As soon as Andrew returned to the command center, a hundred things were waiting for him to do or decide on.
Most of which was connected to the diplomatic relations with his empire's neighbours.
Despite Tarina's best efforts, they were all worried about the newly established invading them, so they all demanded to talk with him directly.
Not that this changed much, since he repeated the same thing the diplomat was saying all along.
-Listen, my Empire just assimilated close to three hundred systems, and there are hundreds of unclaimed systems all over the palace which we can also take over whenever we want.
With all of this, why would I even want to attack you?
Andrew asked irritated,
After about twenty calls, during which he constantly repeated that he does not intend to invade anyone, his patience was wearing thin.
-I agree that attacking my territory under such circumstances makes no sense at all.
Thank you for pointing this out, and I apologize if my inquiries offended you.
The alien on the other side said after a moment of silence, it took him to think this through.
-I'm ashamed to admit that I panicked when I saw that you established an empire.
The Alien's tone became apologetic.
-No apologies are necessary.
If it were me in your place, I would most likely panic as well.
Andrew said in a much friendlier tone.
-Thank you for your understanding and assurance.
The Alien said and ended the call.
-How many more of these do I have to take today?
Andrew asked, hoping that this was the last one.
-This was the last one for now, but there are a lot of messages addressed to you.
Sarill said, sending the mail to his terminal.
He was shocked to see over a hundred messages addressed to him directly.
After taking a deep breath, he opened the first one, trying not to show the desperation he felt.
-If you thought that being an emperor was just having fun and giving out orders, think again.
Lanarine joked with amusement plastered all over her face.
This comment made all the ladies giggle.
Andrew, however, was not amused in the slightest.
Though he knew that being a ruler is a lot of work, he never considered just how much of it there was to go through, and that was just the correspondence and some calls.
He knew that there was much more in store for him, and this was just the beginning, he was starting to worry how it would look like when the territory expanded even more?
The next few days were quite similar, as there was a lot of work to do establishing an empire.
From diplomatic issues with the neighbors, through the internal affairs such as establishing the law system and managing the day-to-day operations, to visiting Tanera in her office to work on gathering more credibility points.
Not to mention that he also wanted to squeeze in some time to workout and he didn't dare to neglect his studies, especially now that he had become an emperor and needed to learn as much as possible, especially about politics, diplomacy and a variety of other subjects.
During this time, the elections of the council-members came about.
To Andrew's total surprise, there was no need to vote at all, since only ten people were competing, and the same happened when it came to the elections for the three provisional Admiral positions.
Andrew learned from the newly appointed council members that most people didn't want to join the council and were instead preferring to take their chances of being appointed a station master or a captain of a ship, while others preferred to continue with their current jobs.
So, after some discussions on the topic, it was decided that five of them would volunteer from each galaxy, preferably people with some experience with politics or management.
The same happened with the provisional admirals, with each one representing one of the three main fleets.
Andrew had a hard time getting over this idea, but he could not do anything other than accept it.
Fortunately, all of the newly appointed council-members turned out to be very competent, allowing Andrew to drop most of his work on them.
Two weeks passed in the blink of an eye, and everything started to settle.
The neighboring territories calmed down a lot, seeing that there were no aggressive moves from the Empire focused on the development of its territories instead of expansion.
During this time, Andrew managed to research a few upgrades which they badly needed, among which the tier 4 shields were one of the first to be completed, which boosted the defensive capabilities of ships and stations alike.
The rest of the research was mainly directed at their production capabilities, especially at the shipyards, which were mostly replaced by bigger and more advanced ones as soon as they became available.
Other than that, they also gained a lot of Credibility points and silver credits by fulfilling the requests from the market.
-Why don't you buy anything?
Tanera asked, while they were browsing the market again in search od any requests they would be able to fulfill.
-Because most of the stuff here is of a lower level compared to what we can make in the empire, and I see no need to buy it.
Besides, while we managed to get our hands on quite a bit of credits, I want to earn more to get better stuff when we reach the next level.
This was true, besides increasing his capital to 1156000 silver credits in two weeks, they also managed to gather 1732 credibility points, by only selling whatever they could.
Mostly, they sold fuel, ammo, food, and resources.
Additionally, Tanera made a few offers to sell a few kinds of alcohol and tobacco from Earth, which got very popular once she added a list of species confirmed to be able to consume said things safely.
-In that case, why don't you get some slaves?
The elf asked.
-I know that they are not of the best quality as well, but this would allow you to increase the population a bit, and who knows, you might be able to find a few like Sarill and Jalina among them.
Besides, they are dirt cheap on this level of the market, so even if they are mostly useless, you won't lose much while with some luck you'll gain a lot.
-This is something to think about, but why do you want me to buy something so much?
Andrew asked.
-Because if all you do is sell stuff, the guild might think that you are using the market to dump all your unwanted stuff and it might affect my position as your resident merchant.
She explained.
-In short, your position depends not only on what I sell but also on what I buy.
He asked, surprised as she had never mentioned it before.
-Yes, we are not supposed to inform anyone about that, but that's exactly the case, and since all the other stuff is useless to you, then the only thing you might consider buying is slaves, since there might be some that are useful to you.
-You should have told me this earlier.
Andrew sighed and shook his head.
-I'm already breaking the rules by telling you now, so I'd appreciate it if you kept this to yourself.
The elf said, seriously.
-Alright, I won't tell a soul.
Andrew agreed, while switching to the slave market, to see if there was anyone worth buying.
Once he did, he gasped in disbelief.
-What the hell is this supposed to be?
He looked at the elf, who was as shocked as he was.
Tanera didn't like slavery much, so she never browsed through this part of the market.
The only reason she was even trying to convince Andrew to buy a few was that she needed to have some records of buying instead of only selling to maintain her position.
Now however she was shocked, seeing hundreds of images of Humans on the screen.
Then she took a look at the list of species and her eyes went wide.
There were hundreds of species from this universe alone and there were hundreds of universes on the list, each with its list of species.
All together there were hundreds of billions of slaves for sale of every imaginable shape and size.
Most of which were either described as damaged goods, low class general purpose workers, low class sexual slaves and some were even described as spare parts sets.
The worst one was the description stating that a teenage girl was nothing more than a livestock to be used as emergency rations.
Andrew almost vomited seeing this description.
He felt an immense fury burning up within him, threatening to burst out at any moment, but he managed to contain it.
Now was not the time for anger or vengeance for his people.
Now he had to save as many as he could and it was not only his species on the list.
After looking through the search engine he found most of the species that he had in his empire.
Even the former pirate species were listed there, each with tens of thousands of slaves for sale.
-I had no idea…
Tanera said quietly once the shock wore off.
-Neither did I, but now we know and we are going to save as many as we can.
Andrew said, trying very much to sound calm.
-Start buying, with the ones that are most likely to die if bought by others as a priority.
At the same time sell everything you can from the list.
-We can't just start buying out humans one after the other, or the price will skyrocket.
The merchant said.
Andrew thought for a moment and nodded.
No matter how much he wanted to buy them all out, there was no way he could afford it at the moment.
-Then what do you propose?
He asked.
-I think it would be much better to buy a slave or two from a few different species.
This way, we can prevent anyone from figuring this out and jacking up the prices.
She said, hoping he would listen.
What he wanted to do would destabilize the slave market, and that was a fast way to be kicked out, cutting him off from any possibility of helping any of these slaves.
-Alright, do it and start with her.
Andrew said, pointing at the girl who was supposed to be sold as a live food ration.