Sword Intent

Looking at the shredded leaves on the floor, Minos shook his head slightly, his form having looked impressive to an outsider, but completely lacking true finesse.

The only reason he moved so fast was because of his advanced realm, which was akin to cheating, meaning that such an attack had no real value in terms of training.

Realizing that such practice was pointless, Minos kicked the tree again, but this time he restrained his strength to the level of a mortal.

With his senses becoming extremely dulled, the originally slow and orderly movement of the leaves devolved into chaos, the ease from before transforming into difficulty.

Swinging his sword out again, this time the entire process took much longer, a full ten-seconds before Minos once again sheathed his sword.

This time, only a small fraction of the leaves were properly cut, Minos having missed the vast majority of them due to this new sense of weakness.

Seeing his dad suddenly start training, little Minos was a bit curious, but he almost 

immediately recognized the movement from the book.

Figuring out that he was training his Speed Sword Intent, little Minos decided to join, finding a nearby tree and doing the same thing.

With the two of them locked in their training, the hours passed by in a flash, both of them improving quite tremendously in the limited time they had.

Little Minos was already capable of cutting more than 50% of the leaves, meanwhile Minos had already achieved perfection, constantly pushing his speed to higher levels.

Without the use of his cultivation, the only way to improve his sword speed was by making his strikes more efficient, which at his level wasn't at all easy to do.

His understanding of his body had long since reached a near-perfect level, so every improvement, no matter how small, was by no means easy to acquire.

Fortunately, with the use of his Omniscient Eyes, Minos had a massive edge in this regard, capable of constantly scanning his strikes and comparing them to see which changes worked best.

With his Aptus, rather than walking through a dark cave, it was like he had a map and flashlight, making the journey much easier.

As the sun slowly descended, Minos's time dropped even further, from the 3 seconds he managed to achieve after a full day of training to 2 seconds, and finally 1 second.

Most of the improvement simply came from getting used to his new strength, but another portion came from all the adjustments he had made.

As his time hit one second, any further improvement became extremely difficult, but Minos could feel instinctively that this was a barrier, and if he broke it, it was very likely he would obtain Speed Sword Intent.

But even as the sun disappeared completely, Minos still couldn't make it past this one-second thresmark, making it clear that this final step was going to be much harder than all the others put together.

"Let's call it a night, your mother's probably getting worried." Minos said as he sheathed his sword and tossed it aside.

"You're right, then I'll see you tomorrow." Little Minos said, waving to his father before walking into the darkness.

In the past he may have argued to stay a little longer, but after spending months with Minos, his fear that his father would suddenly disappear again slowly went away, and by now he wasn't worried anymore.

Since he was confident that Minos would be in this exact same place tomorrow, he went with ease, assured that when morning came, they would do as they always did.

…

Just like little Minos predicted, Minos didn't go anywhere, the two meeting up pretty much everyday for a year straight, Minos's business booming massively in that time.

From the core of Aleph City, Rovo spread, soon having a store in pretty much every district across the city, giving everyone access to a Rovo.

After a year's time, total sales had long since eclipsed a million, and the revenue generated was so massive that Minos needed to hire a specialized team just to keep watch.

Of this revenue, Minos was taking home around 30%, which was a number so big many elite families all put together couldn't pull in as much.

With such a huge amount of money, it was natural for trouble to follow, but fortunately, with the Aleph Royal Family watching his back, his son in particular, Minos managed to avoid most bumps.

But at the end of the day, such a massive amount of money was hard to spend, and even after using millions on his own cultivation resources, he still had a constant flow coming in every second.

With so much money left over, Minos decided to reinvest, the first thing he did being buying a large chunk of the Abandoned District and remodeling it.

With his name having reached such prestige, his every move was followed closely, so the moment Minos made this huge purchase, people couldn't help but start whispering, wondering why he was making such a stupid investment.

