Calls came in one after another from countries that had decided to convert their power production to aether generation. Among the nations that had attended the UN General Assembly, more than 70 percent had sent replies.
In truth, aether generation itself was not a difficult technology, so as long as enough Etherium was supplied, the transition would not be difficult.
On top of that, aether generation was clean, safe, and even highly efficient.
He had not decided to supply Etherium to them in “unlimited” quantities as he had to the Republic of Korea, but even if each country purchased only enough to match its existing power production, the cost would still fall far short of even half of what all their current power generation required.
With aether generation being so clean, safe, and efficient, and now economical as well, no matter how much they agonized over it or punched numbers into their calculators, they would have had no reason to refuse.
Moreover, for countries that decided to make an immediate full-scale switch to aether generation, he had also promised to handle their “nuclear waste disposal” at a special discounted price, so perhaps that made it even more appealing.
The remaining 30 percent of countries that had been unable to make an immediate decision were those that perceived Suho’s monopoly on Etherium supply as an unstable variable, or even a threat.
They did not know how a person’s heart might change, nor what changes might occur to Suho himself, so how could they rely on and trust a single person, Suho, to provide the Etherium they would receive every year?
Suho would neither age nor die, and he did not care enough about such lousy E-rank Etherium to ever change his mind, but since he could not make them understand or believe that…
It was not an anxiety he could not understand.
After going through the trouble of shutting down all their existing power production and switching to aether generation, what would they do if Suho started throwing his weight around and jacked up the price of Etherium? In truth, it was a concern they had every reason to have.
“Hmm… What should I do…?”
As Suho sat with his chin propped in his hand in the study of the subspace warehouse, a great many request documents spread out before him, Rabi came over as always and sat down beside him.
“Rabi, what do you think? What would be best?”
“Hmm… Are you perhaps short on money in human society?”
“No. Honestly, I’m not short anymore. I have so much I don’t even have anywhere to spend it all.”
“Then are you short on influence over the world?”
“I’ve already got more than enough of that too… It’s not like I’m planning to conquer the world and become some great king.”
“Then what is there to worry about? You should deal with the climate crisis you were always worrying about first.”
“As expected…! You’re simple.”
Perhaps because Rabi was truly simple, she had an insight that struck straight to the heart of the matter.
Yes. The most urgent issue right now was carbon neutrality.
And E-rank Etherium was the key to reviving the Earth by cheaply supplying the entire world with limitless clean energy.
He had many minor goals, such as ensuring that not only Suho but the Republic of Korea as a whole would take up an important position in the global economy through the exclusive supply of Etherium, and contributing to the enhancement of Korea’s national status and international bargaining power… but at Rabi’s one sentence, his mind cleared.
In truth, it also occurred to him that such things could be achieved through any number of other routes.
After leaving the subspace warehouse, Suho sent another reply through every channel of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that had contacted him.
“Do not hesitate to convert energy production to aether generation,” he said.
“And if any country wishes, I will sell not just one year’s worth of E-rank Etherium, but more than ten years’ worth at once.”
Then, before even a few days had passed, the number of countries that had decided on a complete conversion to aether generation reached 98 percent.
And requests to purchase E-rank Etherium flooded in.
There was no longer a single country that said it would buy only one year’s worth of Etherium.
Some requested contracts to buy as little as three years’ worth, and others as much as ten years’ worth.
Among them was even a country that asked if it could purchase thirty years’ worth at once, but pay the price in installments over ten years.
“Hwaa… This is insane… Tsk… What am I supposed to do with this…?”
When most countries applied, and he had assumed he would supply one year’s worth of Etherium annually for each country’s aether generation, he had expected an annual income of around 1,180 trillion won…
But as each country purchased several years’ worth of Etherium, quadrillions of won came pouring in.
When money amounting to several times the entire national budget of the Republic of Korea landed in Suho’s hands,
the personnel of the “single-family office” and the team of “private bankers” exclusively in charge of managing Suho’s current immense fortune were no longer able to handle it all.
