The Duke’s stance was one of the huge hurdles I needed to get over. If he was adamant about maintaining power, or had an ambition for a higher power, my plans would be drastically changed. I can’t gain influence or power if the Duke doesn’t wish for me to do so afterall.

It’s lucky he’s just thinking of maintaining the family. He seems to bear an indifferent attitude to the possible transgressions that could happen with this ‘competition’. If anything, he’s supporting it. He implied that as long as no outsider knew, we could even kill the other candidates. Truly apathetic.

A few days pass peacefully. I’ve been introduced to Xun Zhou’s friends. Like him, they’re mostly not scheming individuals. The group’s not perfect though. There’s a couple of eyesores I would like to get rid of, hence I’m holding off on recruiting them for myself. I can’t offer too much currently anyway.

A week passes, and while heading home one day, Leticia reports to me that she has obtained thorough information on the Bao and Beelze family. It’s finally time for me to get to work.

I head out of the house with my usual entourage, wearing slightly more loose clothing than usual.

I shuffle past the crowded alleyway, with my guards discreetly trying to push people aside. They’re dressed in casual clothes like Leticia today, as instructed by me of course.

Before long, I reach a dilapidated storefront, with the words, “Good Merchant Store’ scribbled on it. I walk in and spot the many people gambling. There’s no ban on gambling in the Kingdom of course. However, the Kingdom takes a significant tax on gambling establishments, ranging from 20 percent to 50 percent of earnings depending on the size of the store.

Smaller stores have the larger tax, due to the reigning establishments not wanting competitors to appear. It’s simple, really. They want to have market dominance, and they bribe the officials to do it. As far as the government goes, this is almost an open secret. The gambling dens maintain their dominance and the government gets both the taxes from the establishments and even bribes and donations to ensure the continued thriving of their business. These establishments could almost be considered government run at this point.

This is the reason why smaller dens, which want to avoid the tax, operate in small alleyways like this. There’s some surface effort to ‘hide’ the place, and as long as they bribe some guards, no noble official will come to an alleyway of the commoner district anyway.

However, the Bao family’s darling son is a frequent customer here. The payout is much better here than in the noble’s district, but I’m not here to gamble. I hardly know the games they’re all playing in any case.

I look around the place, there’s 2 guards near the entrance, and another shifty-eyed man seated down at a corner desk. The man’s probably an assassin or barbarian, but if the establishment is doing well enough to welcome a merchant family’s son, they’re definitely rich enough to hire an assassin as a lookout.