Chapter 225: Establishing Contact with the Witches’ Assembly

The Cadres present had all seen their share of major situations, but Johnny’s completely unexpected attack still startled them.

Looking at Mr. Turtledove, whose flesh had been split open by the lightning strike and whose wounds were charred black, everyone fell deathly silent.

“Stop wasting time with these boring little tricks. If you want to kill him, did you ask for my opinion?” Johnny still spoke in that lazy tone, “This man continued the deal I had with the Earl, so he’s useful to me. If you want to incite me to kill him, why don’t you first ask yourselves what use you are to me?”

“But to me, all of you are still useful. In fact, right now, I’m probably the only person who still thinks you have any use at all, yet you’re opposing the only person who still thinks you have value……” Leon’s voice suddenly sank as he spoke, “If you’re really stupid enough to reach this point, it seems there’s no need to keep you around either.”

The Cadres present all felt the pressure. In the end, they had merely attached themselves to the Earl, and after the Earl’s death, had turned to seeking someone else to attach themselves to in Johnny. But Johnny did not value them at all. To Johnny, these Cadres were entirely dispensable.

Fenrir, however, intended to use them. The only choice before them was to attach themselves to Fenrir. With Johnny and Fenrir joining forces, they truly had no room whatsoever to resist.

After a long silence, one Cadre finally moved, reaching out and picking up the cup of wine.

The others gradually picked up their cups as well. Leon also stood up, reached out to retrieve the wine that had originally been poured for Mr. Turtledove, then raised his cup and signaled with his eyes for the others to raise theirs together.

There was no toast. Leon was the first to drain his wine, while the others nervously downed theirs in one gulp. Only Johnny remained seated where he was, coldly watching the scene.

“Very good.” Sensing that his Cursed Blood had successfully parasitized these Cadres, Leon nodded in satisfaction, “Now, let’s discuss the Quotas for each territory one by one.”

At the same time, Johnny beckoned, having his men drag away Mr. Turtledove’s corpse.

……

Two hours later, all the Cadres had finished negotiating their new agreements with Leon and left the River Island as though they had received a pardon.

Only Johnny and Leon remained inside the house.

“Shouldn’t we have a drink too?” Leon joked to Johnny.

“Go to hell.” Johnny replied, taking out his Silver Flask and drinking from it.

“No matter what, I still have to thank you for your method. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to take over the Earl’s territories this easily.” Leon said.

Aside from eliminating one Cadre with the strongest will to resist, overall it could basically be considered taking them without bloodshed.

“You only inherited seventy percent of the Earl’s territory and that’s already enough for you? What happened to that ambition of yours to surpass the Earl?” Johnny replied sarcastically.

Although the remaining Cadres had all accepted the fact that Leon would replace the Earl, Leon still lacked someone to handle the business in that one territory. Besides that, considering that they might be suspected by the Church forces at any time, they also could not easily take the Earl’s own territory.

“You eat a meal one bite at a time. Is there anyone suitable to take over Mr. Turtledove’s territory?” Leon replied.

“What’s the point of taking over the business there? You don’t even have that much output. Handling these seventy percent of the territories is already enough to stuff you to death, isn’t it? When I heard the Quotas you gave those Cadres today, I almost laughed.” Johnny actually laughed as he spoke, “And you still want to surpass the Earl?”

Leon leaned back against the chair and began thinking. What Johnny said was indeed a very realistic problem.

With Johnny’s support, he could obtain the Earl’s territories, but his output could not keep up.

Previously, he had thought that with three Witches, the theoretical upper limit of production could reach three times what it had been before.

But according to Rena and Weiss’s feedback, as well as what he himself had observed as the Lord of the Labyrinth, production in the Arend Island Labyrinth had a bottleneck.

It was said that as long as a Labyrinth was not sealed, its Mana would almost never be exhausted, continuously leaking out from the Divine Body of Moilai sealed deep underground.

However, there was still an upper limit to how much Mana a single Labyrinth could release within a certain period. They had discovered this when creating the Fourth-Level Magical Beast, Drake. Once they overloaded the Labyrinth by consuming large amounts of Mana to create a High-Level Magical Beast, the amount of Mana emerging within the Labyrinth would drop drastically for a period afterward.

In theory, once the number of bred Magical Beasts was increased to the limit, the Mana content within each individual Magical Beast would decrease, while living Magical Beasts themselves also needed to consume the Labyrinth’s Mana to remain alive. In other words, there was an upper limit to the efficiency of Magic Essence production.

They had made a rough estimate, and even under the most optimistic circumstances, output could only increase by about sixty to seventy percent.

In the past, including his own territory, Leon had supplied five Prefectures in total, but aside from his own territory, none of the others had been supplied entirely by him.

Even though he had now only taken seventy percent of the Earl’s territories, Leon still could not fully supply all of the market demand.

“Should I find another Labyrinth?” Leon muttered to himself.

“If you’re that eager for the Church to catch you and kill you, you might as well turn yourself in now.” Johnny mocked him after hearing that.

