Read Novel Full Chapter 753: It Came To A Peaceful End
Chapter 753: It Came To A Peaceful End
Barely six hours had passed since Jonathan posted the unboxing video, and he was already staring at official offers in the tens of billions. One entity in particular had even offered an outrageous amount of $100 billion.
Jonathan was genuinely scared now. Every time the figure grew, it felt less like winning something and more like being slowly buried under it.
And to make things worse, some of the companies making the largest offers had gone public with them, putting their figures out in the open, framing themselves as hopeful, humble, invested in the advancement of science and technology.
Anyone with a brain could see exactly what they were doing: turning millions of strangers into a pressure campaign aimed squarely at him. And it was working. It couldn’t help but work. Mention numbers like ten billion, sixty billion, and people lost their minds — especially the ones who never stopped to think first.
Jonathan sat with his phone glowing in his hands, feeling the walls of his own apartment close in a little more with every refresh. He had no intention of accepting anything close to what they were offering. That much he was sure of. What he wasn’t sure of was how to make it stop.
Then something occurred to him and it was more like the shape of an idea at first. He thought that it would be best to set one number that’s big enough to matter but small enough it wouldn’t swallow his whole life, and to refuse everything above it, no matter how high it climbed. Make the buyer cover whatever the tax took, so the number he named was the number he actually kept.
He turned it over a few more times, tightening it, and the more he looked at it, the more it felt like the only way out of the room he’d been backed into.
He opened his chat with Lucy, not really believing she’d answer, but needing to ask someone who might actually know if the plan held together, and typed it out.
He didn’t expect a reply but he got one anyway. And it was fast enough that his heart jumped before he’d even opened it.
Lucy told him the plan was sound. Nova would stand behind it and that he should post it exactly as he’d worked it out: one billion dollars, no more, no less. Whoever wanted it would have to structure the deal so he received the full amount after tax, meaning that the buyer would be absorbing whatever the number swelled to on their end to make that happen.
He wouldn’t even need to touch any of the paperwork himself because the Bellmere Family Office’s lawyers would review everything and confirm it was legitimate before a single signature was needed from him.
Jonathan read it twice, stunned that she’d replied at all, and stunned again by what she’d offered on top of his own plan. Lucy — Nova Technologies itself — standing behind him. The family office of the most powerful person alive placed between him and every entity currently circling his name. It was, without question, the largest umbrella of protection a person could stand under.
He didn’t hesitate and he posted the statement.
After thinking it through, I’ve made my decision. I will sell the metallic hydrogen for exactly $1,000,000,000. Not a dollar more or less. The buyer is responsible for all applicable taxes and I will receive the full billion, net. This is final. All paperwork will be reviewed by the Bellmere Family Office before anything is signed.
***
The statement did not calm anything down. It set the whole thing on fire in a new direction.
For about ten minutes, the reaction online was almost tender — people genuinely moved that an ordinary kid, handed something worth more than nations, had looked at a hundred billion dollars and said no, this is enough, I don’t want the rest.
*he really just said "one billion, and I’m done" and meant it. Mad respect*
*a hundred billion dollars sitting on the table and he said no thank you. I don’t think I could do that*
*this is the sanest reaction anyone could have had honestly*
*bringing in the Bellmere Family Office was smart as hell. nobody’s touching him now*
But the tenderness didn’t last, because the moment the terms became clear — one billion, net of tax, first legitimate offer wins — every institution that had been circling him for six hours understood exactly what had just happened.
The auction was over. It wasn’t going to climb any higher. What mattered now wasn’t who could offer the most. It was who could move the fastest, with a structure clean enough to survive the Bellmere lawyers’ review before anyone else got there first.
It turned, in the space of a single afternoon, into the strangest race in the history of corporate dealmaking.
Legal departments that normally took weeks to approve a stationery order were suddenly working through the night. Boards that required three signatures and a quarterly review for anything over a rounding error were approving a billion-dollar-plus commitment over a single emergency call.
Because the terms Jonathan had set were brutally simple — pay whatever gross figure nets him a full billion after tax, first one through the door with clean paperwork takes it — and simplicity, for once, favored speed over size. A trillion-dollar company with a slow legal team could lose to a mid-sized firm with a fast one, and everyone chasing it knew it.
*imagine losing this because your lawyers took an extra hour*
*it’s not even about who has the most money anymore, it’s whoever gets their paperwork to the Bellmere office first*
*this is the most expensive game of first-come-first-served in human history*
Somewhere in the frenzy, offers that had once been proud, public, and enormous quietly shrank back down to exactly what Jonathan had asked for — because offering more no longer meant anything. .
Every institution that had thrown out fifty billion, eighty billion, a hundred billion, stripped their bids back down to the one number that actually mattered now, and threw every remaining resource they had into being *first,* not biggest.
It took eleven hours, then materials science firm which wasn’t the largest name in the running, or the wealthiest, had its structured offer in front of the Bellmere Family Office lawyers.
It took the rest of the eleven hours for the review to finish, the tax structuring to be verified clean, and the transfer to be confirmed.
When it was done, a short, uncharacteristically plain statement went out from the company’s own account.
We are honored to confirm the acquisition of the stable metallic hydrogen sample. Full terms were met exactly as specified by Mr. Drusk. We thank him for his trust, and look forward to what this discovery makes possible.
Jonathan read it lying on his bed, phone held above his face, and for the first time in almost twelve hours, he let out a breath that didn’t feel like it was being squeezed out of him.
It was finally over.