A man in his forties was pushing his cart of vegetables, through a residence street, it was his normal routine, he would go door to door selling these vegetables. He pushed the cart and felt like someone was following him. Turning back, he saw nothing. But when he turned back again to continue his job, what awaited him was a blitz attack with a wooden log. All he saw was the flash of a wooden log, then everything went dark.

Scenes like this played out throughout the city. Although the guards were on high alert that day, it couldn’t stop the thugs from kidnapping people. Fights between these thugs erupted in many parts of the city. The two families had mobilized their private armies to help the guards, but it was of not much use. Some thugs did their job stealthily without even making a noise while others did it as loud and brutal as they could.

Many thugs and guards died in the fights that had erupted. The number of captives inside the Snake skull castle increased, many thugs brought a single man, but there were some who had captured 10 or more!

Yugimi had already converted the blue spirit stone into gold for paying these thugs and amassing weapons. He had already recalled all those were under the Snake skull banner to be in Cutthroat’s valley as he expected a movement from the big families. He also bought support from the other smaller criminal organizations to help him in this process. Right now no one would dare to take a step inside the Cutthroats valley!

Lord Yuuma had told him that some of his followers were coming, and each of them had cultivation no less than of an expert. Yugimi was delighted to know this news, there were only twenty or thirty experts in total in the Goldfair city. If he had the help of just twenty experts, he could make this city under his control.

Upon asking Yuuma about this, he agreed after thinking for a second. His reasoning was that if there is a city under his control, he could get as many test subjects as he needs and also it will give him a place to house all his future operations.

Yugimi went on to make a plan to capture the city by attacking the two families and the city hall. His plan was to have a head-on attack with the experts of Yuuma leading a pack of thugs. But Yuuma shook his head. He wanted to assassinate all the top people of the big families, taking control of them all. That way they would get maximum returns from minimum work.

Yugimi had already stopped thinking about the incident with Robert as after they got their hands on Isau. He had told them about Black Dragon clan’s involvement in it. Yugimi was certainly not ready to go up against one of the top clans of the country, at least not now.

He had already prepared a list of people whom he mustn’t touch while he was taking the city under control.

The Cutthroat’s valley was bustling with activity, carriages filled with weapons and dragging spirit cannons rode into the street. The castle of snake skulls had already rolled out all their spirit cannons to defend the castle.

Sophy stepped into the weapons store, with Robert walking behind her. She was summoned here because something strange had happened. All of their spirit cannons were sold out just now. They were all bought by different people, some by the big families and some were shady people. Their sales have been soaring through the roof for the last week. Something fishy was definitely going on. Many people even enquired about the new type of cannons that were a privileged knowledge of a few nobles.

Robert was feeling so restless sitting around in the mansion that he persuaded Sophy to take him with her here.

“Don’t sell any more cannons,” Sophy ordered to the group of employees. Old man Naoki was right, something is certainly wrong.

They nodded and went back to works. Sophy took this decision only because the store was a weapon store. Any other commodities, if they are getting higher sales it will make the owner joyful. But weapon sales increasing was the sign of troubled times. And people were even hoarding magic cannons, the trouble this time was not something small.

She wished that it was actually nothing. Usually, weapon dealers wouldn’t pray for war to stop, but although she was a weapons dealer. Although she was brought up to be a strong leader, somewhere deep in her heart, she wanted peace. She wanted a world where everyone can coexist without any trouble.

Sophy stayed in the store while Robert went back to the firing range. The building that was behind it was a warehouse and Sophy bought it to convert it into a new factory.

Robert walked into the building, there were five guards guarding the door. Sophy had handpicked these people to make sure that they were all trustworthy. Walking through the door, He entered into a large hall, lit by light orbs with pure white radiance.

There was a huge cauldron suspended by chains. It was filled with red-hot molten black metal, Then it was poured into a mold made of clay. Robert didn’t know much about these processes and thankfully he didn’t have to. The spirit cannons that were being used was good enough for copying the structure of the cannon from. The only difference was that these were made of black iron instead of the bronze.

The building was divided into two parts, separated by a wall one part was for forging the cannons while the other ground and mixed the gunpowder. The wall has been built after he debated the issue of safety for an hour with Naoki. Having red-hot metal and gunpowder together was obviously a bad idea. He was not satisfied with even the current setup and wanted to move the gunpowder unit out of the city as soon as possible. Walking through another door, he reached the storehouse.

There were 20 of the black metal cannons stored inside. Robert let out a slight smile seeing this magnificent view. There were small bags of gunpowder and a large pile of cannonballs too. Robert could already imagine an army equipped with these weapons destroying any opposition.

Coming out of the building, Sophy was already standing there outside, observing the test fire of a new cannon in the firing range.

“Boom!”

Another cannon was ready to go!

Robert walked towards Sophy who was dazed by the power of cannon, Seeing Robert was near her, she asked.

“So what do you think?”

“About the cannon? Pretty powerful huh!”,Robert answered.

“Not about the cannon stupid. About the weapon sales increasing,”Sophy asked angrily.

“That, I think some kind of war is going to happen”

“That is what I thought too, But Uncle Naoki is deducing that there's going to be a Coup d'état ”

Sophy went on to explain the two faction that was going head to head, the families, and the Cutthroat’s valley. She also explained how they won’t be in any trouble as they had the banner of Black Dragon clan. Still, Robert couldn’t understand why all these are happening now. What had changed to cause unbalance in the equilibrium of power between all these factions?

Although he loved peace times, a war was not necessarily bad, especially now that he was selling weapons.

The leaders of both large families were preparing for a war. Their top level spies within the Snake skulls had given the information that Yugimi was preparing to take over the city. There was also the rumors about a man who looked like devil incarnate was with Yugimi. They understood the fact that unless one had enough power backing them, what Yugimi was doing was a suicide. Thus rushed to buy as many weapons as they possibly can. And there was also the matter of this mysterious man who had appeared by Yugimi’s side.

A group of hundred riding atop elemental panthers suddenly slowed down seeing structures at a distance. A man made a clicking noise and his air elemental panther jumped up high. A wind blew up the cloaks of the men near him, getting about 10 meters high he floated there for a few seconds and observing the landscape before him. He landed down softly and notified the group that they had at last reached the city of Goldfair.