Thus, for the time being, the team was expanded around the professional asset manager in charge of overall asset management. They connected with more trustworthy global asset management firms to establish and execute asset management strategies, and further expanded the legal, tax advisory, and accounting teams with top experts.
They distributed Suho’s wealth across a wide variety of financial institutions, and also managed risk by dividing and depositing assets among banks and investment companies in multiple countries.
They also invested a considerable portion in safe government bonds and fixed-income investment products, and invested in a variety of other assets such as stocks, real estate, private equity funds, and venture capital to prepare for market volatility.
In any case, countless personnel were投入ed into managing various assets that Suho himself could not even fully understand, and before he knew it, the number of people on the team managing Suho’s assets alone exceeded the total number of employees at the TDM workplace.
Having instantly taken the position of the world’s richest man and been named the most influential individual in the world, Suho became the focus of major media outlets around the globe.
Forbes: “The Lord of Aether, the Richest Person on Earth Born from a New Energy Revolution”
Bloomberg: “The Infinite Power of Aether, the Man Who Shook the Global Economy and Energy Markets”
The Washington Post: “The Leading Figure of the Energy Revolution: The Aether Supplier Who Changed Humanity’s Future”
TIME: “The Man Who Changed the Earth, the Era of Infinite Energy Brought by Aether”
National Geographic: “Aether and the Rebirth of Earth: Symbiosis with Nature Brought by Infinite Energy”
Financial Times: “The Aether Innovator Becomes the Ruler of Global Energy”
In addition, countless media outlets covered this astonishing energy transition and cast Suho in a new light.
They discussed how the energy revolution was replacing all existing energy sources, the impact of aether generation on the existing oil, gas, and nuclear industries, the social, political, and economic influence that the figure Suho had exerted on human society, the technological innovations and economic shocks that the energy revolution would bring, the possibility of accelerated ecosystem restoration due to the cessation of fossil fuel use, and whether aether would become an innovative energy source capable of enabling a sustainable future for Earth, and so on…
Since countless media outlets were competing to report on it, he did not have to advertise each and every thing himself, which was convenient.
* * *
Suho’s daily routine grew even busier.
As for TDM and the On Tower auction house, he now only stopped by briefly when delivering goods,
and he could not spend much time visiting the SimCity construction sites or the domestic aether power plant construction sites.
What took up the most time was traveling around the world to deliver the E-rank Etherium he had contracted with each country.
There were far too many countries, so visiting each one individually by private jet was complicated and annoying.
So Suho issued a worldwide notice telling them to come pick him up, and each country that had decided to purchase E-rank Etherium provided everything according to its assigned order, from chartered planes and security teams to escorting air force units, in order to bring Suho over.
Receiving the utmost hospitality prepared by each country, he went and poured Etherium wherever they wanted it.
Some countries purchased hundreds of thousands of tons, others millions of tons, and some even purchased more than ten million tons of Etherium.
Because the volume was far too large to measure and calculate the weight one by one, Suho gave them rough standards. “If you fill a 20-foot container, it’s about 70 tons; if you fill a 40-foot container, it’s about 140 tons.” Like that.
At first, because he truly had no knack for it, the work of filling several million tons of Etherium became maddeningly tedious and long.
Even if he filled 1.4 million tons, that was still 10,000 forty-foot containers.
Having come up with a trick, Suho simply issued a notice from then on.
“If a country wants @ ten thousand tons, prepare something, whether a pit or a building, with a width × length × height of @ meters. Then I’ll pour it all in there and leave, so each of you can clean it up on your own afterward.”
From then on, the delivery work became easier.
Even though Suho personally visited delegations from countries all over the world and enormous container ships to carry out this work,
perhaps because a rumor had somehow spread along the lines of, “If you mess with that guy the wrong way, your entire capital might be erased,”
there were no longer any countries urging Suho to naturalize, nor any countries daring to try to kidnap him.
Well, every country had at least one intelligence agency, after all.
* * *
Many busy days passed, and the day when the meteorite “Nightfera,” which was scheduled to brush past Earth, would approach the planet drew near.
It was the incident Suho was most interested in lately.
