"What have you found out?" Marcus asked two of his men who had been in Martell Village recently.
Meanwhile, he smiled, hoping to find something compromising against Vicente Fuller that he could use against the bold young man who had met with Shelby Staples when he shouldn't have.
Marcus wasn't suspicious of Vicente and Cesar's relationship. But frustrated by the level of power the Mazzanti family leader had demonstrated this morning, he could only focus his anger on striking this other fool who had challenged him.
"Not very relevant, young master. This Vicente Fuller seems to be just an unfortunate young man." One of the two men said, both with rather complicated expressions.
Neither of them cared much about the situation of people not related to them. But they felt a little bad when they found out the truth about Vicente, especially since they knew that Marcus was unlikely to leave the young man alone.
"Vicente Fuller is the young son of a merchant who made his own fortune by reselling food from the less wealthy nobles of Scott Province.
His family wasn't particularly rich, but they weren't poor either. They weren't talented or unique, nor did they have significant connections to the powers that be in the province."
Vicente's father had some friends among the lower nobility of the province. But the Barons were of little importance, and he had too few contacts among them to be considered important.
Hearing this, Marcus laughed, noting that the fool who had challenged him by finding his woman alone had no support.
"So he only has this small family on his side?"
"No, he has no one." The other man said. "A few years ago, on a family trip, Vincent Fuller lost his mother in a confrontation of experts. After that, his sister was kidnapped by an unorthodox cult, and then his father died.
Today, the Fuller family consists of him, his 8-year-old younger sister, and a few friends and subordinates who have joined him recently. If there's one low-level Acolyte on his side, that's a lot."
Marcus heard this and did not feel sorry for Vicente. This young man's miserable life would not exempt him from being punished for getting close to another man's fiancée!
"Is that all? Is there nothing else remarkable about him?" Marcus asked, feeling that with this data, he already had some of Vice's weaknesses to target and punish him for getting involved with Shelby.
"There is nothing more, young master." The two men said at the same time.
Casey had done his job in time before these men reached people who knew about Vicente's guns beforehand. So, none of the Symons family investigators had discovered the connection between Vice and Cesar.
In the dark, Marcus couldn't use this investigation to hurt Cesar.
But he wanted to target Vicente.
He gave his orders, eager to see the guy begging at his door, promising never to speak to Shelby again. "All right, here's what I want you to do..."
...
After a few hours, Vicente finally left the Scarlet Syndicate headquarters after making a deal with Brody Wright to hand over one of his weapons projects.
In the end, Brody had accepted that Vice would train some of his men to produce the weapons and that the ammunition would be produced exclusively by the Mazzanti family. But in return, that family would have to give 10% more of the profits to the Scarlet Syndicate faction.
From Vicente's point of view, this was a terrible deal!
However, as the weaker party, he had to sign such an agreement, or else he might not have even returned from that dinner.
But Vicente wasn't going to stand idly by!
As he walked home, he thought about everything he had discussed with the leader of the Scarlet Syndicate.
'That bastard! For now, I'll have to do as he says, but when I get stronger, I'll make him pay for forcing me repeatedly!'
The leader of the Scarlet Syndicate had already forced Vicente to join his group before, which had started the whole mess with Defiant Tyranny. Now, he was forcing Vice to hand over a model of his firearms, which could disrupt some of the young Fuller's future plans.
With all this in mind, Vicente was more determined than ever to bring all these problems back to Brody Wright in the future.
'I'll walk in the line and obey you as long as I'm weak and need stability for my men and me to hunt magic pentagrams. As soon as the situation changes, I'll deal with you!' He thought as he saw the Mazzanti estate in the distance and headed home to return to training and upgrading his group's weapons.
'Since you will have my weapons, I must take command of your group!'
...
Another day would end for Millfall, and a new day would begin.
After a night of hard work, Vicente would finish upgrading another batch of his family's weapons, reaching 75% progress on the 50 weapons he had at his disposal earlier.
Also, after training a little each time he was exhausted, even with the magic support items, Vicente had improved his mana density a little more and was about to advance to level 1!
With over 93% of the energy a Senior Apprentice could accumulate before reaching the bottleneck between the 1st and 2nd magic stages, he was very close to advancing and becoming an Acolyte.
But this time, he wouldn't use external items to get a head start. With the situation in Millfall becoming less chaotic for his family, he wasn't in such a hurry to seek artificial resources to increase his strength.
Considering where he was and how his people needed those resources more than he did, Vice didn't intend to spend on resources for himself in the short term.
As his group's operations expanded, he would soon need more people in this city, which meant more people to feed.
With this in mind, he took the day off to upgrade his group's weapons and finally try to advance to the next level!
Shortly after dawn, he would stop for coffee and give his men a few orders before heading back to the training room in the basement of the building.
He was aware that Rory had had a good meeting with Lukas' associates the night before and about the possibility of robbing the Irwin family. But he left those matters for the next day.
There was nothing more important to this young man looking to the future than his time in seclusion.
'Time to see what lies beyond...' Vicente thought to himself as he closed his eyes once more and began to meditate.
