Upon entering his estate, Vicente was soon joined by Rory and the more powerful of the group.
“Vice, what’s all this talk about the Symons family?” Rory asked as he sat down in one of the chairs in the family leader’s office.
As he settled into his seat, Vicente smiled, now without the metallic mask from earlier. “When I went into the Peters family vault earlier, I saw the documents of this family’s magical agreement with House Symons.”
“Uh?”
“They have an agreement with this family?”
“But if that’s true… Boss, why didn’t you just steal them?” One of the men asked as Rory understood where his friend’s speech had come from.
Vicente closed his eyes and said. “This is a society of appearances that doesn’t work as easily as you think, Joshua. If I had stolen those papers, they would have been useless to me.
If I tried to use them in public, I would be considered a thief, and our whole group would be in trouble with the local guard. At the same time, would we still be a reliable group that could be hired to protect local businesses?”
Rory nodded and said. “We could never use those papers if he had stolen them. But trading them for that idiot…”
“Hmmm.” Vicente smiled. “We can end this situation and get not only those papers but a way to use them without being publicly recognized as bandits.”
The situation they found themselves in was not comfortable. It meant they were stuck in a stalemate, and there seemed to be only one battle ahead of them before the alternative Vicente brought.
With this exchange, they would not only get something useful and valuable for the group, but they could end the problem without a fight, without having to kill Brody and take bigger risks afterward.
This was the best alternative not only for them but also for the Peters family!
“Jax will take the deal I propose. He has no choice.” Vicente said confidently. “With this, even after we release Brody, we will have a way to threaten the Peters family. That will keep us safe for the next few weeks.”
“You don’t intend to use this deal to take over the Peters family business with the Viscount?” Rory asked.
“We’ll just wait for now. If we moved to steal that business from the Peters family, we would have a confrontation with Jax’s people. But that wouldn’t be so interesting for us right now.” Vicente clarified. “If we stand still and show the public how we resolved the previous situation without any more fuss, we’ll gain a lot of morale.”
What they needed most now wasn’t a mining agreement, for which they didn’t even have people to take responsibility. What they needed most was to demonstrate their efficiency to the people who had seen the previous situation and to increase the attractiveness of their “territory.”
They did not yet have a territory per se. But some of the nearby businessmen that Vice and Rory had already scouted over the past few days would definitely be more interested in doing deals with them after word of the events of the past few hours spread.
By preventing trouble at Zander’s tavern and not suffering at the hands of Jax, their group was proving itself capable of doing what it set out to do!
“Let’s keep Jax away from us while increasing our settlements in this area,” Vice said, managing to make his less intelligent men understand the plan. “We’ll revisit this in the future.”
Rory agreed with this plan by nodding before he asked. “But Vice, how was your raid? Did you get anything of value?”
The others in the office, all very well dressed in dark suits, turned their attention to Vicente, the only one there dressed differently from the norm. “Yes, good values, I’d say, haha. In that family’s safe, there were 7 gold coins, 526 silver coins, and 898 bronze coins. Not only that, but there was also a magic potion, two pills, and four jewels.” He quickly summed up what he had counted in the chimney of the Peters’ house.
This was an excellent result for a one-night raid that had not even resulted in any casualties for the group!
Counting Jax and his brother’s belongings, what Brody had taken in River’s Tavern twice, and what their group of guards had collected from bandits and troublemakers over the past few days, they had the equivalent of three gold coins.
But in a few hours, Vicente had collected much more than that!
Not only that, but he had gotten not just coins but magical resources, something rarer than coins.
Coins could be used to buy magic items. But magic items, like pills, could not only vary in price depending on place and time. They often had to be ordered.
Such resources sometimes had properties that were lost if they were not consumed within days or weeks. As a result, many alchemists only made items to order. ｂ𝚍ｏｖ𝚕．𝚝
It was much more valuable to have pills and potions on hand than to have the coins to buy them!
Everyone in the room smiled, feeling the good feeling a thief would feel after a successful robbery.
“Not bad!” Rory commented. “This is the equivalent of what we made in profit in 6 days of trading…”
That might not seem like much for what they made in a month. However, their group’s activities only generated this amount of coins because Andrew had spent years developing the foundation for them, and Vice had taken over several businesses from other merchants in Martell Village.
Vicente looked at Rory and said. “The potion won’t be of much use to us for the time being. It is something that only Acolytes can use.
But the two pills will be enough for us. They are 1st-grade Enlightenment Pills.”
Enlightenment Pills were one of the most common types in Polaris Realm. This pill provided mana and the ability to more deeply decipher the elements one had an affinity for, with the most obvious result being a better understanding of one’s magical powers, with a possible level increase.
As for the classification of the pill, it followed the classification of magical artifacts, starting with the 1st grade and going up to the grade corresponding to the level of the magician it could affect.
A 2nd-grade magic item or resource could affect 2nd-stage magicians, and so on.
Knowing this, Rory clenched his fists, satisfied and eager to test one of these pills that should go to Brody if they had not moved.
“Excellent!” He commented to his friend.
As the group’s two most talented and youngest, it was clear that these pills would go to them.
In the future, Vicente might even favor other of his men, depending on the situation. But now, where they both needed these resources, and there were none left for these men, there was no way either of them could think of giving them up for one of their stronger men.
“As for the jewels, we will sell them on the black market through one of our merchants,” Vicente said, not wanting to implicate them directly.
The black market was supposed to keep the identity of its customers secret, but he preferred not to risk that.
In any case, he needed the coins, and he wouldn’t keep those jewels.
At that moment, Jax’s voice surprised some of Vicente’s men, who still had doubts about solving the problem.
“Brats, I’ll do whatever you want! Let’s trade my arrangements for Brody!”