12 Trade

Walking into the town, Dante saw a huge ship at the port. After some questioning to the townsmen, he found out whose ship it belonged to.

The big merchant troupe had landed on Baterilla since last few weeks. As he was in his training session, Dante didn't come in contact with them.

Usually, a merchant troupe would only stay for two weeks at most before they left. However this troupe had stay almost a month and still didn't leave.

It turned out that they were waiting for a big contract to be signed with the Mustang . As the reason they kept on delaying to leave was the Bunta's refusal to sign the deal that they had offer.

Thinking of the situation, Dante did understand why Bunta kept on delaying the deal. The old man didn't have a good talent for doing business.

Since five years ago, when Dante started to build up his own wealth, Bunta was always doing the front work while Dante would only do the farm things and handle the big deals behind the scenes.

Although he gave some guidelines for Bunta to follow in handling the deals, sometimes there were some deals Bunta didn't want to decide before discussing them with Dante.

"No wonder those idiots want to take over. They might have another deals with the troupe." Dante walked around to see the merchant's business.

After a few hours, Dante stopped beside the merchant's ship when he heard a weeping voice.

"I won't steal the food anymore. Sob sob. Please release my big brother." A girl's voice was heard on the ship.

"Shut up! A punishment is a punishment. How dare you slave steal food. Just because the boss is kind, don't you dare to take it for granted." An angry voice was heard.

"Damn you baldy. You dare to kick my sister!" Another voice was heard by Dante as he look upwards.

He saw a silhouette who was tied with a rope and hung to the ship's mast while shouting downwards. A curiosity came to him as Dante secretly climbed the ship.

He saw a bruised girl who was laid on the floor weakly sobbing. At the same time, he looked towards the mast.

"Bring him down. He didn't learn his lesson yet." A bald man shout to his underlines to get the boy down.

Dante saw the boy was brought down and was given another 'lesson' from the bald man.

"Sigh. Stop this. He had enough lesson already. Mandy. Go send them to their room." A beard middle age man came out and gave his order.

From the one look, Dante can guess this is the boss of this ship.

Squinting his eyes, Dante left the ship quietly.

****

After one half day of looking around, Dante decided to go to his farm where his working office located. Arriving at his office, he saw Bunta was waiting for him.

"Gandpa, is this about the Rhode troupe?" Dante asked as he sat on his chair.

"Yes." Bunta stood beside him and handed a stack of paperwork.

"Let me see... Hmmm. Ummmm..." Dante kept on flipping the paperwork.

"So, in summary they want a big portion of grains for themselves and are willing to offer a higher price. Not only that, they wanted to monopoly our Volvo booze? And that Lexus beer powder too. They had a big appetite." Dante looked at the list of requests.

"If we agree with their request, with our amount of grains supplies, we can only cut the portion our other customers. Or we have to use our reserves. You know what they were for." Bunta said.

Dante nodded his head. Of course he knew what they were for. They were the supplies that he reserved for his journey. Of course, he would rotate them with new suplies. But the amount was fixed as Bunta had estimated for his ship's space.

"But they didn't want to take smaller portions. They are adamantly to have the same amount or more." Bunta added

After some thoughts, Dante spoke. "Call Jerry, tell him to send us three groups of guards by next season. And tell Rhode troupe to come to our mansion tomorrow for the deal.

"You want to open more lands?" Bunta was surprised.

While Dante had more land, he never bothered to open any new land after reaching his 'max' number, four years ago. Dante didn't tell him why, but Bunta guessed that he might not want to handle more than he had. Not only that, opening more land would need more money.

"This will be our last big trade. We will no long supply our grains to any big group. Unless the previous ones withdraw. " Dante said.

"Last? But with three new lands, our supplies will go surplus." Said Bunta.

"No they won't. From today onward. We will send any excess supplies to the our new reserves. Not only that, we will start to produce our new high-quality cotton after next season." Dante smiled.

"Alright. I'll informed them. I have to build a new canal too. More work for this old bone." Said Bunta as he walked to leave Dante.

Although he didn't understand what Dante was going to do, Bunta decided to trust him and agree.

"Sigh, grandpa. Why do you insist to do it yourself?" Dante asked.

Bunta stopped on his tracked and turned.

"What do you know? Is building canal is an easy thing? Those worker did a sloppy job. How can I trust them with this important job?" Bunta asked. He had hire some of the contractor in the past, but they were chased out on the second day.

"Can't you just supervised them?" Dante asked again.

"Headache. I rather do it myself." Bunta said as he left the room.