Infinite Reincarnation – Arthur Hurt - Chapter 119



Only Noblemtl

Infinite Reincarnation – Arthur Hurt Chapter 119

23-Collaboration

Count Stan nodded in satisfaction at his obedient attitude and said:

“You’ve been like that since long ago. Because of that temper, you’ve brought unnecessary damage upon yourself. If it weren’t for me, you’d already be a corpse floating in the Saint River.”

“I always feel grateful to you, Count.”

“That’s because you listened to me well. There’s no need to praise me.”

It was an ambiguous way of speaking, whether it was thanks to me or not, but if we interpret it as the aristocratic way of speaking that Johnson knows, it means, ‘It’s thanks to me, right? Listen to me from now on.’ The sentence at the end was just the usual, customary humility.

Count Stan licked his lips a few times at the subdued atmosphere of Johnson and then spoke to Arthur.

“Are you satisfied too?”

“How dare I speak of satisfaction? I can only express my gratitude to you, Count.”

Count Stan continued with a satisfied smile.

“So when do you plan to negotiate?”

Arthur responded to the earl’s consideration for wanting to set the date so that Johnson, who had left the room, would not be able to change his mind.

“Can I do it here?”

“Here?”

“The contract has been prepared.”

As the count’s eyes widened, Arthur smiled and took out the envelope.

It was the envelope that contained the contract for overseas export of music boxes signed by the Count before Johnson arrived. When another contract popped out of it, the Count asked in admiration.

“Did you expect all this?”

“It would be a problem if you misunderstand something I prepared just in case.”

Arthur was serious. Johnson could have suddenly gone crazy and stormed out.

Fortunately, thanks to Johnson’s come to his senses, the contract he had prepared was not a waste of effort.

Arthur said, holding the contract out in front of Johnson’s eyes.

“Please read it carefully.”

Johnson held the contract tightly and turned each page. Even though he was from a back alley, he had accumulated a lot of experience before he got to this position. It wasn’t hard to figure out the contents of the contract.

So Johnson gritted his teeth. He had no choice but to admit that the terms of the contract were fair. But he had no choice but to suffer great losses from the illegal duplication of music boxes.

He gritted his teeth, signed the contract, and threw it in front of Arthur.

Arthur said something to him.

“Are you sick?”

“It hurts so bad.”

“So I prepared some medicine.”

Arthur took another contract out of the envelope and handed it to Johnson.

Medicine? Johnson, who had been curiously examining the contents of the contract, looked at Arthur with wavering eyes. Then he raised his voice and growled.

“If there was something like this, shouldn’t you have shown me a long time ago, you punk!”

“But what the heck is that?”

At the Count’s voice digging into his ear, Johnson realized his mistake, changed his expression, bowed his head and apologized, but instead of accepting the apology, the Count held out his hand, and in his hand he held the contract that Johnson had just looked through.

The count, after reviewing the contract, burst into laughter.

“The right to crack down… … How interesting.”

Arthur said to the count.

“I’ve just left it alone until now, but I can’t just leave it alone in the future either.”

The biggest difference between cylinder and disc music boxes was, of course, the cylinder and the disc.

But this obvious difference raised a problem so big that it was impossible to leave the previous policy as it was, the biggest concern being that making a disk was overwhelmingly easier than making a cylinder.

Cylinders require soldering each protrusion individually, whereas disks only require holes drilled in precise locations by machine.

Arthur continued.

“Since disc music boxes allow for the replacement of discs, sales of the main unit are limited. However, sales of discs will continue to increase.”

And he and Mato Trading Company were running a company that exercised copyrights on music. Now they were ready to start a full-fledged record business, but the problem was, of course, illegal copying. It was easy to secretly make and sell discs.

“And I think that Lord Cordeli is a great choice to crack down on piracy.”

It wasn’t a bad thing for Johnson. In fact, it was a good thing. By hitting up the pirates and taking their inventory, he could make more than enough profit to make up for the losses he had suffered so far.

First of all, there was the justification of representing a company with the right to do so. There was no need to bribe the security guards. Considering the fact that bribery costs are secretly large, it was definitely a good business.

That made it even more absurd.

“If you had brought this up earlier, I wouldn’t have had to get so upset.”

There is no need to be called here and pressured by the Count.

Arthur smiled gently and said to the aggrieved Johnson.

“Master Cordelli is weak to the strong and strong to the weak.”

“… … Is it just me?”

Is it just me? Am I the only trash? You all fart in front of the strong, but put your nose up in front of the weak.

Jackson responded with a mixture of resentment and discontent, but Arthur didn’t stop talking.

“He is the kind of person who would chew and swallow even the bones of the weak. He couldn’t show his weak side.”

Samuel said that Johnson was a pure punk. In order to deal with a punk, you had to beat him up first and establish a hierarchy. Well, it was clear that he couldn’t reveal his thoughts openly because of Johnson’s pride.

“And this contract was also conceived thanks to Count Stan here. If I had not been certain that Lord Cordelli would accept Count Stan’s mediation, this contract would not have been made.”

As he stood still and gilded his face, Count Stan simply smiled happily. Also, as a nobleman, he felt that Arthur’s words had strengthened his influence over Johnson.

