Chapter 1048: Relaunch

Chapter 1048 – Relaunch

His mouth pressed into a thin line.

Adrian looked back at the contract.

Then signed.

The moment the pen touched the parchment, dark-gold light flared beneath his signature.

The contract accepted him.

Adrian put the pen down slowly. "There."

Lux stopped moving.

All the golden interfaces froze in place.

Then Lux turned his head toward Adrian. "Thank you for your cooperation."

He lifted one hand.

The contract and pen rose from the table, folded into dark-gold light, and disappeared into his dimensional inventory.

Adrian’s eyes followed them, unable to stop himself.

Lux adjusted one cufflink. "It’s finished."

Adrian blinked. "...What?"

Lux looked at him.

Adrian’s brows drew together. "What do you mean, finished?"

Lux swung his hand.

One screen detached from the cluster of holograms and floated toward Adrian. It stopped in front of him, translucent gold, filled with organized sections, timelines, names, action items, countermeasures, legal routes, restructuring steps, capital phases, and reputation restoration strategy.

Lux said, "I already fixed your project."

Adrian’s voice came rough. "That is impossible. This project has been stuck for seven years. And you are telling me you fixed it in—"

"Twenty-four minutes," Lux said.

His system flickered faintly.

[Correction: 23 minutes, 41 seconds.]

Lux ignored it.

Adrian’s face tightened. "That’s absurd."

"No," Lux said. "It was messy, but not complex."

Lux gestured toward the screen. "I mapped the sabotage structure, isolated the corrupted contracts, created a clean restructuring path, and prepared a staged countermeasure so your enemies expose themselves without realizing they have already lost."

Adrian slowly looked at the screen again.

His eyes moved across the first section.

[Phase One: Silent Stabilization]

[Phase Two: Confidence Recovery]

[Phase Three: Controlled Capital Injection]

[Phase Four: Sabotage Exposure]

[Phase Five: Asset Shield Transfer]

[Phase Six: Public Relaunch]

Naomi watched her parents.

Their disbelief was almost visible.

Adrian looked less like a proud father now and more like a man standing in front of a machine he had denied existed while it solved his life’s most expensive problem.

"But we still need investment," Adrian said slowly. "And public trust."

Lux smiled faintly. "Yes."

Adrian looked at him. "You said it was finished."

"The plan is finished. Now I execute the parts requiring Greed."

Celeste’s eyes narrowed. "What does that mean?"

Lux did not answer verbally at first.

He lifted his hand.

The room’s light dimmed.

Not fully.

Just enough for the gold interfaces to brighten.

Two new skill panels appeared behind him.

[Skill Activated: TechnoGreed]

[Skill Activated: Money Multiply]

Adrian stared at the words.

Naomi’s eyes sharpened.

Celeste whispered, "What are those?"

Lux finally answered. "Tools."

The first skill spread like invisible circuitry through the air. Gold lines moved from Lux’s hand into one of the holographic panels, then outward, dissolving into countless tiny streams of light.

No dramatic wave.

Like market confidence being nudged by an invisible hand that knew exactly where pressure mattered.

"TechnoGreed," Lux said calmly, "will raise public trust subtly."

Adrian stiffened. "Manipulate people?"

Lux glanced at him. "You already hire public relations firms, reputation consultants, analysts, media strategists, social architects, and private influence agencies."

Adrian said nothing.

Lux smiled. "I am simply better."

Celeste’s gaze sharpened further.

Lux continued, "The point is not to attract attention. If trust rises too quickly, the people trying to bring Delacour down will notice. So we do it softly. A favorable article here. A revived investor conversation there. A respected name casually mentioning confidence. A luxury market whisper. A private buyer inquiry. A social rumor that Delacour is preparing something exclusive again."

The gold streams vanished into nothing.

"Nothing loud. Nothing traceable. Nothing that makes your enemies panic too soon."

Adrian stared at him.

A part of him wanted to object.

A larger part of him knew this was exactly how high society worked.

Lux was not introducing corruption. He was revealing that the game had always been ugly and playing it with cleaner hands than most.

Then the second skill activated.

[Money Multiply]

Lux opened another interface.

This one showed accounts.

Delacour accounts.

Adrian’s private project account appeared, masked behind several security layers.

Adrian’s blood went cold. "How do you have access to that?"

Lux looked almost offended. "I don’t."

Adrian stared at the glowing account data.

Lux clarified, "I am not withdrawing. I am depositing."

The interface shifted.

A number appeared.

Then multiplied.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Again.

Again.

Adrian’s face drained of color.

Celeste’s hand flew to her mouth.

Naomi whispered, "Lux..."

The account balance grew.

Not doubled.

Not tripled.

Tenfold.

The final number sat there, glowing quietly as if it had not just violated every mortal financial expectation in the room.

Lux lowered his hand. "There."

Adrian stood motionless. His eyes were fixed on the screen. "That account..."

"Yes," Lux said. "Only you have access to it."

Celeste slowly sat down. Because her legs had decided reality needed to be processed from a safer height.

Adrian’s thoughts collapsed into themselves.

Tenfold.

The account had been multiplied ten times. Not transferred through visible banking channels. Already there.

For a moment, Adrian could not breathe properly.

This was wealth beyond wealth.

This was money as authority.

Money as something that obeyed him because he was Greed.

Adrian looked at Lux.

For the first time, he did not see only the man who had slept with his daughter. Not the playboy rumors.

He saw the terrifying scale of what Naomi had brought home.

And worse, Lux had done all of this after refusing to make Naomi part of the price.

Because if Lux had wanted to buy Naomi’s acceptance from him, this would have been the moment. He could have placed that number on the table, smiled, and asked, ’Is this enough?’

But he did not.

He had signed separation first.

Then funded the project.

Personal boundary before money.

Adrian hated how much that mattered.

Lux looked back at the project screens. "Your steps are laid out. Follow them exactly. Do not improvise. Do not alert the entities marked red. Do not call your cousin. Do not call the legal office listed in Section Three. Do not confront anyone until I tell you the trap is closed."