I'm Trying To Go Broke, So Why Do I Keep Getting Richer?!-Chapter 197: You’re acting weird

"Alpha Corp will release more details on the matter in the future. I hope that I will have your continued support in these challenging times..."

Leo lowered his head once more, holding the pose of a deeply burdened man for exactly three seconds before he abruptly cut the broadcast feed.

The tiny red recording light on the floating camera drone blinked out. Immediately, he let out a long, exhausted sigh, reached up to casually loosen his silk tie, and stepped away from the makeshift podium.

It had been hastily arranged inside the ship’s main command deck specifically for this broadcast, complete with a backdrop of Earth meant to make him appear more connected and grounded.

"Well? Did you think it went well?" Leo asked, turning to the Branch Manager of his bank.

The man was staring at him as if Leo had just sprouted a second head. The Branch Manager’s face was pale, his eyes wide, and a nervous sweat covered his forehead.

"I... I didn’t know you had such terrifying ambitions, sir. Then again, given the circumstances, it might not be half bad," Alpha Bank’s Deputy Manager mumbled, nodding slowly as he tried to keep his voice from trembling.

After all, he reminded himself, he just had to follow his boss’s whims. Under Leo’s direct orders, they had already kidnapped the formidable Patriarch of the Lionel Family, effectively dismantling a galactic powerhouse and crippling an entire interstellar fleet.

Compared to orchestrating the downfall of a cosmic dynasty, what was the mere act of staging a hostile takeover of Earth?

It really shouldn’t have been enough to surprise him at this point. And yet, the sheer audacity of it left him breathless.

Meanwhile, Leo tilted his head sideways, genuinely confused by his employee’s reaction.

"What’s ambitious about this? Isn’t this a completely normal thing to do in our line of work?"

The Branch Manager blinked, his jaw tightening as he screamed internally, ’Since when did it become completely normal to stage a bloodless coup of a middle-tier planet? You just subjugated billions of people with a straight face, acting like you were doing them a charitable favor!’

Wisely, those exact words remained buried deep in his heart, locked behind years of corporate training.

"You’re right, sir. A very normal thing, indeed. Standard business acquisition," he agreed smoothly, deciding it was incredibly dangerous to drag the issue out any further.

"You’re acting weird today. Haven’t you been resting enough? Take some paid time off once we dock," Leo shrugged, shaking his head as he walked past his stunned employee toward the private corridors.

In Leo’s mind, there wasn’t much hidden meaning in his planetary broadcast. He had simply stated his thoughts, highly confident that the public would support his totally normal, run-of-the-mill business decision.

Throughout the entire live feed, he had been entirely focused on nailing his lines and expressing his grief. He didn’t even bother checking the live comments or the global reaction metrics before walking away.

Unfortunately, there was one crucial, catastrophic variable he had completely forgotten to account for... the public’s obsessive habit of overanalyzing his every breath.

Because of his track record, the world operated under the strict assumption that Leo Vanderlen was a peerless, cold-blooded, calculating genius.

Even when he was pretending to be his brother, Reo Vanderlen, the people still overestimated him, especially after his recent performance of saving earth.

Leo had absolutely no idea that his words, which he genuinely meant as the civic duty of a good corporate citizen, were currently being wildly, dangerously misinterpreted across the globe.

In reality, his thought process was incredibly simple. All he meant to say on that broadcast was that he was going to leave a small, heavily armed security fleet in Earth’s orbit.

The primary purpose was just to protect his newly established Alpha Labs and the various other lucrative industries he had seeded on the planet.

Painting it as planetary defense was just a convenient PR spin to earn a little extra goodwill from the locals.

When he had spoken so passionately about rooting out traitors within, he was literally just talking about any lingering, straggling remnants of the Lionel Family who might be hiding out on Earth.

Not in his wildest, most paranoid dreams could he have guessed that his simple declaration of taking responsibility for Earth’s protection would be viewed as a hostile, authoritarian takeover of the Hero Tower and the Global Assembly.

