It is one thing for the stunts to be an excuse for him to stop reading. It is another thing if his stunts are making him stronger and richer.
With the two of them combined, it is no wonder why he would drop everything he was doing as soon as he hears the slightest complaint about any gang being difficult to deal with.
Unfortunately, the good days stopped. He couldn't get anyone to kill because his gang had stopped expanding.
The only thing left was to inspect their business and make sure that everything was in order and that they weren't trying to stiff him by hiding things from him.
He did most of the inspection himself. But after a while, he hired someone to do the inspection for him. The person's job is to track how much drugs they were making and estimate how much they were making.
This gave him all the time he needed to finish studying. He finished that after six weeks. He had read all the material three times and couldn't take it anymore. So he decided to find something worthwhile to do.
Unfortunately, there was very little he could do to while away his time. He didn't have any destiny game to prepare for. He didn't have game points anymore, so he couldn't go hunting for abilities anymore.
He also didn't need to work for money since he is a cabal boss now, so it would be a waste of his time to be a bounty hunter. Actually, the best use of his time will be to inspect his cabal and make sure that everything is going well.
After the first month of expansion, he earned 10 million dollars from his cabal. It was low because of the expenses incurred in procuring new supplies, recruiting more gang members, hiring more manpower for labor, etc.
That is set to double at least when the gangs settle into bigger market shares. Currently their production is more than the demand for their products. But that will change over time.
The money was cheaper than expected, but it was free and steady. He has people doing all the work while he sits and takes at least half of what they earn. That in itself is better than earning money himself, no matter how much he earns, because it is more pleasurable.
So he spent some time to make sure that his cash cow is secure. He spent a week inspecting each cabal and familiarizing himself with all of their operations.
But after that, he had nothing to do anymore. So he finally listened to Wrath's suggestion to watch TV.
She did most of the watching. He only sat on the couch eating food and looking at his phone while pretending to watch TV sometimes. He was more interested in seeing how much food he could stuff into himself before he had to puke.
He was "watching" TV when Rewind appeared. The sight of the prey that escaped his grasp finally made him interested in what was going on on the TV.
Wrath asked him, "Isn't that the boy that escaped that one time?"
He nodded and replied, "He is the one. I will always remember that face."
"It looks like he is still in the city. I wonder what he is still doing here. Wasn't he from out of town? Why hasn't he returned?"
Kelvin shrugged. "I don't know. He is probably still here to replace some of the absent heroes."
Wrath chuckled and said, "I hear that they are out of manpower recently."
Kelvin laughed. "I heard that too. It is definitely their good fortune that I am out of game points, or they would lose this manpower too."
Wrath corrected, "I think you meant boypower."
The two of them laughed.
Meanwhile, Rewind was being interviewed on TV as a representative of the Caped Crusader hero society about the outcome of the recent war between the heroes and villains and its effect on the power dynamics in the city.
Rewind replied to the question, "I think that is a complicated question. I think it is complicated because there are many answers to it. A villain will give you a different answer, and so will a hero, a citizen in the city, or one of the CEOs of the corporations in the city."
"As a hero, I see the many heroes that died to achieve the outcome of the war. Many people think the performance of us heroes was shameful, but they don't see what led up to that outcome, and they don't know how many heroes laid down their lives to fight for that smidgen of victory for justice."
"I'm talking about my adopted father, the Count. I am talking about Fire Rose, one of the fighters for freedom in the city. I am talking about the many other heroes that died in the secret assassination battles before the open war."
"Because of the poor performance of the heroes in the open world, it is easy to forget the sacrifice of so many heroes that died and easy to trivialize their sacrifice. That is something that I don't want to see. But it is the possibility that I see when you ask me about the outcome of the war and its repercussions."
The interviewer nodded and said, "I'm sure that you're right about the different perspective. I believe that if I ask a villain the same question, they will give me a different answer."
"They might mention the fact that it was the heroes who picked the fight with the villains and started the war. They might say that the heroes were proud and overestimated their capabilities."
"From what I could gather, the hero society received a lot of reinforcements from outside of the city while the villains didn't have a nationwide organization to back them up."
"All the villains had to rely on was the local Thunderstorm Villain Society, while the heroes had the support of many hero societies. And yet, the heroes barely won that battle. It was a true eye opener about the real power of heroes."