"Should I just knock one of the teams out and toss them into the fourteenth floor?" He asked himself, amused.
The idea wasn't exactly without merit, even if it was an amusingly crude way of going about it.
However, it definitely also had its demerits.
('If they get knocked out only to wake up and find themselves on a brand-new floor of the dungeon, that's definitely going into the report,') Rui sighed. ('In that case, it's quite likely that Chairman Deacon will be suspicious nonetheless.')
Although he would be suspicious to a lesser extent than if Rui tried communicating to him the existence and location of the fourteenth floor, it was still too iffy for Rui. What he needed was a concrete way to ensure that Chairman Deacon would greedily try to monopolize and clear it himself. This way, the only one suffering would be Chairman Deacon. He had absolutely no problems with that.
('Alright, now, I just need to plan exactly how I'm going to get an exploration team of Deacon Industries to stumble into the fourteenth floor,') Rui sighed as he considered all the available options at hand.
('The most organic way would be them naturally finding the fourteenth floor without any intervention from me,')
The problem was that this was too unlikely and Rui couldn't afford to wait around for the many days and weeks it would take for an event that may not even ever happen> he couldn't afford to waste so much time waiting for them to stumble onto the fourteenth floor naturally.
Furthermore, if the fourteenth floor came to be discovered by a non-Deacon Industries Martial Squire, then they would most likely disclose its existence to the Shionel Merchant Guild which would immediately mean that all the adventurers in the Shionel Confederation would come to learn of it as well.
That would defeat the whole point of avoiding the floors that the entire public had come to learn of. After all, he went looking out for new floors because he wanted to avoid the huge number of bounty hunters that existed among the normies. There were too many points of failure and the risk was too great to conduct his operations in their presence.
('I can't sit around waiting for them to naturally discover it,') Rui shook his head, sighing. ('I definitely need to intervene.')
He had already ruled out knocking them out and leaving them on the fourteenth floor unconscious.
Thus, he needed a new way to guide them to the fourteenth floor.
('I basically need them to willingly choose the path that would lead them to the fourteenth floor,') Rui considered the line of thought. ('What could get them to choose one path over the other?')
He could think of several possibilities.
('Unfavorable physical conditions,') Rui mused. ('Maybe a path that poses an increased risk to their life as opposed to a plain path. Paths that are detrimental to their primary risks such as their life, safety, and health as well as their objectives to explore a bare minimum amount of distance.')
Rui's mind flashed through a number of plans as he considered all of them. He could poison alternative paths to the paths that led to the fourteenth floor in an overt manner, causing the team to avoid those other paths and go right along the one that Rui wanted them to.
He could leave signs of the presence of monsters that usually meant that one was getting close to a floor.
He could fill the entrances to alternative paths preventing them from taking that path, leaving them with only one path to follow.
('That's actually a good idea,') Rui considered. ("Still, even if I do choose to that, that doesn't mean that it will succeed. Hell, before I can even flesh out the plan, I need to learn more about the exploration department of Deacon Industries.')
Depending on how Deacon Industries went about their exploration and what methodologies they followed, Rui's objectives could be anywhere between easy and difficult to execute.
('The problem is gaining all the information necessary,') Rui tutted.
He had no information on them to work on. Thus he needed to secure a reliable intelligence channel on all of it.
Fortunately, he was not without options.
('Kane has a good amount of experience as a spy,') Rui recalled. ('He should have the ability to infiltrate Deacon industries and gather information on their exploration department.')
He could definitely be of aid in getting Rui the information that he needed. Still, Rui was quite apprehensive about sending Kane on such a mission, since he knew that Chairman Deacon had contracted Martial Seniors. If Kane happened to infiltrate at the wrong time and place, even with Void Step, he would be doomed, for he had no way of defying a Martial Senior.
('Besides, Kane is good, but there is a more secure and less risky way of obtaining more holistic information,') Rui glanced back at the letter before him.
He was absolutely certain that Guildmaster Bradt had an enormous amount of information about Chairman Deacon's operations. The two of them no doubt engaged in a large covert intelligence war that went on in the shadows.
Not only would he be able to give Rui more information than Kane could get his hands on, but it was also a lot less risky. The only downside was that it obviously gave away Rui's interests in Deacon Industries to Guildmaster Bradt. With that and future events, he would most likely be able to piece together what happened.
('Still, that's not such a big deal, honestly,') Rui shrugged.
He was not friends with Chairman Deacon, but the fact that they were working partners with plenty of incentives to cooperate meant that Rui didn't need to fear him gleaning insights into Rui's general intentions and concerns.
He quickly resumed writing the letter as he specified with an information request, adding that Guildmaster Bradt could cut the costs of purchasing the information out of Rui's shares from the profits of Esosale Suppliers.