Unsealing Emptiness

Chapter 211: Three Rank-9?!

Every member, under the stern eyes of Haley, got back to their work after the man had run off.

“What just happened?” Oliver was the one asking questions this time. He hadn’t been in the Neutral Lands for long, so he wasn’t aware of many things, including the widely known nature of the top brass of the Mercenary Guild.

“He was lying, and didn’t have any courage to force it on us in front of Young Master,” Irvin replied, watching Ozul walk back to the stairs.

“How did you know he was lying?” Oliver questioned. From what he had seen, it only looked like the mustache man was scared because of Ozul’s presence.

“You haven’t been here for long, Oliver. You might not know, but the leaders of the mercenary guild are people who would never go out of their way to trouble others without any reason. The Church’s ideals can be doubted, but not theirs,” Irvin explained thoroughly.

It was also the reason for them to be able to set up their branches everywhere. None of the local authorities doubted their intentions.

“Why is that?” Oliver knew that the mercenary guild was a neutral party, but it was surprising that they were famous to this extent for being neutral.

.....

“It’s because they had numerous chances to sweep in and seize more than half of the Neutral Lands many times in history. However, they never acted once and clearly stated that they wouldn’t ever do so in the future either. Although some remain skeptical, the truth is before everyone’s eyes,” Irvin answered.

Oliver was again stupefied, “They are so powerful!?” His surprise wasn’t unfounded. To seize more than half of the Neutral Lands would require them to be able to hold off against multiple Rank-9 Mages at the same time!

“Of course. They have 3 Rank-9 Mages, you know,” Irvin said, not at all worried since he believed that they were truly neutral as well.

‘...3 Rank-9 Mages...’ these words rang out in Oliver’s mind. Sure enough, 3 Rank-9 Mages were more than enough to hold against multiple factions at the same time.

He stayed silent for a few moments, digesting this information. After a while, he asked, “Then why would this guy come here to cause trouble?” If those three Rank-9 Mages were truly known to be neutral, wouldn’t something like this tarnish their reputation?

“Well, I am not sure either. All I can guess is that he must be some new blood. Becoming too full of himself, he thought that doing something like this would make him reputed or something since he would be erasing the competition?” Irvin voiced out his guess. Oliver could only nod his head as that sounded like a possible reason.

The mercenary guild earned through missions and more than 20% of those missions were about collecting information. If some other organization appeared that solely sold information, it would definitely be a huge hit to the mercenary guild’s income.

People would rather buy information from a reliable organization rather than posting a mission for it and trusting random mercenaries with it.

Haley came back after checking up on everyone if they were back to their work. Now she was glaring at both Oliver and Irvin. Being the target of her glare, both of them didn’t waste a moment and went back to their own work. Haley was scary when angered.

. . .

Things seemed to go by smoothly after that little event. The only people present there were the organization members, so no one outside had gotten the wind of it either.

It confirmed Irvin’s guess that the mustache man had indeed done that on his own. With just his own authority, he couldn’t have made any move to deter their growth. Not to mention, he was scared shitless because of Ozul.

Ozul himself wasn’t worried about it either. He knew that the person was lying when he said that he had come here on orders. Although he did expect that person to try and make things difficult for them, which he luckily didn’t.

He wasn’t afraid of the mercenary guild, but as he was right now, it was better not to make an enemy out of them.

The mercenary guild was no doubt exceptional. What he was trying to do with the Three-Eyed Strangers secretly was done by the guild publically already!

Although he would announce their neutral stand as well, they wouldn’t be so open with the world about their branches.

. . .

With the steady growth for another half a year, they had gotten their people in almost every town in the Neutral Lands.

However, it didn’t mean that they would have all the information just because people were keeping watch on the streets.

The information of real value was that within the giant organizations. Ozul wouldn’t sell that information, at least to normal people. But they first had to acquire it, and they hadn’t made any of their men infiltrate those organizations. Haley had clearly stated that they would do it only after everything else was settled, else the results of failure would bring heavy consequences.

In this period, Ozul didn’t have any interaction with Alver or Raymond. Those two knew that it could negatively impact the organization if it leaked out that Ozul was their nephew.

The statement of the Three-Eyed Strangers being neutral wouldn’t hold any worth once his relation with them got out.

Raymond’s men from the Order of Dusk had come to ask for the general situation around a few areas that they had their branches in, but these men were professionals and made sure to keep their tracks hidden.

The people Haley had started recruiting were all experts even with their minimal strength. She also had hired quite a few people who weren’t asked to roam around the streets all day. Their potential would be wasted on that.

The thing that delighted every member of the organization was that none of the big shots in the Neutral City had any problem with them expanding. Many of them were probably aware of the people on the streets, but they didn’t care much about that.

It was as if they had all tacitly agreed for such an organization, all taking into account their own benefits.

Even knowing the general condition of every part of the continent, known to the ordinary people on the streets of those regions, was enough for these powerful groups.

These groups usually had to waste many resources to be kept up to date with the rest of the continent. Everyone wanted to ease their own expenditure.

The only thing that made Oliver, Irvin, and Haley sigh in relief was that Ozul seemed to be satisfied with the progress.

With their growing popularity, many people came to join their ranks. They would first vet out anyone with the suspicion of being a spy from another organization, but it was also true that they wouldn’t be able to stop every spy; many of them would surely get in.

For that reason, they had already started using oath artifacts. Anyone who was accepted or promoted to a position privy to the private details was required to take an oath first. If the person refused, they would kill him that very second.

On the topic of spies, Raymond had figured out the Church’s spy in his organization. It turned out to be the person behind the counter on the very first floor.

He had gone missing only a day after Ozul had first visited them. They had later found his dead body. At that time, Raymond hadn’t thought much of it, considering it an attack from one of the enemy organizations.

After Ozul informed him of his incident, Raymond had searched everything and the only person that remained unquestioned was the dead old guy.

The Church had been way ahead of them. They didn’t hesitate to kill their own spy to cover their traces.

Raymond had been enraged by this move of theirs, but he couldn’t do anything about it, which frustrated him even more. It caused him to take excessive measures to prevent something like this from ever happening in the future.

The only thing that made his anger subside a little was the ever-increasing growth of his nephew’s organization. Together with that, Ozul himself was getting quite popular among the prominent organizations.

These influential factions had realized that there was another Rank-9 Mage behind this newly created organization named Three-Eyed Strangers. However, to their surprise, they couldn’t find anything about this person.

Almost every prominent organization in the continent would keep track of the Rank-9 Mages, but no one knew about him. In the end, they could only assume that he was someone who had recently advanced to Rank-9.

After the rumors of him being young, many of the bigshots had tried to send him invitations in hopes of getting a Rank-9 ally. They thought that if he was really young and naive, it would be easy to bring him to their side.

However, Ozul declined all of them. He didn’t even bother to accept their invitation, much less an audience with him.

Ozul decided to enjoy this free time as much as possible. It had been a while since he just stopped everything only to laze around all day, and at night, stare at the sky with a blank look on his face.

Even at this time, he laid on top of the tower, feeling the winds brush past his face, he stared at the stars filled sky.

“I guess it’s time for the rest of the continent...” Ozul muttered. According to Haley, they had tied up everything in the Neutral Lands as well.