As he already secured the interworld portal back at Lara's city, he had to focus on raising up his power. Yet he knew by reaching the dark gold grade, even at the early stages there, his Devour ability would lose most of its magical effects.
And so he had to lean totally over training, a thing that might take a century to just reach the pinnacle stage. But with access to that magical place, he could shorten such duration by tens of folds.
"I'm in," William didn't need to listen to any further words from the Grand Cardinal, "I'm going to do it!"
"Great," the Grand Cardinal and other Cardinals took the wrong impression about William's swift decision.
They knew trying to make someone shoulder the heat and trouble coming from doing such a grand project wasn't easy. Even trying to bribe him with the prestigious position of a Cardinal in their Cult wasn't enough.
If William was someone who rose up in the Cult, then they would be sure giving such a position out would be a great honour for him. And yet William wasn't, and he didn't even know how hard it was to be one of the Cardinals, how impossible it was for many to become one of this tightly narrow circle.
"So we can start right away then?" The Grand Cardinal wanted to get done from this quite fast, yet what William said next startled him.
"First, let's handle Leo's problem," William suddenly turned towards a far corner in this colossal hall. He was summoned here to deal with Leo's problem, which was mainly his problem. And yet the Cardinals were just using Leo as an excuse to get to know more about him, ending up having this deal.
And yet Leo looked as if all of the Cardinals forgot about him, as if he didn't matter in the first place to any of them. To William, this wasn't the best ending he'd want to see here.
He might have gained a lot from this trip, but his main goal wasn't achieved yet. He still didn't get any clue about how to deal with his weird situation. With all of these formidable figures gathered here, wanting to curry his favour, he'd not let such a chance slip by.
The Grand Cardinal was feeling the same as others around, a bit surprised yet no shame was there. In their eyes, low position folks like Leo didn't need their attention or care.
"We'll cure him, don't worry about that," the Grand Cardinal didn't want to mess things up or waste their time in dealing with Leo. Even if they knew what caused this to him, they still had absolute confidence in their abilities to cure him.
"But I'm interested in seeing him cured," William paused, and before any of the Cardinals would issue their objections, he added, "I gave out my word to his friends, and I care too much about the value of my words."
William was indeed twisting the truth and covering it up with a thin layer of lies. Yet what he said wasn't false, as he truly cared about his promises and words.
In front of his firm stance, the Cardinals couldn't help but buy what he said. "Fine, let's dig into what caused this to our brave legion leader," even when he described Leo like this, William felt this Grand Cardinal was furious at Leo.
If not for what he was now suffering from, they'd have ended fast with this deal with William and started moving towards executing what they promised.
William knew exactly what caused this to Leo. But he kept his silence and didn't say anything, simply watched from the side as one Cardinal went and brought the unconscious Leo back. Then he started single handedly to inspect his fate and destiny.
William knew from the scrolls he went through that the Mystic Arts didn't just grant power to see the future, but also the past. In fact, and according to the information he read in the scrolls, he knew the Cult folks considered the ability to read through the past as far more important than reading the future.
To them, they highly valued the ability to know everything about your enemy rather than trying to depict what he'd do next.
William could get the idea behind such a belief. Fighting an enemy one knew everything about was much easier than trying to fight him while knowing little about his abilities and only knowing a few moves he'd execute in the battle.
Watching a single Cardinal arrogantly trying to see what happened to Leo made William inwardly sigh. What caused this to Leo was related to him, and that meant the Cardinal would get a backlash from it.
Yet unlike what he thought and expected to see, nothing like that happened. The Cardinal kept looking normal for almost an hour, and then he slowly opened his eyes and a look of puzzlement appeared there.
"What did you see?" The Grand Cardinal was sitting next to William, as the two kept speaking about the scrolls and information William was going to get after joining the Cardinal Council formally.
According to the Grand Cardinal, William was going to get the basic one grade of the council, enabling him to visit the first section in the grand library.
The grand library was something exclusive only to Cardinals, and it got lots of knowledge about many things related to the Cult. Be it basics, advanced knowledge, many Mystic Arts, and even a long trail of many missions the Cult members did since its establishment would be available there.
The high secretive knowledge was kept off reach for him, including many advanced Mystic Arts and lots of highly classified missions and intel from the outer world.
William didn't care about any news from the outer world, and he knew he'd take a long time to go through all the content of the grand library first section according to the words of the Grand Cardinal.
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