Nathan really, really wanted to let Pulsie know his opinion on that bloody plant hiding information. But his head was...making it a little...bit...difficult.

sc

Nathan woke up with a jolt. For a second, he thought he was being attacked. But no, it was just a maid sprinkling water on his face.

"I beg our forgiveness, sir." he looked up to see Mira, with a sly smile on her face looking down at him, "I fear that you have rather urgent business to take care of."

Nathan looked up at her through his hazy eyesight, his head still pounding and drowsy from his experience.

"What?" he asked.

"The village head is back, and he's asking if you are ready to meet him. " Mira said.

"No." Nathan replied. "I am not."

"I remember you making an appointment, sir." Mira reminded him. Nathan was already groaning himself awake.

"I suppose you already have a game plan and an agenda for the meeting?" he asked, wishing he had the water element so he could splash- oh. Mira had planned for that. A maid stepped out from behind her, carrying a bowl of water. With ice in it. The summer solstice wasn't that far away. The palace was very clearly maid with magical cooling in mind. The ice should have melted by now.

Nathan eyed it, and the looked at the maid. Now, he didn't have the Countess' Skill or Pulsie's...Pulsieness, but he was moderately good at mana sensing. And it didn't take a genius to think that this maid had the ice element.

"Can you set up ice bowls like this throughout the first three floors?" he asked.

The maid looked at Mira.

"That...might be difficult. Nema is the only one with the ice element and she only has a minor affinity. Cooling so much water...would be difficult.

Nathan opened his desk drawer, and removed one of the rings. "This can boost your mana regeneration."

The maid looked at the ring in shock. Nathan shrugged. Mira looked at the drawer with suspicion.

"That drawer should be secured if you're going to store artifacts in it." Mira said, gesturing to the maid to take the ring. The maid took it with shaking hands and nearly dropped it when she sensed it.

The ring recharged more than the girl's entire mana pool each second. Nathan had been using it to boost his cultivation speed. Then the Countess had given him a hundred. Just picked it up from the bloody jewelry room and gave it to him because 'she had too many of those to count'.

For the life of him, he couldn't believe that the Diery vault was filled with normal barely magical jewelry if the less crucial vaults had artifacts like this.

A journeyman could speed his cultivation by a hundred times by this. Even a Master would benefit. Then again, maybe all Druids were monsters like the Countess that could just call upon the mana needed to break through when they wanted to.

"Are you sure you want to give this to me, sir?" the maid asked. "Th-this is- um-"

"Don't worry." Nathan said. "And if you think there is anyone that can benefit from something like this, please tell me... I have a few."

Mira interrupted before the maid could say anything. "I am sure the army-"

"The college would like to acquire every single one of these rings." someone from behind her said.

Mira spun around. "Tha- What are you doing here, sir? I apologize, but this is a private area-"

"Oh please, it isn't as if I haven't seen a man in his nightclothes before." The old man's eyes scanned Nathan's body. "Not that this young man seems to have bothered to change. A busy night, I take it?"

"Yes." Nathan answered testingly. "Can I please your name, good sir?"

"Oh, sure." the old man extended a hand. "I am Moruvier Senesor, here to volunteer for the position of Dean."

Nathan paused, extending his hand as he sensed for Pulsie.

"Is that who I think it is?" he asked.

"A Foundational Adept of the Senesor Duchy? Yes, it is." Pulsie answered.

Nathan had to school his expression. This was unexpected. Moruvier Senesor wasn't particularly famous, but he was somewhat important. There were history books mentioning him. Just as a branch member of the Senesor ducal family that had risen to the Adept, but still, they mentioned him.

In fact, he was the only active Adept of the Sensor duchy. The other was known to be near death. Why would what most presumed to be the unofficial leader of the Senesor duchy want to be the dean of a small college in the outskirts of the Empire? A college with little to no reputation to begin with.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"I must admit, I am surprised by your presence here, sir." he asked.

"Steward Ven apparently offered him the position. " Mira offered helpfully.

Nathan's left eye twitched.

"And I was glad to accept it!" the old man replied, his smile bordering on freaky.

Nathan's left eye twitched again.

"Is he on the top of the list?" Nathan asked.

"Yes." Mira asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Then I shall see you at the council meeting, Lord Senesor." he said.

The old man looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Now if you will excuse me,'' Nathan headed towards his wardrobe, trying not to notice the old man staring at him. For some reason, that seemed a bit creepy to him.

Nathan took a deep breath after stepping into his wardrobe. The Countess would have probably tried to judge the old man and make a decision right there. The council would have agreed to her decision without objection. That wouldn't work for him. For one, he didn't want to take full responsibility for whatever mess this made. That would mean that he would have to solve it too. And that was just too much work.

