Few hours later, Kaiser and Kaori drag the sleepy Katara out of bed to exercise. They use the excuse that it's a holiday so it kind of counts as a weekend. Katara looks at them with eyes full of sleepiness and malice.
'These inhumane healthy freaks' she thinks to herself grudgingly.
Just like the weekend, they exercise for a longer period and finish at 11:30am. Kaori and Kaiser made sure to regulate their speed and strength to their normal standard around Katara.
By the time they get home, Kendelle has already headed to work. Kaori packs her stuff in a small bag and sets off to Scilla's house, not forgetting to give her a heads up first.
To test her speed and stamina, Kaori decided to jog all the way to Scilla's, which is a 1hr and 30 mins jog normally.
She was shocked to find out that she got to Scilla's place after 15 mins, which is just a little bit slower than a car that would take 12 mins. Kaori wasn't even panting.
Kaori walks up to the Ares Mansion. It is a Victorian-styled three-storey stone mansion. It has a driveway that leads up to the mansion, which would take a normal person 3 mins to walk to.
There is an elegantly carved fountain in front of the mansion spewing out clear sparkly water.
'As expected of a family in the country's top 3%'
Kaori presses the fancy high tech bell beside the dark brown heavy wooden front door. Soon, a middle-aged man in a butler uniform opens the front door.
"You must be Ms. Sol. Nice to meet you. Please come in" the butler says with a wide smile. He steps aside for Kaori.
Kaori nods and steps in. The interior is even more impressive.
Immediately Kaori walks in, she sees an elegant curved staircase with dark-brown wooden railings leading up to the second floor right in front of her. The staircase is situated at the entrance/lobby with a high ceiling at the third level of the mansion. A luxurious chandelier bedazzled with jewels hangs from the high roof gracefully. The floor is tiled with cream ceramic tiles and gold designs at the edges. The doors are tall and seem to be made of the same wood as the staircase railings. Expensive mosaics and paintings can be spotted occasionally in different rooms accompanied by equally expensive sculptures or ceramic works.
Kaori didn't know what to say. But of course, Kaori being Kaori, didn't let her thoughts show on her face.
Scilla grabs Kaori's hand and drags her upstairs to her room while yelling for the butler to make popcorn and other desserts. Kaori let herself be pulled as she continued to admire the Ares Mansion.
Soon, the girls get to Scilla's room and it was as expected; at least from Kaori's point of view.
It is just as eccentric and complicated as its owner.
The walls are painted dark purple with some black calligraphy lines at the vertices. Her queen-sized, all black, bed takes up about 1/4th of the space. Two black bean bag chairs are situated in front of the bed, facing a paper-thin flat screen tv hung on the wall opposite them.
One section of the wall is filled with her favourite bands and tv shows while another section is filled with research papers and handwritten notes. Her desk is huge and covers about 3/4th of the wall opposite her bed. There is a door on the remaining 1/4th section which probably leads to her walk-in closet. There is another door adjacent to the closet that is probably the bathroom. Papers, highlighters, sticky notes, and pens are scattered all over the desk leaving just enough space for her high-tech monitor.
To Scilla's credit, apart from the papers and writing supplies, the room is quite clean with no clothes or shoes thrown around. However, this could also be attributed to the maids in the mansion.
Scilla settles down comfortably on one of the comfy looking bean bag chairs in front of her bed. She doesn't even treat Kaori as a guest. Kaori sits on the bean bag chair beside Scilla and makes herself comfortable. The only way to know that this is Kaori's first time at Scilla's place is her wandering curious eyes.
Scilla starts blabbing excitedly while Kaori takes out her phone and replies perfunctorily.
"Let's watch a movie!"
"Up to you"
"Uncle Mer is already making the popcorn downstairs. What else do you want? Maybe candy or hotdogs or...BOTH!"
"Up to you"
Even though Kaori replies halfheartedly, it doesn't dampen Scilla enthusiasm. In fact, I'm not sure she even notices.
Thirty minutes later, everything is set up. There is popcorn, ice cream, hot dogs, gummies and many more snacks. Scilla finally decided to watch a new horror movie that came out last week.
The bean bag chairs are pushed together and the girls settle comfortably on it covered with a blanket and munching on the snacks.
Five minutes later, Kaori notices UniZon threads entering her pores. Kaiser is cultivating.
Half way through the movie, Scilla dozes off. Yep, she is one of those people. However, Kaori had to give it to Scilla, the movie's effects were realistic and well done but she wasn't scared at all.
Kaori never liked horror movies. She finds them stupid. They pay so much attention to scaring people that they forget what a plot or story progression is.
Seeing Scilla sleeping, Kaori takes out her laptop. Since Kaiser is already cultivating, she can focus on other stuff.
Previously, Kaori was extra careful when it came to investing or making money in general because of attracting too much attention. She could always cover her tracks so that no one on Kumia would be able to find her, but she has always been a very cautious person. This was how she survived in her past life.
