Three weeks passed.
And in that time, something subtle yet powerful began to shift in the village.
Not everyone noticed it. The blacksmith still struck his iron with the same rhythm. The priest still gave his Sunday sermon about virtue and penance. The children still chased chickens through the muddy street.
But underneath all that — in trade, in whispers, in decisions made behind closed doors — a pattern was forming.
And at the center of it was Marcos Stefano Barbosa.
His first batch of soap had sold out in four days. His second, which he delivered personally to Congonhas, moved even faster. He wasn't making a fortune — not yet — but he was doing something far more important: building trust, reputation, and infrastructure.
He no longer slept at the boarding house.
Instead, he'd rented a small, abandoned barn on the edge of the village, near the river, and had converted it into a multi-use workshop. Inside, he kept his production tools, raw materials, and a growing collection of notes — formulas, maps, contact names, pricing patterns, sketches of machines still impossible to build.
He had no assistants.
Not yet.
But he was watching.
Because influence didn't begin with a warehouse or a ledger.
It began with people.
The right people.
The first came in the form of a boy named Tobias.
Thin, fast, and sharp-tongued, Tobias had a knack for listening where he shouldn't, and remembering what others forgot. He delivered milk in the mornings and carried fish from the stream to the inn in the afternoons. But what caught Marcos's attention wasn't his speed — it was his ability to lie convincingly without flinching.
One afternoon, Marcos caught him trying to sneak a small bar of soap from a stack.
He didn't shout.
He didn't call the guards.
He offered the boy a job.
"You steal well," Marcos had said. "Now let's see if you can earn better."
Since then, Tobias worked as his runner, errand boy, and unofficial informant. He carried messages, tracked travel patterns, and warned Marcos of shifts in the village's mood. And in return, he got shoes, food, and coins in his pocket — more than most boys saw in a year.
The second was Ana Felícia, the daughter of a widow who ran the bakery.
Unlike Tobias, Ana didn't talk much. But when she did, her words were precise. She read accounts with terrifying speed and corrected a mistake in Marcos's supply ledger the first time she laid eyes on it. She had taught herself basic numbers by reading receipts and secretly copying her mother's grain purchases.
Marcos offered her a position without ceremony.
"You have a head for numbers," he said. "Let's make it profitable."
She came three nights a week, helped him manage his paper records, taught him regional coin values, and slowly began drafting lists of "trusted" buyers in the village — those who paid on time, those who lied, those who borrowed and vanished.
Her eyes were always tired. Her hands, always ink-stained.
But her mind was a vault.
By the end of the third week, Marcos had two essential assets: eyes and memory.
And it was time to test them.
He called them both to the barn one night.
The workshop smelled of oil and burnt fat. A lantern swung from a ceiling beam. On the table: a regional map, three bundles of product, and a list of six names.
"These are our first clients," Marcos said. "Real clients. People who can influence others."
He pointed at the names.
"A merchant in Ouro Branco, a tavern owner in Conselheiro Lafaiete, and four households in Congonhas who bought soap twice. I want each of them to receive a gift."
"Gifts?" Tobias asked. "Isn't that losing money?"
"It's planting," Ana replied before Marcos could answer.
He smiled.
"Exactly. We don't sell the product. We plant loyalty. The real gain comes when they return — or when their neighbors knock on our door."
He handed Tobias two wrapped bars and a note with delivery instructions.
"Avoid questions. Don't accept payment. Just say it's a 'thank you from the boy who doesn't belong.'"
To Ana, he gave a sealed envelope.
"Take this to Jerônimo. It's our first formal inventory. He'll know what it means."
Neither questioned. Neither hesitated.
That night, as he watched them leave — the boy into the shadows, the girl down the path with her candle lantern — Marcos felt something click into place.
It wasn't a fortune.
It wasn't an empire.
But it was a structure.
A seedling that would, with time, grow into a system bigger than either of them could imagine.
And as he turned back to his bench, where a set of brass gears waited to become something more, the system interface pulsed in the air:
[Progress milestone reached: Trade Node Established – Local]
[Reward: Blueprint Fragment – Manual Soap Cutter (Efficiency +40%)]
[ShadowMarket Status: Foundation Initiated]
Marcos leaned over the bench, dipped his quill in ink, and began sketching the first version of what might one day become a factory.
A real one.
One powered not by steam, or fire — but by strategy.
And shadows.