Chapter 70 Volume II - 36: Lady of the Quie Family

Chapter 70 Volume II - Chapter 36: Lady of the Quie Family

Three hours had passed since I left Sue's side. The sun had already risen and some of the students still in the academy were starting to go outside.

I was out too, walking slowly toward the main campus, hiding my face with the hood I was wearing, and observing my surroundings.

I could see groups of friends joking around with each other, people hanging out with their lovers, security guards on patrol, and everything else I would expect to see in a normal academy.

Actually, when I look at this place like this, I can't help but feel like I'm not in Lunerra, but in my old world.

There are really many differences between the two worlds, but that doesn't change the fact that they are 'similar'. After all, both worlds are inhabited by a creature called 'human beings'.

Just as there are those who are joking around right now, there are those who are being bullied right now. Just as there are those who hang out with their lovers now, there are also those who cheat on them and break up with them for ridiculous or logical reasons. Just as there are security patrols now, there are those who take bribes and ignore what is happening.

My world has changed, but people are no different from before. And that's how I'll be able to do what I want to do.

Finally, after entering the main campus, I went up to the fourth floor without looking at anyone. My goal was to go much higher than that, to the highest room, but students were not allowed to go beyond the fourth floor without permission. So it didn't take long for a security guard to intercept me.

"Where are you going?"

"I wanted to meet the rector."

The guard suddenly frowned.

"Don't be ridiculous, is the rector of the academy going to meet with you who didn't even make an appointment?"

"I don't need an appointment if you tell her that red roses can only be different and magnificent among the whites, otherwise they are just a simple, ordinary red rose."

"Get lost, boy! She has enough on her plate as it is, she doesn't need to listen to your nonsense!"

The man was talking loudly, drawing attention to us.

Fortunately, I was talking to him in a corner, especially so that our voices would not be overheard by others, it would not be good for me in the long run if someone was listening to our conversation.

"If you tell her what I said, yes, she will listen. I'm here as an ambassador for a family I cannot name because I have an urgent message from the family I'm in the service of and it concerns almost the entire academy. By continuing to ignore me, you are earning the hatred of my family right now and of the academy in the future. Believe me, this won't be a simple firing. Now, do you still want to stand in my way?"

Taking advantage of the Absolute Mind, I added coldness to my coldness and calmness to my calmness.

A bead of sweat trickled down the guard's forehead, his expression became hesitant, but he still didn't want to back down.

"How do I know you're not lying?"

I narrowed my eyes and looked him straight in the eye without hesitation.

The guard reflexively took a step back.

"O -okay... I'll get what you said to the Rector somehow, but it'll take a long time, and remember that if what you said doesn't turn out to be true, you can expect a lot of bad things for obstructing security and all sorts of other things..."

The guard turned around, frightened but also furious, and gently lifted the bracelet on his left wrist.

Immediately after he did so, a holographic screen opened in front of him.

Above the screen were indicators similar to those of old-style walkie-talkies, only more modern.

The man used his bracelet to contact someone and relay exactly what I had told him, then turned to me and told me that I could just wait.

He told me that we would have to wait for about an hour to get any results and that the rector was really busy, but contrary to his estimation, only ten minutes later I saw a man in a suit approaching us.

"Please follow me."

When the man said this from behind the security guard, the guard jumped in fright. Then he turned around angrily, but the moment he saw the man in the suit, he went rigid.

"Sure."

Ignoring the guard, I approached the man and spoke without turning around.

"Good luck with your work."

As I left him like that, the guard didn't say a word behind me.

Apparently, he was in shock...

Whatever.

The man in the suit and I went up to the fifth floor, ignoring everything else around us. They did a simple search on me and then we went to the sixth floor.

When we finally got to the seventh floor of the building, there were only suits around. The environment had become more austere, yet luxurious. In addition, literally 'all' eyes were on me in case I did something wrong.

"You are going to meet the rector. This is no longer a normal event. So unless you have a really important reason to interrupt her, you will suffer the consequences."

The man in the suit accompanying me said these words as we stood in front of a door that was almost three meters high. I scowled back at him.

