It didn't take them very long to reach the academy. The man continued to pasta Nymira and Alex. Of course, they do not pay him any heed, but Silas knows that the only reason they did not is because he was there.
He could see the greed in Alex's eyes as he looked at the food around them. Bottles of expensive wine that must have cost several sapphire cores lay around them. Of course, due to their age, Silas gave them a stare and prohibited them from touching a single one of them.
The man did not seem pleased by this, but what could he do?
Silas could already feel the hostility the man was showing toward him. He had already understood that the man felt a certain sense of disgust toward him, but the reason wasn't obvious.
However, his leading theory was that the man despised him for his strength, or at least the strength that the barrier measured him as.
Alex, in the man's eyes, was undoubtedly a genius. According to his guards, who had measured his strength the moment they walked through the barrier, he was at the peak of the pristine amethyst core and was essentially one step away from breaking through to the sapphire core.
However, despite the records saying that Silas was almost 16 years of age, he was still at the same level of power as a 12-year-old that no one knew.
While that was technically true, the reason they got his strength wrong was that the barrier only measured the grade of the core, not the talent, affinity, or the amount of mana inside it. It simply measured the purity, and Silas' mana purity was at the peak of the pristine amethyst core. However, Silas got his strength and reputation, not by being a high mana core rank, but by being a fearsome opponent that had the ability to kill most opponents in a single hit.
His body did not run on toki, so it was untraceable. They couldn't tell his strength. The only thing they knew was that his armor had quite a few emerald cores in it.
Silas' theory was that the man disliked him due to his mana core grade not matching the fear that people felt toward him; however, while Silas wasn't wrong, he was also not entirely correct either.
The hostility the man felt toward him went much deeper than something as petty as that.
When they finally reached the city the academy was in, they all got off the carriage.
Nymira and Alex gawked at the academy. It was much bigger than it looked from afar, and in a way, it was much more extravagant. When the man saw their faces, he could not help but grin as well.
"That was my expression the first time I saw it too. It's amazing, right?" The man spoke with a hint of pride.
However, when he looked at Silas, who didn't show a single change in expression, he could not help but narrow his eyes in agitation.
"I'm assuming you've seen something like this before..." The man asked.
"Yeah, I've seen the Light Academy. Though I have to say, the Diamond Academy does look a lot different than the Light Academy."
"Yeah, they're two different academies." The man sneered.
"That's not what I meant." Silas sighed and began to walk forward. However, before he could take more than a few steps, he remembered something and turned back toward the man,
"What may we call you?" Silas asked.
"Faldro." The man replied, saying his last name instead of his first name.
Then, Mr. Faldro, I thank you for bringing us here." Silas thanked before gesturing for the two to follow him.
They immediately complied, but Mr. Faldro said something that annoyed Silas slightly.
"How about I go with you? I want to see your performance." The man chuckled.
"Mr. Faldro... There is no need for you to accompany us any-"
"I insist." The man grinned even more.
Before they knew it, Mr. Faldro had already joined them, and they were walking toward the academy's entrance.
The guards in front of the academy were about to do the same check they did outside the city they were in before, but before they could, Mr. Faldro quickly told them that they were with him, allowing them to get passed the guards without any trouble.
"The testing hall should be through here." Mr. Faldro commented as they walked through a hallway.
In simple terms, the place was extravagant. There were paintings with golden frames, mana cores that were embedded into the walls, heads of drakes, and other creatures pseudo-mythical creatures.
Even the chairs in the room, and even the carpet looked like they were made out of the most expensive materials.
'For an academy, they sure love to show off.' Silas inwardly thought before Mr. Faldro knocked on a certain door.
"Come in." A raspy voice spoke from within.
From what Silas saw, it was clearly not a testing hall. Actually, it was an office with a man inside.
Mr. Faldro went in and gave them a signal to stay where they were and not move as he talked inside.
Silas didn't hear a single thing that was being said due to the runes that were blocking sound from reaching the outside. However, he didn't really care since there was something else on his mind.
'That man inside... He's hiding his core's strength.' Silas thought.
He could tell due to how the mana was coming out of him. It was being distorted, and its purity was dropping as it came out.
'He's either suppressing it his core's grade, or suppressing the mana that comes out of him. I doubt it's the latter, but I don't see a reason for the former. Not many people have the ability to see someone's core, and even if they do, most of them use expensive artifacts that can usually only be made by the best of artificers.' Silas thought to himself, but before he could think about the situation further, he looked to the side and saw that one of the walls was beginning to open up, and behind it, there were several people sitting behind a long table that stood on an elevated platform.
The platform itself had a barrier around it, and even then, the barrier was thick enough that even Nymira, who couldn't feel mana to the same extent as Silas, could see the barrier with her naked eyes.
Silas, on the other hand, could see the barrier in all its forms, including the runes that were creating it.
'Could probably stop an attack from an emerald cored beast if it needed to.' Silas thought with narrowed eyes before looking up.
There were 5 individuals behind the long desk, each one of them giving a different aura from the last.
Four out of the five individuals had awakened mana cores, and even then, their mana cores were, at the very least, at the sapphire core or higher.
Except for one person, of course, who let out the energy of a topaz core.
'Mystic eyes work the same way as normal eyes, but with energy. Energy has to be coming off something for me to see it. Even if white light is being shot at a stained glass, if you looking at it from the other side, all I'll see if the color of the stained glass rather than the white light behind it. Whatever he is using is like stained glass... Actually, it's porbably closer to tinted glass. He's surpressing the energy coming out of him so I can't tell how strong he is... From his aura alone though, I can feel that he could probably kill Nymira and Alex without having any problems.' Silas thought to himself before switching his attention away from the old man sitting in the middle and toward the one that was sitting on the far right seat.
There, he saw the same beer-bellied man who had taken them to the academy. He had a subtle grin on his face as Alex and Nymira looked at him in confusion.
On the other side of the table, in the far left seat, sat a burly woman with several scars on her face.
In a way, she looked like she could squash all of them into a ball without a sweat, but that was just how it looked.
She was clearly over 6 feet tall, and had the muscular figure of a bodybuilder that could be easily be seen through the outline she created on her clothes. At the same time, she was the only one who didn't have an awakened mana core, and, instead, had an enormous amount of natural toki around her that even shocked the likes of Silas.
'She's stronger than Death...' Silas thought with a shocked expression on his face.
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