Old Stone

Five days passed in the blink of an eye, and now, Minos and his group were only a few hours away from the capital of Stone Island, Old Stone.

During those days, Minos had been busy counting all his gains from the beginning of this trip until now and making plans for how to spend his tens of thousands of crystals of low-grade and also the medium-grade crystals which he had found from Darell's spatial ring.

By Minos' accounts, he had about 400,000 low-grade crystals and 500 medium-grade crystals. With this much amount with him, he intended to buy about 300 pills of grade-1, and device them into three equal parts, each containing low-level, medium-level, and high-level pills.

As for grade-2 pills, Minos knew that they were just too expensive for them right now, besides it would take a few years before the soldiers of the Black Plain Army would even need such a resource. 

Implying, normally the pills of this grade are sold in exchange for medium-grade crystals, as well as spiritual weapons and the same goes for arrays that were in this grade.

Minos also planned to buy about 120 grade-1 spiritual weapons and pills, which would be divided into three parts. 

The reason why Minos was buying these low, and medium-level weapons and pills was that he wanted them to supply and also speed up the cultivation of the recently recruited youths in the Black Plain Army.

There was a petty number of spiritual weapons in the Black Plain and even among those weapons most of them would either be defective or just too old to be used. As for the pills, it would aid the 300 soldiers to advance further in their cultivation.

Before starting his journey to the Stone Island, Minos had already intended to spend almost all of his earned crystals. But the turn of events had helped him to get more resources for his region. Even so, he didn't plan on saving them and wanted to use those crystals on grade-1 weapons and pills, leaving only the medium-grade crystals for purchasing a low-level grade-2 spiritual gathering array.

Such an array would be ten times more potent than a  high-level grade-1 array, just like the ones that Dry City had been given from merchant Elen Nash. 

Moreover, with a grade-2 array, Minos could also cover an area of a million square meters, resulting in an increase in the area with more dense spiritual energy within Dry City!

This spiritual array also had an efficiency of 26%, which was already much better than Minos' old arrays, which could only offer an efficiency of only 20%.

Minos only hoped that these investments would help Black Plain's strength to increase by an entire step.

He also planned to start drawing people from the various impoverished regions, such as those bordering the Black Plain with the Kingdom of Waves and the Cromwell Kingdom.

After all, the current population of the Plain Black was only 50,000 inhabitants, and about more than 40,000 of them were already living in Dry City. With such numbers, Minos knew that it would not be long before the city would have to face a problem with the labor supply.

And according to his estimate, it would not take more than six months for the entire unemployed adult population of the Black Plain to be working in agriculture or the Black Plain Army, thus leaving room for many other things.

Therefore, if he were to not encourage immigration in his territories, there was a possibility that the city would not be able to grow.

'This is truly a headache. I have to talk to Miss Elen about this. Maybe she could have a way out for me.' Minos thought, gazing over the horizon through his carriage window.

In the Spiritual World, it was not uncommon to find slaves and businesses which specialized in the commercialization of captives to be noticed, but the numbers of such groups were relatively small due to the absence of any major wars in this region of the Central Continent for a long time.

Of course, even if there would always be some conflicts between noble and smaller families, the scale of such events did not reach such alarming numbers that would result in the appearance of millions of slaves at once.

However, even if these groups were numerous, Minos would not have been interested in this type of labor. Even if someone bought slaves and treated them well and even freed them later on, these former captives would never be happy. Though many of them might even be grateful for such a gesture, they would still crave for their own lives, perhaps somewhere else.

Actually, the number of people who would be willing to give up their newly recovered freedom to stay and help their liberators was quite small. After all, the ones who have experienced would have learned to be skeptical in such a situation and try to recover what they were forced to give up due to slavery.

Besides, Minos himself was also not in a favor of this type of service.

Buying a slave and then freeing them was not really a way to help fight this system, but on the contrary, by purchasing slaves, one would only be an aid to strengthen this type of market!

That was Minos' belief!

As for helping these groups… well… Minos lacked the strength to do so, and even more importantly, he didn't think that he was a good person to the point that he would be willing to give up his interests just for helping some strangers.

He might even do something about it, as long as it didn't bring him harm…

…

Time passed, and the silhouette of the Old Stone city could be seen appearing on the horizon from the group of carriages carrying Minos and his group. 

Despite the long distance from their current position, the group could still clearly see the vastness of the city. According to the information that Minos was provided with, this city comprised a population of a boastful number of more than 6 million!

In fact, that number was almost twice as large as the population of the capital of the Brown Kingdom, the City of the Setting Sun, which didn't exceed 3.1 million residents.

This even further demonstrated the financial difference between the two states despite one of them being the capital and the other but a region. 

This was what made Stone Island one of the most influential regions near the north of the Central Continent, while the Brown Kingdom could only be an average influence.

However, despite the disparities in influence and wealth of any party, the powers in these states were considered equivalent. Not only that, Stone Island had many non-warrior specialists, while the Brown Kingdom had many warriors but lacked support professionals by a great number.

That also explained the relative peace between the top powers of both the regions as the two had equivalent powers and also needed each other to pursue their goals.

After a while, Minos and his group arrived at the southeast entrance of Old Stone city.

Here many other carriages were entering and leaving through this entrance to the city, which were pulled by several spiritual beasts.

It was even possible to see many 3rd and 4th rank beasts and some were even at 5th. It was indeed an image that Minos had not seen even back when he lived in the City of the Setting Sun. After all, while there were numerous beasts of the same level in his old city, still it was not common to see them on the streets.

As Minos' carriage continued to slowly drive through the streets of Old Stone, he could see numerous multistory buildings throughout the city. Not only that, but the city also had uneven and mountainous terrain, which only made some of these buildings stand out even more.

Such a sight would give one the impression of the beautiful landscape that could be seen from these places.

At that moment, Sergeant Pyke, who was standing next to Minos, uttered in a low voice and a thoughtful expression, "The spiritual energy here is much denser than in the city of Portland. Amazing!"

Hearing that, Minos smiled and replied, "This is normal in this city as there must be some array masters of grade-2. So, with their presence, the city certainly has quite a lot of spiritual gathering arrays in operation."

Minos then continued while enjoying the view of the city. "We are going to look for the Hotel Olson in Old Stone. Ask someone for directions."

Getting out of the carriage, Pyke looked around for directions to Olson  Hotel which would be in the capital of Stone Island.

It didn't take long for them to find the directions and the group had also arrived at the hotel and checked in. The night was just starting when they settled into their rooms. Minos then thought, 'I will look for Ms. Elen tomorrow.'

He then threw himself on the bed after taking a refreshing hot shower. 'Mnn, even though I don't really need to sleep as much as before, I still love doing it…'

…

While Minos was peacefully sleeping at the Olson Hotel in Old Stone, a giant eagle that was in the 4th stage was approaching the capital of Stone Island.

This eagle had completely white feathers and a large, sharp yellow beak.

On top of this enormous beast sat a young girl with a cute appearance yet a dull look on her face.

This was Ruth Miles, the young disciple of Minos' mother who had traveled as quickly as she could from the Maritime City to Portland and then came straight here.

And, though she had stopped to visit some places, Ruth had arrived rather quickly because of her 4th stage spiritual beast that was a flying type and also a lot faster than the terrestrial beasts.

'I hope that ungrateful Minos has already arrived here. Otherwise, I will be forced to wait for him...' Ruth thought as she yawned slowly.

"White, let's go down and find a place for me to rest in this city," Ruth spoke as she rubbed her hands around the giant eagle's neck.