Chapter 75 TIME

Like a pack of ravenous wolves, they kept their hungry eyes on the governor and Dale (who kept a straight poker face the whole period), hoping to sneak a peek at the inside information.

Before any one of them could protest, it was a little too late. For by then, the governor had already regained his composure.

"Gentlemen," the governor began assertively as he placed both hands on the long dining table,

"In lieu of the fact that another urgent matter has surfaced, I am afraid we have to draw the curtain on this meeting for the time being...."

The governor had scarcely finished speaking when, immediately, cries of complaints rang across the table as multiple voices rose up at once to protest.

"Mr. Governor! I implore you…"

"This is unacceptable!"

"What urgent matter could be more important than this?!"

"Your excellency please…"

They all spoke at once. Each plea, complaint and protest overlapping the previous one, painting the picture of a chaotic assembly and negating the true value of a sit in discussion..

The governor indulged them for a few seconds. He allowed them bicker before raising his right palm in the air, indicating his call for silence. The rumbling slowly died, but not with great reluctance.

"I encourage you all to conduct yourselves in a manner that is befitting to officials of this great government. My secretaries will reach out to everyone of your offices with the details concerning our next meeting. Good day."

With that, he stormed out with Dale on his heels. The governor was actively trying to rein in his excitement at the prospect of meeting such an interesting entity. He had been coped up with administrative duties of late, so, this was the closest he could come to an adventure.

On their way, the governor failed to curtail his impatience even though he was just a few minutes away from seeing the local legend. He began to ask Dale some questions.

"You've met him, what do you think about him Dale?"

Anticipating this question, Dale replied him with an already prepared answer.

"The man is truly an enigma. He is wrapped in so many mysteries that makes him difficult to read."

The governor was well pleased with the answer he got. For him, this was just another adventure. The mere thought of a mysterious stranger with the chilling skill and wit to kill the notorious chief orc, well, it made him giddy. Almost like a schoolboy on a quest.

The Governor thought quietly for a moment.

"So, he's the real deal then?"

Dale answered him diplomatically;

"It's way too early to conclude sir. But by all count, it's safe to assume that he might actually be worth the trouble."

The governor chuckled slightly and then said vaguely;

"It's weird…"

"I beg your pardon sir?"

"This is the first time I have seen you unsure about a person's character. Makes me wonder…"

Dale cursed under his breath. This was what he had been trying to avoid. They both trudged on in silence as they approached the hall that led to the waiting room. The governor quickened his pace, and eagerly opened the adjoining doors to the waiting room.

With no option than to succumb, the doors responded to the governor's push, and they swung open in full force, opening up the physical portal to the next room where a human prize awaited him.

The governor bounced into the waiting room with eager eyes and an anxious mind, hoping to see a kind of medieval hero, or a mage, or at least, a warrior of the state. But alas, instead of any of these things, an empty room greeted him instead. The governor's eyes glossed over every visible square inch of the waiting room, looking for the person he had spent the last four minutes envisioning in his head.

A cloud of anger began to gather above the governor's head.

"Is this some kind of joke?" he raged..

"I assure you, this is the worst possible time to mess with me!! Where is the man you said was here Dale?!!!"

Thinking he had been played, he swung round to address the Silver Knight behind him. But on Dale's face was a look of shock that equaled that of the governor's. He opened his mouth to reply him, but this time, Dale who always had an answer for everything was lost for words. He didn't k Xzavier all that well, but he didn't think that he would be daring enough to skip out on a meeting with the governor in his own residence.

"This had better not be one of your mysterious things Xzavier!"

Dale cursed Xzavier inwardly.

"Damn you! You jerk! Where the hell did you wander off to?"

It was a bit too late for regrets, but Dale began to realize that, in retrospect, it wasn't exactly to leave a shifty, unproven entity like Xzavier unattended in the governor's house. A morbid thought came across Dale's line of thought as he struggled to give the governor a solid reason as why the star prize had suddenly vanished.

"Wait a minute…" he thought to himself,

"Could it be that Xzavier might have left already simply because he had lost his patience?"

Dale's blood ran cold. If that was the case, he knew that it would be a real pain having to track down a man who loved to stay aloof from the world. Not only that, he would lose face seriously in the sight of the governor and his other colleagues if word of this was to ever get out.

He had to find Xavier. And fast!

Totally oblivious, completely unaware of the commotion he had stirred, Xzavier wandered around the posh estate that belonged to the governor. Xzavier's decision to go AWOL wasn't intentional. It had all been a huge misunderstanding, and all parties were to blame.

When Dale received the message from the butler regarding the governor's lunch meeting with the members of his cabinet, it seemed to Xzavier that Dale didn't take too kindly to being asked to wait around. The furrowed eyebrows, the incessant pacing, and the overall look of impatience on Dale's face suggested that he wasn't really going to sit around waiting for a meeting to come to an end.

So, when Dale stormed off, marching briskly, and heading to an unknown location without updating Xzavier on his intended whereabouts and estimated time of return, Xzavier concluded what he had already suspected in the first place. Xzavier had presumptuously suspected that Dale had lost his patience.

As a statesman, Xzavier guessed that Dale knew from first hand experience hat the meetings such as this might take up an inordinate amount of time. There was no telling just how long this particular one might take. And judging from the way the Silver Knight had stormed off, Xzavier came to the logical conclusion that the end of this meeting might not exactly be in sight.

So, faced with what seemed like another long stretch of time that was filled with the gloom of boredom and inaction, Xzavier sighed inwardly, before making the conscious decision to explore the governor's estate.

"What could possibly go wrong?" he thought to himself as he reexamined his plan.

"By the looks of it, Dale might be gone for a while…"

Xzavier remembered how only just a few hours ago, he had been bored to senselessness while he waited to be attended to by a government official.

"And that guy was just a low ranking official, imagine how long it would take to get to see the governor on such short notice?!"

The more Xzavier thought about it, the more he saw reasons why he should go ahead with his exploration. He turned his head towards the end of the waiting room, in the direction of the hallway that seemed lead elsewhere. Like a portal to a magical world, the courtyard seemed to call out to him, taunting him invitingly, and egging him to try and find out more about his environment. After all, it wasn't every day one got to experience the Vintage Architectural wonder of the European Middle Ages.

There was so much to explore! And Xzavier had an abundance of the one resource that almost always proved to never be enough- TIME.

So, with nothing stopping him, and literally no one in sight, Xzavier set off like the explorers of old, hoping to feast his eyes on the wonders of this strange and yet densely familiar place (familiar because he had only seen timely pieces like this on TV and in books). Coincidentally, at that same moment, some two hundred meters away in the dining section of the estate, Dale and his governor were actively making their way towards Xzavier in great haste and with even greater curiosity.

So, in a bid to escape the stifling, mundane grip of the goddess of boredom, Xzavier ended up leaving a tide of commotion in his wake. But of course, he didn't know that.