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Chapter 15: Moving
🕑 Added 2024-10-06 04:23:45 +0000 UTC"I know this may be difficult, but I still hope you can find a way to provide me with as much sugar as possible, oh, and this chocolate too! This gold - half of it is a thank-you gift for you, and the other half is a deposit. I won't bother with the actual purchase price of the sugar; I'll buy it at five ounces per pound. How does that sound?" Daenerys said seriously.
She was a queen, after all. Though young, she had already endured many hardships and was no ignorant little flower.
Daenerys understood the importance of white sugar.
If powerful firearms could help her defeat her enemies by force, then white sugar was essential to maintaining the fighting power of her army and winning over allies.
If she were to retake Westeros, sending the same weight of white sugar to a noble lord would be a hundred times more effective than sending the same weight of gold.
As for the price of five ounces per pound, Daenerys derived this figure from the raw sugar blocks in her world.
No doubt this quality of white sugar would still be underpriced compared to the inferior sugar of Westeros.
However, Daenerys might also suspect that while sugar in Josh's world might not be cheap, it was certainly not as expensive as in Westeros.
This was not mere speculation; it was based on the conclusions she had drawn from the weapons Josh had sold her earlier.
And why? Because of the metal!
By the time of the Second World War, Earth's industrial level had reached an advanced stage. The steel produced was nothing like the special steels of later times, but it was worlds away from medieval production.
When Josh first recommended firearms to Daenerys, she was only interested in their power.
However, once she received the actual weapon, her interest extended beyond the weapon itself to the metals used to make the guns and bullets.
During their first trade, when she received the .38, Daenerys had already tested it. The best weapons used by her warriors could only leave light scratches on the gun without causing any real damage.
On closer inspection, she discovered that the so-called scratches were merely on an unknown coating... this weapon was nickel-plated.
Such robust steel could be said to rival the legendary Valyrian steel.
In Westeros, steel of this calibre would cost many times more than gold.
It was even comparable to the legendary swords in martial arts novels - such as the Sword of Heaven and the Dragon Slayer's Blade - that couldn't be bought with money.
And how much does a .38 weigh? Just over a kilogram.
Even without the non-metallic parts, converted to imperial ounces, that would be no less than 30 ounces.
Josh sold it to her for just 10 ounces of gold, along with a free book on Monarch theory.
Later, the M1917 rifle was even heavier, weighing 8 kilograms. Without the wooden stock, it was still no less than 2 kilos, and it even came with a hundred bullets.
Moreover, both the .38 and the M1917 bullets were cast in pure copper.
So even though the price had tripled, Daenerys hadn't lost out at all.
In fact, if one day Josh stopped selling her bullets, those guns wouldn't just be considered firewood by Josh; just recovering the steel and casings from the bullets would allow Daenerys to cover all her losses and still make a profit.
Besides, there was no problem with the recoverability of the steel.
It's true that steelmaking requires high productivity, but if it's just a matter of remelting, the difficulty drops significantly.
Like Valyrian steel - while the people of Westeros couldn't make it, remelting Valyrian steel weapons wasn't difficult at all.
So Josh always thought he was getting a great deal.
But in reality, he was only at the stratosphere, while Daenerys had already reached the space.
This was one of the biggest advantages of interdimensional trade.
Now Daenerys used this information gap to give her estimate of the price of white sugar.
Faced with Daenerys' offer, Josh was no doubt tempted.
Is white sugar expensive? At $2 a pound, it certainly is.
And if he wanted to make a big deal at that price, it would be impossible, because ration coupons are extremely difficult to obtain.
So he had to buy on the black market.
On the black market, the price of sugar was at least $5 a pound.
However, compared to Daenerys' offer of 5 ounces of gold (80% purity), which works out at $250 per pound, it was still incredibly cheap.
That's a whopping 50-fold profit! The M1917 rifle he had previously sold had barely yielded a 25 times profit.
This deal was definitely worth pursuing!
"I'll do my best, but I can't guarantee the quantity," Josh said after some thought and immediately agreed, but he didn't want to overpromise given the strict controls on supplies.
"That's fine, just do your best," Daenerys understood that it wouldn't be easy.
After discussing what needed to be discussed, they said their goodbyes and ended the call.
As the call ended, Josh looked at the hundred bars of gold in the system warehouse and felt an exhilarating rush again.
Even though he had seen gold every day recently, each transaction brought him more wealth than the last.
It was a wonderful feeling.
If it were all in cash, Josh would even consider taking out a note to imitate the extravagant way a certain character lit a cigarette.
Of course, this was just a thought - firstly, Josh didn't smoke, and secondly, while this character lit his cigarette in a flamboyant manner, he was a counterfeiter and used counterfeit notes to light his cigarette.
A night soon passed.
The next day Josh woke up very late and his plans changed again.
He had originally planned to visit various gun shops to buy more firearms, as after paying for his house he wouldn't have much left to stock up on. He planned to buy some weapons in the morning and then meet Daenerys for a transaction around midday.
But the sugar deal had suddenly given him a thousand ounces of gold, so there was no hurry.
What? Half of it's a deposit?
Just kidding! Once it's in Josh's pocket, do they expect him to give it back? It almost amounted a hundred pounds of sugar! Even if he cleared out the black market, he would still find a way to gather it!
After nibbling on some leftover bread and milk to fill his stomach, he began to pack his things.
There wasn't much to pack, as most of the important items had already been stored in the system warehouse, so he just casually threw some clothes into a box.
He also prepared a delicate wooden box and placed fifty gold bars inside.
The rest was just waiting for Margaret's arrival.
