When Chris saw those two Dukes looking at his beautiful car, impressed, he stopped momentarily, thinking of a possibility.
'These people didn't come here for the Ritter Motor Company cars, did they?' His eyes narrowed.
"Chris, is that what's called a car? The so-called independent animal-powered carriage?" One of the two Transcendents asked as he walked toward the Duke of Linn Province's pick-up.
He and his group had arrived in Peters City a few minutes ago. But so far, they had not seen any cars running in that city since it was very early.
The sun had just risen over the local horizon, and only a few individuals were on the streets, none of them car owners.
Even the few cars circulating in Peters City now were on the city's inner streets, away from the busy avenues where carriages from outside usually pass.
The minibusses of the local transport company were inside the central station at the time of these people's arrival. So Chris's car was the first one they had seen!
Chris and some of his men looked momentarily at those people admiring the pick-up as if it were an otherworldly object.
Then this man said. "Yes, that is one of the model cars the Ritter Motor Company sold... But leaving that aside, Marius, Leonard, what are you doing here? Why did you come to my city without telling me first?"
Marius, a level 16 man with black hair and a bulging mustache, said, still looking at the car. "Chris, how can you say something like that? That way, it even sounds like we are not welcome in Linn Province..."
"Yes, it is a great disregard." The other man, also level 16, blond and without a beard or mustache, commented. "Can't we come to your city unannounced?"
"I'd rather not." Chris was short and blunt. "Why would you people come here on the eve of the opening of the Secret Realms of your provinces?"
Not all of Leopoldine's subdivisions had Secret Realms. But the territories of these two men did, and the opening of those places would occur on the same day as in Peters City.
"That's not so important to keep us from solving our own problems," Leonard said. "I've seen several Secret Realm starting and ending. There's usually nothing of relevance to us Transcendents."
"Yes, each youth who manages to return takes, on average, a few decades to be able to absorb all their gains..." Marius commented. "So there is no need for me to attend all the openings and closings of the Secret Realm of my province."
"Sigh... Anyway, we are here to meet the cars and trucks of the Ritter Motor Company." Leonard finally answered Chris' question.
"So that's it..." That man sighed, noticing that his suspicions were the reason behind these three experts' visits.
"How do we go about getting one of those?" Marius asked.
"Simple, you can go to the Ritter Motor Company store and pay for your orders... In a few weeks or months, you will be able to receive your cars."
"Orders?" Marius repeated that word.
"Weeks or months?" Leonard frowned, not liking at all what he had just heard.
They were prestigious Dukes of Leopoldine. How would they have to wait for weeks to get their cars? That was disrespectful to them and also to the empire!
"Who is behind this Ritter Motor Company, Chris?" Leonard asked. "I want to talk to this person to get my vehicle more easily."
"Yes, let's not wait weeks to acquire ours!" Marius agreed.
Chris bitterly smiled and said. "I don't know if it is a good idea for you to approach this person with those thoughts. He's pretty hard to negotiate that sort of thing..."
"Oh? Just tell us who he is. We'll work it out for ourselves." Leonard said confidently.
"Well, his name is Lothur Ritter. He's a 20-year-old young man, the greatest genius of the local generation of the Morning Star Academy."
"Lothur Ritter?"
"Never heard of him." The two looked at each other, not recognizing that name.
Only a few people in the empire capital and local forces in Linn Province knew about Lothur.
Naturally, these two did not know him and thought it would be easy to deal with a 20-year-old.
"It doesn't matter. Let's talk to this junior and get him to deliver our cars faster." Leonard said, looking at Marius and seeing this man agreeing.
"Where can we find him?"
"At his house... At the Morning Star Academy and at one of the stations associated with Ritter Motor Company." Chris said, letting these men get themselves into trouble.
"All right, let's go talk to this young man!" So the two left from there shortly after that.
...
Meanwhile, at a local hotel...
Some men coming from the empire's capital to accompany the Secret Realm of this province were staying at this place in the central part of Peters City.
But as individuals who kept themselves informed about the places they passed through, these people had already found out about local news concerning independent animal power vehicles.
Information about this had not yet reached the empire's capital, but upon arriving in this city in the middle of the night, they soon found out about it.
Whenever they arrived in a place, these people sent their subordinates to find out about important things happening locally.
So when they heard rumors around the city and passed by the Ritter Motor Company store, which was open 24 hours a day, the servants of these Transcendents soon brought them the information about the cars and trucks.
Because of this, the three imperial family members sent to accompany this event were now talking about the infamous cars.
"Do you think this is true? It may work well in the short term but maybe is fragile and disposable..." One of the men said this, a little skeptical about the cars.
"I don't know." Another said as he considered the information his servant had passed him. "My servant went to the Ritter Motor Company store and heard from one of the employees that there is currently a waiting list of 8,000 orders for the cars. As for the trucks, the waiting list is already 1,000 orders ahead of anyone ordering one today."
"With so many orders placed, which have to be done with the payment of half the purchase price at the time of ordering, I doubt this is a scam." The third of them said, considering the hundreds of millions of bronze coins Lothur's company had already collected.
These resources were so impressive that they in themselves gave validity to Lothur's business, even if his cars were a great uncertainty in the minds of these people.
Considering this, these specialists from the capital soon concluded that they also needed to get to know this Lothur Ritter and send information to the family about him.
Even in the capital, not everyone knew about young Ritter's identity, much less the Third Prince's actions against him.
That was the case for these men, who would soon search for Lothur to talk about the car business in the province and Leopoldine!
...