The Rise of the Black Plain

"Friends of Dry City, my name is Todd Cohen. I am here to meet the local ruler, Minos." So the young blond man said loud and clear as a group of soldiers surrounded his carriage.

After only a few seconds since Todd's carriage had arrived close enough to the northern entrance of the dome, a dozen soldiers from that post had quickly met his group.

Upon hearing this, the leader of that group of soldiers stared at Todd and asked. "Can you prove this?"

"Sure, I have this with me..." Todd then explained a few things while taking a large gold sheet out of his spatial ring.

This young man had rushed to Dry City shortly after discovering the news that was circulating throughout the northern region of the Central Continent regarding his trading ally. After all, if Minos was found, it could significantly damage his relationship with the Black Plain!

As such, this young man from the Cohen family was extremely worried about this.

In fact, he was so stressed that he had not been sleeping well since he had gotten his hands on such edition of the Northern News. That is, he had been living a perfect life for a merchant of his age, but all of a sudden, some bastard decides to try to screw up his life.

It indeed was something that could make anyone sleep-deprived!

That's why he had rushed to Dry City to talk face-to-face with Minos about this matter and maybe think of a way to counterattack those responsible for this.

Anyway, after those soldiers saw the Soul Contract that Todd and Minos had signed, they immediately put away their weapons. Then, they allowed the young blond's carriage to enter Dry City.

The borders of that city were closed to people as strong as those three individuals. However, since Todd had a good relationship with the army, there was no need for the soldiers to prevent such a person from entering the territory protected by the dome.

Hence, quickly Todd and his two traveling companions entered the Dry City.

...

As they passed through the streets, Todd's carriage eventually arrived in front of the government mansion, where they could see a prosperous city center, almost as bustling as the central parts of large regional cities.

"Unbelievable! This place has truly developed!" The Spiritual King who was escorting Todd said in a low voice while he had an expression of curiosity on his face.

The Cohen family had assigned such a person to protect young Todd after this young man brought millions of low-grade crystals to that noble house.

And even if it was a dishonor for most Spiritual Kings to become bodyguards, in this case in question, that was quite different. After all, this young man was behind a business that had the potential to reach nine digits in the future!

Thus, protecting someone like this was of great importance to the power behind Todd. Consequently, he had a bodyguard with a strength that would usually only be seen in the bodyguards of regional princes.

Todd then smiled and said. "This place has gotten so much better! I can hardly believe that this is the same city I spent time in after the Spiritual Tournament... Amazing."

Gulp!

"Not only that, young Todd. Feel this. There are at least nine auras of Spiritual Kings in this city! And the strongest of them is already at level 57, the same level as the patriarch!" The bodyguard said in shock, right after sensing the spiritual fluctuations of the Miller family nobles and the other individuals at that stage, who had been living in Dry City now.

"What?" Todd opened his eyes in disbelief as he spread his spiritual sense in all directions and tried to understand what such a person had just uttered.

'This place can no longer be underestimated! Now the Black Plain already has strength as great as a medium-sized family, like House Cohen!' So he thought to himself just before he started walking again, heading towards the interior of that mansion.

...

After a while, Minos was notified of Todd's arrival by Mia. Shortly after that, this business partner of his entered the office in which the local sovereign was working.

In Minos' office, this young man was sitting in an armchair next to Ruth, who at the moment was not training at headquarters. On the contrary, she accompanied her boyfriend on his official business, which she enjoyed and occasionally did.

On the other hand, Abby was also there since they had just returned from lunch, and she still had some time before her afternoon training.

Anyway, upon entering that office and seeing those two women and Minos, Todd immediately recognized both of them, as he sat down on the sofa there, and his bodyguard stood beside him.

"I didn't expect to find Miss Ruth here." He said politely, as he remembered that he had met this young woman during the Spiritual Tournament and learned that she came from the Flaming Empire. As such, he had to be very polite to her, regardless of what relationship she had with Minos.

"One of the empire's powers by any chance..." He was asking that, but Minos interrupted this blond's speech. "No, Todd. I have no relation to powers outside our region. Ruth comes from the Flaming Empire, but she is here because she is my woman."

"So, that's it..." He muttered as he looked away and saw Abby and then turned his view back to Ruth. 'Ah, how envious... And besides having beauties, this guy is almost at level 50!'

After thinking about that for a split second, Todd suddenly put that subject aside and brought up what mattered. "Cough! Cough! Uh, leaving that matter aside, Minos, this time I've come to visit your town to settle some matters at my family's store and also bring you some bad news."

"Bad news?" Minos frowned his eyebrows upon hearing this. "Recently many problems have been coming to my town... Tell me what this one is."

Todd then looked at young Stuart and removed the newspaper from his spatial ring. "The entire region already knows about the fact that you didn't go to one of the Flaming Empire sects!" He said at once as he dropped the newspaper into Minos' lap.

Hearing this, those three people in that office were surprised for a moment as they all began to look at the latest edition of the Northern News.

'He did not go!'

The three of them read the news story's title before finally reading the entire contents of that article.

As they finished doing so, of those three people, Ruth was the only one who looked a little worried, while Minos was smiling slightly.

He had not found out about this before, so he was a bit surprised. That is for two reasons. First, because this kind of newspaper would take some time to reach Dry City, after all, not many people around here were interested in this kind of service before... So, it was naturally more time-consuming for it to reach this place.

Second, even if Elen or Elena had read such news, it would take them longer to send it to Minos than the time since the publication of this edition.  That is because they communicated via the Nash family boats that went from time to time to the naval base of this young man's army.

However, this did not happen every day!

After all, although there was almost constant food production these days, these products were not transported weekly. And precisely because of this, some messages between the forces of Minos and Elen could take more than a month to get from one side to the other.

Hence, Todd had had the privilege of being the first to tell Minos this.

This young blond man then looked at Minos without understanding why this sovereign was smiling. "Minos, you don't think that's bad?"

"Hehe, Todd, you brought news that in the short term is not so bad!"

"Huh?" Todd and Ruth made a similar sound simultaneously.

"Don't you guys get it? Hehe, this is something that has the potential to inflame the situation in our region even further... As such, some powers will make mistakes that will give us opportunities!"

"And maybe one of these powers is my enemy!"