Chapter 197: Tragedies are unexpected, downfalls are planned
Telana sat in a pensive mood as she digested the news her spies had just given her.
The Grand Elder of the Wolfe Family has returned an Aether Lord…whoopdifuckingdo.
“How long has it been since that old fucking mongrel fobbed off? Fifteen? Twenty years? And now he’s gone and killed a fucking Diabolic Dragon… he’s got something planned again, but what?”
The last time the Wolfe Family had machinations, a grand tragedy played out like the world’s worst drama…
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Once upon a time, a branch family from Roaring Tide fled to the the frontier of another continent.
No one knew why they had ran away, it was impolite to ask a fellow frontiersman their circumstances unprompted, but the moment this family had arrived to Stone Claw City, they flourished.
Perhaps it had to do with the niche service they ended up providing to the city, perhaps it had to do with the patriarch being a Grandmaster, perhaps it was due to the matriarch being a whip smart businesswoman, or maybe it all of the above. Whatever the reason may have been, the family went from unexpected refugees to an anchoring force in the community.
Of course…not everyone was happy with this development.
Prior to the arrival of this foreign family, two others had established footholds within this community.
One was an offshoot family that developed a business centered around mining ore and processing said ore into tools and weapons, while the other was a family that started from the ground up from a simple apothecary to becoming the forefront of medicine making in the frontier they all called home.
Now the latter family didn’t care about the presence of this foreign force, in fact the niche service they provided benefitted their own trade as well. As for the former offshoot…they hated them.
This hatred was twofold, composed of a reason that made sense to practicality, and another that was at best, irrational.
First and foremost, the offshoot family didn’t appreciate that yet another power had decided to muscle in on territory they had deemed theirs by right.
They didn’t mind the medicine makers, for if there was one rival family, they could easily focus all of their efforts in dealing with them or even merge with them by marriage. A third party makes such plans…difficult.
The second reason was simple: they were foreign.
The offshoot family had some mild misgivings with the medicine makers, what with them coming from nothing, but they were at least from the same kingdom and continent.
The same could not be said for this branch family.
How dare this runaway clan move into their city with baggage that nobody wanted to deal with?
How dare they come and dirty their beloved culture with their new ideas?
How dare they impress the people that was supposed to bow down to them!
The leader of the offshoot family at the time knew he had to deal with this upstart family, but he wasn’t sure how.
He couldn’t just drive them out by force, for the patriarch of this family had power to rival his own and a surprisingly stable subordinate structure. If anything, the leader of the offshoot thought it would be more appropriate to make them kneel before him. Additionally, the offshoot family had developed a reputation over the years to be “magnanimous”. Driving out a fellow frontier family, especially one that integrated themselves so neatly with the community would be rather… gauche.
He knew he had to wait for an opportunity, something that would render his rival unable to oppose him in any meaningful way, and that opportunity came in the form of a simple cough.
One day, out of the blue, the matriarch of this branch clan had come down with a minor illness of sorts, the kind that makes one cough and develop a bit of a fever, nothing that a little medicine couldn’t fix in the right dosage. Granted, if the dosage was just even a little off…things could get worse, and worse and worse.
This was the opportunity he was waiting for, and all he had to do was to convince a certain family of medicine makers to make use of the…other side of their trade…
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Scene: The inside of a certain family-owned apothecary.
Scenario: An elderly man with a cruel yet elegant demeanor is attempting to convince, coerce or bribe a middle aged woman to make use of her craft for unscrupulous purposes. He had just had an offer most people wouldn’t refuse, but…
Woman: “Fuck right the hell off you old dog. I’m not breaking my code just to justify your ambition!”
Old man: “Oh come now, he reasonable! I’m not asking you to go to war, I’m just asking you to add a little something extra or remove something to your medicine. Nobody will notice!”
Woman, angrily: “I’ll fucking notice and so will the patient who would up and die from it! I’ve spent years developing a foothold for my family, a reputation of being indispensable here and I refuse to compromise that. Now either buy something or get out!”
The old man looks like he’s about to snap and do something violent…but stops, takes a breath and leaves out the door, leaving the woman behind to go back to her job.
Old man: “Venomous whore, how dare you disrespect…huh?”
Out of the corner of the old man’s eye, he saw a young woman in a nearby alleyway, possibly a tad older than his own son beckon towards him like she had a secret to tell.
Normally, he would ignore such shenanigans, but this particular woman looked remarkably similar to the one who just told him off.
The old man looked left and right, making sure no one was watching him he answered the young woman’s gesture and entered the alleyway.
The two of them walked a couple more steps together, before the young woman turned to face the old man eye to eye.
Young woman: “I just heard everything that happened in there…were you serious about the compensation for doing this job?”
Old man while nodding: “I was and then some.”
Young woman: “In that case…I can do it, but I have an additional condition.”
Old man: “Oh? And what’s that?”
Young woman:”It involves the woman you were just talking to…”
Old man with a cruel smile: “Really now?”
