After a few hours, the two young men sent by Vicente returned from the Crow Woods while their leader released Peter in the center of the village.

As the day slowly took over the skies, marking the end of that long night, the four involved in the previous action were together at the Fuller residence.

Nina was sleeping peacefully in her room, while her brother had too many things on his mind to rest.

After everyone had finished their business the previous night, Vicente looked at those three and said. "What we did this night will happen many more times in the future.

Many more will die at our hands if we are to grow. Finally, some of us may fall by the wayside.

The battles' reward for some warriors is death, so it will happen to some of us sooner or later.

This is not a safe journey but a thorny path full of problems.

Your families may eventually suffer.

Are you sure you want to walk this course? Once you enter it for good, there is no turning back."

Seeing the deep look in Vicente's eyes, Rory clenched his fists, remembering the misfortune of his friend's life, and readily accepted.

"We will leave the village someday. My mother will be fine if we stay away, so I will take the risks."

"Me too." One of those two young men said. "Better to live at a thousand for 10 years than to live at 10 for a thousand years!"

The other nodded in agreement without saying much.

"Very well, fellows, I welcome you to my family. As your Don, I will provide you with resources and opportunities, but mostly protection." Vicente smiled. "In return, I want your loyalty and strength.

Today it is just us, but we will be much more.

Do you trust me?"

"Yes!"

"Starting tomorrow, we will deal with building this family. For now, we will secure our agreements with local suppliers and develop more firearms.

With the help of you two, I want to discover the limits of these weapons."

They both nodded, eager to help Vicente with that.

"For the rest, don't talk about the weapons or our group with anyone else. Just watch for people with the potential to join us.

When we have more reliable people, we will invite them to our group."

"OK!"

...

After Jesse's death, three months would pass in the blink of an eye.

Peter would return to his mother at that time, and searches throughout the village would ensue.

Jesse's wife would accuse Vicente of being around her husband's disappearance, but she could do nothing against him without proof.

She had no resources to act against Vice, and her power was not high enough for her to cause trouble for this boy who had dozens of men who depended on him.

Even after the villagers found Jesse's body days after his death, nothing but rumors about Vice and this man's relationship would circulate through the village.

Either way, Vice was just a child in everyone's eyes, and few believed he really had any involvement with this death.

But of the few who did, some were precisely those suppliers who had talked with Jesse earlier.

They intended only to fulfill their contracts with Vice and then do business with such a man. But with his death, they were confident that this child was not a good-for-nothing and that he was involved in this murder somehow.

However, even these misgivings had not hurt Vice's group in the short run. He had contracts that would last from 2 to 5 years, so even if some wanted to distance themselves from him, he would not allow it.

When signing a Magic Agreement, one could only break it if both sides decided to do so.

And so Vice had been growing his operations with more of his trusted people working for him and the development of new weapons.

In these months, he and those two young men had done many tests and discovered the limit of their weapons.

An Apprentice blacksmith had made these weapons, so they were Red-grade items. But still, the limit of these items was the Junior Apprentice level.

When those two young men had used all their power, they had damaged the weapons and helped Vicente understand that, for the moment, their limit was to infuse about 75% of the mana of a Junior Apprentice.

Luckily this could be improved if they used more talented and well-ranked blacksmiths.

Even though it was an earthbound project, by involving the magical powers of blacksmiths from this world, these items had become magical artifacts with the classic limitations of items made on this world.

Because of this, Vicente had in mind to get more powerful blacksmiths in the future, while he had already increased the number of weapons at his disposal by three times.

But for now, only he and his three family partners would use these weapons since they had not yet recruited anyone else.

Anyway, amid all this, the new period at the Academy of Stars had finally begun, and Nina had started her studies.

At the academy, she spent almost half the day learning, giving Vice more room to busy himself with his plans for his family.

...

"Vice, here are your things. See you." A middle-aged lady said as she smiled at Vicente while standing across the counter from a bakery.

After getting his change and the bag of loaves of bread, Vicente said goodbye to that person with whom he bought bread daily.

He walked out of that place amidst the stares of the people in the surrounding area, several of whom looked at him with different eyes than they would look at a child.

Everyone in this village already knew what had happened to Vicente's family and how he had been dealing with his late father's affairs.

But the rumors about how he led exceeded those about how unlucky he and Nina were.

So the whole village no longer saw him as a 12-year-old boy.

"I hear that he and his group are targeting all the local merchants." A customer commented on this to the establishment's owner, looking ugly at Vice. "He wants to steal everyone's business in the village."

"Don't say that. He's just trying to expand his business. Is it really wrong for him to do that?" That woman asked.

"The rates he charges are absurd. How are we going to compete with that?" That disgruntled person said in an irritated tone. "And he's just a 12-year-old brat.

What will happen when he grows up?"

"If he grows up..." A 13-year-old muttered as he looked sharply in Vice's direction.

If Vicente watched him now, he would identify the young man who bullied Rory years ago.