Investment and Abilities

Max yawned as he exited, stretching his hands into the evening sky. However, his hands got stuck there, and this time, it was for a good 2 seconds before he finally returned to normal and continued his steps.

It was rather a rather odd feeling when his body would just stop, it was a feeling similar to having a burp come up all the way to your throat, but then being halted in its progress to release by either you swallowing something or some other event, resulting in a giant lump becoming stuck in your throat. But Max felt it all over his body.

However, he did not let this unsettle him as he smiled and continued to the road and stopped a single-horse carriage to take him to his home. It was not too far from his current location, the Dunant's Department Store.

In the carriage, Max recalled the deal he had struck with Ms. Dunant…

…

"I wish to invest 1000 Pounds to take 51% of the Dunant's Department Store. Furthermore, I will also be willing to provide a loan of 1000 Pounds at 5% interest in case the original capital is used up. Of course, you will be the Entrepreneur of the Store unless it begins to make losses in daily operations. Ah, but I will also have to explain a lot of financial terms to some of you so that we can communicate more effectively."

"Alright." She said, as her children also nodded upon reading the entirety of the contract. They knew their mother was good at managing the business, but too weak willed to actually hold onto money herself and would just end up giving everything away to her husband's family. Based on the contract, this youth was intending to change that.

"I will also tell you that I envision many changes to the story itself, as well as many expansions. And most importantly, I would like you to stop sending money to your husband's family. Send over just enough for them to survive. Around 20 Pounds per year."

"Also, from the moment you accept the investment, I would like to inform you that the company; Dunant's Department Store and you are separate entities… oh, this will take some time to explain."

…

And thus, Max had spent all day explaining various aspects of accounting and the business to Ms. Dunant, and her children, taking a break for lunch and high-tea of course. What kind of savage does not have high-tea. 

From the expressions he got from the children, max had quickly sorted out which of them were better for what kinds of positions. Two of them, Gloria and Quinten were especially suited for handling the accounts of the company, and Max intended to hand it over to them, considering how weak willed Ms Dunant seemed.

Max could have very well created his own company and followed the plan of Ms Dunant, making a rather successful business. However, there were two reasons he did not do this.

Firstly, he did not want to go through the effort of becoming an entrepreneur himself, and would rather be the investor who helped start-ups by giving advice and finance, and then departing when the time was right with a hefty profit.

Secondly, he simply lacked the skills to handle people. He could easily supervise those placed under him in the hierarchy, and handle such tasks with great efficiency. He could also easily follow the orders of superiors, and more importantly, butter them up until he got promotions. However, searching for talent and hiring them as cheaply as possible was not his forte. That was something better left to the blood-sucking HR department and he knew this was not his strongest suit.

If it was just one or two people, he would be able to handle things, but with the scale, he wanted to expand, he would not be able to handle it. On the other hand, the way Ms Dunant had skilfully hired her now adopted children and allowed them to become incredibly close in whatever short period of time they had spent together signified a lot about her skills in people management. 

As such, he could leave her in charge of the Dunant Department store's expansion while searching for a more talented CEO for later, upon the time he could shift her to be the head of the HR department of the company.

Max returned to his home after getting out of the carriage and paying the driver. His current savings had reduced by a significant sum, but he still had enough for one more, smaller investment.

But he could think about that later. For now, Max sat down on his soft bed and closed his eyes. He then thought about the honorific name he had created for himself.

'The Unity of the Time'

'The Almighty Singularity'

'The Ruler of the Three Realms'

'Universal Amalgamation of All'

And with that, Max felt his soul being stretched into a thin noodle and being shot into the sky, before mysteriously appearing inside the Unity Sefirot. Unlike the Sefirah Castle, the Universal Amalgamation of All did not have a mysterious fog billowing through it nor was it in the shape of a castle. Instead, it was essentially just two square tubes, one forming a circle, the other forming a three-petal shape, both tubes crossing each other and meeting at specific points. Each of these points formed larger 'rooms' of sorts, while the rest were all just normal pathways with a floor, a ceiling, and curved walls.

All the floors and walls, as well as the ceiling, were bright white. And around Max, there was a considerably thick, glowing-black fluid with the consistency of tar. Yet, the moment he thought about it, the feeling of restriction immediately vanished, despite the white glowing liquid still being around him.

Max felt an odd sense of familiarity with this liquid as he began to control it to flow around him. It took only a few seconds for him to realise that this feeling stemmed from the will of Unity that had begun slowly fusing with his own soul. It was slow, but while he was in the Unity Sefirot, the speed was actually visible. If he remained here non-stop, the soul fragment should completely fuse with him in about a month or two at most. 

The feeling of familiarity originated from the fact that the Universal Amalgamation of All was originally a part of Unity's original body. This, instinctively it knew how to control it, and now that whatever was left of Unity's original soul had fused with Max's it also gave him a certain amount of instinctual control over the black liquid that filled all of the space within the White Sefirot.

Max could feel that with every passing second, more and more of the black tar-like liquid was being collected within the Sefirot, while the liquid that was originally within the Sefirot was being compressed to make space for more of the liquid.

Of course, the first thing that was created by the white walls of the Sefirot was actually a black mist, which was slowly compressed into drops of liquid under the same compressive force that compressed the existing liquid into smaller and smaller space. 

Clearly, soon solid black tar would also be formed. But based on this speed, it would take a really long time, and Max was not here for that. Max looked outside the Sefirot and noticed that he could see a lot. He could see the infinite vacuum of space in one direction, and the disgusting red blood-world created by Her on the moon, turning it from its original white to the current red.

Back to the endless cosmos, Max saw countless galaxies, each having hundreds of billions of stars, each having their own star systems with an incredible number of planets. Some of these planets may very well be habitable, some even having the possibility of having nurtured life in the past, present, or nurturing in the future.

Max's thoughts raced as he thought of a daring idea. One that would prevent him from coming at odds with the official churches or other super-powerful beings. Max understood that considering the fact that he needed a ritual for his very first sequence 9 to prevent himself from losing control, having anchors in his pathway would be vital.

Especially after seeing the conditions for advancing to Sequence 7. As such, he would ultimately need to have his own church which had a large population of believers that would prevent him from completely losing control while fighting or advancing through sequences.

But this would directly bring him in conflict with the official and unofficial churches belonging to True Gods and angels and Kings of angels respectively, as well as the few oddities among Beyonder organisations.

There was a solution to this thought. As long as he could come into contact with one or two of those civilisations from the Cosmos that the Outer Gods had not whipped out yet for whatever reason, he could potentially gain a large number of believers in a short period of time.

Max smiled as he finally put his attention to the Sefirot and its powers.