Kami was the first to speak, fury coating his words. “I won’t let this stand. My boy still hasn’t recovered. Disregarding the pain he’s been in, the expense of the medicine needed to ensure these wounds would have no impact on his future is astronomical.”
“Don’t act rashly Kami. If your boy hadn’t tried to kill the commoner, he would have never suffered,” Patia-Neva’s voice was understanding but firm. He couldn’t allow Kami’s hate to fester.
“I don’t care. Since when has the Kami family ever needed permission to kill? He’ll pay for this humiliation.”
Duco spoke. “Don’t forget why he gained the quota to perform in the first place Kami. The boy may be mediocre here, but he is of great value to the commoners. In fact, he’s quite the celebrity in the mortal world. If they learn of him being killed, and especially so soon after coming to us, it will start a war.”
“Duco is right, we have other issues to deal with. Warring with the commoners is not something we can afford, and it seems like the boy knows this. Plus, considering the dangerous missions Focus Academy’s students undergo from the 4th grade onwards, he might just die naturally.” Bai spoke out in agreement.
Sapientia’s light laughter filled the room in hopes of cutting through the tension. “From what I can garner, this boy might not continue to be mediocre for long.” He said in reply to Duco’s comment. “I see that our resident Librarian has already taken a liking to him.”
“What?!”
Kami’s anger spiked. The importance of the library to this school couldn’t be understated. If Dyon somehow managed to get Libro to his side as a mentor or friend, his progress would be much faster.
“Not to worry Kami, Libro wouldn’t break the rules of the academy… Although, it seems that Patia-Neva’s daughter gave the boy access to the first 600 levels for a few hours.” Delia’s father stiffened at these words.
Kami sighed in relief. No one could do anything with just a few hours, even with access to 600 levels.
“Eh, I wouldn’t be too relieved if I were you. It seems like one of the techniques he learned was my clan’s speed-reading technique.”
“Learned? Don’t play with us Sapientia. You just said he only had a few hours, what do you mean learned. And such a high-level technique at that?” Storm said, breaking his silence.
Sapientia sighed. “It seems he has quite some affinity for my clan’s techniques. You know the mortal world has always fascinated me. Their capacity for thinking and research is in some ways far beyond our own.”
Kami’s fists tightened.
In reality, it seemed odd for experts of their stature to be so concerned with a boy. However… There were very strict taboos on the interaction between the martial and mortal world. The ceremonial talent check they allowed the mortal world every five years was never meant to actually turn out any talents. They couldn’t understand how Dyon had passed.
Patia-Neva’s voice rang out. “The larger school alliances are putting too much pressure on us. We may have many promising geniuses in this generation, but past years have only had maybe one or two.
“If we want this school to survive, and thereby secure the future of our families, we shouldn’t be ostracizing geniuses. The boy is intelligent. It wouldn’t be difficult for him to find out that there would be other schools willing to recruit him. Schools more… willing to ignore the taboos.
“I suggest we move away from a plan to stifle him ourselves. The students of this school will be more than enough to do that. That way, if he succeeds despite that, we have a genius. If he fails, then we’d have gotten rid of a problem. We have other matters to attend to, such as preparing our families’ geniuses for the Alliance Ranking Tournament and…”
Although Patia-Neva didn’t speak the last parts of his thoughts, the other family heads knew fully well what he was referring to.
Aside from this, the truth was that the family heads only acted against Dyon because it was the easiest and most direct way. If he was embarrassed into leaving without them having to lift a finger, it would have been their best-case scenario. They had no way of guessing he’d have met Delia to give him access to the library, or even that he’d be able to learn what he learned in such a short time.
Kami swallowed his anger, choosing to believe his son would get his own revenge.
As the pressure in the room subsided, the family heads nodded in resolve. It wasn’t worth it to act themselves. They knew that Dyon would be slowed by his own lack of resources. In fact, he wouldn’t even be afforded a decent cultivation technique since the one demonstrated in the coming classes would be the most basic and crude version possible.
Even the family heads didn’t know what calamities lay ahead of them. All they knew was that power trumps everything. And right now, they didn’t have enough of it.