With a wide grin on his face, Dell stepped forward and started walking away from the terminal ground, his walking gait reflecting his distinguished position not only as a member of a tier one family but also as one of its important heirs.
Dell's gaze glanced to the side to see a similarly red haired youth who immediately bowed as he got to his side and greeted respectfully,
"Welcome back, young master."
It was none other than the same youth who had reported the beginning of the attack on Atticus to Dell.
Dell gave the youth a quick glance, the disdain completely evident in his eyes as he continued walking without stopping, his wide grin unchanged.
Seeing as he had no choice, the youth, with his head still bowed, followed after Dell. This current camp couldn't be compared to the camp of the first years or even Atticus's camp.
The campgrounds were completely paved, and there were multiple large and developed futuristic looking buildings all around the camp.
It was quite obvious that compared to the first years, the second years had gone far in terms of their camp development.
Dell walked through the campgrounds, and the members of his division immediately reacted as soon as they saw that Dell had arrived.
Regardless of how far the students were from him, as long as they were in his field of view, each and every one of the students bowed as he walked.
It was as though the entirety of the students in the camp stopped whatever they were doing and bowed to show their respects. As though a King walking amidst his people.
Dell simply walked, ignoring every single one of the bowed youth. Although his expression seemed unchanged, it was plenty obvious that he was reveling in every single second of this scene.
The feeling of being worshipped was… awesome.
"What's the status?" After a few awkward moments of walking, Dell suddenly spoke up and asked. At this point, the other year two Alverian youths had already joined the duo, each of them walking behind Dell.
"It's going as planned, young master. The whole Ravenstein and Nebulon families are fighting,"
Dell came to an abrupt stop as he heard those words, the grin on his face widening. As though the others had already anticipated this response, they all simultaneously stopped, in sync with him.
"Good, good! Now his attention would be diverted," Dell said with an incredibly satisfied expression on his face.
Then he started moving again as he continued,
"Are the others ready?" Dell asked.
"You just have to say the word, young master. We're all ready,"
Dell turned his gaze backward to see each of the youths showing determined expressions on their faces, and he couldn't help but silently click his tongue while muttering under his breath, "Cock suckers."
He knew why they were acting this way towards him; they all obviously wanted to form a connection with him. He was the strongest candidate among the heirs in the Alverian family.
Unlike the Ravenstein main family, which had only Atticus as an heir, the Alverian family was different.
Eleanor, the family head of the Alverian family, had married multiple wives and given birth to numerous sons and daughters.
The only reason Dell and Lila were currently being favored in the Alverian family was exactly because of their unmatched talent in both the art of alchemy and in battle.
Their battle strength was comparable to the youths from normal battle families.
There was only one person who could be a threat to his position in the family, and it was none other than his lovely sister, Lila.
Dell had perceived signs of some of the elders in their family who were subtly supporting Lila instead of him.
'For all I know, one of them could be a spy,' Dell had always been paranoid, incredibly so.
'I should adjust their contracts and turn them into slaves.'
Dell shook his head and decided to leave this for later; he had pressing matters to attend to.
"Start the next phase," he suddenly commanded, prompting the youth and the other Alverian youths walking behind him to simultaneously bow their heads and respond, "As you wish, young master."
At the next instant, they each excused themselves, leaving Dell alone with his thoughts.
…
The days went by quickly, and the war between the Ravenstein and Nebulon youths still continued. If the onlookers hadn't been certain before, now it was 100% sure that the Ravenstein family youths would be the winners of this war.
The Nebulon family youths were basically decimated already, as it became a very rare occurrence to see any of them walking through the academy.
The remaining ones didn't even dare attend classes or show up to the academy campus. The very few that remained all simply stayed back at their divisions, intending to wait out the intense situation.
The higher years weren't different. Initially, the higher years hadn't gone full throttle, especially at the start, with only a few battles happening here and there.
But after the tension started escalating every day, the higher years had eventually joined in fully.
After receiving reports from the Ravenstein youths about the Nebulon youths' movements, Atticus had immediately instructed them to command the enslaved Nebulon youths to sneak attack the ones that refused to come to the academy campus.
Although doing so would alert the others that some of them in the Nebulon family worked for the Ravensteins, Atticus had still decided to go this route.
He had basically already found out everything he needed about Zephyr and the other Nebulon family youths from the enslaved youths. They all literally didn't have any other use except for this.
Their primary target had been one person: Zephyr. And Atticus had instructed them to make it as painful as possible.
After that night, the days once again passed. And on a particular afternoon, in a very secluded spot in the non leader's section of the academy campus, a total of 100 youths were gathered.