CLACK

The door to Lord Leonul's room opened as the two magetant bodyguards standing outside allowed them to pass through after Cæ had been pat down and scanned by a divination mage to check whether he had with him any dangerous items that could be used to hurt the head of the Vritra Family.

Of course, the head of the Vritra Family was very powerful. A master mage was not going to be done in by some apprentice mage still in magicademy. Master Leonul, in particular, was a powerful magetant himself, making him extremely difficult to actually kill.

Yet, it was better safe than sorry. There were powerful artifacts in the world that, even in the hands of an apprentice mage, could kill a master mage. And even if it was highly unlikely, it was worth it to take the possibility seriously to protect an important and powerful man.

Cæ and Serulia entered the luxury slowly as they directed their attention to the man in the room.

He donned a more casual ethnic garb traditional to the Durmen Principality, comprising a long cloth wrapping over his lower half extensively in a complex bind that was both spacious and gave his legs room to move despite being a one-piece bind.

His shirt was simple and white, with the crest of the Vritra Family embroidered on it.

There were two slaves in the room who stood in the corner of the room with their eyes fixed on the wall opposite to them, never once moving, so that the chains on shackling their neck did not ring and disturb their owner.

The man's long golden hair was untied and let down long, reaching his waist, making the air more informal than Cæ was expecting.

"My precious baby…" He gazed at Serulia.

She huffed with a hint of disdain. "I am not a baby, Father."

He simply smiled at her like she was a baby pretending to be an adult, before shifting his gaze to him. "And… Mr. Cæ." His eyes shifted between them, settling on Cæ as he studied the man.

His demeanor was quite different from what it was last time. He regarded Cæ with a greater degree of respect than he did previously, having understood just what kind of man he was. He had to admit that no matter what happened that day, he would give Cæ the respect that he deserved.

"Pleasure to meet you again, Lord Leonul."

"I apologize for demanding your presence on such short notice, Mr. Cæ," the man remarked, getting up before walking over to Cæ with a slow, measured gait.

He stopped just one step away from him, directing a deep gaze into Cæ's stormy, gray eyes.

"I must admit that I… was rather rude to you the last time we spoke," his tone grew courteous. "Your demands were indeed… bold and unusual, but the fact of the matter is that you saved my precious angel right here and that means infinitely more than anything you could ever demand of me, isn't that right, my precious baby?"

"Do not call me baby, it's so embarrassing!"

"And so because you saved my precious baby," he continued with a serious tone, ignoring Serulia's embarrassment. "I believe that I owe it to you to give you an absolutely fair chance to make your case you business to me. I will be charitable and generous to you in a way that l would never to be any other investor. And even if you don't succeed in convincing me, I'll give you the money that you seek as venture magicapita that you will need for your business idea."

Cæ feigned a smile, something that didn't fit on his serious face. "Thank you for generosity and grace, sir. L will endeavor to do my very best to earn your approval on this matter to the best of my abilities."

In reality, Cæ was relatively certain that he had made up his mind on the matter and would likely accept Cæ's proposal as long as it wasn't absurd. This was simply an attempt to save face and not to convey the idea that he was particularly easy to convince if his daughter was involved in the matter.

He cared more about Serulia than he let on, undoubtedly willing to go to any lengths for her sake.

He simply nodded at Cæ with a hint of satisfaction, glad that he didn't try to push the matter and make him lose face.

"Now then, Serulia." He turned to her with a patronizing glance. "We are going to be discussing some very complex and boring matters soon, not to mention matters confidential to him, so why don't you go spend some time with your mother and brother next door?"

She glared at him, clenching her fists, before folding her arms. "I am not going anywhere. I will have you know that I have a deep interest in business, Father."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Really…?" Lord Leonul asked with a tone of exaggerated interest. "Tell me, what is your favorite business case study?"

"…I do not need to read such boring stuff to be very interested in business, ok?!"

Neither of the two men believed her, of course. But her father understood that she didn't give a damn about business matters, but rather cared a lot about Cæ's business matters.

Cæ being the important variable there.

This didn't displease him as much as it did before. Not after learning how far Cæ went for people he loved. The fact that he was willing to alter his life trajectory entirely to kill the man who was responsible for his girlfriend's death was actually a very large plus point in favor of Cæ as suitor material.

He wanted to find a man for his daughter that would protect her with everything he had and, if he couldn't, would at least avenge her with everything that he had.

