She thought about what she said and decided to add an amendment. "While your identity won't matter, getting the resources is another matter. Naturally, it all depends on your talent, but it doesn't help if you know the right people in the family."
"Currently you don't know anyone in the family. You don't even know your father. If anything, you might have people who are disgruntled with you in the family."
Arthur was aghast when he heard that. He asked in surprise, "But why will anyone in the family be disgruntled with me?"
He didn't think he had done anything to offend the Dyson family. The only thing he had done was to kill that Jake. That is a serious matter that no one must know about, or he will be in big trouble.
Lady Vena rolled her eyes when she heard his question. She asked, "Why are you so surprised that there are people who are unhappy with you? Have you forgotten how you terrorized your neighbors for years? What about that time you refused to be married off for the interest of the family?"
"There's also the fact that you killed one of their prized deer, and you also refused to join the inner academy. That is the most important offense that you made. You refused the help of the family and refused to swear fealty to the family. Instead, you went out of the family to get the force diagram. A lot of people are not happy about that."
He said, "Oh."
When he heard what she said, he lost interest in it.
He looked out the window of the carriage and said, "I thought I had done something seriously bad to offend them."
Lady Vena didn't think it was right for him to belittle the matter. She said, "This is a serious matter. These people are not so unhappy that they will take action against you. But they are unhappy enough not to support someone. so talented that they might turn against them in the future."
"So tonight is your chance to change their minds. At least change the mind of your father. If he gets on your side, your work is already half done."
He was skeptical about her claim. So he asked, "Just how important is a father in the family if he has that much influence enough to make my work half done?"
She chuckled when she heard that. "Your father doesn't like politics, and he doesn't like interacting much with people, so he doesn't have many connections in the family. This also means he doesn't have a lot of enemies in the family."
"He is a neutral person that everyone respects. When combined with the fact that he has a talent that grants him a 50% chance of reaching the third mortal coil in the future, it makes him a good candidate for a future patriarch of the family."
He asked in surprise, "Really?"
Lady Vena nodded several times to show just how serious she was. She even clarified what she meant for him.
"I'm not talking about the family head. That is just a figurehead. I am talking about the position of patriarchs, who are the one truly in charge of the family."
He understood what she said. The head of the family makes decisions about the daily operation of the family. But the Patriarch are the strongest and the ones that make critical and highly important decisions in the family.
He has heard several times that his father is talented. It was because Augustus was talented and powerful that his competitors ganged up on him and forced him to fail the sect examination.
He always took this story as a lesson in how the outstanding nail gets hammered down. He learned that lesson and promised himself to gather every advantage he can get before he participates in the sect examination.
He also heard that his father is currently at the fifth transformation of the first mortal coil. In comparison, Lady Vena is at the third transformation.
The gap between the fourth transformation and the third transformation is not as simple as it looks. It looks like a single gap of one transformation, but that one transformation is very difficult, as it is the first difficult bottleneck in the second mortal coil.
Crossing from the third transformation to the fourth is very difficult. Some people might never cross it in their life.
It is true that Augustus had an advantage of three years over Lady Vena, but three years is not enough for Lady Vena to make both the fourth and fifth transformations.
Three years will at most be good enough for Lady Vena to reach the fourth transformation. But by that time, Augustus might have reached the sixth transformation of the second mortal coil.
The difference in their talent is clear. But he didn't know that his father was so talented that he might become a patriarch of the family.
It is because he understood the value of his father's talent that he said to Lady Vena, "Are you sure you care about my father because you love him or because he has the chance of becoming a patriarch of the family in the future?"
She folded her arm on her chest and asked in return, "Why not both? Why can't I want us to be back together because I like him and because he is talented? The two for things are not mutually exclusive."
He sighed when he heard that. Then he shook his head and said, "Father won't help me. You have said many times that he doesn't care about me. I don't think that will change for anything."
She shook her head too and said, "It will work if you show enough sincerity."
He said, "But I'm not sincere."
She insisted, "You have to be sincere. I'll give you many things if you succeed."
Then she smiled and asked smugly, "How is that for sincerity?"
He looked at her intently and asked, "Do I really have to spell it out? He doesn't like me because of how I was born. That is the same reason why he doesn't like you too."