If William found a way to do it, he'd not hesitate to add the Vancouf family to his guild. But if he found them hot headed and filled with useless pride and arrogance of the past glories and such, then he'd have to lean towards the other option.
Before meeting up with Lara and her family elders, William spent the past days preparing some sort of substance.
"The world only knows potions, pills, and elixirs… I introduced ointment, and now it's time for the world to know about powder…"
William was in his room, while a pot was in front of him. He already received the materials he asked for, ending up producing a substance using alchemy, one that looked like pink powder.
He stored these powder in small glass bottles, sealed them quite well, while storing them inside his ring. "Using these with a wind-based master is going to leave a scary impact at the upcoming adventure," he evilly grinned, before he heard Lara's voice.
[We are heading to the floor lower than yours. Head down there in half an hour, and hopefully you have what it takes to convince everyone]
"Don't worry, I'll be there in half an hour."
William looked around. He just finished his last concoction. He cleaned the entire place, leaving not a single trace behind. Then he left his room and found someone waiting for him, a worker.
"This way, sir," the worker said in utmost respect, seemingly the orders of Lara. William moved behind him, while his mind kept thinking about what he just passed through in the past days.
It was a bit hectic actually. He came here just to pass through the portals and reach his destination. But he ended up meeting a team from that academy, learnt about the presence of a grand scheme against him, and ending up with the scary events he caused back at the Lost City.
In William's eyes, fate and good luck were on his side. He acquired dark gold cores at last. And that meant he could just pass through the shackles of silver grade and be a gold grade master.
But he refrained from doing so right now. He knew when that'd happen, some sort of a test would befall him. As he was already causing enough havoc here, he didn't want to turn this into some sort of a war or something.
As he knew what he was going to experience, it just felt right to select the stage where he'd undergo his test. To him, it was better to take that last step when assaulting that academy. It was just right to kill and spread havoc in the heart of hostile territory, not in such a place where he wanted to control and rule later on.
"So… You are the one who caused all these troubles for us in the past week?"
William entered into a big hall, one that looked like it was designed for grand meetings or something. He expected to see at most thirty elders, but he saw a hundred or so. It was weird though, as this seemed more than any family could gather.
The one who spoke was an old man, reminding William of Ben with his thick and long white hair. He had pure silver eyes and looked a bit serious.
"I'm William, it's an honour to meet you," William cupped his hands, acting as respectful as any youth in his age would do.
"Stop it! We already heard tons of stories about you," the old elder suddenly laughed, acting more carefree than what William expected.
"He is my grand uncle," Lara spoke up at this moment, pointing to a seat beside her before adding, "and he is one of your biggest fans."
"My biggest fan?!" William never expected such a thing at all. He looked at the elder, and the latter responded with a laugh.
"Of course, I am! A youth like you managed to flip the entire situation in this city simply like this. You are someone worthy of admiration and support. You don't know how hard we tried, how many times we attempted to change everything, but failed. Who knows someone like you, coming from a faraway place, will have the solution to all this, hahahaha! Isn't it fantastic? Hahahaha!"
William could tell this elder was honest and sincere in his words. And that made him have a better impression about this meeting.
"Ahem, elder Stark, we need to first speak about what we are going to do with the Lost City," and when William felt he was going to have a good deal today, someone else spoke up, shattering such a feeling.
He was another elder. From the tone and the look on his face, William felt he wasn't that supportive of what he did.
"Elder Larry, we already spoke about how to run the city," Stark scoffed, and that told William his earlier guesses about Larry were true, "we will divide the city into two halves, with one belonging to us and the other belongs to him."
"That's not true," Larry waved his arm, as if he wasn't accepting any of this, "we just spoke, but didn't reach an agreement, right?"
From the look over Stark's face, William could tell he didn't expect such a thing. But when William moved his eyes among the one hundred attending here, he noticed many nodding, agreeing on what Larry just said.
"This…" even Lara felt weird and puzzled about this, "we already agreed…"
"No," this time the voice who spoke wasn't old like others. In fact, it was just as young as Lara's, "our family elders just spoke and discussed the various possibilities, yet a final decision wasn't made."
"Richard…" Lara's face changed slightly when she saw the face of this youth. He looked a bit similar to Lara, with lots of features shared between the two of them in William's eyes.
That told William that Richard must be a cousin or something to Lara. As things reached such a point, William decided to stand and watch in silence, enjoying this amusing show.
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