Duke stood on the stage that was almost destroyed from the battle.
He looked at the ten candidates who stood below the stage in an order and said.
"You ten will be leaving the Southern star in week and be on your way to the Imperial capital. In a month and a half, the princess will be reaching eighteen years old and there would be a ceremony on that day which will be the final day of your compet.i.tion in the empire.
Before that you would be facing the challenges which you should surpa.s.s prove yourself to be worthy to attend that ceremony.
One more thing, there is a clear significance of the rank you have attained and you will know when you arrive at the imperial capital.
In a week, make all the preparations and bid goodbye to all your relatives, you might not be stepping in southern star city for a while."
After that speech everyone went on their way. In this week there are a lot of things Sam has to do and that is to meet someone, send someone a gift and send someone a message and last but not least, avoid some people who wants to meet him desperately.
For example, the artisan tower head. That guy tried to get in contact with Sam in the past eight months of the business phase, but was unable to do so.
Sam knew why he wanted to meet him and he has no intention to do so. He had tried to give that man an opportunity, but he was too blind with greed so, Sam cut him off, and he has no intention to listen to that man even if he changed his nature.
As for the people who he has to meet, they are the three tower heads.
In their meeting, they talked about the future of the Park and everything and how they should operate in his absence.
He only has few things to state.
"The Dragon Hawk tribe members, under any circ.u.mstances cannot be removed of their employment without my permission. You have only authority over shifting their duty over.
Our profit-sharing methods remain same except you will get additional five percent in every agreement, since you will be managing this.
My share of profits, which I can estimate how much shouldn"t undergo any embezzlement, as I might send a person with my scholar artisan badge to retrieve my funds at any moment.
The most important thing of all, any formation design or inscription design and even the business model shall not be leaked to anyone other than our four people.
If by any chance they were leaked, I hope you would be willing to bear the consequences as I won"t be bothering to investigate the happenings. I will hold everyone accountable all the same.
So, you better hope that there are no traitors among your subordinates and not any other Dukedom wouldn"t get hold of all my designs.
As long as you do that, there is little chance for anyone to replicate our business."
At Sam"s words the three tower heads were a bit displeased after all these words showed that Sam has some doubts on their integrity in the business and it is not a good feeling being a Nascent and still get warned by a young man who just broke through the Great realm just now.
Sam also knew they would feel like this, but he didn"t bother hiding his intent. He only trusts a few people in this world and these tower heads aren"t one of them, and it is even more so when there are billions and potentially trillions of spirit stones involved.
Sam stood up and before saying.
"I understand if you are displeased, but I hope you think about it and make a decision to follow my words or not after you see the fireworks I prepared on the night before my departure."
After leaving those words, Sam left the place leaving them confused about what the fireworks meant.
For the next few days, the shadow mice were on the duty. He has to send a gift to Van family head who conveniently wanted to kill Sam to gain the general"s favour.
As for getting revenge on General, it would be too easy on the General if he was to die just like that. So, Sam has something planned for him.
These six days, Sam stayed in the second floor working on something serious.
Mia, started losing the effect from the hydras blood as it became too small for her to absorb, so she left everything for the executioner sword to absorb and the blade is already a Grade 5 sword.
It wasn"t suitable for him to use it for now with his strength.
Now, the effect of the blood lost all the essence and only the venomous effects were left which would be dissipated in a year or two without the effects of the blood essence.
As it is extremely potent, Sam has a great use for it, and now he is using it for not only to make mutated poisonous herbs, he is also using it for another purpose.
Inside the tower, these six days, Sam worked on a large, easy but a time taking project while the shadow mice gathered his required intel. That intel is not regarding the black water. He doesn"t want to target the organisation anytime soon as it would be quite hard for him to deal with them on this scale with his power level.
The info is about the Van family and the General Spark.
On the seventh day which is also the last day of his stay in this city, Sam came out early in the morning.
He had a lot of things to do.
He sneaked out of his residence using the divine dimension and the shadow mice and entered the Van family estate.
In that estate, the shadow mice carefully hid in a shadow near the family head"s mansion.
The family head is in a gloomy mood for the past week.
His son died, but he was not upset about that, he has many sons from many concubines and youngest of them is the only one who is lost he still has his eldest son who he is mostly proud of, he was upset that his son leaked his plans.
He enquired about Sam and learnt that he is quite vengeful. But he is not entirely worried for now as it is not much of an immediate problem as Sam doesn"t have enough battle ability to content against Van family. At least, that is what he knew.
