Little Use
The Silver Empire was indeed to blame for this. Because they manipulated their Zones so that others couldn't learn their secrets, their Variant Zone appeared in an obscure part of their Empire rather than an easily accessible location. As a result, a Zone that might have turn their fortune around fell into the hands of three small families who were still fighting over it to this day.
According to the history, the ultimate treasure of the Variant Zone wasn't claimed by any one of the families. Instead, it ended up split, with the Radix and Midas claiming one half while the Florer family gained the other.
Due to the treasure being split, neither group could gain the full and true benefits and the result was what they saw today. Neither family was able to rise up to the level of the Silver Empire, but they weren't necessarily weak either. In terms of the power scaling of this Sector, they could be considered to be in the dead center, maybe a tick above.
The three families were definitely a restraining force on one another. If not for this, they would likely only be second to the Luxnix family and its two counterparts. But, it was because they knew this that their greed for the entire inheritance was so fierce, resulting in all three parties suffering.
As for why the Midas and Radix families came together? It was because they shared a half. Only by being together could they resist the Florer family. That also likely meant that the most powerful existences Leonel might have to face in this coming war were the Florer.
Leonel's expression went cold as he recalled the practices of the Florer family. These were most definitely individuals that had committed too many sins to be left alone.
Leonel took a deep breath and calmed himself. 'I've wasted enough time, I have to hurry or else all of this information will be meaningless.'
**
"Over there. The process for entering the Eight Eye Branch will take about a day and you will need to—"
Leonel placed down his badge, causing the words of the individual before him to get caught in their throat. The older gentleman didn't know what to say for a long time, his gaze slowly arching up to meet Leonel's own.
Realizing his folly, the old man shook his head.
"Ah, esteemed Crafter. Forgive me for my rudeness. Please be on your way."
A cold sweat covered the old man's forehead. He knew that Crafters tended to have terrible tempers, and one as young as this was even more likely to fall into such a category. Even though it wasn't an exact science to tell someone's age after the Fourth Dimension, the fact Leonel could still look so young and yet be a Bronze Crafter was impressive enough. Even the most talented Force Crafters this old man had ever seen were at least deep into their middle ages.
However, Leonel just smiled, catching the old man off guard. He didn't even recover until Leonel had long since stepped into the teleportation platform and vanished.
'This… Did he just smile at me…?'
That only meant one of two things, either he met a rare, nice person, or he'd come home tonight to find his family nailed to stakes and decapitated. The old man suddenly felt the urge to run.
…
"Where is he? Who's here?!"
Another old man with messy white hair rushed into a room as though his ass was on fire. No… His ass really was on fire. Somehow, no one had stopped him on his way here to point out that the back of his robes were quickly burning.
"Iselan! You're on fire!"
The middle-aged woman who had a cold sweat on her forehead identical to the receptionist from earlier flew into a panic. It was only then that the old man realized that he was indeed on fire. In fact, another few inches and his undies would be out for the world to admire.
Iselan waved a hand and the fire shot into his palm.
"What are you shouting about? Where's the Sixth Dimensional Ore!?"
The middle-aged woman was speechless. Wasn't it you who shouted first? And weren't you still shouting now?
Leonel chuckled at this scene but didn't seem to mind. He had thought of using the Sixth Dimensional Ore in his creations, but he felt that using it like this was actually far better.
The Eight Eye Branch was the largest and most powerful of the Force Crafting Guild Branches in the Milky Way, information Leonel had thankfully learned from the Radix. Their reserves of riches made the Golden Path Branch look like beggars and their influence was far greater. They were almost like a mini-main branch of this Galaxy and actually had Tier 8 and 9 Bronze Crafters.
Of course, Leonel knew that this was actually a recent change.
Not too long ago, the strongest Crafters in the Milky Way were just Tier 3 or 4 at best. But, a slight shift began to occur as the Main Force Crafting Branch began to send over stronger experts bit by bit. Obviously, this was all for the sake of taking part in Earth's Fold of Reality.
The waters of the Milky Way were far deeper than Leonel had ever known. It really put into perspective how naïve he was thinking that he could take it over in a few years.
This aside, this made the Eight Eye Branch perfect for Leonel to target. So long as they made such a transaction with him, they would be biased toward Leonel to an extreme. Not only would this give Leonel a large amount of funds, but it would make perfect use of the backdoor the Golden Path Branch had paved for him. Nôvel(D)rama.Org's content.
With Leonel befriending the Eight Eye Branch with his Ores and Crafts, it would make it almost impossible for Shield Cross Stars to continue to target him freely and would give him some added freedom.
Leonel smiled and respectfully greeted Iselan.
"Elder Iselan, I was indeed lucky enough to stumble upon a small ore of Sixth Dimensional metals. They're of little use to me now so I wanted to sell them to your Branch."