Mission Complete
Owing to it being impossible to feel my left foot, it wasn’t easy to control it to accurately get my foot into the stirrup. Dismounting was even tougher. I felt I needed a horse carriage, except they were too expensive. Hence, I just had to deal with the drag.
Francis walked next to me; noticing how hard it was for me to mount a horse, he smiled: “Your foot appears to be hurting.”
He was a dwarf, but he nimbly mounted his horse. Furthermore, dwarves didn’t require stirrups. God forbid I knew how they managed to fix themselves on the horse. He came to us at noon and asked us to come to the bank to sort out the business between us.
Veirya and I got ready to leave once we woke up. Francis brought me the contract. I examined the map to check the location they needed. The location was quite close to the dwarves but fairly far from our town. Furthermore, there appeared to be a village there. Therefore, we most likely needed to speak with the villagers there if we wanted to sell the land and had to prepare money for them to buy land.
I presumed putting together money to pay the villagers was simple enough. They probably never saw gold coins before; I estimated one hundred gold coins to be adequate. hus, I didn’t need to worry about them. Candy from a baby. There was nothing to fret about.
Veirya followed behind us. From my side, Francis inquired, “Can I ask why you want to make a loan with collateral? What do you want to pawn?”
“It’s rather complex; it’s not for buying a house or something or rather, however.”
“Of course. By my estimations, you aren’t the type to go after little things. You’re different to the average businessman. You’re the type of businessman who wants to turn everything on its head.”
Smiling, I replied, “I’d say you’re wrong, then. My dream is to purchase a house in the imperial capital, and that’s all.”
“In that case, your methods will be incredibly extreme, won’t they? What exactly is it that you want this time? We dwarves heard you humans invented a steam engine or something that could provide infinite and large amounts of power to propel the entire world. We’re very fascinated in such machines; after all, it’s related to our mining activities. I would venture a guess that the loan you seek is somehow related to those machines, right? With that said, taking a loan to invest is a little rash, wouldn’t you agree? If you take the loan and your investment falls through, would you be able to repay your debt?”
I shook my head: “I never said anything about investing in it.”
Francis smiled: “We’re good friends already, so why do you need to hide things from us? We won’t fight you for the business; right now, we’re most focused on the mine. We don’t have the spare energy to be distracted with something else.”
That was quite the proclamation. To be frank, I genuinely didn’t consider us to be friends. Francis and I had only met twice by that point. I questioned if dwarves considered anyone who drank with them to be friends. I believed Veirya and Francis were good friends.
“I’m not lying to you. I honestly don’t plan to invest anything in that business. As you, yourself, said, if it falls through, I seriously can’t repay the loan. That’s why I won’t invest.”
Bewildered, Francis pressed me for answers: “What are you planning to do with a loan, then? Do you have any other business? We’re friends, so how about filling us in?”
“Truth be told, it’s not big business or anything. Plus, I don’t necessarily need to take out a loan, either. I purely want to know more about loans. I can prepare for the future, after all. New things intrigue me.”
I had no intention of sharing my plan with the dwarves. Last night, Francis did look as though he awfully missed the past. Even so, if there was something that could improve his life at the snap of a finger, he wouldn’t let the opportunity escape him. To add, I didn’t want others to know what I was planning, either. With that, Francis should’ve got the hint that I didn’t want to talk about my plans and shouldn’t press me any further.
We finally reached the entrance to the bank. It was already afternoon, also known as peak hour at the bank. A clerk or something similar quickly ran over when he saw Francis. Judging from the individual’s reaction, Francis must’ve been a big customer for the bank. Thanks to Francis, the worker at the bank immediately served us. The worker was young. By my approximations, he was only around twenty. Nevertheless, his pale lips and eye bags made him look as if he was being worked to death. That went to show how much pressure workers were subjected to at the bank.
The worker took out a parchment: “Did you say that you want to loan money? Approximately how much do you wish to loan? You can take out the loan if you have something of similar worth. Then, we will provide you with an interest rate dependent on your loan amount and the time frame. Should you not be able to repay the principal amount within three months of taking out the loan from the day you signed and the interest, we will confiscate what you pawned. If you wish to loan money, you just need to fill out this contract. We can provide you with cash and cheques that you can use to exchange for cash at any of our money depositories.”
“Oh, no, I just wanted to ask if I could pawn intangible items. For example, can I use the bonus that I annually receive from a company as collateral?”
“That would depend on the status of the company. We need to ensure that the bonus is enough to pay our interest and that you can repay the principal amount.”
No matter where you go, banks will always be willing to loan you things when you provide collateral. As long as they were willing to loan money, I’d definitely do my absolute best to satisfy them, for banks relied on the interest paid for loans to earn money. The principle applied especially for larger sums, as the larger the loan, the bigger their profit. In addition, when there was no interest cap as we had, who could tell how high their interest rates would go?
In any case, I didn’t come for a loan. I just wanted to find out the answer to my query. Since I could use a company’s share as collateral to get a loan, I could also use the bank’s loan to buy more shares to loan more then rinse and repeat. I found out what I wanted.
I meticulously studied the contract, especially the interest and the statute of limitation. Seriously, there were lots of overbearing and unreasonable articles and clauses. But nonetheless, there were just as many flaws. I saved the numbers to memory. They were the essence of the sheet.
“What, you seriously just came for a look?!” asked Francis.
Francis was astonished when he saw me calmly get up and leave. He didn’t believe that I really just wanted to satisfy my curiosity. He thought I had something to put into motion, but I really didn’t have plans to do anything. I didn’t bring my principal; I needed some time to get it first.
“Yes.” I nodded and extended out my hand with a smile: “We’ve accomplished our mission for this time; we need to head back now. If you want to buy the block of land, come see me first. There are residents there; therefore, we may need to make an appearance and coordinate things.”
“Ah… Sure… Uhm…”
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