri but gave up when he saw that it was affecting several shopkeepers. Before opening the stationery shop, he had researched his competitors, and there was only one person, so he wasn’t going to hurt anyone else.

Darius entered the store and then went to a small room in the back house, it was an office, there he tried to create a large stamp, and he succeeded. The stamp would serve as a press, he would dip it in ink and then slap it on a sheet of paper and give it to someone to distribute around town.

The stamp had a few phrases on it indicating that the store would be having a sale, they would sell any product for just 1 copper coin.

He looked at the papers and they really did look like leaflets, but in a simpler way. He hated it when he walked past stores and the salespeople handed out flyers with their offers, this time he was on the other side.

He took advantage and spent all his mana on merchandise, he was willing to go all out.

The stock room was full, so they used the empty rooms in the house, it was small by noble standards, the house had six bedrooms and downstairs there were some rooms that weren’t used, in the store there was still a room at the back.

Darius handed Nor some coins and asked her to hire adventurers to deliver leaflets, Darius wanted several.

He got twenty children and asked them each to deliver several leaflets over two days throughout the capital.

Paper was used by many people, even though it wasn’t very cheap. The Guild used to be the biggest buyer of paper, but it stopped buying from the Baron, as did restaurants and stores, which used it to put prices and indicate the products they had, as well as to write on and keep track of all their stock.

Darius knew this very well and wanted to put an end to the Baron’s sales.

Two days passed and several people were entering the store, the Baron was there, and he was greeted by Darius, Lucian, and Kaly.

When the Baron looked at Lucian, he avoided saying anything rude to the saleswomen.

"So you’re the one who was bothering my son’s employees. May I ask why?"

"Son?" He was nervous.

"Yes, I’m the son of a Count and it’s my store. I heard that you were coming into my store to threaten my employees. As I understand it, this is a violation of the Merchants’ Guild, you could lose your license, but if you stop this I promise I won’t take it any further."

"Yes, I promise," he said, knowing he had no choice, the position of a Count could make anyone in the Guild accept the request to cancel his license.

The Count looked at the fees, he knew they would be low, but he was only charging 1 copper coin.

"How long do you plan to leave these values?"

"Until our stock runs out, we still have more than 200,000, so it’ll take a long time."

"200,000?" The Count thought, he was interested to know who the supplier was, but he knew that Darius wouldn’t tell him, so all that remained was to accept the situation.

"We don’t have a supplier, all the products are made by our family, so you don’t need to waste resources trying to find out. You can buy our products and try to create them yourself and then resell them at a lower price than we sell them for."

The baron knew this wasn’t possible, even with current techniques he couldn’t compete, his product was inferior and more expensive. There was no way around it. He left.

"You put fear into him, sometimes I wonder if you’re really 8 years old."

In this world, he was close to 9, but his mind was that of someone much older.

He kept the prices the same for several days until the day he learned that the Baron had closed up the store. Darius went back to the normal price and then some.

He was partially satisfied, he knew his idea was childish, but it didn’t hurt to try, at least it wouldn’t be a loss for him.

He hated the idea of seeing that some employee had been offended.

The years passed and he was close to taking the exam to enter the Magic Academy, he was in a queue, Nyme and Zenith were behind him, the queue was long and he was losing patience.