"Are you close with Conrad?"
Inside the car, Arias watched the conversation between John and Conrad through the window, his brow furrowing slightly before he offered John a well-meaning reminder.
"For reasons unknown, the Slayfort Family seems to have run into some trouble recently. Quite a few people have been watching them, so I suggest that you limit your contact with them for the time being, lest any unnecessary misunderstandings arise."
"Conrad and I are ordinary friends, I suppose. But Marquis Arias, what did you mean when you said the Slayfort Family had run into trouble?"
"It appears to be related to the Phantom Seed. Something may have gone wrong in the magic research laboratory transplanting a new type of Phantom Seed, causing injuries among reserve members receiving spell-circuit transplants. Aside from the Phantom Legion project being declared a failure and all the early investment essentially going down the drain, the most critical point is that the incident also implicated the illegitimate son of a powerful noble."
"So, the Slayfort Family has been caught in a storm of public opinion lately. And if they cannot provide a new solution, it is foreseeable that the Slayfort Family will suffer a severe loss this time."
"I see..."
John's face was full of surprise as he listened to Arias's explanation.
He had not expected such a change to occur within the Slayfort Family during the time he had been fighting in Faoken.
And it was a development that had never occurred in the original storyline.
Under the normal course of events, the Slayfort Family's first large-scale trial of the Phantom Legion modification project—which they had prepared for nearly twelve years and poured vast sums of money into—
should not have met with any accident. It should have ended in success.
Then, after confirming