William's thoughts drifted towards two sources of danger. It was either her enemies were confident in the ability of the dark masters at the Long Feather academy and the mysterious enemy behind them to take down him and her. Or perhaps there were some sort of assassins in the entourage she'd bring with her in this journey.
William took his time checking the contract, even rereading it five times! He spent around half an hour, while in reality he was taking a better look at Larry and Richard.
As he took much longer than expected, the two kept exchanging glances together. This confirmed lots of his doubts, as the look over their faces told him they dreamt about him raising issues about this contract.
If that happened, then they could use the excuse of this to restart the entire elder council again. And even worse, if William left without signing a contract, then things would turn ugly for his side.
The contract was indeed filled with all the terms he agreed before with Lara, even the clause regarding purchasing a piece of land and establishing a guild branch was mentioned as well.
"It's all looking good," William got eyed weirdly by Lara and many elders who were on her side when he took a long time inspecting the contract, "and here is my signature and my spirit power stamp."
As he did that, he handed one contract over to elder Stark. He didn't hand it to Lara, but to Stark in particular. And that made the latter issue a deep look towards William, getting the hidden meaning behind his subtle move.
"I'll keep it safe," Stark said, "and in one day, I'll make sure for this contract to be registered in the city's general affair department."
"Great," William clasped his hands before adding, "I'm glad this issue got resolved nicely. In fact, I hate to see other good masters fall into the hands of monsters thanks to my formations."
"As if you'll stick around all the time to guard this place or something," Richard snorted, and that was exactly what William wanted him to say.
"Oh, don't worry about that," William evilly grinned, "I'm going to leave a control key for my guild branch leader. Using it, he'll gain total control over the formations I left there. And just to not miss such a trivial point, I left tons of formations around the Lost City. So, if any danger appeared or someone tried to act funny, just notify my man and he'll handle everything."
William's words were clear, he was directly threatening Richard and those standing behind him. He didn't expose such a card to them just to scare them off. He also wanted to show this family that even with their grand numbers and long heritage in this place, it meant nothing against him.
The smart ones realised this point and couldn't help but exchange worried looks. William could easily tell how these folks had dirty plans towards his guild branch and his right in that city. And now they realised their dreams of getting total control over the city when he'd be away got shattered like fragile glass.
William even suspected that Richard and those behind him had plans to dispose of him when he was out in that adventure. In their eyes, he was the one controlling the scary formations down at the Lost City. And killing him would free them from such a headache, providing total control over the Lost City to them.
If William left a control key to someone here, then they had to take this person down first. Yet even if they did that, there was no guarantee that William wouldn't make other keys, entrusting them with other members in his guild.
For a second there, William noticed how depressed and surprised Richard was. Then in the next second, the look over this young man's face changed to be filled with evilness and viciousness.
It all happened in a flash, but William noticed this. He could tell how deep this young man's enmity was towards him and his guild. And that was something weird in William's eyes. He never interacted with Richard before, never saw him before this moment.
Yet it felt like he was looking at an old enemy of his. In response to such enmity, William simply raised one arm, as if he was hitting a fly or something, yet it was like he was inviting Richard to do his best and try to take him down.
"It's settled then," Lara chuckled, while not putting anything Richard showed in her mind, "now it's time to select the temporary leader of our family. Is it going to be Richard?"
She stressed over the temporary word. Before anyone would say anything, Stark suddenly said:
"I got another candidate, my son, Dorfis."
"..."
Just before Richard and others would celebrate this small success in their plans, Stark poured a bucket of cold water over their heads.
"Ahem…" elder Larry cleared up his throat, trying to buy his side time to prepare counter moves towards Stark's sudden words, "at first, William has to leave. This matter is strictly limited to the higher ups in our family."
"This…" Lara was about to object, but with a simple wave from William's hand she swallowed what she wanted to say.
"Send me the licence of that piece of land and information about impacts specified in construction business when you are done," William left while saying these words to Lara. and the latter nodded.
William walked back towards his team's place. In his mind, he knew the future couple of months would be quite stressful to him and his guild.
He thought by having Lara's support, things would roll nicely for his newly established branch. But it seemed lots of greedy folks were inside the Vancouf family.
He planned to move the next day after this meeting was done. He already prepared everything for his upcoming adventure, only lacking finalising this deal and then moving out.
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