That was what true love was, as far as Lord Leonul was concerned.

"Very well then," he remarked. "As long as Cæ here has no problem with revealing his business idea to you, something that can be quite sensitive, mind you, I have no problem with you remaining here for this meeting."

"I don't have any problem with you being here," Cæ clarified.

He considered Serulia to be an extension of her family for the purposes of this matter. He also didn't think that she had any incentive to try to spread his idea or use it in an unfair or harmful way.

"Then, let us begin right away."

The three of them took a seat at the table as Lord Leonul had his servants serve them hot cochil, a popular beverage across the entire world.

Cæ didn't waste any time getting into his business idea, describing first the problem that spurred him on to this particular research direction.

"Firstly, let me begin by highlighting the lack of adequate surgical healing services when it comes to more serious conditions or wounds," Cæ began with a serious tone. "The simple fact of the matter is that the demand for senior-level healing services vastly outstrips the supply. There are far, far more people who need the healing services of senior healers than there are senior healers who can possibly take them all on. This can be seen in virtually every single sub-field of surgery exists in the entire industry, whether it is heart, liver, kidney or brain. There simply are not enough qualified healers who can meet the demand and ensure that every patient gets the services that they need."

The man nodded with a curious expression. Although this absolutely was not a problem that the Vritra Family faced with their immense wealth and power, he was aware of a chronic shortage in the medical industry of those he needed the services of senior healers, versus the number of people senior healers could serve.

The high demand for medical services and the lack of supply were two of the reasons that the Vritra Family had decided to dip their toes in the medical industry.

However, it was a problem that required high investment in magicapita. How in the world was Cæ planning to fund it if this little incident hadn't happened? More importantly, this was a problem that many people had given some thought to, and some had even attempted to solve.

There were some that went the governmental intervention way in Elendir, with a governmental program incentivizing more people to pursue healing to increase the number of healers in the country. Other statesmen had tried to get rid of all immigration barriers from some of the smaller nations around them, to invite as many of them as possible.

Within the medical industry, there had been many who had tried more efficient and effective education methods. For instance, many proposed and tried implementing a hyperspecialized training method for healers where they were exclusively trained for a handful of tasks and only had information relating to those two tasks.

This would make them not even real doctors, just surgical servicemen. It was a suggestion that had been shot down boldly, even if many were in support of it to increase the number of healers at hand. There were also those who sought to try and create surgical automatons that could be mass-produced and conduct surgery en masse to ameliorate the supply issue.

But not only was such technology not mass viable at the moment, it was also a big question mark on whether they were truly trustworthy and on whether they could possibly be entrusted with human lives if such technology even came to be developed at some point.

Regardless, many solutions had been proposed in many places in the world, but not a single person had found a solution to the problem.

"I believe I have a solution to this problem," Cæ remarked with a tone of certainty. "I have not yet engaged in testing or experimenting or anything of the sort that can serve as empirical proof, but the concept I have in mind goes like this…"

Cæ began describing the system that he had in mind, with hyper-specialized, leveled division of labor, where the senior healer would focus only on the parts of the surgery requiring their expertise. By ignoring all other parts of the surgery that were more basic and could be handled by lesser surgeons, they could reduce their workload to the things only they were qualified to handle.

Rather than have them deal with only a handful of patients at a time where they personally conducted all the mundane pre-surgical procedures as well as post surgical care, monitoring, and recovery, he could leave all of these procedures to surgeons who could handle them and have all senior healers laser focus their time and energy exclusively on the things that only they could do, for which there was a shortage.

"…Imagine a surgeon who was teleported from one operating room into another in rapid succession with all the information and knowledge of each surgery implanted into their head, where they were required to focus only on the most difficult parts of the surgery process that only they could handle," Cæ explained. "In this hypothetical, they would be ten, dozens, or maybe even a hundred surgeries in a full day's work. This is the power of hyper-specialized division of labor."

"…It would also increase the labor that surgeons would have to do," Lord Leonul frowned. "That would make their job far more stressful and strenuous."

"On the contrary, I think the fact that they focus on so much patient care and even administration work would be more stressful compared to the one thing that they have trained for all their adult lives and are most proficient at. A cook who specializes in cooking meat buns will be much more at home cooking meat buns all day than if they had to focus on other things like kitchen management, supplies, preparations, and so on and so forth. When you allow people to focus exclusively on what they are best at, they excel far more than they would otherwise."

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