Scroogeux Overson [pronounced 'Scroo-dew'... from the French] was no ordinary billionaire.
In the elite circles, he was known as someone who had never gotten the worse end of a deal.
He was one of the wealthiest but also shrewdest men to ever live, known as a man who did nothing unnecessarily, and all for the purpose of acquiring wealth and influence.
Through his exceptional understanding of finance, human motivations and factors of power and politics, he truly lived up to his name, gradually increasing his power and influence like a chess-master slowly built up his position with good moves.
However! All this manoeuvring was not simply for the mindless pursuit of wealth. This was just a front.
He had been looking for someone… something worth investing in whilst he still had time, having long realised that money was not something that you could take away, and needed to be used, as otherwise just having it lying around, it was in fact a depreciating asset.
As for whether he would help or hinder… this would be something that would have to wait and see.
Valentine's video and words were truly groundbreaking and revolutionary, and he was genuinely impressed and seriously considering investing… but his years of experience meant that he couldn't act too hastily. He needed reliable information, and for this, he would only count on someone he could fully trust.
His own family! Accordingly, he called his daughter Lucy over to his Study. She was beautiful, resourceful, intelligent.
"I've received word that Valentine will be attending the World Ball."
He handed her a ticket - it was an invitation to the World Ball!!!
"I'd like you to get close to this Valentine.
Find out all you can about him… and let me know if he is worthy of our investment…"
"Yes father."
The blonde beauty bowed gracefully as she accepted the invitation and the mission…
___
Meanwhile, Bob had not been idle.
The main limitation of the Spray and Stay strategy was… time.
In theory, this ideal family model required that he be present physically and mentally in the upbringing of his children, in order to create a nurturing family environment that might provide his kids with the highest chances for genetic quality and success.
There were several ideas he had in mind to overcome the inherent temporal bottleneck of this strategy.
First of all, one could make the argument that the father's main role was to provide resources, considering the large amount of time that fathers spent away from home at work for this very purpose, and that the social and educational environment and training as well as a mother's love was already more than enough to provide a happy childhood and upbringing for his kids
- in short, that if the goal was to provide genetic opportunity, then, even if he weren't physically present, as long as he provided resources and opportunity, it was good enough, especially considering that many families in reality had many problems and the ideal perfect family was basically a myth and didn't exist.
Instead, it would be essentially the idea of letting the village teach the children - like going to boarding school, his children would have multiple parents via the Education and Training Academy, where each of them would receive specialized training in order for them to pursue their dreams.
At the same time, Bob did feel that he still owed it to his partners to spend time with them so that they might be happy and fulfilled. This was because of his experience with Allie -
having given her the promise of intimacy, to simply pump and dump, and leave her all alone wasn't something he wanted to do if he could help it.
Bob was focused and relentless, but he was not a heartless person. His Respect and Morals level had reached Lv 96 after all.
However, if he chose to devote his time with Allie, then this would surely limit his future options, taking into account all the amazing women that he had encountered to date, and no doubt, would continue to encounter... thereby also limiting his contributions and happiness of many future women in the process.
Fortunately, as always, Bob had devoted his time intensively in order to figure out an optimal win-win solution to this problem.
And at last… it was time to unveil the fruits of his labors…
The answer was… [True Multiple Projection]. Originally, this had only allowed for temporary projections of alternate futures, but after his training and research, these multiple projections could be made reality, with indistinguishable real-world and real-time effects.
Valentine Richést had been but the first experiment, to see if this might be possible, and successful.
Now, Bob's mental capability had increased due to his regular Subconscious training, allowing him to evolve to the next level, and he could now project not just one Consciousness - Valentine - but also now multiple 'streams' or projections of 'Bobs'.
Essentially they were like avatars or real physical projections of Bobs that could be customized in terms of appearance - essentially, all alter-egos of Bobs.
As a result, this now meant that he could simultaneously have multiple "Spray and Stay" partners… all at the same time…!!!!!!!
Of course, there was a limit which was based on his Subconscious ability and Genetic Quality, currently, at the A+++++ grade, his maximum was 3 Alter-egos, in addition to his core self, the original Bob, for a total of 4 Avatars.
Of course, if he could level up his genetic quality further, to what Old Man Li referred to as S+++++ grades and above, then who knew what might happen...?!
Regardless, one thing was clear. The floodgates to Bob's Genetic greatness… had finally burst open.