After greeting Secretary Mia, Minos headed to his office, with young Ruth following right behind. He intended to see butler Dillian again and discuss distributing the various items he had purchased on Stone Island.
Minos entered his office and found a middle-aged man drinking spiritual tea there.
The man was comfortably seated with his legs crossed on one of the sofas in this room while he held a cup in one hand and some papers in the other.
Noticing that someone had entered the room, Butler Dillian slowly turned to look who it was and upon seeing the person, he greeted, "Oh! Young master, you are already back. Haha, it looks like things went very well during your trip!"
He also noticed a young woman with long black hair behind Minos and extended his greetings, "Ahm, Ms. Ruth is also here. I hope it didn't take long for you two to meet."
Ruth confirmed nodding at Dillian, "Mm, we met soon after I arrived in the capital of Stone Island, Old Stone."
She had been here for over a month, so the butler was curious to see if everything had worked out.
The butler then smiled for a moment and asked Minos with a solemn face, "So? How were things on Stone Island? Did the young master face any setbacks?"
"Mm, I might have had some problems along the way…" Minos then started to describe all the events that occurred since he and his group had left Dry City.
He didn't hide anything from Dillian and talked about everything that had transpired during their trip. He spoke from the coyote attack on their way to Maritime City, the auction, the ambush which he had set up against Darell's group, to his problems faced with the Nash family. Of course, he didn't talk about his fun and romantic encounter with beautiful Elena since it wasn't crucial for Dillian to know.
While he continued to listen, complicated expressions started to form on Dillian's face. He had finally realized who was behind the death of his friend and former master, Albert Stuart, "So, it was those miserable ones from the Silva family…" Dillian let out a sigh after understanding the situation.
Meanwhile, Ruth was impressed with how many problems were around this young man with whom she had been traveling for so many days, 'He truly dares to kill people from such important families in this place...'
Minos and Dillian didn't care about Ruth's presence in the room since she was neither of power in the region nor an enemy but a disciple of Minos' mother.
So, even if Mrs. Maisie was absent, Ruth wouldn't try to harm her master's son on purpose, this Minos and Dillian knew well. That way, the two had no reason not to speak openly in front of beautiful Ruth.
"However, not everything that happened is bad. Now we at least know who our enemy is. And the young master shouldn't be bothered by the Silva family being able to track you down in the short term. That should take a long time before they could even find the young master's exact identity."
Butler Dillian changed the subject and said with a smile on his face, "Haha, but this problem with young master Luke has truly benefited us. Who knew the Nash family would be so generous to us?"
Minos nodded and said with a chuckle, "Mm, because of him, I came back with even more medium-grade crystals than I had when leaving for Stone Island."
But then Minos continued with a serious face.
"Anyway, how are the forces of the Black Plain Army? How many of them have already reached the level 39 bottleneck?"
"Well, the number is not much. At the moment, we only have 15 more soldiers who can reach level 40 after absorbing the power from the pills that the young master bought.
However, we have many who are at level 29. Around 60 soldiers are at this level and if we help them level up with spiritual pills, they will be able to advance a few months earlier," Dillian suggested.
"Mm, that's not too bad since most of our soldiers are in the middle of their respective stages. This also gives us some time to acquire more resources. If they were all ready to receive these pills, we would not be able to deliver such a high demand," Minos said while handing a spatial ring to Dillian.
"Here, Grandpa Dillian, you can distribute these pills and spiritual weapons to the highest-ranking soldiers who have met the requirements for them."
"Okay, I'll do this as soon as possible... Ah! I almost forgot, during the period that the young master was on Stone Island, our city's population continued to grow, and we now have 47,583 inhabitants in the city. However, all of these people came from the vicinity of Dry City," Dillian said, remembering this critical fact.
"Oh! That is good. Almost the entire population of the Black Plain has already migrated to our city with the exception of Maritime City, which cannot be considered as part of our sovereignty area... In a short time, there will be no more people living outside Dry City in our region," Minos said without much expression.
With the increase in population, they could continue to increase the area of plantations under their control. And even if it was a slight population increase, it was still enough for the next six months. But after that, if Minos wanted to expand even further, then he would have no choice but to attract people from elsewhere.
"Don't worry about it now, Grandpa Dillian. We have already found a place from where we can attract more labor for our Dry City," Minos said with a light smile remembering what Elena had told him about.
"Oh! But how are we going to do that?" Dillian asked curiously.
"Well, we're going to do it like this…" Minos started to tell the information he had obtained from Elena and Elen. This was something that Dillian did not know either, since until now, he was just someone who was responsible for the affairs of the late General Albert.
So, he didn't have as much information about what was going on outside the Brown Kingdom. All he knew was basic knowledge of the other territories, just as anyone at his age would know. But he did not know the details of what was happening in such an unimportant region, such as the border between the Kingdom of Waves and Black Plain.
"Tsk, this does indeed seem to be the best alternative for the young master. With this, at least we are not going to draw the attention of the great powers of the region," Dillian agreed with what he had heard from Minos so far.
Minos then sighed and continued, "Anyway, changing the subject, how is the progress of those two youths?"
"Very good! Alison reached level 22 while the young master was away. As for the boy, Lee, he reached level 23," Dillian replied with a wide smile.
Although these two were not as swift as Minos, they were being nurtured as the priorities of Dry City's forces. For this reason, their cultivation speeds could be considered very good.
"Mm, this is good. Then bring them back. I will send them to their 'special' training soon. They've had more than a month to stay with their families. Now it's time for them to train even harder," Minos finished.
After that, each of the three people went their separate ways. Dillian went to resolve the matters concerning the distribution of the resources which he had received from Minos. While the young Stuart went to his residence, and Ruth went to find a place for her to rest.
Not long after, Minos entered his Spatial Kingdom, which he could not access much during his trip to Stone Island. After all, besides Dillian and the two youths, no one else knew about it, so he couldn't just disappear from nowhere and come back out of the blue.
Such an anomaly could create suspicion among those around him!
…
And thus, a month quickly passed.
During this time, Minos had given orders for preparations to be made for an attack mission at the border region of the Black Plain with the Kingdom of Waves. He also wanted to spend that time cultivating so as to minimize the risk during this expedition.
Despite hearing from Elen that the strength of that place was only slightly higher than that of the Black Plain, it was of no harm for them to be cautious.
And in the meantime, Minos had reached level 35!
After this return, Minos had spent most of his time within the Spatial Kingdom, so such an improvement was already to be expected.
In addition, in that period, all the soldiers who had reached their bottlenecks in cultivation had already advanced and learned new battle techniques, with some of them even receiving new spiritual weapons and were already getting used to them.
A few changes had also occurred for ordinary people in Dry City.
Now, there was another spiritual gathering array in operation in the city, which was in fact, even better than the other four that were being used here for over a year.
Resulting in a considerable increase in the area that was covered by these arrays, following the expansion of the city's territory.
But that was not all, with the arrival of the alchemist Davis, the ordinary population of the city was now excited about the possibility of being able to increase their cultivation speeds with the help of the spiritual pills that were sold by him.