An Understated Dominance by Marina Vittori

“Here’s the problem-even if we know Warrick’s intentions, how do we stop him?

“Austin asked.

Right now, Warrick had already disappeared without a trace. Austin’s team hadn’t even come close enough to get a hold of him, so there was no way to track him down.

West Lucozia’s vast territory and resources made it impossible to seal off every exit route completely. While it might be manageable in the short term, prolonging such an operation would significantly impact West Lucozia’s economy. Wasting resources on a single fugitive wasn’t a wise move.

“Warrick is a wanted man across the entire city. There’s no way he’s leaving through official channels. He’ll have to sneak his way out,” Dustin analyzed.

He continued, “According to the maritime charts, if he’s traveling from West Lucozia to Artea, he’ll have to go through Thaloria. That’s our lead. Get someone on it immediately-find out how many smuggling routes there are from West Lucozia to Thaloria.”

“Got it. I’ll get it done right away,” Austin replied with a nod. He quickly summoned his guards and relayed the orders.

The castle’s intelligence network worked efficiently. In less than half an hour, a special route map was delivered to Austin.

As he spread it out, he saw dozens of winding paths-all leading from West Lucozia’s border to various docks and ports in Thaloria. However, five of these routes were marked in bright red, which stood out sharply.

These routes weren’t found on any standard map, and few knew they existed. In other words, they were the secret channels used by smugglers. Unscrupulous merchants and corrupt officials had long exploited these routes for profit.

The castle had been aware of them for some time but had chosen not to take action. Cracking down on them would be a massive undertaking.

was like

Austin said, pointing at the map. “If your guess is right,

to lay an

was like a startled bird,

a large force, it’ll tip him off. But if we only send a handful of elite squads, I’m worried we won’t have enough manpower to stop

being drugged with Tranqurin, Warrick still managed to escape from the castle. Regular

Draken Guardians stood a chance of taking him down. The problem was that there were only about 100 of them. It was nowhere near enough to cover

had the backing of experts from the Hall of Gods. If it came to a confrontation, the

go through all that trouble,” Dustin said coolly. “Just deploy your forces to seal off four of the

it now. So, this is what you meant by ‘ lure him

the false hope that he could escape. Dustin would then wait at the exit and capture him the moment he walked into

wouldn’t raise any suspicion

take down Warrick, Austin had never doubted it. Even top-ranked martial artists on

had only himself to blame for

in Celestria, the capital of

Dustin and Austin already had a plan to capture Warrick, they still had to put on a show to avoid arousing suspicion from the

a bookshelf