Boss

Chapter 84

"Logan, come in!"

"Yes, Boss!" Logan, standing by the elevator outside the office, moved swiftly. The moment he keenly heard Kyle call for him, he immediately answered, opened the door, and stepped into the top-floor office.

Boss?

Kyle, seated on the cushioned sofa, was slightly stunned before quickly realizing that he had treated Logan as his bodyguard in the car earlier. That made him the "boss," didn’t it?

He cleared his throat and gestured toward Howard beside him as he said to Logan, who had stopped in front of him, "Howard is the founder of Stark Industries. Tomorrow morning, he’ll arrange an American citizen identity for you. Your full name will be ‘Logan Karl.’ Do you have any objections?"

"No problem." Logan nodded. As long as his surname changed while his given name remained, it made no difference to him.

"Howard, then I’ll have to rely on you to look after Logan while he’s here in New York." Kyle spoke, clearly intending to leave Logan in New York first to handle the follow-up arrangements.

"I have a feeling the two of us will become friends someday." Howard said with a gentle smile, extending goodwill toward Logan. Though Logan did not respond this time either, he was no longer quite so cold and distant. His stern expression softened considerably as he nodded in reply.

Howard took a check from his suit pocket and placed it on the low glass table. He continued, "This is your dividend from your Stark Industries shares for the past two months, a total of two hundred thousand dollars. I’m handing it over to you in the form of a bank check."

Two hundred thousand dollars could easily buy an entire high-rise building in central New York these days.

Kyle remained calm, and Logan likewise showed no emotional reaction as he stepped forward and accepted the check for him. After all, the two of them were men who had emptied out Germany’s national treasury.

Once one’s wealth reached a certain level, it truly became nothing more than a pile of astronomical numbers, incapable of stirring any emotional ripples.

Still, the bank check Howard provided was a legitimate source of funds, meaning Kyle no longer needed to circulate and sell the gold and gemstones in Card Space through underground channels for the time being.

Howard continued, "There’s also the matter you mentioned last time at the Training Base—developing an island and building a fortress. After returning to New York, I found a construction company with an extremely high level of expertise. Once World War II fully ends, we can immediately head out to sea and begin construction."

He had taken everything Kyle previously mentioned seriously, treating it with the same importance as developing new products.

"That’s wonderful!" The moment Kyle heard that, he happily toasted Howard several times, even more excited than he had been over receiving the two hundred thousand dollars.

The development and construction of an island fortress—that was the foundation and future of a private power.

Kyle patted Howard’s thin shoulder with measured force and said eagerly, "The Gravity Magnet equipment you gave me also gave me an idea. The fortress on the island must have a Gravity Room, one that can freely adjust the gravity inside by several times. It would be great if it could reach ten times or more."

"A Gravity Room? It sounds useful for training, but ten times is terrifying. Even you would be crushed under your own weight in there. Besides, the Anti-gravity Device can’t reach such a high value." Howard smiled bitterly and immediately offered a practical correction. "With the current Anti-gravity Device, if we stack positive and negative Gravity Fields on the floor and ceiling respectively, we should be able to raise the indoor gravity to a maximum of five times."

"A five-times-gravity Gravity Room will barely do." Kyle nodded in appraisal. Even he would likely need some time to adapt to five times gravity, but for training people with Super Agent physiques, it would be more than enough.

"Not just a Gravity Room. If you want to do it properly, we can also equip it with a supercomputer and an intelligent management system, voice controls…" Howard expanded on the topic.

Kyle immediately picked up the thread. "An intelligent system alone isn’t enough. At minimum, it has to ensure the entire island and fortress are integrated as one. Its intelligent surveillance needs to cover the whole island and accurately carry out targeted strikes…"

The two drank fine wine while engaging in an intense discussion about building the fortress, their ideas wildly imaginative yet grounded in reality. Logan, standing beside them, listened with a vague sense that it was all incredibly impressive.

Neither of them was ordinary. One was a transmigrator whose concepts were far ahead of his time after being bombarded with information from another world in his previous life; the other was an engineer in this Marvel world with top-tier scientific technology and a superhuman brain.

Whenever one of them spoke, the other could basically understand what was meant, then build upon it, upgrade it, patch its gaps, and expand it in detail.

The main point was that Kyle was responsible for unleashing imaginative ideas, while Howard was responsible for refining them with professional theory and bringing them into reality.

The lively discussion in the office barely came to a halt late at night.

The reason it ended was that Howard had gotten drunk. He collapsed onto the soft office sofa, muttering hazily, "Make the island fly into the sky? That can’t be done…"

What followed was a stream of incomprehensible complex numbers, Newtonian formulas, anti-gravity theories…

"Get some good rest, my friend." Kyle shrugged, rose from the sofa, waved a hand, and quietly left the top-floor office with Logan.

"Howard really has no guard up around other people…" Logan said quietly once they entered the elevator. Throughout his life, he had endured blows, betrayal, wandering, and more. He always kept his distance and remained wary of everyone who approached him.

"It’s not that he has no guard up around others. Otherwise, he couldn’t have built himself up from nothing and moved freely between the military and private industrial fields." Kyle smiled and explained, "Only after you truly become friends with him will he be this relaxed and at ease, willing to show his true nature and entrust you with his trust."

Logan looked as though he half understood.

After Kyle and Logan left Stark Industries Tower, they rented a double room on an entire floor of a nearby luxury hotel for distinguished guests.

After washing up in their respective rooms and changing into comfortable casual clothes, they stood together on the open-air balcony, looking down at the brilliantly lit nightscape.

"Logan, after bringing you to meet Howard just now, you should understand my intentions." Facing the night breeze, Kyle turned to look at the silent Logan beside him.

Logan nodded and said quietly, "I can roughly guess. You want to build a fortress on an overseas island and cultivate a private force."

"More accurately, a power family. ‘Karl’ will be the family name in the future, and the family crest will be—cards."

Kyle smiled faintly. At some point, a card had appeared between his fingers, which he flipped and toyed with. "Karl" was simply a combination of the Card Draw System and his own name.

"You could be considered the first person to join the Karl family. You’ve boarded a pirate… Ahem."

Kyle said solemnly, "Just know one thing: I’ve never regarded you as a subordinate. If you choose to follow me, then you’ll be a part of the Karl family from now on."

"I understand." Logan replied, deeply moved.

He had initially thought Kyle would hand him over to the military or Howard to be studied as a man-made weapon. Instead, Kyle had directly included him in his future family.

What a great boss!