Chapter 280 - 174: The Greatest Reward in History
"Yes, Julian," Mark said with a sigh. "Back then, I always wanted to tell you to stay out of that whole mess with Julian. After all, he was the one who got short-sighted from snorting too much cocaine. He just handed that massive General Motors IPO opportunity over to Goldman Sachs, costing us over 300 million USD in underwriting fees. And in the end, you were the one who took the fall for him."
"It’s all in the past," Don Quixote said, waving his hand dismissively. "Besides, I was already thinking about starting my own business back then. The global partners at the time knew about it, so it was all just a convenient way to make it happen."
"But if you hadn’t taken the fall for him," Mark lamented, "you wouldn’t have lived in a basement for all those years... suffering so much..."
"But everything’s fine now, isn’t it?" Don Quixote said, looking at the downcast Mark and offering some comfort. "I’m only 45. And now, thanks to my nephew, my weekly salary is 46,000 USD after taxes."
"How did this get turned back on me?" Li Wei said with a laugh. "Mr. Mark, let’s talk about your future plans."
At the mention of this, Mark was instantly filled with Spirit.
He carefully rubbed his wedding ring, then glanced at the ceiling before finally speaking:
"In fact," he said, "I have a classmate and friend I grew up with. He works at a large private equity firm in New York and introduced me to a shadow pre-IPO project."
"Wow," Don Quixote said, raising an eyebrow. "Sounds like this friend of yours has some pull. Very well-informed, huh?"
A "shadow pre-IPO" is a low-risk arbitrage strategy where insiders speculate on a company shortly before it goes public, capitalizing on non-public information.
"We’re very close," Mark said with a smile. "So I trust him quite a bit. The only issue now is the capital. But if I can just pull this one off, Sarah, our future children, and I will be able to firmly establish ourselves on the Upper West Side."
"After becoming a partner at Merrill Lynch, I feel like my expenses are more than three times higher than when I was an executive director," he said, shaking his head. "Can you believe what class I spend the most time on now?"
"What is it?" Li Wei asked.
"Elocution lessons!" Mark laughed heartily. "Can you believe it? Sometimes I have to deliberately mimic my clients’ accents to build a deeper rapport with them."
Don Quixote burst out laughing too.
Just then, a quest popped up before Li Wei’s eyes. The reward made him widen them in shock:
[You have encountered the quest: The Devil’s Temptation]
[Don Quixote’s Knight apprentice has met a silver-tongued devil. The devil uses the lure of a kingdom of Gold that seems within easy reach to induce the apprentice into signing a blood contract with a tenfold price. What the apprentice does not know is that this is an abyssal swamp built entirely from illusion.]
[As a Silver Knight, you can choose to practice the Knight’s virtue of ’Compassion’ to save the Knight apprentice before you.]
[Quest Objective: Pull him from the abyss and display a Knight’s virtue.]
[Quest Reward: Silver Treasure Chest x1]
[Silver Treasure Chest: Opening this may grant 1-2 rewards, including silver-grade equipment, skills, or corresponding attribute points (with an extremely small chance of receiving Gold-grade equipment or an extremely rare, upgradeable piece of equipment).]
Li Wei’s eyes instantly shot wide open.
The reward this time was extraordinary. It was by far the quest with the greatest reward he had ever triggered.