"I know, I'm not that stupid. Or do I look that way from the outside?"

I looked him in the eye, putting all my weight in my gaze. There was a brief moment of tension, but neither of us looked away.

"Then you can go inside."

The suit turned to the three men standing in front of the door and nodded to them. Then the huge three-meter door opened for me.

The first thing I noticed when I entered the room was that it was exactly the same as in the game. Everything was exactly the same except that the graphics were more 'realistic'.

The right side of the room, which was almost several times the size of a normal living room, was luxurious, designed to be a huge guest lounge. A few armchairs, a large table with short legs in the center, glass cups on the table, a large view of the academy campus that could be seen looking out from the seats, paintings large and small on the walls, a cabinet with glass doors containing countless trophies and so on...

Other than that, the left side of the room was a complete mess. Paintings were taken down from the wall in one corner, photos of other executives lined up along the wall, and a few boxes of colons and technological devices that I didn't even know what they were for.

"First of all... Can you tell me where you heard that quote?"

As I surveyed the room, a woman's voice rose from across the room and my eyes reflexively turned in that direction.

If I ignore the left and right sides of the room, the first and most obvious thing that greeted the person was a large table in front of me as soon as the door opened.

The table was covered with holographic screens, but the important thing was the woman sitting across it.

The woman sitting at the table had bright blonde hair and blue eyes. At first glance, she looked like someone in her early thirties, but she was actually forty-four. This was due to the conditions of life with mana and partly because this woman lived a really 'healthy' life.

"I would like to speak alone if possible."

There are two suits behind me, watching me just in case, and what we are about to talk about is sensitive.

I don't want anyone, no matter how trustworthy, to listen to me. Especially in an academy that is largely controlled by others.

The rector fixed her blue eyes on me, we looked at each other for a while and then I began to feel a pressure.

Something was attacking my mind directly, the air in the room was getting colder. I could feel it, but the only thing I did in spite of it was to sigh deeply.

Attacking my mind? Try it with Absolute Mind.

Cooling the atmosphere in the room? I don't want you to know, but I'm half-wiera.

Despite the rector's efforts, I continued to stand there and calmly keep my eyes fixed on hers. The pressure on me was increasing by the second, even to the point that the suits behind me started to feel uncomfortable.

Only a few seconds after even the suits started to feel uncomfortable, the pressure suddenly stopped.

"Get out."

The woman's voice sounded much more authoritative than before. This was so that the suits would listen to her without question, and so they did.

After her command, they both bowed their heads slightly and left the room. That left only the rector and me inside. n0VElUsb.c0m

"It doesn't really matter where I heard the word. I am here to make you an offer and I think you will like it very much."

The woman's eyebrows rose slightly at my words.

The saying was a code word for anything to do with academy business. It didn't matter much to me except that I had used it once.

"So you are not an ambassador for a family?"

"No, I'm not."

This is where I stumbled and lost my composure.

It was sudden, too fast for me to react, and this time the mana she was using to put pressure on me was penetrating directly into my body, not my mind.

I couldn't fight back, even if I wanted to, because there was a huge difference between me and the woman in front of me in terms of statistics alone.

"Do you know what the punishment is for coming here lying and keeping me busy?"

"Yes..."

I tried to get up from where I had stumbled, and after some effort, I managed and carefully straightened myself up.

The pressure was still there, it had just weakened a little.

"I know quite well, which is why I'm making my offer not to the rector of this academy, but to the lady of the Quie Family."

"Oh?"

The woman, Lucia's mother, as I just said, folded her arms across her chest and looked at me curiously.

"Now you have my attention. So tell me, what is this offer?"

Okay... Here we go.

"We can erase the Malus Family from the kingdom."

The woman's demeanor turned one hundred and eighty degrees the moment she heard that. The authoritative demeanor I had always maintained disappeared and she narrowed her eyes.

"Excuse me?"

"I'm talking about the Malus family, the Quie family's greatest rival. We can wipe them out of Cevilian and the foundations have already been laid. Justin Malus is dead, I killed him myself."

I don't want to bring Sue into this.

