Their duties are singular: firstly, to recover air-dropped goods that fall outside Dogtown stadium; secondly, to remain on standby 24/7. In case support is needed, they are currently the only armed backup force in Dogtown.
The dormitory of the security department's Netherworld Dog is at Gem Cyan, and their training base is at the stadium. This also means these two places are usually guarded by the Netherworld Dog, providing a certain level of security.
Of course, compared to trusting these Netherworld Dogs, Mercer still has more faith in the unmanned equipment controlled by Venus.
Drones, robot dogs, spider robots, cameras... almost every day, the number of unmanned devices at Mercer's disposal is increasing.
The humanoid robot he developed to be used with Octopus Arms, even considering the cost of adding the arms, is comparable to commercially available security robots in price, but its combat strength is terrifyingly high.
This robot, equipped with two Octopus Arms, not only utilizes the arms for rapid mobility paired with thicker armor, but also attacks during close combat using the powerful arms, handling various weapons with nimble hands.
When necessary, these Octopus Arms can be equipped with different mechanical hands to switch the robot's role to sapper or technician. With the assistance of AI, Mercer himself thinks as long as the AI inside is smart enough, it indeed works better than humans.
As Dogtown's business began to revitalize, Mercer finally realized how lucrative Hansen's past earnings were.
Goods bought for fifty thousand would, after a round of operations by him, sell for several times more; even if Hansen hadn't personally brokered the sales, just by shipping and turnover duties for others, he could earn a staggering docking fee casually.
And comparing bulk trades, in fact, the most profitable are various Night City restricted prosthetics and military gear.
These prosthetics and weapons, which are officially banned military items from being sold on the market, yet in Dogtown, they come in bulk daily.
Then people would smuggle them from Dogtown to Night City, as well as neighboring Free States, doubling their price easily. Sometimes, items originally not very valuable can earn tenfold profits here.
Moreover, many are inconspicuous little gadgets like certain advanced chips, processors, various electronic components, basic materials, always in short supply on the black market.
Even some expensive foods, drinks, artworks...
Daily net profit, excluding wages and labor costs for the Netherworld Dogs, has to be calculated in Million Euros—although considering donations to big shots, investments, and other hidden costs, the profit isn't as large.
But earning tens of millions of Euros per quarter is really no hard matter.
This money is purely earned while lying down, as sellers just need to air-drop to Dogtown to receive payment directly, completely bypassing past shipping losses and finding buyers.
Night City's buyers are always in short supply, items are casually thrown on the black market and snatched up instantly.
In the past, Dogtown only handled selling goods to big black market merchants, allowing them to distribute the goods themselves.
But now, Mercer wants to intervene even in these transactions—he recruited the Adcardans, giving them a list of goods and a purchase list, for them to directly negotiate with Night City's buyers.
The myriad smuggling channels emerging in Dogtown, ultimately, are due to too many people profiting, and Mercer now lets Adcardans directly sell externally, not only earning intermediary money but also having the cost advantage.
This can greatly strike personal smuggling businesses in Dogtown and save the hassle of constantly checking for secret tunnels being dug.
Adcardans are thoroughly familiar with such work, as they are best at secretly tinkering things and selling them around, even possessing interstate transportation routes.
Mercer merely provides them with goods, and they can find clients and distribution networks by themselves, potentially selling to all of New America. And once a means of living is obtained, Night City's Evil Land Adcardans will only gather more and more.
This band of Wanderers always drifts wherever they can earn a living, Mercer plans to delegate downstream of Dogtown's industrial chain entirely to Adcardans, appointing them as agents to sell Dogtown's goods.
He just takes care of intermediary work, drawing commissions to earn price differences, all while expanding markets, earning favors, achieving multiple benefits in one stroke.
The money Hansen earned, Mercer wants to earn, and the money Hansen previously didn't earn, Mercer wants to earn even more.
Having merely used Venus's model for analysis once, Mercer could estimate that solely the downstream market earnings created by Adcardans could double Netherworld Dog's income next quarter.
Time was passing swiftly during Mercer's low-key growth, soon, collaboration between robots and Netherworld Dogs in excavating and searching Little Beidou Facility began showing effect.
Mercer successfully found the entrance to the Little Beidou Facility buried deep beneath a building, but subsequently encountered a slight headache— the base was artificially blocked, requiring a path to be dug open forcibly.
The entrance is relatively narrow and located beneath a tall building, posing difficulties for large equipment to enter.