More than his fortune, which had already far surpassed 5,000 trillion won in just a few weeks, and more than the SimCity sites in Yeongyang County and Bonghwa County, where road construction had progressed quite a bit, it was this meteorite that drew Suho’s attention.
All the more so because it was said to be not just an ordinary rock, but a mineral mass containing a great deal of materials for S-rank items.
Of course, even though the materials were not particularly valuable to Suho, his interest was piqued even more because the advanced spacefaring nations had decided not to simply let that high-value-added meteorite pass by, but to form a multinational exploration team and begin full-scale mining operations.
Splash, splash.
Suho was floating on the water and watching the news when Seongsik, whom he had not seen in a while, followed him in.
“You bastard, you were monopolizing a nice place like this all by yourself?”
“Haha, I wasn’t monopolizing it. Among the swimming pools, this side just has the best view, so I’ve always been here. But no one ever came here.”
“Now that I know, I’m going to come often.”
“Haha, do whatever you want.”
Wearing a swimsuit, Seongsik put on a tube that only lightly fastened around his neck and lay back on the water, relaxing his body.
“Hyaa… This is nice.”
“Right? Doesn’t it feel like the exhaustion of a sweat-soaked day just gets washed away?”
“Yeah, I’m getting drowsy…”
“How’s TDM? Manageable?”
“Well, there’s not much for me to do. Narae is so good at overseeing everything, Jiho is doing his part well, and there are plenty of quick-witted employees too…”
“That’s a relief. By now, I feel like most of the worthwhile materials should have been sold off, but it’s interesting that applications to purchase materials keep coming in.”
“Well, there are plenty of consumable ones, and there are so many Admitis that we were very selective at the start… Still, compared to the beginning, it has gone down a bit.”
“Really? I guess it was about time it decreased.”
Seongsik pulled his body close to Suho’s tube.
“So, Suho.”
“Yeah?”
“I was thinking maybe we shouldn’t limit TDM to Korea anymore, and we could open it up to overseas Admitis too.”
“That’d be fine with me. But can the TDM staff handle it?”
“We’ll have to hire a lot more employees. And either expand the TDM building more, or move to somewhere bigger and better equipped.”
“Oh, let’s do that. Let’s do that. Let’s just build it as big as a convention center and run it like that. That sounds fun.”
“A… convention center? Isn’t that scale way too big?”
“Come on, how much could it cost to build one? Have people draw up an estimate. Commission a design too. If you find it annoying, you can have Jiho do it.”
“No. I’ll do it. I happen to not have much to do anyway.”
“Whoa, you’re enthusiastic. I’ll have to raise our employees’ salaries. A 100 percent raise!”
“Hey! Our salaries are already too high. I’m already dying of guilt and discomfort from receiving an absurd salary when I barely do anything…”
“What’s there to feel guilty about? Because you’re there, I can leave TDM in your hands and wander around with peace of mind.”
“Good grief… Don’t say such embarrassing things. Anyway, don’t do anything weird like raising salaries. Now that we’ve moved into Elysium Heights, we’re saving on housing costs, and since everything inside this building is handled free of charge, there’s nothing to spend money on.”
“Still, there must be plenty of places where you need money. Spend freely. Freely.”
“I’m telling you, there really isn’t anywhere I need money.”
“Gasp… Don’t tell me…”
“Don’t tell you what?”
“…Don’t tell me you’ve fallen into the curse of abundance too.”
“What are you talking about? The curse of abundance?”
“Seongsik, don’t worry. As your senior, I can give you advice. The way to escape the curse of abundance is simple. It can be something small and modest; just do something you like, something you can find interesting. Happiness and satisfaction are close at hand.”
“….. You’ve gotten a lot more ridiculous while I haven’t seen you. Is that why you started exclusively supplying Etherium energy to the entire world? To do something modest and satisfying…? And the new city SimCity too?”
“That’s right! I found my own modest fun. You should try finding something like that too. I’m sure it exists.”
Suho patted Seongsik’s shoulder encouragingly, while Seongsik gradually found it more and more difficult to keep up with Suho’s insane conversation.