Even worse, the entire planet now fully believed that enemies within was a direct, thinly veiled threat aimed directly at Earth’s corrupt politicians and the top-ranking Heroes who had failed to stop the invasion.

Unaware of the apocalyptic political chain reaction he had just ignited, Leo simply returned to his luxurious private quarters. The chaotic battle in space was over. The bad guys were captured. All that was left to do was to harvest the massive profits and achievements later on.

Without a single care in the world, Leo tossed his coat onto a chair, put his wrist communicator on absolute silent mode, crawled into his massive memory-foam bed, and slept like a baby.

At that exact moment, down on the mid tier planet far away, Earth was in a state of unprecedented turmoil.

The world leaders had frantically convened an emergency, ultra-secure global summit. Those who couldn’t attend in person joined via encrypted holographic projections.

In truth, that meant almost all of them were projecting from home; every single head of state was utterly terrified that stepping outside their reinforced underground bunkers would result in an immediate precision strike from Leo’s small security fleet.

The virtual assembly room was packed. It wasn’t just the presidents and prime ministers of various nations. The titans of Earth’s industries, men and women who had enjoyed untouchable influence for decades, were present, sweating profusely.

The Hero Tower wasn’t absent, either. Those who occupied the highest echelons of global defense, including the legendary Top Ten Heroes, hovered in the digital space.

Unfortunately, their expressions were just as grim as the politicians.

They were already deeply frustrated and humiliated that they had completely failed to capture Fiona before she was snatched away by the mysterious Observers. Now, they were facing a domestic threat that made Fiona look like a warm-up act.

"Have you all heard the declaration from Alpha Corp? They have publicly, brazenly announced their intention to conquer Earth! What do you suggest we do?" the President of one of the Western allied nations asked, kicking off the meeting with a voice bordering on hysteria.

"What can we even do? We have to stop that bastard! We cannot let him control our governments just because he has a powerful private army and good public relations! We must use everything within our means to stop him!" a Prime Minister yelled back, slamming his fist on his desk.

"That’s right! We control the media! We can always destroy his reputation and make the public hate him! Will he still dare to take over forcefully if he lacks the mandate of the masses?" a media mogul chimed in, desperately clinging to his fading relevance.

"Exactly! As long as he is hated by the people, he won’t have a justification to land those ships! And if he forces his way in anyway, we can always broadcast a distress signal and ask the friendly planets for help!"

The ministers and executives continued to talk over one another, feeding into an echo chamber as if they could actually stop Leo Vanderlen.

"Who, exactly, can we ask for help?" another world leader finally spoke up, his voice heavy with hesitation and a clear understanding of a bleak reality.

"Have you all gone blind? Didn’t you see the amount of ’help’ we received when we were being actively attacked by the Lionel Family just hours ago? Do you honestly think the sectors that ignored our cries for help will suddenly lift a finger when Leo attacks?" 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

The words hung in the air, making everyone realize that they really might have been over optimistic. Dead silence fell over the assembly as the reality of their total isolation set in.

Unfortunately, the man wasn’t finished.

"Even the Lionel Family’s vanguard army, a force that nearly drove us to extinction, couldn’t survive his onslaught. You think we can?" he continued, his expressions going darker with each passing second.

"If we somehow manage to make the public hate him, what’s to stop him from going crazy and simply blowing Earth to dust along with the people who hate him? Right now, the public’s blind love for him is literally our only defense!"

"Then what do you suggest we do?! We just casually lay our necks on the chopping block and leave them there? Don’t we still have the Hero Tower?!"

A wealthy, trembling businessman turned his holographic avatar toward Blaze. The S-Rank hero was sitting quietly, looking lost in thought, still trying to decipher what Leo was actually planning.

"Isn’t he your friend? Can’t you talk to him? Convince him to stop?!" the businessman pleaded, his voice filled with nervousness and fear.