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((The Mon/Wen/Fri Double -- page 1 of 2))
And besides all that, it was just good to have more domestic investors. The whole point of the Bank was to prevent foreign influence from taking over the nation, so any help that Hector could get from fellow Atreyans was a step closer to that goal.

For their part, though, the other lords often seemed a bit uncomfortable with the whole thing--in some cases, even when they agreed to invest millions of troa.

Hector couldn't be entirely certain what the source of their collective discomfort was, especially with how guarded many of them were in his presence, but he could imagine why they might be feeling a bit trapped by him.

With the current state of the economy and the very public commotion that the Bank was stirring up, there seemed to be a fast-growing cultural sentiment that helping Darksteel National Bank meant helping Atreya itself--and by logical extension, not helping Darksteel National Bank meant borderline treason. If the public found out about a lord's refusal to invest any troa at all, it wouldn't look good for them.

Hector felt kinda bad about that development. He hadn't intended to bully anyone into joining hands with him, but with the way some of these meetings went, it sometimes felt like that.

He didn't want to apologize unnecessarily, though. The purpose of the Bank really was to help Atreya, after all. It wasn't like he'd done anything wrong. And hopefully, all these lords would eventually be seeing huge returns on their investments.

On a more pleasant note, however, the Bank was also getting quite a few offers of investment on its own, without Hector having to go and meet with anyone personally. Business owners and lesser-known lords were apparently calling in every day, asking to get in on the action.

It was all just so very, very strange.

A few months ago, Hector would never have imagined that he might become a banker, of all things. And at the age of seventeen, too? What the hell kind of life was he living, exactly?