With Roger's departure and the Vesalius empire's immediate future secured, Arthur thought things would finally slow down. Unfortunately, he still had a few meetings left to get through. The vampires, for starters, wanted his permission to grow certain plants they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to, thanks to the benefits his Soul Splinter brought. He’d been pleasantly surprised that they’d consulted him for something they could have easily gotten away with. Still, he wasn’t so foolish that he was blind to the political intent behind the decision. The elder vampires had been shocked by his Soul Splinter, and he’d quickly risen in status from a necessary evil to a golden goose they wanted to be kept well-fed and happy. By consulting him on such a trivial matter, they got to stroke his ego and inflate his sense of self-worth.Or maybe he was reading into things too much, and the vampires were just good neighbours. He remembered how they'd broken his house to build theirs. Arthur snorted. Fat chance of that. Iris looked up at him from the document she was reading through.“What’s got you in such a funny mood?”“Nothing,” Arthur replied. “How are those reports going?”Iris groaned and pulled at her hair. “It's the last time I’m going to let Ayesha sweet-talk me into things,” she cursed. “It’s been her dream forever to establish her own faction on Earth, but if I knew it involved so much paperwork, I would’ve tried to talk her out of it.”“I still don’t get that, to be honest,” Arthur said. “How exactly does all this faction stuff work? And why is Earth so important? Unique people aside, it's only just become tier 1.”Iris shrugged. “It’s all really simple. In the end, it all boils down to a game of benefits and the basest of all emotions, greed and desire. Ayesha’s father is a businessman through and through. He isn’t evil or anything, but he made for a terrible father, at least in her early years of life.”“As (...)