Jacob left the Black Sea Company with a content look in his eyes, and Reuben even walked him to the gates with a very respectful expression.
Afterward, Jacob started to stroll the market while looking at materials available from different vendors. He was just trying his luck to see if he found any materials for the array.
In the end, Jacob didn't find anything, and he wasn't surprised since even the alchemy guild, which was the biggest dealership of materials, didn't have them. The chances of others having them were even less.
However, Jacob also had another purpose for doing this. He was making his presence known to his watchers and wanted to draw as many as possible.
In the evening, Jacob returned to the alchemy guild and opened his inbox to see the messages he received when he was out in the market but didn't bother to reply. He even received a few calls, which he also ignored, and he had some idea who they were from.
Just as he suspected, the calls were from Great Earth Minor.
With a cold smile, he opened the reply of Great Earth Minor.
'Great Earth Minor (Reply): So, you finally decided to show your face?!
'Great Earth Minor (Reply): You give me your location I'll come to you!
'Great Earth Minor (Reply): Why aren't you replying?
'Great Earth Minor (Reply): Alright, let's meet in the Dark City's alchemy guild in two weeks!'
Jacob sneered when he saw those messages, 'He's replying to his own questions. Well, I expected no less from a desperate dying idiot. But does he really think he still has the initiative anymore?'
Jacob started to write his reply.
Somewhere in the beast forest,
Two figures were hovering in two glass cells filled with black liquid. One of them was a fox face orc, while the other was a brown hobgoblin. Both of them were extremely skinny as if someone had drained all blood from their bodies.
At this moment, the star watch on the hobgoblin's wrist vibrates before he opens his beastly green eyes and looks at the message he just received.
'Faceless Ancient (Reply): I can't come to the dark city. Select another place, and it has to be closer to the best forest, and I'll come when I have time. If you don't want to wait, then forget about it. If you agree, then reply, and if you spout any nonsense or rush me, I'll block you, and you will never be heard from me again. Don't even think of a second that I need you. You need me, so get your mind straight before you reply to me. This is your last chance!'
Killing intent started to rage in the hobgoblin's eyes, but he suppressed his urge to write a curse back and press a button within the glass cell before the black liquid started to sink.
The fox face orc also sensed something and opened its foxy eyes, and when he saw the hobgoblin was about to come out, he also pressed the button to exit the glass cell.
After getting a clear look at the hobgoblin's ugly yet pale expression, the orc seemed to guess the reason behind it as he asked, "Mason, did that prick reply?"
Mason, who was none other than Earth Great Minor, didn't reply and only pressed his star watch a few times before a projection of Jacob's message materialized in front of the orc.
When the orc saw this, his expression also turned nasty like Mason, and he spat in an extremely eerie voice, "What an arrogant bastard! What should we do?"
Mason hoarsely refuted, "Lucas, you motherfucker, you still dare to call others arrogant and ask me what to do? When I'm in this damnable state because of you!"
Lucas, who was none other than Dark Moon of Beast Forest, couldn't help but smile bitterly because he knew Mason was right.
When, twenty months ago, Jacob didn't tell Mason about the plutonium. He turned to Lucas, who quickly agreed to Mason's demand and even invited him to his lab to research the material together.
In truth, even Lucas didn't know the true properties of Plutonium, and he was so eager to get his hands on it because he had an old picture of plutonium with only one description, 'Intermediate Type-2 Material.'
This picture was something he found in an abandoned lab in the south of rare plains, and not only this picture but the entire research data of an explosive expert, and with that exact data Lucas became what he was today.
That's why when Lucas saw the plutonium in the market, he wanted to get his hands on it to see if it was really the same material in the picture. Because it was, he could become rich.
Furthermore, by Mason's interest in it, Lucas guessed that he had more than what he was showing. So, he became greedy and decided to lure Mason here by the lure of researching together. But he didn't tell him about that silver being intermediate type-2 material.
Mason was also greedy, so he decided to agree with Lucas's invitation since he wasn't losing anything, and once he got a keen grasp over what kind of material it was, then he could sell it and gain huge profits from it.
However, none of them had thought that things would go south the moment they started experimenting with that piece of plutonium, and within a few months, they started to experience grave symptoms.
First, they thought nothing of them and ate some random healing pills to alleviate those symptoms. However, they soon found how wrong they were when they started coughing blood, and their conditions turned worse.
It was at that time Mason started to understand the meaning behind Jacob's subtle words and tried contacting him, but he never received any reply.
Now, their condition was so worse that if they couldn't contain their bodies within type-1 healing liquid for eight hours, they would feel pain worse than death, and their life would start slipping away. They can't even breathe properly anymore.
They were at the end of their ropes and were about to head to the dark city alchemy guild to seek help from the alchemy guild when Jacob finally responded.
However, they had lost all the initiative over him, and now they could do nothing but play on the palm of his hand.
"I know, I was being greedy, but don't forget you were already experiencing light symptoms when you came here, which means the exposure to this metal was also as deadly as experimenting on it. The process just became faster.
"So, we should stop blaming each other and do something about our condition before we turn into living corpses. We can still stick to our plan and go seek the seniors' help, or we can take the risk by inviting this guy here. Although it's risky, I'm confident he won't be able to do anything to us as long as he enters my base… cough… cough…" Lucas suddenly started coughing violently as drops of blood were mixed within his saliva spared over his hand.
Mason's expression became extremely dark as he also stopped the urge to cough and weakly nodded, "Alright. I think this guy, cough…, is more reliable since he knew the symptoms. So, I'll give him the location of this base. But we should also be ready just in case the negotiation fails."
Lucas smiled coldly, "Don't worry. Although we get this mysterious illness, we still manage to create a weapon out of that deadly material. If he knew how dangerous this material is, I'm sure he won't try anything funny!"
Mason nodded with a grim expression as he started typing…!