He is just afraid that Sam would use his connections to make things difficult for his family members, but there was nothing that affected them has been done yet which made him more and more worried.
So, for the past week he was busy with planning countermeasures for any possible scenarios he could think of and this day he headed for the family meeting as this would be the last day that Sam would stay in the city and they had to make sure to be ready at whatever he would throw at them.
The head of Van family is a Peak Grand realm expert. The shadow mice observed him as he left the mansion and they immediately went on to do their thing.
From what Sam learnt from the shadow mice, the Mansion of this Van family head is a restricted area for all the other people from the family and they observed another interesting thing in a secret underground chamber under the mansion.
Now, Sam is inside that room, as he looked at a cubic structure which looked like a Rubik"s cube. Sam couldn"t understand what it is, but he knew that the family head will stay most of the time here in this place messing with this cube.
The cube was guarded by a formation of concealment. But there are no other securities around it as the family head was very sure that no one knows about this.
Sam cracked the concealment formation by finding a loop hole in the energy flow and took away the cube after that he didn"t leave like a shadow as he entered the place, he made a small tunnel big enough for the mouse to escape from this room and entered the divine dimension letting the mouse take him into the tunnel.
Before they escaped though, Sam placed a large cubic shaped energy cell almost filling the entire room. there is only some s.p.a.ce big enough for a man to walk sideways around the cube.
He waited for the evening for the sun to set, so that he would give a great vision to the rest of the city.
After the sun was set, the Van family head entered his mansion and as a routine habit he spread his spiritual sense to the underground secret room.
But all he sensed was a huge volume of spiritual energy being emitted from the room, as he entered the room, he saw a large volume of the energy cell and it was extremely shocking but before they he could think of what is happening, Sam"s words rung.
"You are indeed quite ambitious and cunning, but you shouldn"t have thought of using me as your stepping stone, now you have to face the consequences."
As soon as he heard those words, he understood who that person is, he suddenly had a bad premonition.
And his guess was right. On the opposite side of the cube, Sam stood with his hands on his cube and he was already on the last stage of destabilizing it.
There is one advantage of using these energy cells, the bigger it is the more time it will take for destabilizing and it and more the buffer period it would take before exploding.
Sam finished destabilizing the energy cell and entered the divine dimension which the shadow mouse carried through the tunnel and moved as fast as it can.
After it reached the other end which is a few yards away from the mansion, it entered the divine dimension leaving the crystal out in the open.
*BOOM*
A loud explosion was heard and the ground shook. The divine dimension crystal was the only thing in the surroundings which was able to endure the explosion as it was made by a being who is powerful beyond any one on this empire and even the whole planet can imagine.
So, it was the only thing which was not damaged by the explosion but it was still blown out of the estate.
The whole City became alert as they saw the huge amount of fire elemental energy blasting through the sky with a red glow. Everything around the Van family estate along with the core members" quarters were completely disintegrated into a scorching and molten rocky pit.
The Duke, the Generals, the commoner, the n.o.ble families the tower heads all of them saw that huge explosion, half of the central zone could feel those tremors.
After the divine dimension was blown out, Sam let a shadow mouse carry it and entered the General"s estate.
This time though, he left a letter in General"s mansion and made a small explosion in an open place of estate.
*BOOM*
Another explosion which wasn"t as large scale as the previous one happened in the General"s estate.
He ran out of the mansion and was surprised to find a letter in the living room on his way. But he still rushed towards the spot and after seeing that it didn"t deal much damage, his thoughts calmed down and went back to read the letter.
He knew clearly who was the one who wrote it after seeing the explosion from the Van family and his mansion.
He was sweating as his heart beat rapidly in trepidation.
There are only a few words in the letter.
"I hope you liked the fireworks I planned specifically for you to bid good bye.
But before I go, I want to tell you something and that is, your life is not yours anymore, it is mine to take and I am only leaving it with you temporarily, it can basically proved by the fact that I can take that pathetic life of yours whenever I want.
Next time, I enter the Southern Star city, you would be losing that life of yours.
You wouldn"t know how I will take it, when I will take it and on what premises I would take it.
Until then, you better life your life to fullest."
General almost knelt as his legs gave away, he supported himself and forced himself to sit on the couch.
This is the first time he felt fear so much that his whole body was soaked in sweat.
He never imagined that he would have to live his life in fear, but looking at the letter and feeling the huge explosion in the Van family, he couldn"t help but shiver at the thought.
Now, for the first time, he started fearing for his life and that is due to a young man in his teens.
That night, many big shots in the city got a wakeup call from Sam.