Birth Of The Crafts-God

"Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Winter Showcase of Versailles Group. We have a lot of surprises for you all and we hope they're to your liking."

The Winter Showcase was an annual event by the Versailles Group and its allies to announce their latest products. Most of the time, it wasn't a high class event and was only meant for those in the industry or with interest in the company and their technology.

However, thanks to the Seven Sparks Forge and its alliance with the Mertens family and the Silverine Factory, Emery had pushed for the event of hold one month ahead of the usual scheduled time.

After the short greeting, Emery gave an inaugural speech to kickstart the event. Once he was done, he went on to announce the latest major announcements of the company.

"A week from now, the construction of a new project will begin in Maldoso district. However, contrary to public opinion, this project won't just be an equipment manufacturing and assembly plant, but would also include a medium-scale processor factory." Emery smiled as he spoke.

Behind him, a projection of the factory appeared, alongside its expected production scale and dimensions.

The crowd was immediately shocked.

Although the majority of the guests were of the second generation, this didn't mean they were inexperienced or lacking in knowledge. They all knew about the importance of stellar processors and how various city-states treated stellar processor companies as state secrets. It was due to this behaviour that manufacturing factories couldn't be built outside the city-state of origin.

Hence, the announcement by the Versailles Group's president was very shocking. It changed everything.

Once the factory was completed and running, the prices of processors from the Versailles Group would naturally drop as they would no longer need to factor in transportation costs. But that wasn't all.

As the Versailles Group was now going to transition into a full manufacturing company, they would receive special protection and rights from the city-state's governments in exchange for their cooperation. Such rights included, but were not limited to tax right-offs, government contracts, government subsidies and so on.

It was indeed a game changing move that would reshape the status of the company forever.

"Crazy. I can't believe their headquarters do this." Giselle had her eyes wide-open.

She wasn't the only one both surprised and confused by this. There were many others like her in the hall, and for a good reason.

For the Versailles Group headquarters in Paros city-state to be able to go ahead with the construction of a processor factory in their Baylands city-state branch, they needed the approval of the Paros city-state government; to be specific, the City Lord Manor of Paros city-state. One could only wonder how many concessions they had made to get the approval.

Seeing the crowd's reaction, Emery smiled but he knew it was just the beginning.

This was barely enough to recover their losses in the stock market quickly, but it wouldn't put a dent on the other two processors companies. This was especially so for the Silverine Factory which had allied with the Seven Sparks Forge. If anything, the announcement would only be able to pressure them a bit.

Raising his hand up, Emery managed to bring the murmurs to a close.

"This is the Winter Showcase meant to officially release products. If I was to just stop at a simple announcement like this, I would be bringing shame to this event."

Following that, the projection behind Emery displayed a couple of new products from the company which the president spoke about. In truth, there were not many new ones. Most of them were simply previous products the company sold, but as they would now be produced locally in Baylands city-state once the factory was up and running, Emery had rebranded them as new products.

On the other hand, the truly new products weren't processors, but equipment that was vital to production of processors, whether regular or stellar.

The new factory was going to be a large one that involved an equipment manufacturing and assembly plant. It would also have a medium-scale processor factory. Such a factory would have the capability to mass-produce stellar processors as well.

This made customers of the Versailles Group rejoice as the future prices would be lowered. Even those who patronised the Silverine Factory and Novanio Tech began to consider building relations with the Versailles Group.

Five processors were announced by Emery to come into production under the new factory. Although they were rebranded versions of existing products, their performance had been improved a bit or even considerably. It was only natural since the Versailles Group was a design and development processor company; research and development was always underway.

Three of the announced processors were regular ones with different performance, while the last two were stellar processors.

Of the two, one of them was a low-end stellar processor model that was cheaper and generally used for simpler tasks. It was the frequented model by Versailles Group's customers for hover cars, high-end consumer electronic equipment, communicators and so on.

The last one was surprisingly an upgraded version of the Versailles Group's current flagship product —the KY chip. It was also going to be rebranded as the BKY chip, as a tribute to Baylands city-state. The BKY chip was much better than the old KY chip, achieving an overall 7% increase in performance. Although this was smaller than the SS version 1 chips that saw a 38% increase to the old KY chips, it was still revolutionary. After all, there were only less than one hundred SS version 1 chips in existence.

Once again, the crowd of guests was stunned. The Versailles Group was being reborn.

"What a sly man." Giselle said in a low voice only her and Lucas could hear.

"By just adding one letter, he's managed to appeal to the City Lord Manor and the authorities. This would make it easier for him to get a hold of government subsidies and support."

Lucas felt the same as well as he couldn't help but reevaluate the president of the giant corporation. While his action wasn't entirely enough as the authorities weren't easy to please, it would still make things easier for him and grant him preferential treatment.

'It's time to end this.' Emery thought as he glanced around at the crowd.

Coincidentally, he spotted Lucas and their eyes crossed.

Emery let out a smile almost as if he was taunting Lucas, before he looked away.

"Finally, there is one last product of our company that I'm very sure you would all be happy to hear about."

The projection changed to display a stellar processor scaled to a large size so the crowd could see it clearly.

"I present to you guys, the Falcon X9 series, model Yotsuga."

While the guests were all stunned by this new announcement, Emery went on to talk more about it.

"With an increase in performance equivalent to 42% of the new BKY chip, which translates to roughly 51% improvement to the old KY chips, the Falcon X9: Yotsuga will become the leader of the industry." Emery smiled as he spread his arms wide open.

The Falcon X9 series was a stellar processor designed by the headquarters of the Versailles Group in Paros city-state. It was actually a product of the Falcon X series, which was a premium grade line of stellar processors. The X9 was the most recent generation of the Falcon X series, and was a very powerful stellar processor.

In order to aid with their rebranding effort, the headquarters had made slight changes to the original Falcon X9 processor, which gave birth to a new model, the Yotsuga. The Falcon X9: Yotsuga's design was handed over to the Baylands city-state branch, while also granting them full control and majority hold of the patents. This was to enable the branch Versailles Group to be able to develop a foundation and also progress from there.

To Emery, while the cooperation of the Seven Sparks Forge and the Silverine Factory caused a lot of trouble and losses, it turned out to be the fire that would baptise the company. He couldn't help but have a bittersweet opinion of that.

While Emery was stuck in his thoughts, the crowd went wild as the benchmark records and the specifications of the Falcon X9: Yotsuga were released.

A stellar processor? No. To the people of Baylands city-state, this was a monster.

"This could power a fucking spacecraft!"

A second generation descendant of a vestige-smith family had his mouth open as he was struck speechless.

Even Lucas was amazed. He never expected that the coalition's retaliation would be this strong and intense.

As long as one wasn't blind, they would see the value of the Versailles Group after this event. Heck, even a blind person could, much less all the knowledgeable scions and individuals present at this event.

A middle-aged man that looked to be older than the majority of the guests sighed at this moment.

"There's going to be a bloodbath tomorrow once the stock market opens."