Blood Fury had just breathed a sigh of relief, only to be choked by those two words. A flash of embarrassed anger crossed his eyes. “Ah, is that so strange? Wait, why is a brat like you so concerned with what goes on in bed and not the actual point?”
The curve of Ethan's lips tugged upward a bit more. “Dean, an Official Wizard from the Logistics Department leaked secrets just because a woman whispered poison in his ear in bed?”
He paused, then continued, “Something's not right here. Losde is an Official Wizard, after all. To secure a position in the Logistics Department, his brain shouldn't be that useless. Just because a woman blew some pillow talk his way, he dared to risk execution by the academy to leak my location?”
Blood Fury leaned back against his chair. “You're not wrong.” He nodded. “That's why the academy investigated.”
“And what did they find?”
“Losde himself didn't even know what he was doing.” There was a trace of strangeness in Blood Fury's voice. “Sethna used a potion, slipping it into Losde's food and drink over a long period. That stuff won't poison someone to death, nor will it affect their mana circulation, but it makes the victim trust the person administering it. Just a tiny bit every day, continuously for several years. By the time Sethna started whispering poison, Losde could no longer distinguish truth from lies.”
“So, Losde was drugged and had no idea what he was actually doing.”
The expression on Blood Fury's face shifted from constipation to a toothache. “It's not that he was completely unaware. He knew what he was doing, he just couldn't distinguish right from wrong anymore. Whatever Sethna said, he believed. The academy spent half a month investigating before finding traces of the potion. That guy Dark Stream went into seclusion again, and the remaining few who understand potions are progressing as slowly as turtles crawling.”
Ethan nodded.
He mentally pieced the whole chain of events together.
Raymond died during the Human-Faced Wolf mission, and his younger sister, Sethna, pinned the blame entirely on Ethan, the sole survivor.
Sethna was Losde's apprentice and also his woman. Leveraging this relationship, she drugged Losde for years.
Once Losde trusted her completely, she began whispering poison.
Working in the Logistics Department, Losde could easily access Ethan's travel records and mission details, allowing him to leak his whereabouts to hostile forces.
...Was she completely out of her mind?
How did her brain even function?
Instead of blaming Raymond's death on the Lost Forest, she blamed him—the survivor who had avenged Raymond on the spot and gone through the trouble of bringing his body back?
Was she even human?
“...Fair enough.”
Once Blood Fury finished speaking, he couldn't keep his straight face anymore either.
He raised a hand and wiped his face, dragging his fingers from his forehead to his chin as if trying to scrub away some rather unseemly emotion.
“How do you plan to handle them?”
“Are they both alive?”
“Dead.”
“Dead?”
“Yeah. When the Enforcement Department went to arrest him, Losde blew himself up on the spot. After that woman confessed, she also committed suicide.”
“Tsk, alright then. I'm leaving.”
Ethan stopped halfway through turning around.
He turned his head and scanned Blood Fury from top to bottom—from that face desperately trying to look calm, to his deliberately slowed breathing rhythm, and then to his left hand resting on the armrest, which he hadn't put any weight on the entire time.
“Dean, how badly are you actually hurt?”
Blood Fury's face stiffened for a visible instant. He slammed his cup onto the desk and glared with his crimson eyes.
“...Get out, get out, get out!”
Ethan's lips twitched, but he didn't budge. “Tsk, keep it to yourself then.”
He took half a step forward, propped his elbows on the edge of the stone desk, and leaned in. “Dean, how much of the Sea Race's compensation did the academy get?”
“...Can't you focus on actual business?”
“How is such a massive sum of money not actual business? The night you messaged me, I almost laughed out loud, alright?”
Blood Fury stared at him for a couple of seconds, his lips parting slightly before closing again. The office fell silent for a moment before Blood Fury let out a snort.
“...Fair point.”
The curve of Ethan's lips rose a fraction more. “So, how much exactly?”
“One million magic crystals and the three-hundred-year development rights for thirteen small worlds.”
Ethan's brow furrowed. “Only that much? Didn't they say thirty million magic crystals, plus the one-thousand-three-hundred-year development rights for one hundred and thirty-seven mid-tier and small worlds?”
“Yes, that was the total.”
“???” Ethan leaned further forward. “Is the Council really that corrupt?”
He paused, then shook his head. “No, wait... hiss, is the Council actually that generous?”
Blood Fury leaned back with a “teachable youth” look on his face, a flash of satisfaction in his eyes. “Hehehe. This is only because our Headmaster is considered someone of consequence in District 77. Otherwise, humph, forget all this—getting around eight hundred thousand to a million magic crystals would have been the absolute limit.”
Ethan fell silent for a few seconds.
There was a lot of information packed into Blood Fury's words.
The Headmaster was a Tier 3 Wizard, someone of consequence in District 77.
For the Headmaster of a Three Rings Academy to have a reputation across the entire district proved that Blood Bone Tower wasn't at the very bottom tier of Three Rings academies.
But even so, the compensation they received was merely a fraction of the total.
Out of a total compensation of thirty million magic crystals, the academy only actually received one million.
Out of the development rights for one hundred and thirty-seven worlds, the academy only got thirteen.
The one-thousand-three-hundred-year development period was compressed to three hundred years.
The ratio was cut with surgical precision, as if someone had worked out the math long ago.
“True.” Ethan nodded. “An ordinary man is guiltless, but harboring a treasure makes him guilty. In the end, our Blood Bone Tower is only a Three Rings Academy. We can't make much of a splash in District 77. If we were given too much, it really wouldn't be a good thing.”
“An ordinary man is guiltless, but harboring a treasure makes him guilty?” Blood Fury savored the words in his mouth twice, his thick brows arching. “Oh, that's an interesting saying. Quite profound. Exactly.”
Ethan watched Blood Fury's “this is a nice phrase, I'm taking it” expression and said nothing. This eight-character idiom had been spoken for thousands of years in his previous world, but here, it was heard as a novelty for the first time.
Blood Fury muttered the phrase to himself once more before looking up. “Alright, stop showing off your fancy vocabulary. Before you go to the Enforcement Department, there's one more thing I need to make clear.”
“Please, go ahead.”
“For this Sea Race compensation, you have three portions. One is the one million magic crystals. As for the development rights of the small worlds, the academy will develop them on your behalf and give you fifty percent of the annual resources produced.”
Ethan froze at Blood Fury's words, even digging his ear to make sure he hadn't misheard.
Wait, what?!
Are you serious?
One million magic crystals.
Not magic stones—magic crystals.
A single magic crystal was worth one hundred thousand magic stones. One million magic crystals equated to one hundred billion magic stones.
He had originally thought getting a few hundred thousand magic stones from the academy would be the absolute ceiling.
What kind of place was a Black Wizard academy?
Resources were concentrated in the hands of a few. First-Tier Wizards were just high-level thugs and cannon fodder, and any mission rewards had to be split with the academy.
More importantly, the phrase “this is all the magic crystals.”
The entire one million magic crystals the academy received as compensation was being given to him.
Not a single one was kept.
Besides the magic crystals, there were also the development rights.
For the three-hundred-year development rights of thirteen small worlds, the academy was only keeping fifty percent, giving the remaining fifty percent to him in the form of annual resources.
One had to realize that world development wasn't a one-time transaction; it was a long-term stream of annual income.
A minor world of the lowest tier produced supernatural resources worth at least a few hundred magic crystals a year.
A fifty percent share of the annual output, even calculated by the lowest standard, would bring in several thousand magic crystals every year.
Wasn't this... a bit too generous?
Rate on N.U.