Leon actually knew that if he found another Labyrinth and rebuilt another Production Base according to his previous operating model, he would inevitably be able to make output match market demand.

But right after killing the Earl was precisely when danger surrounded him from every direction. It would not be strange for the Church to begin investigating him at any time. He had gone through considerable effort to turn Arend Island into his own territory, reducing the risk of the Labyrinth on the island being investigated.

At a time like this, recklessly finding another Labyrinth outside and establishing another Production Base would undoubtedly greatly increase the risk of being investigated by the Church.

The business had expanded, and there were no problems with the technology or Purity of the goods, but the total output of supply could not keep up. This was also the most fundamental reason Johnny believed Leon could never catch up to the Earl.

“Is there really no way to purchase goods from the Witches’ Assembly like the Earl did?” Leon asked Johnny.

“You’re bringing this up again. Do you really think those Great Witches are easy to deal with?” Johnny rolled his eyes at Leon, “I already told you. Right now, the Witches’ Assembly might be even more dangerous to you than the Church!”

“But they’ll find out sooner or later, won’t they? We’ll have to face this problem eventually! If we maintain the same purchase volume as the Earl and take his place, they shouldn’t act rashly either.” Leon said.

It was unlikely that the Church would never uncover the fact that he had killed the Earl, and the same applied to the Witches’ Assembly.

Leon had to occupy the Earl’s ecological niche as quickly as possible. This did not merely mean obtaining a protective umbrella on the Church’s side, but also replacing the value the Earl had held for the Witches’ Assembly.

If either side was not handled properly, that side would make him pay the price for killing the Earl.

During this period, he had actually been continuously considering the feasibility of proactively establishing contact with the Witches’ Assembly.

After the Earl’s death, the Witches’ Assembly would sooner or later make a move. Rather than waiting for them to come looking for him in order to eliminate him, it would be better to proactively contact them and negotiate conditions.

And Johnny was precisely the person who had always handled transportation between the Earl and Moirland, so Leon had to persuade Johnny.

“Purchase goods on the same scale as the Earl? Even if you shut down your Labyrinth completely, you still wouldn’t be able to absorb that much.” Johnny replied irritably.

“But you said before that even after the Earl accepted the Magic Essence I supplied, he still continued purchasing from them according to his original demand.” Leon said.

“That was because Mastan had the ability to sustain it. He had spare money to stockpile Magic Essence, and he also had the ability to continue expanding the market.” Johnny said.

“The Earl still wanted to develop the market into the Western Region?” Leon asked.

The several Prefectures in the western part of the Empire should logically also have demand for Magic Potions. Yet the Earl did not seem to have developed his territory there, because the powerful figures in that region belonged to the Western Faction and did not share interests with him, an Eastern noble.

Forget finding a protective umbrella willing to cooperate with him there. Church personnel from powerful Western families might even go out of their way to deal with him.

“The reason the Earl could smuggle Magic Essence from Moirland through Overseas Transportation was that he had the qualifications to conduct import and export business. Through his own cross-border transportation, he could send goods to colonies and other countries on the continent, Suvia, Augran, the Highlands……as long as he lowered the price, he could easily sell off any surplus Magic Essence. That was never a problem for him.

Do you think the Earl’s greatest value to the Witches’ Assembly was that he had money to purchase the Magic Essence they supplied? No, it was because the Earl had transportation and sales networks! That was what made him most valuable to the Witches’ Assembly.” Johnny said.

“With a lord’s authority, it’s not as though we couldn’t establish cross-border transportation too.” Leon argued.

“It’s not enough just to possess value. Lions negotiate with lions. Antelopes don’t negotiate with lions. The Earl was a Grand Noble, entangled with both the Eastern nobles and the Church. For the Witches’ Assembly to kill him would have been no different from starting a war with the Empire. But you? You’ve only just started!” Johnny said.

“When the Earl first established contact with them, he had only just started too.” Leon said.

“Mastan’s starting point when negotiating with them wasn’t low at all. At the time, he had already begun operating his own territory, and he was also a Knight Commander! Even then, the fact that Mastan managed to successfully persuade a lunatic like Arachne involved a fair amount of luck.

At that time, the war was nearly over. The Restoration Faction that Moirland had supported in the Eastern Region had been eliminated, and they urgently needed new channels. Arachne had also been accused by her political enemies of failing to properly manage the Restoration Faction and could have been punished at any time after the war, so she urgently needed to prove her value to the Queen.”

Johnny stared at Leon and gave a cold snort, “After all these years of cooperation, her demands on the Earl became greater and greater. She wanted the Empire’s military technology, all kinds of intelligence, and even wanted to incite the Earl to rebel against the Empire. Even the Earl had to deal with her carefully. With an appetite like that, what makes you so confident you can satisfy her?

Not to mention, you also killed the Earl! You caused her to lose the network of interests she had established with the Earl. If you don’t have the ability to compensate her twofold, all you’ll do is attract her wrath. That lunatic isn’t reasonable like I am. She’ll assassinate targets who displease her without caring about the consequences. From what I know of her, she will definitely find you, and then kill you!”