Free Web NovelChapter 955: The Nine Million Gold Shock
The video call request froze Trusty007 mid sentence. He had been about to speak, already struggling to organize the chaos in his head, when everything stopped. His mouth hung slightly open, words lost before they could form. For a moment he simply stared ahead, unmoving, then lifted a hand and rubbed his eyes out of habit.
Only then did he remember he was inside Ethereal. Closing his eyes changed nothing. The translucent call window remained suspended in front of him, impossible to ignore.
"Well? Say something!"
"Stop pretending you didn’t hear us. Give us an answer!"
The room had fallen quiet when they thought he was finally going to respond. Instead, he froze and started making strange motions, and the brief silence collapsed back into agitation. Voices rose again, sharper this time.
"You motherf, are you even listening?" A man even heavier than Trusty007 slammed his chair back and pointed straight at him.
That was when Trusty007 suddenly stood up.
"All of you shut the hell up!" he roared. "One more word and I’m done. I pull my shares right now."
His eyes were bloodshot, his shoulders trembling faintly. To everyone else, it looked like rage finally boiling over. None of them realized the truth. The person sending that call request was the Druid God, a man who had vanished from Ethereal for over a year without a trace.
The threat worked instantly.
Trusty007 controlled eighty percent of the alliance’s shares. If he withdrew, the entire operation collapsed overnight. All their loud complaints and mutiny talk had never truly meant pushing him away. What they wanted was simple. They wanted him to inject more capital so they could scale up their investments.
Their alliance had long since moved beyond simple gold flipping. They issued loans, invested in properties, backed small storefronts as silent partners, and spread their funds across every profitable opportunity they could find. Greed drove them forward because only thirty percent of their total capital was actively circulating. The remaining seventy percent sat untouched, frozen beyond their reach.
If they could unlock that portion, profits would explode.
What none of them knew was that the seventy percent was never Trusty007’s money.
It belonged to Ethan.
More than a year ago, Ethan had handed him an enormous sum to acquire gold. After completing the purchases and exhausting the original funds, Trusty007 ended up holding over four and a half million gold coins, only to discover that Ethan had completely disappeared. Then Ethereal introduced its official cash to gold exchange system, crushing the profits of middleman traders overnight. Their old business model nearly died, forcing the entire alliance to pivot toward investment and financing.
Back then, Trusty007’s ownership share had been similar to everyone else’s. He managed operations and held the largest portion, but his authority was limited. During restructuring, he made a risky decision. He poured Ethan’s four million plus gold coins, along with his own capital, into the alliance and seized eighty percent ownership in one move.
The others had celebrated when they saw the amount of gold he invested. Even though their individual shares shrank, their dividends increased dramatically. With massive capital backing them, investments became aggressive and profits surged higher than ever before.
At the time, Trusty007 had been terrified.
But the gamble worked.
Once the principal was recovered, he froze Ethan’s funds and refused to touch them again. Every subsequent investment expanded the remaining capital pool further. He always assumed the Druid God would return soon, that he would eventually explain where the money had gone and decide whether to continue investing or withdraw it entirely.
Instead, more than a year passed.
Rumors spread that the Druid God had quit Ethereal for good. Several times, temptation crept into Trusty007’s mind. The idle gold could have generated enormous returns. Yet each time he resisted. Greed was dangerous when the money was not truly yours.
Meanwhile, dissatisfaction within the alliance kept growing until today’s confrontation pushed everything to the brink.
He had been seconds away from breaking. And then that man returned.
After cursing the room into silence, Trusty007 turned and walked straight into the back office without another word, leaving the conference room behind. The remaining members exchanged uneasy glances.
"What’s wrong with 007 today?"
"No clue. You think he’d really pull his shares?"
"Hard to say. He’s always hesitant, and always dodging decisions."
"If he pulls out, eighty percent of our capital disappears. Even if that frozen seventy percent stays locked, he still personally owns ten percent."
The reminder darkened every face present. All of them combined held only twenty percent, split across more than a dozen people. Individually, they barely controlled one or two percent each. Even if Trusty007 paid penalties for withdrawing, his personal ten percent alone outweighed anything they could threaten him with.
While panic spread through the conference room, Trusty007 accepted Ethan’s video call.
"You’re finally back!"
The moment the connection established, relief flooded his face, followed immediately by tears he failed to suppress. He stared at the holographic projection before him as if afraid it might disappear again.
Ethan smiled calmly from the other side. He expected surprise, but not this level of emotion.
"Didn’t expect to see me again?" Ethan asked lightly.
"Yeah... yeah... yeah!" Trusty007 nodded repeatedly, almost laughing through the lingering sob.
"Haha. I came to collect," Ethan said.
"No problem. But I might end up working for you from now on."
He sounded oddly excited rather than discouraged.
"What do you mean?" Ethan asked.
