Five days passed in the blink of an eye, and now, Minos and his group were only a few hours away from the capital of Stone Island, Old Stone.
In those days that passed, Minos counted all the gain of the trip until the present moment and began to make his plans of how to spend his tens of thousands of crystals of low-grade and also the crystals of medium-grade that he still had.
By Minos' accounts, he had about 400,000 low-grade crystals and 500 medium-grade crystals. With this amount, he intended to buy about 300 pills of grade-1, divided into three parts containing low-level, medium-level, and high-level pills.
As for grade-2 pills, it would take a few years before the soldiers of the Black Plain Army needed such a resource, not to mention that Minos could not afford to do this now. To give you an idea, pills of this grade are sold in medium-grade crystals, as well as spiritual weapons. The same goes for arrays that are in this grade.
Minos also planned to buy about 120 grade-1 spiritual weapons and pills, divided into three parts. He was buying low-level and medium-level weapons and pills because he wanted to supply and speed up the cultivation of the youths who had recently joined the Black Plain Army.
That is because there were not many spiritual weapons in the Black Plain, and even the ones they had were old and defective. As for the pills, it would help 300 soldiers advance further in cultivation.
Minos intended to spend almost all of his low-grade crystals on this, leaving only the medium-grade crystals to purchase a low-level grade-2 spiritual gathering array.
Such an array was ten times more potent than a grade-1, high-grade array, like the ones that the Dry City had won from merchant Elen Nash. Moreover, with this grade-2 array, Minos could also cover an area of one million square meters, thus increasing the area with more dense spiritual energy within the Dry City!
This spiritual array also had an efficiency of 26%, which was already much better than Minos', which could offer an efficiency of only 20%.
Minos hoped that the Black Plain would raise an entire step of strength with all these investments.
He also wanted to start attracting low-level people from other impoverished regions, such as those bordering the Black Plain with the Kingdom of the Waves and the Cromwell Kingdom.
After all, the current population of the Plain Black was only 50,000 inhabitants, and more than 40,000 of them already lived in the Dry City. With such numbers, it would not be long before Minos faced a problem with the labor supply.
In fact, according to his accounts, in a maximum of 6 months, the entire unemployed adult population of the Black Plain would already be working in agriculture or the Black Plain Army. Therefore, if he did not encourage immigration towards his territories, his city could not continue to grow.
'This is truly a problem. I have to talk to Miss Elen about this. Maybe she can help me with that.' He thought as he watched the horizon through his carriage window.
In the Spiritual World, it was not uncommon for slaves and businesses specialized in the commercialization of captives to appear. But the numbers of these groups were relatively small, as there had been no major wars in this region of the Central Continent for a long time.
Of course, there were always some conflicts between noble families and smaller families. Still, the scale of these events did not reach such alarming numbers that millions of slaves appeared at once.
However, even if these groups were numerous, Minos would not be very interested in this type of labor. Even if someone bought slaves and then treated them well and even freed them, these former captives would never be happy. Many of them might even be grateful for the gesture, but they would still want to have their own lives, perhaps elsewhere.
In fact, the number of people who would give up their newly recovered freedom to stay and help their libertarians was very small. After all, individuals who have gone through this type of situation learn to be skeptical and try to recover what they had lost through slavery.
And Minos was also not in favor of this type of service.
Buying a slave and then freeing him is not a way to help fight this system. On the contrary, by purchasing slaves, one would only be helping to strengthen this type of market!
That was what Minos believed!
As for helping these groups… Well… Minos lacked the strength for this, and more importantly, he was not a good person to the point of giving up his interests to help strangers.
He could even do something about it, as long as it didn't harm him…
…
Time passed, and the silhouette of the Old Stone city began to appear on the horizon for the group of carriages, in which Minos and his group were.
It was a vast city, and despite the distance, it was from the group of Minos, they could still clearly see how big it was. According to the information that Minos had received, this was a city with more than 6 million inhabitants!
That was almost twice as large as the capital of the Brown Kingdom, the City of the Setting Sun, which had less than 3.1 million residents.
That clearly showed the financial difference between the two states. What made Stone Island one of the most influential regions near the north of the Central Continent, while the Brown Kingdom had only an average influence.
However, despite the differences in influence and wealth of any party, the powers in these states were considered equivalent. Not only that, while Stone Island had many of its non-warrior specialists, the Brown Kingdom had many warriors and few support professionals.
That also explained the relative peace between the region's top powers. They had equivalent powers and needed each other to continue their affairs.
Anyway, some more time passed, and the group of Minos arrived at the southeast entrance of Old Stone city.
Many other carriages were coming and going through this entrance to the city, with several spiritual beasts pulling the many carriages.
It was possible to see many 3rd and 4th rank beasts and even some 5th. It was indeed an image that Minos had not seen even when he lived in the City of the Setting Sun. After all, even if there were beasts of that level in his old city where he lived, it was not common to see them on the streets.
As Minos' carriage drove slowly through the streets of Old Stone town, he could see many multistory buildings in different locations. Not only that, the city had uneven and mountainous terrain, which made some of these buildings stand out even more.
Such a look would make one think of the beautiful landscape that could be seen from these places.
At that moment, Sergeant Pyke, who was standing next to Minos, said in a low voice with a thoughtful expression. "The spiritual energy here is much denser than in the city of Portland. Amazing!"
And when he heard that, Minos smiled and said with a smile on his face. "This is normal since, in this city, there must be some array masters of grade-2. So, with that, the city certainly has many spiritual gathering arrays in operation."
Minos then said to Sergeant Pyke as he enjoyed the view of the city. "We are going to look for the Hotel Olson, here in the Old Stone city. Ask someone for directions."
Pyke then got out of the carriage and looked for directions from the Hotel Olson, which was here in the capital of Stone Island.
It didn't take long, and the group of Minos arrived at the hotel and checked in. The night was starting when they settled into their rooms. Minos then thought to himself. 'I will leave to look for Ms. Elen tomorrow.'
He threw himself on his bed after taking a nice hot shower. 'Mnn, even though I don't need to sleep as much as before, I still love doing it…'
…
While Minos was sleeping peacefully at the Olson Hotel in Old Stone city, a giant eagle, which was in the 4th stage, was approaching the capital of Stone Island.
That was an eagle with completely white feathers and a large yellow beak.
On top of this enormous beast was a young girl with a cute appearance and a bored look on her face.
That was Ruth Miles, the young disciple of Minos' mother. She had traveled quickly from the Maritime City to Portland and then came straight here.
And, even though she had stopped to visit some places, she had arrived quickly because her spiritual beast was a 4th stage and a flying type, which was faster than terrestrial beasts.
'I hope that ungrateful Minos has already arrived here. Otherwise, I will be forced to wait for him...' Ruth thought as she yawned slowly.
"White, let's start going down. I want to find a place for me to rest in this city." She spoke as she rubbed her hands around the eagle's giant neck.