God of Technology: Creating the Internet in Another World-Chapter 335: Two Different Companies

A lot of people couldn’t really wrap their heads around why Viscount Roster would choose to do this, but out of fear and respect for him, nobody raised any objections. They said they’d do exactly what he asked and wait a while before making their moves.

Thing is, they actually knew Viscount Roster pretty well. They knew he’d always make sure to leave them some room to profit. Just follow along obediently, and yeah, the money would naturally flow in.

Of course, they also knew what would happen if they didn’t play ball.

Viscount Roster might just be a viscount, but these days he was way more of a pain to deal with than some kings. Recently, any nobles stupid enough to cross him had mysteriously had their territories attacked by dragons.

"Actually, if you guys feel like you’re getting shortchanged, you could always pick up some stock in the Dawn Southern Development Company or the Foster Iron Mine Company."

Viscount Roster looked around at everyone, pretty satisfied with their reactions. "All the surviving nobles in the Southern Territory have already signed on to the Great Southern Development Strategy. You can basically think of it like this—right now, the entire Southern Territory, except for these nobles’ castle compounds, everything else belongs to the Southern Development Company. Including their territories."

"The entire Southern Territory is under the Southern Development Company’s control. Everything’s being planned and developed together as one. Look, I’ll put it this way, even if it sounds kind of disrespectful—if the Southern Territory were a country, the Southern Development Company would be its absolute ruler. Any resources there, whether it’s land, mines, or manpower, all of it belongs to this company."

"More importantly, the God of Technology is really bullish on the ultra-high-speed maglev train system, and the Goddess of Agriculture is interested in a certain project I can’t really talk about yet—all of it’s being done through the Southern Development Company. The ultra-high-speed maglev train burns through cash like crazy, so the numbers on paper don’t look great. That’s why this company’s probably gonna be seriously undervalued for quite a while."

Originally, the dragon race had the idea to split the ultra-high-speed maglev train company and the Southern Development Company into separate entities. That way, the Southern Development Company’s potential would be absolutely massive, and the ultra-high-speed maglev train would be easier to manipulate price-wise, setting up some operations down the line.

But after a lot of back and forth with the dragons, Viscount Roster thought it’d be better to keep the two companies together, at least for now. That way they could make sure the ultra-high-speed maglev train would hit the market quickly.

The operations they had planned later wouldn’t really be affected all that much anyway.

Hearing Viscount Roster’s words, everyone in the room went kind of quiet.

They’d been riding the coattails of Viscount Roster’s various companies for a while now, so they’d naturally been focused on that stuff. They hadn’t really thought about other options.

Now that someone brought it up, yeah, it seemed worth considering.

But they didn’t know much about this stuff and weren’t sure about the risks. If they were gonna invest big, they’d need to be careful and really do their homework.

"Lord Roster, I’ve got a question."

Suddenly, one noble spoke up. "Theoretically speaking, if the Southern Development Company owns the entire Southern Territory, shouldn’t they just be able to develop it step by step?"

"It’s fundamentally different from the Roster Territory Group Company in that it’s got this huge foundation. Even if they just farmed the land, the profits and scale would be enormous. Plus, with so many nobles joining in, they shouldn’t need to sell themselves off to raise capital, right? They should be able to handle everything internally."

"Like I just said, the ultra-high-speed maglev train. You guys, as shareholders in the Roster Territory Group Company, should know about this project. The costs are just way too high. And sure, in my view there’s no risk—it’ll definitely be profitable eventually—but for them it’s different. They need more people to help share the costs."

Viscount Roster smiled as he explained. "You might not know this, but the Southern Development Company borrowed over 50 million gold coins from Dragon Bank alone. Even if its current market value multiplied by ten, it’d still be undervalued."

Over 50 million gold coins in debt.

Just the interest alone would cost them several million a year to Dragon Bank.

The current market value worked out to less than 10 million.

Wasn’t this seriously undervalued?

But that kind of debt also made some nobles feel like there was absolutely no way they’d invest.

Throw money into that, and it’d probably just disappear without a trace.

No wait—at least when you throw something in water you can see a splash. This thing would probably just sink straight to the bottom.

Viscount Roster just smiled and didn’t push it any further.

Actually, calling it undervalued was an understatement. This was completely him and the dragons trying to create a wealth myth by selling off a portion of these companies’ equity on the cheap.

For bigger profits down the road, they needed to make a little investment now!

And it wouldn’t take long before they’d earn it all back, and then some.

If people wanted to jump on board, they’d naturally catch the wave and make a fortune. If they had doubts, well, they could just stick to making money the old-fashioned way and blame themselves for not having any vision.

The stocks that were originally circulating in the offline trading market were already looking pretty scarce, and with the Magic Net stock exchange up and running, these stocks became even more of a drop in the bucket. No matter how much got thrown out there, it all got snapped up instantly.

People’s trading enthusiasm just kept getting more insane.

This enthusiasm kept going right up until the market closed at 3 PM.

Across the entire Magic Net, over 10 million people pretty quickly came to one unanimous conclusion: trading stocks equals free money.

The people who’d been testing the waters at 1 gold coin when it was 1.25 gold coins were now kicking themselves. A lot of stocks had already climbed to 4 or even 5 gold coins.

Roster Territory.

World Economic News Agency.

News Bird Megan looked at all this information, her face full of excitement. "This is amazing! Today’s trading results were incredible. People’s enthusiasm for stock trading is through the roof. Our financial news program tonight is definitely gonna be a huge draw!"

"Scholar Anthony Houston, do you have any more questions? If you do, our expert team needs to discuss them ASAP. Tonight’s the first analysis, so we’re trying to nail everything. Viscount Roster and his people will provide some general direction and reference information."

Scholar Anthony Houston didn’t actually have a ton of professional expertise, but the thing was, he was from the Houston family, and he had this face that just screamed trustworthy scholar. Really impressive presence.

Born into a well-known scholar family that pretty much everyone had heard of, with family members holding important positions in dozens of countries, and looking like that—Megan spotted his potential right away.

Especially after hearing him talk confidently and blow smoke without batting an eye, Megan felt like he was kind of similar to her in some ways. Having him host a financial program was just perfect.

As for him not actually having any real expertise—did that matter? 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

Obviously not!

The World Economic News Agency had tons of talent. They had everyone they could possibly need. He could just read off the script when the time came.

"Don’t worry, I’ve basically memorized everything. Sure, this is my first time talking to the Magic Net like this, but I’m confident I can do a good job." Scholar Anthony smiled warmly.

He absolutely loved this job.

High salary, and all he had to do was talk for half an hour a day.