That aside... I expected her to be stunned and reflexively stand up after what I said, but she is strangely calm.

"So you're openly admitting that you killed a nobleman? And how can you, who is second to last in the ranking, kill Justin, who is directly in second place? Do you expect me to believe that?"

"I don't expect you to believe me, you will inevitably believe me as the conversation goes on and, in the future, when news of Justin Malus' disappearance spreads everywhere."

She sighed deeply, quickly losing interest as if in a child's game.

"The Malus Family is not a family that will simply fall. Even if you killed their son, which I still don't believe, they will not fall."

"But what if we reveal the evidence of all the dirty work they've done?"

"It won't be hard for them to cover it up, you underestimate them too much and if this conversation continues, I'll have to hand you over to the kingdom."

"No, Miss Quie, I didn't say that the only thing we'll do is spill their secrets to the media, that's just one of the things we'll do. So much will be stacked against them that their downfall will be inevitable."

I paused, realizing that she wasn't going to be swayed like that. She had to see it directly, she had to understand.

"Listen to me carefully..."

That's how I started talking. I told her a small part of my plan in small detail, and the rector, interestingly, really listened to me.

Not just listening, of course. As the words came out of my mouth, as I started to put things together, her face became serious again.

When I finally finished explaining some of the things in my head, she became thoughtful.

Seconds passed, then a minute.

"I see... I have no idea how you got this information, but if they are reliable, the Malus Family could indeed collapse."

"And when that happens, the Quie Family, oppressed by them, can finally start to climb higher."

She took a deep breath, then slowly stood up from her seat.

"Still, I'm not stupid enough to agree to this. Your plan is good and logical, I can't say anything, but this is a much bigger job than you think. So I'm sorry, but I have to hand you over to the kingdom because of the possibility of you killing a noble."

She walked toward me, calm and relaxed. She was aware of my power and her own, she knew I had no chance against her.

I knew it too, and of course, I had expected her to react in such a way. I didn't think I could convince her so easily, but I still wanted to take a chance.

"I know that you are not in complete control of the academy."

And with that, the rector's body shuddered and she appeared at my feet, a sword in her hand.

This time she was not calm, not thoughtful.

She was not only cold but also careful.

"You know too much."

I looked at the sword threatening to pierce me through the throat as mana flowed into the Absolute Mind, but I did not avert my eyes.

"The academy is under the control of people whom you don't even know, and there is nothing you can do about it. You've tried fighting them several times but it's been frustrating, you can't even find out who the spies are and you've received a warning from them. I can solve your problem. Moreover..."

I hesitated for a moment, slowly pushed the sword in front of me away with my index finger, and fixed my cold eyes back on her rigid blue ones.

I wasn't supposed to know what I was saying. The fact that I could say these things was so astonishing that she was stunned.

"If you help me, I can solve Lucia's statistics problem."

Her eyes widened for the first time in the entire time I was in this room, her whole body trembled for the first time, and she showed a sign of weakness.

"You..."

"Her charm statistic has reached S- grade, hasn't it?"

Her sword slipped through her fingers and fell to the floor. A loud sound echoed around the room. The Rector could not even open her mouth, she just stared at the floor with her eyes still widened.

"My guess is that the statistic won't stop there, it will continue to grow, and you already know what she suffered because of that statistic."

Lucia was someone who couldn't go out freely because of her extremely high charm statistic. She was always restless because all eyes were on her wherever she went, she was getting so much attention that she was even tired of it and tried to be alone. This was taking its toll on her, affecting her psychology in a negative way.

In this world, even a B+ degree of charm could be enough for a random person to become one of the most famous models in the world, but for someone to have an S- grade of charm was something divine. Moreover, this person would reach an S+ grade charm at the age of twenty-three.

What would be the consequences? It's scary to imagine and even I don't know the answer to that.

Because in the game, Lucia usually finds a solution when her charm reaches S grade.

What I'm proposing to the rector is to do it earlier. And she doesn't even know that this will happen in the future.

Can she, as a mother, ignore it when she's faced with the solution to her own daughter's problems?

"Are you... Are you sure you can do this?"

Of course, she can't.