When Vicente heard the horrible ‘proposal’ that Brody Wright had for him, he couldn’t help but make an awful face under his mask.
He wouldn’t bother to give more of his profits to this faction for the stability he and his family needed to go in search of magic pentagrams. But his weapons were the most valuable thing he had besides his own powers.
Giving them to another group would be remarkably dangerous.
But how could he refuse? The man in front of him could kill him with a wave of his finger!
Vicente could kill level 3 Acolytes with ordinary talents inferior to his own, as was the case with most of his opponents so far. By the same logic, he could fight with some balance, perhaps even advantage, against level 4 Acolytes, but without the chance to kill them. However, before advancing to level 1, he knew he would have no chance of withstanding a single move from a level 5 Acolyte, even if that person had low talent.
But the man in front of Vicente was a born warrior and had a Yellow talent that was by no means negligible.
Vicente didn’t need to fight or challenge Brody to know he would die if this faction leader wanted him to!
‘Damn it, so you’re not going to give up!’ He held back his anger at Brody, sensing that this man had not forgotten the ‘loss’ he had recently suffered.
The deal Vice had recently made with the Scarlet Syndicate had been crucial for him and his group to continue to operate while strengthening themselves to reach their current level. Without that deal, they would probably all be dead by now.
But that deal had only been possible because Vice’s weapons were at stake, which was the only thing he and his people could use to lure the Scarlet Syndicate group. But he had known from the beginning that he would get enough to stop Defiant Tyranny, and he had never been willing to hand over his weapons to such a faction.
Brody had probably realized that already, but he wasn’t willing to let Vice control the situation as he pleased.
As the strongest and the one with the biggest hand in the matter, Brody was the one who would control the pace of things!
He realized that Vice was very upset about his demand and laughed inside.
‘Do you think I’m going to let you use me like this without doing anything? Kid, you may be smart, but you still haven’t achieved what it takes to fool me so masterfully.
Consider this your punishment for playing with someone you shouldn’t have.’
But despite his thoughts, Brody wasn’t angry with Vice, for as much as such a boy had acted for his own good, the result of his actions had been very beneficial to the Scarlet Syndicate.
Vicente saw the serene look on Brody’s face and realized that he would have to take a few steps back. ‘I’m going to have to gamble.’
“We can do what Senior Wright says. But I’d like to ask for some time. These weapons are my greatest creations. I don’t want them to fall into the hands of non-aligned forces.
I’d like to train some of your men to make this weapon for your group and have them know exactly how to make the model you’ll have without risking others having access to it.”
To make Vicente’s weapons, one would only need blacksmiths and people to assemble the parts of these weapons. It was something that anyone with the materials and blueprints could do.
However, Vicente had created a method to make it difficult for others to learn how to make similar weapons by taking them apart and reverse engineering them. 𝗻𝐨𝐯𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺
If he had to give one of his models to this faction, he wanted to make sure that the Scarlet Syndicate wouldn’t be the ones to start a gun revolution in this world by letting one of their models fall into the hands of people who could understand how these weapons worked and replicate them.
Not only that but if he could get this man to agree to have some of his men trained by Vicente first, this young man could buy some time before the Scarlet Syndicate had weapons like his group’s.
“I also want the ammunition for this model to be produced exclusively by my group. To prevent any of our enemies from getting their hands on one of your weapons and using it against us, I want to be the sole supplier of the ammunition.”
Without ammunition, guns were like useless toys. Even if someone got their hands on one of these weapons, not only would they not be able to learn how to develop weapons because of Vicente’s mechanism, they wouldn’t be able to use them freely because they would have a limited number of bullets.
Hearing this young man’s words, Brody was surprised to see that Vice knew how to swallow his defeats and do what he had to do.
Vice’s first request didn’t seem strange to him, but he didn’t agree with the second. “What makes you think that your group will be able to keep these ammunition safe when you don’t even trust my group to keep possessing them? I don’t see how you, being the only one capable of making these bullets, will change anything about this kind of danger.”
Vicente heard this and immediately responded, not with words, but with his own powers.
He showed Brody his red pentagram and used some of the utensils on the table between them to form several bullets of different sizes and designs.
“Because I don’t have a lot of prepared ammunition on my property. Since I make them with my skill, I don’t have to make a big stockpile like blacksmiths would if they had to make them. Whenever you need ammunition, I can produce the amount you need on delivery without having to store it.”
Seeing those bullets and hearing that, Brody couldn’t deny Vicente’s power’s versatility and that it made him more efficient at protecting that ammunition.
A blacksmith could never make one or two bullets. They would have to maximize the efficiency of their work and would certainly produce a much larger quantity in a longer time than Vice would need.
Understanding this, Brody saw that Vicente wasn’t just trying to trick him into having a monopoly on these items for some silly reason.
“I see…”
…
While the two were negotiating how to make a deal on a gun model, Marcus Symons was receiving information about his men’s investigation of Vicente Fuller in another part of the city!
“Well? What did you find out?”