Preparing for the trip

As they turned back to browse the different resources of the shop, some of them came to him asking for his suggestion about which resource was the best for their contracted beast.

Helping them, time went fast and finally, it was 11:30 am. Saying goodbye to the men who came and bought for 13,435 crystals, he went back to his seat and gave some food to Zaya. She had been showing her need for food for almost two hours and she was now showing her unhappiness.

Finally, half an hour later, he closed the doors of the shop and went back to the second floor to prepare his lunch. He wasn't very hungry but he understood the need to keep a healthy diet.

An hour later, he once again opened the doors of the shop and seeing there were no customers, he took out the sword of the previous owner of the body and continued to train. His sword wasn't very good but it was more than enough to train his sword mastery skill.

Training and training, at some point, he heard the door of the shop open and he stopped training. Luckily, the shop had various useful functions such as helping the customer and Aurus in that case always stay refreshed. He figured the system thought that always being refreshed would bring a positive impact to the customers. Although he didn't know if it was the case, it was anyway a great function.

Turning around and leaving the sword behind the counter, he saw an arrogant middle-aged man enter the shop with around two dozen goons behind him. The reason he knew he was arrogant? It was easily distinguishable by the constant smirk that hung on his face, the head that was kept high to the point Aurus was wondering if he could see in front of him and eyes of disdain as he looked at everything and everyone in the shop. Honestly, Aurus thought he just looked stupid and silly in this situation but he kept his calm and merely said welcome to the new customers.

Sitting back behind the counter he looked as the goons under the man were looking greedily at the shop. Weirdly enough, he didn't need predictive abilities to know that those guys were affiliated to either the Mortel or Watul family.

And indeed, a few seconds later, the leader of those men came in front of the counter and with his head held high, he said: "We are from the Mortel family, one of the four noble families in this city. I am the butler of their family and I came here to give you a message from the master."

He continued while the goons behind him looked smugly and smiled with disdain at Aurus.

"For having killed the contracted beast, Red Sparrow, of the team leader, Gary, the noble is asking for compensation. Considering the heavy injuries and the death of his contracted beasts, we ask for the entire shop and its content. You have five minutes to leave this shop or we will kill you."

Hearing these words, Aurus couldn't help smiling while the goons became angrier and angrier at Aurus's attitude. Aurus noticed that the goons had two different crests in their shoulder and he figured they were people of the Watul and Mortel family.

Simply, Aurus answered. "I refuse, there are rules in this shop and if he is too stupid to read and apply them, he can't blame me for kicking him out. After all, who asked him to be such an uncultured individual? I must say that the way he acted shamed the nobles' families. Your welcome for giving you a reason for getting rid of him."

Always with his smile on his face, Aurus merely waited for them to do something. It was not like he could ever lose in this situation. If they attacked him, he would crush them, if they left, the situation would stop there. If they blocked the business, it wouldn't matter much to him since they couldn't block the other two nobles who would certainly come back. If they decided to take his sister or his mother hostage, considering his ability to kick out the guys from his shop, they would believe he was truly powerful. Even though he could only do this in the shop, they didn't need to know that. Furthermore, from the moment they touched him or his family, they would be banned from the shop and they would become weaker compared to the Falnis and Graynar family which would have access to the shop. In the end, their only option left would be to follow the rules of the shop or get annihilated by the other two families.

While he was thinking about this, the time continued ticking and finally, after the five minutes were spent, the middle-aged man gave Aurus a wicked smile and ordered the goons to go and get rid of him.

From the moment they summoned their contracted beast or showed their killing intent, Aurus lifted his hand and when the shop defensive function was activated and the pressure came, Aurus dropped down his hand.

As he dropped his hand, all of the contracted beasts were eliminated from the world as not even blood remained after the pressure and the men who were down were flung outside of the shop. Of course, Aurus moved his arm at the same time to make it look like he was the one doing it.

