Chapter 100: We Can't Afford It

"From today on, you are me, the founder of Umbrella. For some occasions in Muggle society that require attendance, you will participate on my behalf. For those matters that I must intervene in directly, I will appear in your guise. Do you understand?"

Before going to see Patrick, Murphy gave Boris a reminder.

"The power you've given me is too great. If you let me participate in all these external activities, aren't you afraid that I will replace you?" Boris asked.

"Since you have already understood that the research center is the core of Umbrella, and since you have seen the Magic Research Institute, you naturally know what I truly want. External glory has nothing to do with me; on the contrary, it will bring trouble and distract my attention."

"Money and these companies are just tools. If you can truly replace me and help me maintain this external big stall, allowing me to only need to focus on the output of results, I would actually be more than happy."

In fact, Murphy is now more like an investor, except that the investment return an ordinary investor needs is money, while the return he wants is some knowledge obtained during the R&D process that can be used to understand magic.

In a lakeside villa, Murphy and Boris met Patrick.

As one of the founders of a star enterprise, Patrick is now full of honors, and his net worth is naturally not low. After recruiting many talented professional managers, he no longer needs to participate in daily management personally.

And this also gave him more time to think about the company's future strategic direction.

Seeing Patrick, Murphy felt a little emotional. He had been cooperating with the other party for two years, and they had been working together very happily. Today might be the last time he would see him in this true guise.

Patrick was a bit curious about Boris. Murphy only explained that he was his bodyguard—the latter's physique made this statement very convincing.

The two drank tea for a while, chatted for a while, and then went fishing by the lake.

"I bought this lake," Patrick pointed to a large area of water in front. "It wasn't expensive. In the past, I never knew there was such a place near London."

"The scenery is indeed not bad," Murphy said.

The lake is not very big, but there is a hill next to it, covered with coniferous plants. Looking at it at a glance, there are mountains and water, which actually made Murphy think of the Black Lake at Hogwarts.

He had only graduated for a little over two years, but it felt like he had been away for a long time.

Maybe he should go back and take a look sometime? Or it wouldn't be bad to go and guest-star as a professor when he has time.

Forget about Defense Against the Dark Arts, but telling the juniors about the Muggle world and teaching them a few self-created spells would also be quite fun.

It's just that he doesn't know if Dumbledore would refuse him like he refused Tom.

Hmm... he shouldn't make the same mistake again. Keeping a possible Dark Lord under his nose to monitor him is better than letting him run wild outside, right?

Thinking about these things in his head, Murphy was a bit distracted while fishing and didn't notice when the fish took the bait.

Patrick looked at the moving fish float and didn't remind him. "What's wrong? Do you have something on your mind?"

Murphy thought for a moment and said, "Patrick, if I told you that I am a wizard and that things like White Medicine we make are actually just very common potions in the Wizarding World, what would you think?"

Patrick was stunned for a moment. "The efficacy of White Medicine is indeed similar to magic. If you say so, I probably won't be too surprised."

"You wouldn't be surprised if I could use magic?"

"Unless you turn into a rabbit for me."

Murphy was amused. He took a deep breath and pulled out his wand. "You've worked hard all this time. Also, it's a great honor to be able to cooperate with you. Obliviate!"

Through several sessions of Legilimency and Obliviation, Murphy replaced the image of himself in Patrick's mind with Boris.

Then, he sat quietly by the lake fishing, waiting for Patrick to wake up.

This wait lasted for three hours. Murphy had already caught two fish, and when the sun was about to set, Patrick finally woke up.

And Murphy had already used Polyjuice Potion to turn into Boris's appearance.

"Sorry, did I just fall asleep?" Patrick rubbed his somewhat dizzy head, as if he had slept for a long time.

"Patrick, you're getting old. You can even fall asleep while fishing."

Patrick's face turned dark. I'm only forty, what do you mean getting old!

Murphy put down the fishing rod and said, "You've caught quite a few fish, and you've woken up. Let's talk about business. Didn't I ask you to buy a few electronics and software companies before? How is it? Do you have any you like?"

"There are a few, such as Inmos in the chip field, Sinclair Research in the personal computer field, and Fantasy Technology in the chip design field, etc."

"Oh, right, you also mentioned before that you wanted to find talent in computer networking. I also found one, Tim Berners-Lee. He is in physics, but some friends at Oxford told me that he is recently working on a computer network that wants to connect internal laboratories at CERN, using a technology called hypertext..."

"Who did you say?" Murphy was shocked.

"Tim Berners-Lee, do you know him?" Patrick was also a bit surprised.

Turing Award winner, inventor of the World Wide Web!

As a practitioner in this field in his past life, although he had never been involved in theoretical research, he had heard the name of this father of the Internet.

So the Internet hadn't appeared yet in this era!

"We must pull him over!" Murphy said. "Give him whatever resources he needs. I want the Internet to be born in the hands of Umbrella."

"By the way, buy all those companies you just mentioned. Do they have their own chip factories?"

Chip manufacturing is an extremely huge industry. From top-end IP core design to IC architecture, to the wafers, lithography machines, and photoresist needed to produce chips, and then to actual chip manufacturing, as well as subsequent packaging and testing, each link counts as a subdivided industry. In each subdivided industry, there are a large number of technology companies around the world rolling and dying.

And in order to reduce costs, in fact, many chip companies do not produce chips; they only do IC chip design. There are not many manufacturers that actually manufacture chips, so Murphy had to ask if they had their own chip factories.

"Inmos has its own chip factory, and Fantasy Technology seems to be doing the most front-end IP core design," Patrick said. "However, we might not be able to afford Inmos."

"Ah?"

"Inmos has always been funded by the government. The British government alone has invested a total of over 200 million pounds. Although it has never achieved profitability, it owns eight chip factories, and its valuation is also around 700 million pounds. Even if it is sold at a low price, it will still be over 600 million pounds."

Hiss...

As expected of the chip industry, it starts in units of hundreds of millions.

Umbrella has already become a terrifying money-sucking machine by relying on the White Medicine series and the Venus series. Last year's operating income reached 300 million pounds and is still growing rapidly. But building a biotechnology R&D base and a mansion, equipping it with the most advanced experimental equipment, and recruiting top researchers, etc., all spend money like water. Umbrella's currently available funds are really not much.

Without raising funds, it is indeed unaffordable.

"Boss, why do you want to build chips?"

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 101 =====