Chapter 47: Looking for Mixed Bloodlines Slaves Part 1
After confirming his choice with Edward, Kael approached the beastmen so that he could further confirm his assumption.
"Come here!" Kael beckoned for the beastman to come closer.
Seeing that he has been chosen, the beastman could only approach his new master.
"Now that I'm observing you closely, I can see you'll have a good future someday!" Kael chuckled. He could finally confirm a hundred percent that the beastman indeed possesses a bit of the drake bloodline.
Along with the discovery of the beastmen with a small drake bloodline, he realized a very important information that he had forgotten to take into consideration, especially as someone who came from the future.
The existence of a powerful bloodline, even the smallest amount, on a beastman, is something that could tremendously affect their growth potential.
If he can take advantage of that and he could successfully gather a bunch of beastmen with even the slightest powerful bloodline, he could easily create one of the greatest armies in Avalon.
At this stage, where barely anyone from Noverra has entered Avalon, there should still be plenty of not-yet-discovered slaves that secretly possess a powerful bloodline.
Kael couldn't help smiling in excitement. At the same time, his blood started boiling, motivated by the thought of recruiting all those soldiers with great potential.
Right now, he could finally understand why those people who employ slaves prefer them. It's because it's like a gamble. If one could get a slave with a good bloodline, they would instantly get themselves a powerful soldier who would never betray them.
"You're looking so weird right now," Lawrence interrupted with a cough at the side.
"Don't mind me, I just thought of something really great," Kael muttered before telling the beastman. "Follow me."
Kael approached Edward again, and the latter asked. "Have you decided on the other slaves?"
"For now, I'll only pick this one. I'll come to the Sylvaris Kingdom later to pick more slaves, would that be okay?"
"Sure thing, boss!" Edward doesn't see any problem with that. That's also what he prefers.
With that being said, Edward left along with all of his men and everything else they had brought with them.
After making sure Edward had left, Jayem, along with Roderick, appeared behind Kael and Lawrence.
"This was your plan, right?" Kael could already guess Jayem's plan.
"That's right," Jayem nodded. "I figured that since just four slaves wouldn't be enough to achieve our first step in the plan, I needed to find a way to increase them without spending any money."
"Have you thought about the risk even for a bit?!" Lawrence reprimanded.
"I didn't. But I still made sure to clean any evidence. Though I totally didn't expect Edward to also cover up for me." Jayem scratched his cheeks.
"You're lucky this time," Kael kindly reminded. "If it were someone who is slightly more shrewd, they would not have hesitated to pin the blame on our group."
"I naturally have some idea of Edward's character. That was why I decided to do it in the first place," Jayem was certain of his own assumption. After their small interaction with Edward back then, he could already presume that the latter was the type to repay a favor with another favor.
Kael nodded in agreement.
If Edward were truly the type of person who would backstab someone who helped him, then he would have done something to intimidate or prevent his competitors from continuing to suppress him and harass his customers a long time ago.
From Edward's reaction alone, one could already surmise that he at least had some principles and would not break a law unless absolutely necessary, which is also similar to Jayem.
"Anyways, let's start preparing to visit the Sylvaris Kingdom," Kael prompted everyone.
"By the way, why did you insist on increasing our discount for Edward's business? Isn't his business bad right now?" Jayem couldn't help asking. "I understand decreasing the number of slaves, since you weren't favorable with the idea of having slaves in the first place. But I'm just confused about the discount. It's as if you're certain his business will really explode in fame in the future."
"One thing you don't know about me is that I like to gamble. Deciding to increase our discount was just me betting on the chance that once Edward's business picks up the pace, we'll stand to benefit a lot from it at the same time." Kael explained with a convincing lie. Well, it's not technically a lie when he's indeed that type of person.
"I can see that," Lawrence could confirm that. "Besides, an important law in business is that if someone pays the favor they owe you, never ask for too much. In that way, if they're sensible enough, they will still feel like they owe you something."
"That shouldn't be the only reason, right?" Jayem still wasn't convinced.
"Yeah." Lawrence agreed. "I believe the most important point here is that if we receive too much, then it will raise a lot of suspicion on our side once an investigation begins, especially if you consider the fact that Edward immediately came here after a bunch of his competitors died."
"In other words, Edward is still considering a plan of throwing us off the bus once the situation becomes bad for him?"
"I'm afraid so," Lawrence could only hope that the worst-case scenario wouldn't happen. That was why he never trusted Edward even the slightest.
"That's not necessarily the case. It could also just be that Edward is telling us that he is joining our bus. If an investigation starts, he couldn't just throw us away, because he has to crash the bus by doing so, affecting everyone." Kael said in a remark before hurrying everyone to start preparing.
As soon as they were done with their breakfast and other preparation, including Kael finishing mana binding the new slave, the group immediately departed the camp, leaving Nyvarr and the three members of the mouse race to guard the place.
Kael specifically decided to bring the new beastman, whose name is Grol, with them so that they could get to know the beastman more. He was particularly curious about the beastman's potential, so he's planning on finding a way for the latter to showcase his full power later on.
Arriving at the southern gate of the Sylvaris Kingdom, Kael's group greeted Elandor before continuing their way in the direction of the tavern they exited from last time. This time, they are planning on using the hidden entrance to get to Edward's podium. In that way, they wouldn't have to bother with any potential trouble along the way.
The bartender already recognized Kael's group from the last time, so he didn't hesitate to let the group through the secret passage. In his defense, only customers whom Edward considered to be important could get access to this secret passage.
Soon, they arrived at Edward's podium.
As expected, Edward was still not receiving any customers even after the death of those competitors who were giving his potential customers trouble whenever they approached.
This simply proves Kael's words before that Edward offended someone that the latter shouldn't have.
"Edward!" Kael called out.
"Oh, Kael! You're here!" Edward hurriedly approached. "If I knew you'd follow us soon after, I would have just waited for you."
"I couldn't trouble you with waiting for us. Besides, we also have other matters to attend to." Kael glanced at the few sacks that his group was carrying, which were all full of materials that they were planning on selling to stores that needed them.
"I see," Edward was quick to understand. Unfortunately, he wasn't in the business of buying those materials, because if he were, he would have taken the initiative to buy all of them. But there's another important matter he could help Kael's group. "Let me lead you to the Pit."
"Pit?" Lawrence looks at Kael.
"It's his own term for a place where he stores all of his slaves. They apparently don't like calling it a storage room or something that doesn't sound grim and cool." Kael couldn't help rolling his eyes.
"Now I'm starting to regret doing this man a favor." Jayem felt sick knowing that.
"It was unnecessary, to be honest," Kael didn't bother hiding his own opinion.
"True! We could have just slowly gotten more funds to buy more slaves if needed." Lawrence agreed.
"It still helps!" Jayem scoffed and no longer bothered continuing to speak.
Not long after, Kael's group arrived at a small tent behind Edward's podium.
It was a magic tent that used vines and wood as material to camouflage itself with the surrounding background, which was why they didn't notice until now that there's actually a small tent behind the podium where Edward stores all of the cages that imprison a lot of the slaves he's currently selling.
The magic tent might have looked small outside, but once they stepped inside, the space around them instantly expanded to the same size as a warehouse.
Arriving inside, Kael's group, excluding Grol, who had been imprisoned in this place for a long time, were surprised by the number of cages around them.
There weren't just hundreds of cages.
It was more or fewer than ten thousand cages.
Not to mention each cage stores three to five slaves, making the number of slaves way beyond the number of cages.