Kaori didn't want to attract too much attention to herself previously because she felt she didn't have enough power to protect her family. Also because it was too bothersome. But now, it's different. She is more than 10 times stronger and faster than the strongest and fastest person on Kumia. She is basically a superhuman. Who should she fear now? And...the most amazing thing is...she will keep getting stronger, this is just the beginning.
Kaori stretches her fingers out and rolls her neck.
'Now that I am getting serious, time to make some waves.'
Kaori opens up a brand new account for stocks with the pseudonym 'Light'. She then sets up multiple encryptions, firewalls and traps on her account and her information in the government system. The traps are so cleverly placed that even after the person gets trapped in it, they won't know. The trap will redirect them to a random person's information, leading the person on a wild goose chase. Additionally, a virus is then planted on the person's device. The virus gives Kaori full access to the person's device, allowing her to go through the device like it's her backyard. The virus can also jump from one device to another as long as Kaori wills it and the devices stay close together for 10 seconds.
After doing all this, Kaori starts investing. She currently has $1.2 million in her account, she transfers $700k to the bank account she just set up under Light. She starts browsing in the available stocks and doing the relevant research into each stock and its company's situation.
Among the light spots Kaori absorbed in the BIC, there are some planets and universes that are more advanced than Kumia economically. Therefore, Kaori, who has absorbed the light spots from the top business people in that planet or universe, playing in stocks on Kumia is just child's play to her.
Kaori's fingers swipe and type on her phone with a relaxed lazy expression, almost like she is playing an online game.
One hour later, after accurately predicting the rise and fall of some relatively big stocks like a psychic, Kaori managed to more than double her initial capital of $700,000 to $1,700,000. Therefore, in total, Kaori has about $2,200,000 in her accounts. This is an insane amount of money for a 17 year old, but Kaori is still not satisfied.
'It should be okay for now. Argh the market in this country is too slow and boring...'
Kaori closes the stock exchange app and opens up a search engine. She starts searching for a place to set up her lab to carry out her work. She has several requirements that make the search a bit complicated. It should be on the outskirts of the city, preferably in an isolated or abandoned area. The walls should be made up of T7 Tesmun, which is Kumia's several levels improved version of industrial grade concrete from Earth. It should be located in an area where the government will not pay too much attention to the facility; preferably right on the city border. Convenience of the transfer of property; facility should be privately owned. Finally, remaining anonymous during the transaction.
After two more hours, Kaori still hasn't found the facility that fits her requirements.
She shuts her phone and takes out her laptop. She opens it up and opens a search engine on her browser. She types a series of commands and a command window pops up beside the browser. She stretches her fingers and arms like she is getting ready to partake in a high intensive thumb wrestling match. She gets comfortable and starts typing in the command window. Due to her grandmaster level coding skills coupled with her recent breakthrough in cultivating UniZon, her fingers move so fast that they leave afterimages on the keyboard almost disappearing.
As she types, several windows pop up on her screen showing different locations, structures and maps. Right now, Kaori hacked into the search engine's database, optimized it by filtering the results based on her requirements, and is actively using it's satellite to conduct a search for the building that fits her preference. Also, in every search engine, there are restrictions the government places on how much information can be collected by it's satellite; Kaori simply bypasses those restrictions like she is walking through her backyard. She does all this without anyone from the search engine's tech team or the government discovering even a trace of her hair.
Soon enough, she finds something. It is a two storey laboratory facility on the outskirts of City A, an hour drive away from the abandoned farm Kaori found the UniGem. It was built about 40 years ago and used to be owned by the government to be used for research on the X-trait. However, due to no progress in the research, it was sold to a pharmaceutical company about 10 years ago. This is actually a common occurrence both with government-owned or privately-owned X-trait research facilities.
Unfortunately, the pharmaceutical company seems to be in some kind of slump for the last five years, not yielding any result from their various researches and barely holding on. Therefore, to raise funds to keep the company afloat, they started selling off their properties. However, this particular facility is quite tricky to sell. They can't sell it back to the government because the government sold it to them so therefore, they have no use for it. No other pharmaceutical company or industry is interested in the facility because of its awkward location which is about five hours away from their headquarters. When it comes to medicine, transportation can be time-sensitive depending on the medicine.
Therefore, the facility has been on sale for the past two years. Additionally, from the look of things, the company would be filing for bankruptcy in about a month. At this point, the company has given and has probably forgotten about the property for sale. This is the best time to contact them cause they would probably sell it at a cheaper price as they are tight for cash right now.
Kaori proceeds to send an encrypted email to the company indicating her intention to buy the facility for $300,000. Kaori expects them to be skeptical at first but she knows that they would ultimately take her offer.
Forty minutes later, after multiple negotiations, and emailing back and forth, the deal was finally made. They sent her an electronic copy of the title deed and transfer of property agreement, which she signed electronically. Kaori electronically transfers the money and the keys are left in a safety deposit box at a storage facility near the laboratory. Even though Kumia can be considered more advanced than Earth, this transaction is still not considered safe or reliable so people generally prefer to do these kinds of transactions in person. However, the pharmaceutical company seemed more desperate than Kaori thought and they had no issue with the transaction. On the other hand, Kaori was not worried because if they try to cheat her, she has a special way of dealing with them.