At this point, it was strange that Arthur’s gaze wasn’t covered in bean-shells.

At this point, even Johnson couldn’t get angry. He lost. He just lost.

“I’ll sign the contract.”

Those were the words that came out of Johnson’s mouth.

***

“Stop it~!”

The factory owner’s screams in front of the Cordeli family, notorious for being thugs and corporate troublemakers, were useless. The workers guarding the warehouse collapsed or ran away from the club beatings, and the music box inventory piled up in the warehouse was stolen.

The factory owner quickly went to the security guards to report the incident, but the security guards who arrived checked the documents presented by the Cordelli family and answered the factory owner as follows.

‘This is a legitimate execution.’

I wondered what the heck this was so I checked, and it turns out it was a crackdown on music boxes that were illegally copied without a license.

Does this make sense? Wasn’t Johnson Cordelli also pirating music boxes? When on earth did he get the right to crack down on them?!

Even without that, the stock was piling up and dying after the market trend changed, and even that stock was confiscated through crackdowns. There were more than one or two factory owners like that, and they were so aggrieved that they all shouted out like this,

“““This is a scam!””

Who are you calling a collaborator when you are making illegal copies without a license?

It was absurd, but originally, humans were not animals that felt wronged by their own false accusations, but were more sensitive to the damage caused by them. To be honest, if there was no harm in being falsely accused, who would feel wronged?

And some more shameless people even included the opportunity cost they had missed in their grievance.

“I can do it too!”

This was the reaction of some factory owners who heard belatedly that Johnson had secured the right to crack down.

Some of those factory owners, like Johnson, were running gangs of hired thugs. In an era when there was no concept of labor rights, it was not unusual for a factory owner to run a gang of hired thugs.

Of course, because there are costs such as maintenance and reputation, general factory owners often outsource the work, but there were still capable factory owners who made a decent profit by hiring thugs and the like.

This is because they were asked to break up strikes, sabotage rival factories, etc.

Birds of a feather flock together, and many of the factory owners Johnson knew were of that type.

A businessman who is indistinguishable from a gangster to a factory owner? But you can’t blame them. In this era of security structures where bribery is taken for granted, they have to protect their own property.

Anyway, they came to Johnson like flies that found shit. On the surface, they said they would help, but behind it, they couldn’t tolerate him sucking up honey alone.

So Johnson asked Arthur, and fortunately Arthur gave him the benefit of the doubt.

“The right to crack down? Do as you wish. As long as you crack down, I don’t care how you use your power to crack down. The problem is that if you get too greedy, you won’t be able to crack down.”

It was a roundabout warning that if you try to eat everything by yourself, your stomach might explode. Even Johnson couldn’t cover the entire St. Scala.

But I didn’t know that Arthur would hear something similar to that, like, “I can’t cut my own hair.”

“Are you having fun these days?”

When I went to see Countess Tzak at her summons, I immediately heard this story.

Arthur realized she was talking about disc music boxes, which were completely overwhelming the market.

But there was something I had to say specifically.

“I haven’t had fun yet.”

“I heard you’re making a ton of money?”

“I spend as much as I earn.”

“Where? It’s not like it’s anything particularly extravagant.”

“It’s maintenance. The business is still in its infancy, so a lot of investment is needed.”

“Investment?”

“It’s oily.”

The disc music box was a revolution. Not only in terms of performance, but it was a revolution that changed the structure of the business.

In other words, it signified a change from a simple ‘manufacturing’ business that made and sold ‘mechanical devices that make pretty sounds’ to a knowledge-based business that sold intangible content called ‘record records’.

And because of the nature of knowledge, there were certain things that were absolutely necessary for knowledge-based businesses to succeed: legal protection of intellectual property rights.

“Isn’t it too grandiose to say that you are offering a bribe?”

“Because you can make a lot of money.”

“Hmm… … .”

Countess Tzak squinted her eyes and asked with a nasal voice.

“Can I help you?”

“Hmm. No. National diplomacy is powerful, but it also has serious side effects.”

Arthur politely declined. If you diplomatically suggested to a country friendly with the Kingdom of Skara, “Let’s protect our intellectual property rights,” would you get a simple “Yes, let’s do that” response?

Rather, it was not strange that the first reaction was, “What is intellectual property? Is it something you eat?”, “Don’t bother me with that.” This was because it was not something that could be protected simply by saying, “Okay, okay. We’ll protect our intellectual property.”

Also, what good is it if you only talk about it and have neither the will nor the ability to protect intellectual property rights?

Then Countess Tzak spoke with an even more intense nasal voice.

“Huh? Really? You don’t need any help?”

Arthur was shocked. It seemed that what the other party wanted was not a favor to help him, but money to be extorted under the pretext of giving him a favor. Surely it wasn’t because he lacked power.

“I will pay a lot of taxes.”

Even so, I couldn’t allow him to interfere with my business.

This was a business that would rather fail if power intervened. The ‘intellectual property solidarity’ that Arthur envisioned was a loose cartel structure of businessmen and vested interests who made ‘profits’ by using records and other items across borders.