Chapter 50

The Big Picture

  Aredhel knew that her daughter won't contact her if it was not an urgent situation but she was not able to reach her. this was making her anxious. She tracked her recent locations in a hurry which led her to the ground floor of the library, the place her communication orb was before her disappearance.

  She got angry seeing Walter's lingering dark aura there. They had already made a deal so she believed Walter would not cross her and after scaring the receptionists she found out what had happened there.

  She flew tracking the dark aura and saw the land reshaping itself. In the midst of it, there was a long tree holding a battered boy. She was already having a headache imagining the trouble it would bring if Hans was that boy, but before she could focus on clearly identifying him. A loud scream entered her ears and the object of that scream shot itself with a very fast speed toward the sentinel boy, whom she just saw.

She quickly used a fifth-circle spell

TempusBullet

It was a self-created spell of hers, which contained three elemental mana, a strong structure by ground mana, and its speed provided by fire and wind. It had more penetrating power than the conical casing of Hans and on impact, it killed the crying seed instantly.

Everyone turned to her as they heard her mana-enhanced boy,

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?

Hans got annoyed, their fight was interrupted and it looked like this was the extent of how much he could beat Gazel. Aredhel came in anger and repeated her words, this time aimed at Walter,

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?

Walter replied,

Tsk, you just have to crash the fun.

  He hopped on the vines till he reached Hans and, Delimira and Chris followed him. Hans sat on his bottoms to relax a little. He had to take the attack head-on, just to let Gazel down his guard but it doesn't mean he was not feeling the pain.

  Delimira poured some liquid on Hans’s wounds and the effect was the same as when Sierra healed him. He was staring at the vial in her hand and asked,

What is this?

My five gold coins.

Hans didn't speak a word after she mocked him with the price of a healing potion pouring on him. While they were cheerfully talking, there was tension between Walter and Aredhel.

Walter spoke up, not to Aredhel but to Gazel,

You see, running an information organisation will only charge you a simple fine and a few days of suspension but bribing a professor for making a private fight has some serious consequences. I will add a few cherries on the top like, extortions and discrimination then you will be set for a life outside this place, your family included.

  Gazel was looking at him stupefied, it was all the set-up from the beginning to increase his charges. but what he did not get was why Walter was going this far and seeing him not believing, Walter clarified,

Gazel Robins, henceforth on the charges I mentioned before, your family is barred from using Concordia privileges.

  Gazel could see his father killing him on his return; he could not allow this decision to pass on. It was time to use the last straw, that is using family connections to scare him off. He shouted at Walter with this intent,

Do you think you can treat me like this, I am from a council family. You will regret this day.

He turned towards Aredhel and said in a commanding tone,

HouseMaster, relay the words to the Clandor council…

Walter laughed loudly at his last attempt to use family connections and said to the elven boy,

You moron, you are barking at the wrong tree. Why do you think Elves don't like our dearest professor Winters? She aided Parvians in the purge of the Elven council. 

  This was news to everyone, even to Delimira, she didn't know her mother was involved in the Elven war. The only thing about being not respected in Clandor sounded true in his words for her, since she knew the real reason behind the scorn of other elves was her biological father.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

When she was thinking all that, Chris and Hans had their own thoughts, Hans was thinking about how deeply was she involved with his supposed-to-be father and Chris was also pondering about that too since his family also became victims of the Elven War.

Aredhel was despising Walter more since he was distorting the truth so she stopped him,

I did not help anyone.

No, abandoning your kind means aiding the enemy, Winters. Ah, I can't say enemy, after all, you were quite chummy with king Samson, right?

Aredhel was feeling a twitch in her eye. She was close to losing it but controlled herself and said,

It's not the place and time to dig up the past, Walter, LET IT GO.

  Walter didn't speak anything after that, while Gazel was thinking of a way to avoid the worst-case scenario but one thing keep coming to his mind, he was a high-profile person too, so he didn't get why he was facing this situation because of Hans.

After staying silent for some moments, Walter turned to Gazel and said,

When I was talking about the lesson of learning who to offend or to avoid, I was talking about you, fool. I was the one who got rid of your little shop. How dare you investigate one of my members.

Gazel refuted

But you said..you took my money…my father won't like it…

Walter smiled and threw the money pouch at Hans and said to him,

Here is your welcome bonus kid, we prophets always return twice what we receive, pay back the little miss Winters.

  Hans could not say that he understood Walter's motives but his attitude right now was up to his liking. He took out 10 coins from the pouch and gave them to Delimira. He had a feeling that Walter was up to something else but he was not sure what it was, he stood up smirking and threatened the weary Gazel,

Watch your back in the dark, senior.

Suddenly, anger took over Walter’s face and Hans was thankful that it was all directed at Gazel,

I have drawn quite a big picture for our youngest, how dare you include yourself in it.

Gazel was out of his wits, he replied,

But you will be charged with Bribery too.

So what, I am the one reporting, I just have to pay it back, that is the law here. You don't have witnesses on your side and you won't be foolish enough to let us scan your memories, right? The council has too many secrets, god knows how much we could dig.

  Gazel was cursing his fate, he didn't have any choice but to accept whatever Walter was charging him with and beg his father for mercy. They could buy back Cocordia’s privileges, of course with a heavy price but his expulsion was permanent.

Walter looked at Aredhel who was still in the air and said to her,

Take the kids back with you. I will take care of this mess, so it doesn't smear in your pretty face, just like I took care of the stupid commission.

  Aredhel sighed, Walter was coercing her and Delimira was feeling guilty for providing the means for it. The sentinel’s HouseMaster looked at Gazel with hateful eyes. He had cost her a lot of things in just two days. She thought of thoroughly reforming the Sentinels and grabbed the kids with some invisible force to fly away.

  The three started floating towards her. This was the first time flying experience for Hans and it sure was far better than sitting on Rudolf’s shoulder. He enjoyed the view from the sky but he could not share his experience with Chris and Delimira since both were dead silent for some reason.

  It was a short trip, Aredhel dropped them at the entrance of their lecture hall and disappeared without saying anything. Hans was expecting to receive some sort of scolding from her but there was nothing. He was doubting how much this mother and daughter pair knew about him.

He turned to Delimira and threw the bait,

It was you, right? The one who commissioned the information check on me?

  But surprisingly Delimira showed the expression clearly stating what the hell he was talking about. Chris knew about it too but lying with a straight face was one of Delimira’s many quirks.

Hans said to them,

Whatever, thanks for speaking up for me.

Delimira was startled this time and replied,

When did I?

[referring to when she pleaded with Walter to stop when Hans got hit with the first boulder]

Hans innocently said,

Then I must have heard wrong.

  This annoyed her more than his gratitude. Chris sighed and pushed them inside the hall. The three kept sitting at the back but since there was some time for the professor to arrive. The duo of Clandor were interested in many things to learn about Hans.

He asked while scratching his right cheek,

What was the screaming thing and how come you can do that massive spell?

Hans thought for a minute and thought since it was going to happen more and more, he decided to tell him with some sprinkle of lies,

My friend, the massive spell is called Sprout, it's a kind of spell to grow anything that I have studied before, of course with any modification I want, but it takes time to create something that big.

Chris got annoyed and said,

That's not what I asked, I wanna know how you could do that massive spell.

Ah, that. I have so much mana that I won't even feel bad to brag about it

Delimira interjected,

Then what was that screaming thing?

  Hans and Chris both turned to her in surprise, they both felt she would never be the one to ask first, but Hans’s performance was far impressive to ignore. Since she healed Hans before, he decided to repay the goodwill by satiating her curiosity, in satire of course.

A very dangerous spell.

***