While what he did wasn't very significant for him, it meant totally a different thing to the middle-aged man who was left in the shop since he neither summoned his contracted beast to attack nor showed his killing intent by attacking.

The middle-aged man who was previously extremely arrogant had only fear in his mind at this moment. From the way he saw it, Aurus merely moved his hand twice and more than two dozen of his goons were expelled from the shop and nothing remained from their contracted beasts.

Aurus seeing him like this smiled and said one thing: "If any of your two families, the Mortel and Watul, comes to bother me again, I will never continue to sell to you. I'm sure you know what it means since the other two families are polite and pay for their materials." While showing a knowing smile, the middle-aged man stopped to think for a moment thinking of what he meant and what he understood made him have cold sweat.

From what Aurus had just said, he understood that if they did one more thing to him, they would never have the chance to buy resources from him again. But, in addition, he understood that the two other families had come to this shop and had bought resources with a good attitude. This meant that the balance between the four families or two teams of two families had already begun to break in favour of the Falnis and Graynar families.

Understanding the situation, he lost all of his composure and said: "I'll be sure to relay the message to the two family masters."

Shaking his hand without any care of the world, the middle-aged man as if being granted amnesty left at full speed. He didn't even care about the two dozen goons on the ground and left towards the family's mansion. In his opinion, he had to relay the message as soon as possible to escape from the destruction of the families.

Shaking his head with a smile, he kept the shop open until 5:00 PM. The nobles in the afternoon were only a small thing and it didn't matter much to him. After they received the message, they would not dare to go against him unless they were wishing for death. This way, he would reap profit and his family was safe from those two bastards. Hell, they would probably even send some people to protect Laia secretly to be sure she didn't have an accident. After all, with their few encounters, if something happened to her, they believed Aurus would believe they were the ones to do it.

As he closed the shop, Laia came back from school and he went to prepare food for supper. While eating, Aurus asked Laia what kind of contracted beast she wanted and where they were located since they would be going the next morning.

She had already prepared this a few months before as she was supposed to go with the previous Aurus back then. However, with the 'new' Aurus, there was almost no problem no matter which kind of contracted beast she wanted. They just needed to buy the right cage for the contracted beast.

When one caught a contracted beast to prepare for their sixteenth birthday, they would have to place them in a cage until the moment they could contract with it. However, in between that time, the next owner of the beast would have to take care of it, feed it and create some links between them in order to create a more powerful bond between them. This would help them communicate when the beast was successfully contracted. It was recommended to catch the beast between two and four months in advance to have the time to create a bond and for the next owner of the contracted beast to be there during the catch.

Beasts were a proud species and they would never accept someone who took them easily. If the next owner wasn't there when it was defeated, it would believe the next owner would be too weak and this brought the case of revolt amongst contracted beasts. As such, most people would go and get their beast themselves with a little help from Hunters, friends or family members.

"Alright, since you want this beast, we will go and get it tomorrow. Now go and do your homework, I'll prepare everything for the trip."

"Okay!" Laia seemed very happy to have the chance to go and get her future contracted beast. After all, in her year at school, she was the only one which didn't have a beast ready for her yet. Although she would never say it to Aurus, she had been sad that she could not compare to the others. While in reality it didn't much, it just gave her a sense of inferiority and others would always mention it to her when she had better grades than her.

Sentences such as: "Although you are good in school, without a contracted beast what can you do? Or, your family is so poor that you can't even afford a weak Hunter to help you get a weak monster." Were part of her everyday life. Of course, now that Aurus said that she could choose the kind of beast she wanted, she, of course, went and searched for the best she could find near the city. Afterwards, she would want to see who would dare say that she wouldn't be able to do anything or was too poor.

As she was in her fantasies, Aurus prepared everything for the tip of the next morning. Food, water, his sword, food for Zaya and he would certainly bring some crystals which would allow him to borrow a green wolf for the trip. After all, the monster Laia wanted was around 200km away and he would need a method of transportation considering most of the time would be in forests.