“Oh, the messenger hasn’t reached you with the warning? Maybe he got sick on the way and died.” Mark raised his shoulders

“you..!!” All the humiliation today is on one side and what happened now on the other side.. “You really are wonderful, Dolivar, wonderful! I hope you remember this well in the future! Let’s go!” prince William shouted and turned to leave, his expedition went out right behind him, and soon all the expeditions of the Black Sun followed, they all looked extremely angry.

Caesar did not understand anything.. This was very similar to the reaction of his uncle Billy when he mentioned the matter to him as well, but when he looked around, he found that the expeditions of the rest of the kingdoms were behaving normally as if they had not heard anything..

As they walked out of the hall, Caesar turned to Billy and asked, “What’s going on, Uncle? Why is everyone acting like this? What exactly is the hunting event?”

“…The Hunting event is where you enter a large piece of land full of beasts ranging from the eighth to the twelfth level, those beasts are usually held in captivity and are starved, you can imagine how dangerous that place is…” Bailey replied

“What’s the problem with that? Why are we the only ones acting like this?”

“The problem is that the participants will not enter alone! Each of them is entitled to take five followers inside. Those followers must also be at the tenth level or less. Those five followers can be friends, servants, slaves, or even elite soldiers in the army, anyone who isn’t a noble would do.”

“what?!” This time, it was Caesar who lost his calm, “Why would followers be allowed in? Isn’t this supposed to be a competition between geniuses?”

“Of coarse there must be some followers to grant the main participant life, or what would you do if you are alone and saw a level 12 beast for example? at least you can have those followers die for you.

Listen, the hunting event, in particular, isn’t a competition between the main participants. it is a competition in the readiness of the royal families and their duchies, the cooperative work between each participant and his followers, the cooperative relations between the families of each kingdom, and of course, the possibility of providing many genius followers that aren’t of noble blood…

In this case, the role that the main participants play is marginalized. In some sense, it is a competition between the kingdoms, not between geniuses.

This hunting event was only held seven times over the last two thousand years, and each time the participating kingdoms were notified months in advance so that they could gather the needed followers and organize their ranks, but they did not send us any warning!!”

“This… in addition to our Burton family, the Black Sun kingdom sent the representative of the 9 duchies and the royal family, that means… we need 55 genius followers at the tenth level in total, where are we going to get that number quickly?” Finally, Caesar realized the problem

“Why do you think everyone is so agitated? The distance between here and the Black Sun Kingdom is so vast to get there in time, we can’t even ask for support because the first event always starts three days after the announcement. Come on.. let’s see what the prince has to say”

Outside the hall, all the expeditions of the Black Sun began to gather to see what they were going to do

“We must immediately withdraw from these shameful competitions.”

“I agree, no one will say a thing if we leave now”

“Yeah, let’s get out of this damn place, we will have our revenge for this insult later!”

“His Majesty has to know what is going on here!”

“Enough!” prince William shouted, and everyone went quiet, “…the hunting event itself is a bad omen, every time a kingdom offers to host it, something bad happens after that, we can’t leave and clear the stage for them..”

“But we don’t have any good followers, Your Highness, we can’t send our youths inside without protection! You must know how it is easy to die inside, and with their behavior, I fear for our geniuses even more…” one everyone nodded their heads..No one here intended to compromise his family’s genius.

“Go to the slave markets and buy every possible candidate. Also, try to hire some from the assassination and mercenaries agencies. Our goal this time will not be to win better ranks… But to survive.

I know what you are thinking, but we have to stay and join in to see what’s going on here, and also.. the Kingdom of the Black Sun never withdraws from anything, no matter the circumstances!” said Prince William in an indisputable manner.

Everyone present nodded seriously, and after some further side discussions, they began to disperse…

The young men returned to their family residences, while the elders went to search for suitable followers.

——–

A day passed quickly… nearly everyone from the Black Sun Kingdom was busy searching for candidates good enough to be followers. None of them slept or rested for a moment, they turned the capital of Dolivar upside down..but the obstacles were everywhere!

The assassination organizations were busy, the gangs refuse to hire anyone, and even the mercenaries refuse to cooperate.. After a whole day, they were only able to gather 23 candidates, all of whom were at the eighth and ninth levels…

The Burton family’s situation was the worst.. During the whole day they were able to buy one old slave at the eighth level.

“What do we do now? if this continues we will find one more follower in the next two days…” said one of the Burton elders at the meeting at the end of the first day.

“We must withdraw, Caesar is our hope to go back to being a Marcosian family again, we can’t sacrifice him to gain some face for the kingdom!”

“Yeah, let the royal family and the duchies fend for themselves, we are still from a little Earldom, let’s just go back to where we came from, no one will notice our absence.”

“that’s enough!” Billy hit the table, “his Majesty himself has nominated us, and the rest of the duchies have agreed, they put their trust in us to get good results, how can we fail their favor and leave?!”

“Calm down Billy, it happens in every tournament, each kingdom nominates one or two more participants outside of the duchies and royal families, it’s not like his majesty made some historical exception for us.”

“that’s right, his majesty heard about Caesar’s strength and was thinking of the kingdom’s interest when he nominated us, let’s think about our own interests too!”

*Knock Knock*

“WHAT IS IT? Didn’t I say no one is to bother us?!” Billy yelled at the door, he’s in a really bad mood today

“saint Billy, there are two young men standing outside the residence, they claim to have been sent here by Sir Robin Burton.”