Trusty007 then explained everything. The collapse of gold trading margins, the restructuring, the investments, the internal conflicts, and today’s near rebellion. By the time he finished, Ethan understood why the man felt cornered and why he considered abandoning the alliance entirely. ƒгeewёbnovel.com
Yet one detail seized Ethan’s attention far more than the story itself.
He blinked slowly. "You said... over nine point two four million gold coins?"
Ethan clearly remembered transferring six billion dollars. At the time, gold traded around thirteen hundred dollars per coin. Even with favorable pricing, the total should not have exceeded five million coins.
But now the amount had more than doubled.
Nine million gold coins.
Even at today’s lower gold price, that still translated to over eighty billion dollars. In just over a year, Trusty007 had effectively generated an additional twenty billion in value.
Ethan was genuinely stunned.
If he had not traveled to the Second Universe, ventured into the Sea of Death, and unearthed mountains of gold himself, reaching this level of wealth might have taken far longer. His personal fortune had already grown so large that he barely tracked the numbers anymore. Perhaps seven hundred billion by now. Compared to that, eighty billion felt almost modest.
The shock faded quickly.
"So you’re not flipping gold anymore?" he asked.
"We still do some. Investments are just the bigger part now. There’s still profit in trading," Trusty007 replied.
"Alright. How much gold do you have available right now?"
"Let me check... not counting your portion, around two million coins." He still had no idea where this was going.
Ethan answered immediately. "Then I’ll take all two million. As for that seventy percent stake you mentioned, keep investing it. Convert every dividend into gold and send it to me."
He spoke direct, efficient, and final.
A system notification appeared before Trusty007 could respond. ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com
[Ding... System Notice: You have received a cash transfer of 3,500,000,000 dollars!]
"The hell..." he whispered.
Three points five billion dollars.
His mind blanked. The previous transfer had been six billion, and even that had left him stunned for days. Ethan treated billions the way ordinary players handled spare change. While everyone else struggled to earn profit inside the game, Ethan simply moved capital on a completely different scale.
The phrase surfaced in his mind unbidden. Poverty limits imagination.
"Calculate the cost of two million gold," Ethan continued. "Use the rest as a deposit. Keep buying gold for me whenever possible. As for working directly under me, that’s unnecessary. I don’t really have a position to offer."
He smiled casually. "You’ve already done extremely well. You turned thirty percent usable capital into more than double my share. With full access to the funds, I’m sure you’ll perform even better, right?"
Trusty007’s eyes brightened instantly.
If Ethan withdrew his money, Trusty007 would have been forced to liquidate his own shares just to repay him. After pouring so much effort into building this alliance, walking away felt unbearable, yet following Ethan blindly without a clear role felt equally uncertain. That had been his final contingency plan.
Now Ethan not only allowed him to continue managing the capital but entrusted him with a massive new order worth thirty five billion dollars. His authority within the alliance would become unshakeable.
"Alright... thank you," Trusty007 said sincerely. To a businessman, everything ultimately reduced to profit, but what Ethan offered went beyond money. It was trust, nearly unconditional trust.
"What’s there to thank me for?" Ethan replied. "You have the skill. I have the money. You make my money grow. That makes us partners."
His tone carried an ease that had not existed before. Returning from the Second Universe had changed him. He was no longer the cautious man who counted every expense. He had stepped into a different world entirely.
Trusty007 nodded firmly. "With this level of capital, I guarantee only one group might out earn us. The All-You-Need chain."
"The All-You-Need chain?" Ethan blinked in surprise. Hearing his own business mentioned from someone else’s perspective felt strangely surreal.
"They make that much?"
"You really don’t know?" Trusty007 laughed. "Even ignoring their auction house transactions, the daily revenue from their storefronts alone is insane. And then there’s the Mad Engineer. The guy’s a genius. The world’s only Divine-tier Engineer with a hidden class, Demonic Engineering at Divine-tier."
He leaned forward, excitement rising as he spoke.
"His creations are priceless. You can’t even find them on the open market. Through his operations, he’s taken nearly half of the Northern Frontier Region’s potion and engineering supply market. The unbelievable part is how he balances relationships between Renegade Alliance, Blade Syndicate, and Nocturne Order. Renegade Alliance and Blade Syndicate hate each other, yet both sides respect him and maintain long term supply contracts. And Nocturne Order treats him like a strategic partner."
Trusty007 paused, shaking his head in disbelief.
"He even..."
Ethan felt a sudden realization forming. He glanced at his friends list and noticed another avatar glowing online.
"He even what?" Ethan asked slowly. "Don’t tell me he’s opened All-You-Need branches in the other three theaters too. Eastern, Southern, and Western regions?"
The answer was already taking shape in his mind, and for the first time since returning, Ethan found himself genuinely uncertain what he was about to hear next.
