Troubles Ahead

Three days later, Gotoh called Leon. Their biologists had found something. Walking down to the lab, Leon looked at the two men and one woman standing in front of a dissected snake.

The animal was almost twenty feet long and thick as a barrel. "So what have you found for me? I hope it's something we can use."

The oldest man nodded, "Yes, sir. We have dissected thirty corpses, and in all of them, we found that they have an extra area in their brain. After running some tests, we narrowed down that it is the organ responsible for how they sense nen."

Leon frowned, "Do you know how they sense nen?" The biologist started to sweat, "We have a few theories, but we are running out of resources and without more..."

Leon expected something like this, so he held up his hand, "As I said, as long as I see results, your experiments are the top priority."

The biologist sighed in relief, "Thank you, sir. I assure you that we should have everything figured out in a week."

After Leon left the lab section, he wanted to check on another project of his. Pulling up a map on his display Leon, reviewed what he called the Hunting Grounds.

They had highlighted an area in the forest and swamp where the beasts were weak enough to be hunted. Leon did allow hunters to go out into the Grounds, but he set a limit, so they didn't see any population decline.

The hunters could exchange their prey for benefits like a drop of Nitro Sake or a room in one of the apartments they had built above ground.

There were three dots out in the Hunting Grounds meaning that there were three groups of twelve.

Leon pulled up a weather map and saw that the storm system wasn't anywhere close to passing over them. But there was a benefit to it. The Mafia could send in anyone to attack them either.

That storm had become a massive problem in recent days. They couldn't ship anything out or in, and resources were starting to wear thin.

Luckily their efforts in agriculture were showing fruits. One of their main crops was barley, which was perfect for their situation. Anything grain that they didn't use, they turned into whiskey.

While it wasn't the same quality as the Sake, it would still sell at a premium. Leon looked over their current inventory.

They were starting to run low on funds, but Gotoh had drawn up a plan to sell the beast pelts on the black market along with some of the Nitro Sake.

It should cover them for a while, but they needed a sustainable economy, which meant having a private business industry and taxes.

In his short-sightedness, Leon hadn't negotiated a tax into the Hunters Association agreement, but he still had the upper hand in that deal.

Leon started to think about going public after dealing with the Mafia. Taking out such a large piece should boost their status on equal terms with the rest of the ruling powers.

Walking outside, Leon was immediately drenched by the rain, but it was more annoying than anything else. Leon ran over to the cliff wall where Ymir had dug out a cave.

Inside, Ymir was hiding from the rain, he had grown again, and Leon could sense that he was now a stage 2 primal.

Butch had taken Leon's suggestion and came up with a ranking system for primals. It went from stage one through four.

Stage one primals could destroy a small town, stage two could destroy a city, stage three could prove threatening to a continent, and stage four could threaten the world.

Leon had Ymir fed three times every day. However, the cat didn't allow anyone else near him besides Leon, so it was up to him to record any changes.

Ymir stood up and nuzzled his head against Leon, "Hey bud, my god, you stink. When's the last time you had a bath.

At the mention of a bath, Ymir retreated to the back of the cave, "Look's like we're doing this the hard way."

Leon froze Ymir and dragged him out of the cave into the rain before unfreezing him. Ymir tried to run back to the cave, but there was no escaping the rain.

Laughing at his misfortune, Leon pulled out a tape measure, "Come on, the faster I get this done, the sooner you can go back inside."

While Ymir had always been intelligent for a cat, he was getting smarter each week. Leon didn't know if it was him getting older or a side effect of him becoming a primal.

"Just another thing I have to keep in the back of my mind." Ymir had grown half an inch since the last time Leon measure him.

"I think we might have it down to a science."