“Sailing west is closer to a gamble than an adventure.”

Esteban said this as he personally served Rupert a cup of rare tea imported from the Eastern Continent.

“Let’s just call it romance rather than profit.”

Of course, calling it mere romance didn’t quite capture the scale of the investment—building a new ship from scratch and funding an entire voyage—but Rupert didn’t feel as anxious as he might have expected.

‘If this were the past, I would’ve called it madness.’

There was a time when he soaked stale bread in soup just to make it edible, scraping for every penny …