If the council made the decision, then the entire council would have to contribute to fixing it. Not to mention, the council might not agree to his decisions easily. There was so little trust between them that he didn't even need to read their minds to see that they doubted him. The fact that he had done so just made it worse.

Dressing himself was easy. Now that he had managed to deny any valets, he was able to wear whatever he wished. There would be no wearing uncomfortable suits to long meetings, no, thank you. Why would anyone even do that? The nobles of the continent were just masochists. Then again, so were those in the Southern Continent. The meetings in that continent just involved a lot more blood. Associating meetings with pain must be a human trait.

Well, Nathan was half-fae and that meant he would be wearing shirts and trousers to the meeting. Just black with gold trimmings. When his body already had a color scheme, he might as well exploit it with his clothes.

Walking out, he was glad to note that the bloody old man wasn't around. Mira though, was.

"What else is there?" he asked.

"I have it on good authority that the village heads want to discuss housing in cities." she said.

"What about it?" he asked.

"The villages have been trying to buy more property in the cities for a while now."

"And let me guess, the homeowner's association or whatever they call themselves does not want them to." Nathan groaned.

"Yes. The villages feel that the cities have too much influence in the government." Mira said.

"Do they?"

"The villages make up over ninety percent of the county's population, but not a single member of the cabinet is elected. The village heads are elected based on a democratic system, but the county level government is entirely nominated by the Countess."

"And the villagers are dissatisfied with that. "Nathan finished.

The atmosphere changed around him. Mira stopped walking as a few maids dropped whatever they were carrying. Nathan hadn't bothered to check.

"Not at all, sir! The people of the county are loyal to the Countess-" one of the maids said. Even Nathan was able to guess what was going on.

"I do not doubt your loyalty, miss. There is nothing wrong with wanting some more representation in the government." he said.

The maids did not look convinced. Nathan sighed as he continued walking. Why did everything he did just turn out bad?

sc

Althea

Althea looked at her staff, admiring its contours as she tried to figure out what it did. There was literally nothing better for her to do. The journey was, for the lack of a better word, boring. A person could only cultivate for so long.

Or rather, she could only cultivate for so long. Lady Surich did not seem to have that problem. The Steward didn't either. The rest of the passengers seemed to have found something to occupy their time while she had gotten bored.

Just bored. There was no point in absorbing mana, she had more than stuffed her core full of it. Flying was still something she was working on, but she had the handle on it now. Althea wouldn't be doing cartwheels in the air anytime soon, but she was able to move up, down, left and right. Even diagonal. At least in her room. Flying outside would have...unpleasant results if she was caught in a bad position.

The Countess Guarding Diery was not supposed to be floundering around in the air after all.

Now, back to the staff. The staff of the Diery family was a legendary artifact that had been passed down from the first Druid. That of course meant this was the staff of Vader the First. Now, the question stood, why did Vader the First use a staff that only seemed to be very, very hard to destroy. There were records of it getting chopped by Grandmaster blades and coming out without a dent. But not a single head of the Diery family had managed to make the glorified stick do anything else.

At least that was what the records said. Althea would be ready to believe that the great Vader had simply wanted a very hard weapon instead of relying on external factors, but she knew better. The staff had helped her by feeding her land mana, back when she had just started cultivating.

Oh, she wasn't sure how helpful that had been, except perhaps increasing the amount of mana she could call on. And use to further her understanding of magic, of course. Well, it would probably also be important to other people that needed to actually store mana before breaking through. Having two types of mana to call upon did double one's cultivation speed.

But she was diverging again. The staff was clearly more than a hard stick. So, how could she use it better? What was the staff's secret?

Althea smashed the staff down onto the deck, trying to provoke a response. The staff just hit the deck like a wooden stick. There was not a smudge of difference. Mana did not churn. The wood did not have a hole. There were no signs at all that a weapon that surpassed Grandmaster class weapons had been used here.

The next thing she did was pour mana into it. As usual, the staff rejected it. No, not reject it, it let her mana pass through it. Just like it was a normal piece of wood. Hitting the deck while channeling mana wouldn't change anything, she was sure.

With a heavy sigh, she laid back on her bed, keeping the staff beside her. The communication orb sat just a few meters away. A part of her wanted to call the Empress, ask her if she was ready to finish their talk. But she was sure her aunt had things to do, and leaving in between would just make people suspicious.

There were a lot of eyes on both of them right now. Althea had noticed no less than a dozen people wandering where they shouldn't be. Taking any action would be an overreaction, they were just roaming around. Pursuing them for doing something that could simply be out of boredom would hurt her, at least politically.. But a fool could tell that they were spies, trying to get a sense of what she was doing. The positions they were in were just too coincidental.

That more than anything else propelled her to sit up and at least act like she was meditating. That was what she was supposed to do. Even if the act was starting to get tiring.

The Diery palace was so much better than this.