My words landed and were responded with utter silence. I looked at the faces of those down below before turning to the three behind me.

“Go back now and start working,” I said after I added them as friends, “I’ll keep watching all of you. Also sign these contracts first.”

I took one loyalty contract and one channel contract for each one of them. The three couldn’t say a single word, signing the three in silence and obedience.

I watched them descend to their people down below while I had a guess about what was in their minds. It wasn’t easy to be pressured like this, especially when you had such a brilliant mind and strong personality.

Great minds had rock hard personalities, or eccentric ones. I just hoped for those weird dudes down below to control themselves better.

Or else I’d have to step in and behave in a merciless way.

Now I finished dealing with this and it was time to let these minds prove themselves to me. As for the two companies, I wasn’t that worried.

If they were half what I took them for, then they’d be smart enough to accept my offer. Or else they’d miss the opportunity of their lives.

The next step after that was for me to wait for my elites to finish controlling the city before gathering up. As they were still working, I started to consider whom to stay and whom to move out to control the area around.

Of course facing Hector wouldn’t be impossible, but it was unlikely. That paragon was smart, and I had the feeling he already realised how bad his situation was.

His forces were affected with his curse. He would be either thinking about solutions to break the curse, or he would try to find another solution.

If I was him, I’d act realistic and put the interest of my race above mine. Being arrogant and greedy wouldn’t help at all.

If he thought like that, he would keep trying to break the curse and that would affect the total performance of his race here. Of course that would be for the better for me, but I wasn’t that excited about it.

After all from my interaction with Fang and Wryly, I realised these races were like a large group of vicious sharks.

One simple sign of weakness and that weakened shark would be mercilessly eaten by his kin. I gave a deadly blow to that paragon indeed, but that would also tempt other paragons to attack and claim his territory.

It would take time, and that bastard would try to resist and fight back, but in the end new paragons would appear here to harass me.

Thinking about that gave me a crazy idea. Of course I wouldn’t seriously consider it for now, but I’d put it in my mind. If that happened… Damn! I’d be more than just a lucky human.

Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t realise that I had a big smile over my face until after the passage of a few minutes. I was surprised by myself, thinking about such a bold idea and even dared to think about many strategies for it.

“I have to be humble,” I said to myself, “at least until the right moment comes. Or else I’d just be dreaming about the impossible.”

*Flash!*

Just before I could open my channel to see what my elites were doing, a sudden appearance of a big screen in front of my face startled me.

“What the heck is that?” I looked at this dark screen that kept flashing and dimming for a few minutes. I looked into my channel, there was nothing wrong there.

I didn’t even open my channel when that screen appeared. I leant over my glaive, looking in interest and doubt towards this screen.

“Hi everyone,” just before I grew tired of seeing black screen in front of my face, a tough looking face of a young man appeared in front of my eyes.

Just seeing this face… Pale brown eyes, short and thick black hair, dark skinned muscular body, with a deep fresh scar that took almost half of his neck… It was him!

Damn me! It was him!

“I’m Ed, or you can call me by my new name, the lord of death,” he spoke in a tone I heard a lot of times before.

He was the one who established one of the three kingdoms of my human race back in my time! The lord of death, the king of torture, the nightmare of all livings… It was him! The founder of the Central kingdom, the one I was born and raised in!

“For you who don’t know me, I’m now considered one of the strongest in the entire apocalypse. No race stood a chance against me, not those arrogant Dragons, not those maniac Berserkers, and surely not those fierce Selvators…”

He spoke and after controlling my ragged emotions and disturbed mind, I realised something.

“A heroic calling?!!” It seemed I wasn’t the only one doing miracles here. In fact this dude wasn’t a surprise at all. However didn’t he shine after the tenth quest or what?

I looked at his sharp eyes, fierce face, and that horrifying scar. That scar was something he gained after fighting a group of archlords, killing two of them and wounding three before pushing them to flee for their lives.

But wait a second… Didn’t that happen in the sixteen quest? I looked at his scar, closely watching the seemingly pink coloured flesh that appeared underneath a thin layer of a semi-transparent semi-healed skin.

This scar was recently acquired… I couldn’t be wrong about this scar. He had just one scar on his neck, and it would heal to form a hideous shape of a disfigured fist over his neck, giving the impression that someone was holding his neck with his hand.

“I’m here to give a message to someone called… Hye!”

“What?!!” I heard my name just now, right? I looked up at his eyes and for a second there it felt like he was looking directly towards me.