One week later...
Much had changed in Leopoldine since the death of Emperor Otto Leopoldine days before.
After the official period of mourning, Klaus Leopoldine ascended the Imperial throne and became the new ruler of the Empire, with the support of most of the Imperial family, as well as the shadow followers of that house.
Like the Jansen family, the families that lived in Leopoldine's shadow did not care who was in charge. Everything was fine for those powers as long as that person was not against them.
Thus, Klaus faced no major obstacles in the days following his father's death.
Not only that, but with the help of the young masters of the families Stauss and Welzel, he had gained access to his younger brother!
Eight days after the death of the former Leopoldine Emperor, Third Prince Lars was found dead in his residence!
No one knew what had happened, as there were no signs of battle or invasion on his estate. But the fact was that Otto's third son had been found dead, probably poisoned.
The Imperial Family was already 'investigating' the case and vowed to avenge the Third Prince...
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇtBut in private conversations throughout the state, everyone knew who was responsible for this death.
In any case, with Lars already dead and Klaus in power, no one wanted any trouble with the Emperor over this.
And while everyone was talking about this death, Klaus had already taken his first initiatives as Emperor, initiating a series of measures in favor of the Ritter Motor Company.
According to the new Emperor, this company and its vehicles would change everything in the state. Therefore, it should be protected and promoted.
He had already created a tax exemption for the Ritter Motor Company and introduced a new imperial law that required Dukes throughout the empire to cede land to this company.
Also, Linn Province was given special status, and new imperial army posts were already being built in the area to support the company's operations.
These and many other impressive measures in favor of the Ritter Motor Company had already surprised the whole state, but especially the powers of Peter City!
...
In Peters City, the Duke of the Province had just held a meeting with his trusted men and was now standing next to Coroner Klossner, discussing the most talked about topic of the day.
"This is really impressive... It seems His Majesty wants to increase his profits from the Morning Star Academy." The local Duke said, knowing that several of the new rules created decreased the collection of taxes and coins for families of Dukes like his and did not only affect the imperial family.
In this case, these recent measures had the potential to actually increase the Leopoldine family's income if, of course, they could absorb the future profits of the Morning Star Academy.
"But this will be good for us in Linn Province," August commented to his friend. "My group will save at least 100,000 gold coins in just one year with these tax exemptions His Majesty has introduced.
As far as I know, the Ritter family should get a much higher bonus and will save about 5 million gold coins in taxes because of these measures."
The Ritter family had already completely absorbed the Frost family and all of their operations. As such, some of those coins that would go to taxes were on account of Victoria's family operations.
But August was already considering the Ritter family's immense profits from their vehicle business, which was making the rounds in more cities across the province every day.
With more than 8,000 vehicles, including cars, buses, trucks, and farm vehicles, circulating throughout the province, the company's profits were growing exponentially.
Another factory had been completed in recent days. Finally, Peters City was connected by paved roads to the first capital of another province!
With this connection, Ritter Motor Company trucks were already traveling out of the province to make deliveries of new vehicles outside of this area.
Until a few days ago, this was not the case, and anyone purchasing vehicles in Peters City from outside the province had to come to this place to pick up their vehicles. But with the completion of this road, cars have finally started to be sold in that capital, and slowly, some cars are already being dispatched to this city.
Minibusses and other vehicles were already traveling on the paved roads to start various operations in that city.
"Good thing we are in the Ritter Motor Company!" Chris commented to August, pleased he had gotten his share of the company in time.
...
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmMeanwhile, at the Ritter Motor Company headquarters...
Viktoria was presenting promising data to some of her business partners.
With 4 factories focused on vehicle production, their output had already reached 250 vehicles per day.
Meanwhile, with the opening of the company's new branch outside the province, the number of orders had suddenly skyrocketed in recent days, reaching 150,000 orders in the queue.
More than 80,000 new orders had been placed in the city where they started operations, resulting in a collection of more than 34 million gold coins.
With these funds, Victoria was already planning to hire more people and start building new facilities for the company to raise the bar for its operations.
Upon hearing these results, all of her most demanding partners, even those who usually picked on her to try to diminish her influence, were pleased with the numbers and the speed of the company's growth.
Victoria sighed and said, "With the recently implemented tax exemption, we expect our profits to increase between 15% and 20%. Therefore, we will soon reevaluate our expectations for the company's first profit distribution."
Everyone there heard this and nodded with a smile. No one worried about the future distribution of profits and was happy about the tax exemption.
Victoria then cited new results. "In addition, with the start of operations in Stock City, we expect to reach a profit of 1 million gold coins from the driver training school and our minibusses by the end of the month."
This was perfect for these people!
In Peters City, these parallel business operations, which they barely had to invest in to run, were already generating over 4 million coins per month.
As such, this was an extraordinary result that could help the company expand to other states in the near future!
"Excellent!"