What they didn't know was that little Minos and Minos had both long since reached a deal, little Minos agreeing to cancel the protection the Royal Family usually offered to the drug lords of the Abandoned District to allow more Rovo factories to be built.

That's right, a large portion of the drug-trade was directly maintained and incentivized by the Aleph Royal Family as an alternative source of money, but after little Minos convinced them that the Rovo was far more profitable, they changed their tune.

Without the Aleph Royal Family granting the area immunity anymore, Minos and his hired men swept through the streets, clearing out a large chunk of the criminal's in only a few days.

Of course even with the drugs and criminals gone, addiction was still a massive problem, so after a lot of studying, Minos compiled together a few books that would help teach one how to best deal with/cure those who were addicted.

After that, Minos opened up a few rehab clinics and hired some intelligent people, teaching them everything he knew and sending them to work.

Of course the clinics were only half the solution, and Minos knew that even if one was cured, if they had nothing else to do, it was easy for them to fall back into old-habits.

So with a little thought, Minos did a tie-in-program, not only offering rehab, but even opening classes that would teach one how to operate in his Rovo factories.

With more factories opening up, he was in dire need of workers, so this program happened to solve two birds with one stone.

With all these steps, plus the massive amount of money Minos was constantly funneling into the district, in only a few months time, the entire place took on a completely new look.

From an addiction rate of nearly 80%, it dropped to only 5%, and drug-trade had pretty much been completely eliminated, meaning that even that 5% would soon hit 0.

Not to mention the dozens of Rovo factories built in that time were also generating huge amounts of income, a portion of which was reinvested into the community.

With everything working in its favor, the Abandoned District finally saw the light once more, the emperor being so impressed with Minos's efforts that he decided to make an edict to officially rename the district Rovo District.

However despite these big moves, Minos still kept his identity on a down-low, most people knowing neither his true name or appearance, just calling him Mister Rovo.

Originally, it was planned for him to meet the emperor, but it was natural that Minos couldn't do that, so after some excuses, he managed to fortunately avoid that while still not offending the emperor himself.

With everything on track, Minos took the next step, not only re-establishing the Abandoned District as the Rovo District, but going even further in turning it into a high-rise paradise.

With all his advanced knowledge acquired from Luka, Minos built a chain of luxury apartments, personally designing everything himself.

The building had all sorts of superior features, from a machine capable of cleaning dishes on its own, to lights and doors that were completely voice-activated.

There was also an intricate heating system, also voice-controlled, that allowed one to specify exactly what temperature they wanted their room at.

Beyond that, Minos used his puppet expertise to create what he called servant-puppets, capable of every task from cooking to cleaning.

With these, occupants pretty much didn't need to lift a single finger, the servant-puppets taking care of everything.

Having created all this, Minos got the right to advertising, using his massive funds to spread the news across the entire city.

It went without saying that with all these features, the apartments were filled up in the blink of an eye, Minos having to get right to work on building more.

After the first wave of residents, news spread even faster, the tremendously good reviews of the apartment buildings making it so that people had to wait years in advance if they wanted to rent a unit.

However, more than the buildings, what people were really talking about were the servant-puppets, which were seen as a similar revolution to the Rovo.

Realizing that the servant-puppets could be sold on their own, Minos wasted no time in building more factories, these one's being for the creation of servant-puppets.

With the factories up and running, it was only a matter of time before Minos started selling them in his already established Rovo Stores.

Along with the servant-puppets, Minos decided to sell a few other things, reaching the point where Rovo was no longer just a brand of phones, but rather an entire lifestyle.

With phones no longer being his only product, Minos decided to create Rovo Enterprise, which was a conglomerate that oversaw all his property, from real-estate to Rovo's.

Rovo Enterprise soon took over many fields, from medicine to entertainment, Minos was constantly pumping out new products simply for the fun of creation.

Of course such a massive company wasn't easy to maintain, but with the Royal Family acting as his main-backing, he slowly steam-rolled his competition.