DOOMED TO BE A VILLAIN

Lee Jung waited confidently after hearing about the arrangements of the old man, as he had confidence that as long as he had the chance to pick a few stones, he would definitely be able to win the competition no matter how many stones Davies had bought.

After a few more minutes, the crowd of traders began to thin out, indicating to those that were watching the ongoing situation, that Davies had almost finished buying all the stones that were being sold.

Another couple of minutes later, the crowd dispersed completely to reveal Davies sitting on a chair made with ice which he seemed to have created with his ice at some point when they were surrounded by the crowd and Daniella was making the payments to all the stone traders… he obviously wasn\'t going to personally go through the hassle of continuously making payments to almost a hundred people when he had someone who could do it for him, standing right beside him… this was a personal assistant\'s job anyway.

He was staring at Lee Jung with a fist under his cheek, while Daniella and Fiona stood on both of his sides respectively. He had a slight smile as he looked at Lee Jung victoriously as if he was asking him with his eyes if he would ever dare to give him another head-start ever again.

"Are you done?" Lee Jung spoke in a scolding voice, but Davies didn\'t understand who he was using such a tone for,

\'It better not be me he\'s talking to like that,\'  he thought internally.

"Do you think that just because you have more money than most people, you can do whatever you like?" Lee Jung continued, his tone sounding a little bitter because he was more than a little jealous of Davies\'s wealth and wished he was the one who owned such a great amount of wealth.

"No, I\'m not quite done yet," Davies replied, his smile slowly turning into his trademark wicked grin that seemed to be planning another sneaky act,

"And yes, I can do whatever I want because I have more money than most people," he continued, answering Lee Jung\'s second question.

"Money is a superpower… you just don\'t have enough money to realize that," Davies spoke as he stood from the ice chair and it shattered into ice dust behind him as he did so.

Then without paying any more attention to Lee Jung, he walked in the direction of the last remaining stall that for some "reason" had not sold their stones to him even though he had offered double of the market price.

"I wish to buy these stones," Davies said to the middle aged man who sat on a chair inside of the stall, not even bothering to look at the stones that he wanted to buy, but if he was being honest with himself, he did not expect a positive answer from the trader.

He wasn\'t stupid enough not to realize that for the trader to not have been willing to sell his wares at double of the market price, thereby increasing his profit greatly, he was obviously not the one in charge of the shop as any normal trader would have jumped at the offer he had made earlier.

He could discern that the stall not selling their stones to him, had probably been due to an arrangement of the old president for Lee Jung to still have a fighting chance in this competition as it was pretty obvious that for some reason, the old man seemed to favor Lee Jung  to the point that his brain had shut down and he was offending someone he should never dare to.

"I\'m not selling," the man spoke grumpily to Davies, sounding very annoyed that Davies had come to disturb him even when he had not made any moves to sell his wares to him in the first place. 

Just as Davies had expected, the answer was not a positive one, but one thing bothered Davies, and it seemed to be a weirdly repeating occurrence.

Even though he had not been very open about his identity, the mere fact that he had introduced himself as a representative of Imperium Technologies should have guaranteed him at least some respect from the old man and the stone trader in the stall, but neither of them seemed to be acting under the influence of their brain guiding, as they spoke to him and treated him like he was some sort of child they met by the roadside, who they could talk to anyhow without expecting any form of repercussion.

Did they really think he was some sort of a generous and selfless person who wouldn\'t react even if they shat on his face, or had their thoughts been tampered with so much by fate who was trying so hard to create opportunities for it\'s agent, that it had ended up frying their brain cells in the process.

If the reason was the former, then he could show them that they thought very wrongly as he was in no way related to those two words. Hell, they didn\'t even exist in his dictionary anymore… and if the reason was the latter… then it explained why all the fated protagonists seemed to lack any working brain cells… fate probably fried them all while trying to make their destiny brighter than most people\'s.

"Not selling, huh?"

"Even if I wanted to buy at a price of five million apiece?" he continued, taking his eyes off the trader and looking at the stones in the stall.

The trader\'s heart almost burst out of his heart when he heard about the price Davies was willing to pay, but he garnered his willpower and still rejected Davies\'s his voice sounding extremely rude.

The onlookers and other stone traders had had their hearts leap into their throats when they had heard Davies offering to buy the stones at five times the market price, but it had leaped even further when they realized that the trader still rejected such a lucrative offer and wondered if something was wrong with his brain as there was no way anybody who called himself a trader/merchant/businessman would reject this kind of deal that guaranteed five times the profit.

\'Are you even a businessman?\' the other traders thought bitterly at such a lucrative business being rejected.

They could only wish that they had more stones to sell to Davies, but unfortunately they had all jumped on Davies\'s initial offer and sold the last of all their stones, so right now they could only grit the teeth and swear internally at the bastard trader who was not taking such a great opportunity that even they did not get.

"Still not selling, huh?…"

"What if I still want to buy them at ten million apiece?" Davies asked again even though he knew the merchant probably still wouldn\'t accept the deal, but he wanted to make the man cough up blood and feel regret at not agreeing to the deal even though he was doing so under the orders of his boss.

The merchant almost lost his head at this point and stared at Davies with grievance,

\'How much money do you even have!!!\' the merchant screamed inside his mind. This was also what was echoing in the minds of everyone else at that moment, but Davies didn\'t seem to care about their stunned looks and even seemed to be enjoying it, a wicked grin dancing at the corner of his lips.

"I will still now be selling any of my stones to you," the merchant said with great effort. At this point the other stone merchants didn\'t even react as it was obvious that there was another reason for which the the last stone merchant wasn\'t selling his wares to Davies.

"Alright, I respect that," Davies gave in, surprising Daniella a little as she knew that Davies wasn\'t one to give up on something he wanted, but then she quickly realized, that he had only given up on buying it with money... There were other ways to acquire things after all.

Davies walked back to where Lee Jung and the old president were and he spoke to Lee Jung, 

"You can take the floor now," he said, gesturing towards the trading area.

"Don\'t cry too much since you couldn\'t buy the stones," Lee Jung said mockingly, surprising Davies who thought, \'Protagonists really are dumb creatures\', but outwardly he replied, 

"Cry? Me?" Like it was the dumbest shit he had ever heard.

"Yes, you... You can learn a valuable lesson from this," Lee Jung affirmed

"And what\'s that?" Davies asked, intrigued at what the protagonist had to say.

"Money can\'t do everything," Lee Jung spoke sagely.

"I respectfully disagree... and I can prove you wrong," Davies said with a bright smile as it was time to move to stage two of his plan of shutting Lee Jung from buying a single stone today.

"How?" Lee Jung wondering what Davies meant by proving him wrong.

"Like this," 

"Daniel, call the Imperial Yorkshire bank and tell them to freeze Lee Jung\'s account because he is under investigation of suspicious transactions." Davies said to Daniella.