At the end of the gambling contest, Severus emerged the overall winner having doubled his money as the boys spent over 16 hours inside the casino gambling before they eventually came out.
It was a new day when they eventually did come out and it was time to pick up Lily and head back to Dombivli City after a nice little vacation.
When the trio finally arrived to meet Lily at her workshop, she was all packed up as the group helped her store some of the boxes in their inventory space while they carried the crates containing the live animals by hand.
From the moment Sebastian glanced at Lily, he became a little nervous and began acting in a way that was slightly different than his usual demeanour as Max caught him stealing glances at the master alchemist from time to time.
He smiled at this development but said nothing as the group boarded their frigate ship from the Dwargon docking port and returned to Dombivli.
Max had already informed his office at Dombivli that a residence needed to be prepared for the master alchemist on both Dombivli and the Wet planet as he planned on letting Lily stay and meet with the top officials of his government and tour Dombivli city once before she secluded herself in the lab.
Just as he predicted, Sebastian kept laughing and trying to be funny throughout the journey home and acquainted himself quite nicely with Lily.
His boy had seemingly developed a crush on the dwarven alchemist and Max intended to support it subtly as he requested Sebastian to give her a tour of Dombivli upon arrival while he and Severus returned to their duties at the palace.
From here on, whether Sebastian was able to keep in touch with the Alchemist and further his cause was up to his own wooing skills.
Upon his return, he was bombarded with questions by Asiva who smelled something fishy with Max's story as to what he did for the three-day trip in Dwargon, however, Max and Severus were tight lipped about their adventures as they maintained the story that it was purely business as usual.
Hitting a dead-wall with her questioning, Asiva finally relented and filled Max in about the developments that had happened over the last 3 days in Dombivli and informed him about the projects and proposals that needed his immediate review.
It was only now that Severus also took the initiative to inform Max about his findings of the secret behind Felix Aurelius and Eden as Max's frown deepened listening to these events.
Max wondered why it took Severus so long to inform him about these things but he then figured out that the old man did not want to ruin his vacation by informing him about stressful topics.
On one hand Max respected the sentiment, but on the other he really wanted to have a chat with Eden as he wished to see what that boy knew about his brother.
Max's first impression of the boy was not good at all. He had let out his aura laced with killing intent in a public setting and had directed it at Severus nonetheless, a move that Max found hardly forgivable. But worse than that he had decided to sneak-attack Max after Max had shown him mercy which was a dumb move to make considering Eden had no idea about his real strength.
In the end he did pay for his foolishness dearly as while his [ Ball Crushing ] was not as strong as sir Johnny's which was capable of demolishing one's nut forever, his attack was strong enough that even the most potent healers would need multiple sessions to ease the pain and proceed towards recovery.
Since there was no point in mulling over spilled condiments, Max wrote up an intelligence request and sent an executive order to Jathi, his IB chief, to keep tabs on the boy, thinking that he would meet with him some other day when the opportunity presented itself and the boy matured a bit living in Sigma.
After sending the executive order, Max threw the matter to the back of his head as he resumed working on his daily affairs, trying to administer his territory as best as he could.
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( Meanwhile On Radiance )
Earthlings were usually divided on many things and fought amongst each other based on multiple fronts when they were on earth such as race, country of origin and gender, however, everything changed when they moved to Radiance as the in-fighting stopped and the earthlings truly United in the face of a 1000 different species in the universe.
One of the biggest attachment that all earthlings shared was towards Shakuni, as for them he was the man who had saved them from the alien invasion in the first awakening, the man who had fought to keep their planet safe during tough times and the man who negotiated their smooth settlement into planet Radiance with the Won Knights.
He was the most revered and respected man amongst the humans of planet #H2047 and the organisation that he left behind, the True Elites guild was the dream destination of all earthlings to be recruited into.
This was why when a newly integrated human race of planet #H2050 began fabricating a story about how their planet had Shakuni's disciple, a warrior superior to everyone within the True Elites guild at the same tier and how he was denied his rightful place within the ' True Elites ' guild by the new guildmaster, the earthlings were beyond angry as a heated war of words began on both sides at the international forums.
A scathing interview of Eden who claimed that guildmaster Neatwit was ' Jealous ' of his talent surfaced on the internet further fanning the flames as soon the matter blew out of proportion and became a topic of world pride.
Eden was #H2050's Shakuni, he was their top warrior and the individual who all humans looked up to because of his incredible feats within Omega which finally led to #H2050 teaming up with the Angels in the tutorial to defeat Lucifer and be integrated with the light faction.
In their minds, he was unparalleled within the same tier and hence a challenge was issued for him to fight a champion from #H2047 in a one-on-one battle with 100 million gold coins and planetary pride on the line.
Naturally, Earthlings were not going to back-down from the challenge and the only question was, who was going to be earth's champion in this battle?
The decision to send the warrior representative of earth was left up to the True Elites to decide as they were the organisation where the world's top talents had gathered and while Neatwit had a pool of over 1000 tier4 guild members to choose from for this fight, there was one particular boy he had in mind which was his first priority for this event, should he still be at the tier4 strength.
The boy he had in mind was none other than the winner of the ' Earth's strongest warrior ' event, the younger brother of his best friend Rudra, the aloof Max Rajput.
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/// A/N - Chapter 16/30, a new day and we are back at it ///