Even though it was a Saturday, Lord Grandpa was still holed up in his office inside the underground School complex. While I could certainly just Phase in on top of him and call it a day, the whole point of this excursion was to peacefully discuss things like reasonable adults, so I opted for the more traditional approach. Once I arrived at the designated neighborhood marked Placeholder's house, I hopped across a fence, circled around the fancy wall surrounding Blue Cherry High, and then entered through the wooden gate at the back of the campus. Unlike the main gates, through which we usually entered on school days, this one was always open, so whenever I wanted to visit Gowan to exchange some pleasantries and enchantment work with him, I always used this route.

Speaking of the portly Scottish artificer, I seriously considered dropping by the Artificer's Lodge within the School to see if he had anything for me, but my plans were torpedoed the moment the doors of the elevator opened at its destination.

"Dunning."

Armband Guy was standing right in front of the elevator, and he gave me a flat greeting accompanied by a skeptical look directed at the sword hanging from my side. I pre-scouted the place before coming down, so I knew he was in the School, but I didn't expect to run into him the moment I arrived.

"Hello, Pascal."

When I stepped out of the cabin, there was a bit of a standoff between us. Critias's culture was strangely averse to handshakes, so I wasn't surprised by him not offering a hand after meeting for the first time in weeks, but the apprehensive look he was giving me clearly expressed the fact he didn't welcome my presence at the moment.

"What brings you here at this hour?"

"'This hour?' It's not that late, you know?" He remained completely stoic, so after shrugging, I added, "I came to pay a visit to the old man."

"And you brought a sword with you," he pointed out, so I raised Cal to show that I wasn't trying to hide them.

"As a matter of fact, I did." A short beat later, I exhaled a shallow groan. "Oh, come on. Don't look at me like that. I'm not here to pick a fight; quite the opposite, really."

"So you brought your sword specifically not to start a conflict."

"Yes. Precisely." He remained visibly unconvinced, so I shook my head and walked past him with the words, "Just think of it as an experiment to keep me calm and civil."

Pascal didn't say a word, and I expected that he would enter the elevator cabin, but he turned on his heel instead and followed after me. When I glanced over my shoulder to give him a curious look, he blandly stated, "I just remembered that I also had some business in the office of the Lord. I hope you do not mind if I tag along."

"Why would I?"

With that, my suspicious tagalong and I made our way to the annoying old coot's study. The sturdy double-winged doors were imposing as usual, though the notion that I knew for a fact that the complex interlocking system of wards covering their surface was fragile enough to be broken on accident certainly detracted from their majesty. Though again, I was literally the only person on the island who could do that, so maybe my view on things was a little skewed in this regard.

Anyhow, once we arrived, Armband Guy didn't even let me announce my own arrival and cut ahead of me, just so that he could knock first.

"Lord Endymonion?"

"Did you not say that you were heading home for the day?" the unmistakable voice of the arch-mage answered from the other side, sounding genuinely irritated.

"I did, but on the way, I met Leonard Dunning. He is here to pay you a visit."

"Is he?" There was some kind of commotion on the other side, but it only lasted for a short while. "I do not believe he made any appointments."

"He is here all the same."

This time, there was no response, and this whole exchange was pretty annoying to begin with, so I forcefully cleared my throat.

"Please stop stalling. We don't have all day."

Another beat of silence followed, then a disgruntled grunt, and then, at last, the wings of the door began to move. Right away, my gaze landed on the old man sitting behind the uselessly large desk at the back of the room, and I could already feel the familiar yet just as irrational instinctive irritation wash all over me. For now, I forcefully bottled it down and walked inside without a word.

The arch-mage's office was the same as always. Discounting the missing liquor cabinet, everything else was at its usual place, and while it was most easily seen on the enchanted walls surrounding the chamber, the air itself was also brimming with the colorless, ethereal glow of magic. Maybe even more than usual, I surmised. Was the old badger doing some spellcasting before we came in, I wondered?

In any case, I unabashedly walked right up to the desk and locked eyes with the owner of the room. Lord Amadeus Endymonion was even more haggard than the last time I'd seen him, with the dark circles around his eyes turning into an unhealthy shade of purple, and his face looked like it gained a couple dozen new wrinkles in the past few weeks. This time, he wasn't wearing his Panama hat, but his beige-suit-and-dark-wizard-robe combo was the same as usual.

"Evening. Before we begin, can you say something infuriating," I addressed the man without any pretenses, and showed off Cal, to avoid any misunderstandings. "I'm doing something of an experiment, and I need it for calibrations."

"… I have to say, your newfound leadership position did not improve your skills in the art of diplomacy one iota."

"Thank you, that's very accommodating of you," I responded with a grin before focusing on the sword in my hand. "Cal? Can you please do that circulation thing that Naoren taught us the other day?"

"{Under these circumstances?}" I only nodded, and after an exasperated sigh, they answered with a tired, "{I shall do as you ask, young knight.}"

They barely even finished speaking when I could already feel the flow of mana heading to my chest area. I let Cal do the regulation and the guiding, and once it entered the designated mana vessel, the stream quickly completed its first circulation. As it did, I could feel a sudden sense of ease spread through my whole body. I waited for a second or two, just to be sure, before I turned back to Lord Grandpa. The effect was… not perfect, as I could still feel an intangible sense of impatience claw at my thoughts just from being in his vicinity, but the calming waves of relaxation provided by the meditative circulation did help to alleviate it, if only a little.

Overall, I couldn't exactly call it a success, but it was better than nothing, and with some mental discipline, I figured it would allow me to maintain a more or less civil conversation with the arch-mage.

"Are you quite finished?"

"Yes. I didn't want to keep you waiting, but I had to give this one a try."

The old man eyed me skeptically for a second or two, and then he theatrically took a small bottle of mineral water out of one of the desk's drawers and took a swig from it.

"If your goal was to demonstrate that you are indeed one of the members of the Brotherhood of the Most Heroic Bloodlines, you need not do it in person. I had no reason to doubt the news in the first place."

"No, this was for something else entirely," I corrected him, and he might've expected me to actually explain myself, as he looked quite annoyed when I turned back and gestured at Armband Guy instead. "Are you staying?"

"Is the topic of your conversation in regards to something I must not hear?" he asked back, which made me turn to Lord Grandpa again.

"Good question. Does he already know that the whole Assembly is coming to the island to say hello to us?" He nodded, in the company of an exasperated grunt. "In that case, I suppose you might as well stay. Make yourself comfortable or something."

That was supposed to be a stray comment, but Pascal took me seriously and brought a chair over. While he sat down at the side, roughly at the same distance from both of us, Lord Grandpa put his bottle away and directed a displeased scowl at me.

"In regards to the current situation, how much of it are you aware of?"

"Just that the Assembly is freaking out about the Draconic Federation, and they are coming to the island to posture and show everyone they are the biggest tomcat in this neighborhood."

"Your interpretation is both brash and only surface level deep, but not entirely inaccurate," the old Magi grumbled and linked his fingers on the table. "Allow me to be frank as well and ask this: what are you intending to do about this?"

"Why would I do anything?" I blurted out, and it was easy to read the surprise off his face. "This is a political dispute between the Assembly and the Draconic Federation. It has nothing to do with me personally."

"I am afraid you are quite mistaken in that regard," he told me plainly, with a face sourer than distilled lemon juice. Then, before I could get a word in, he followed it up with a groan. "Leonard. You are certainly one of the… no, there is no need to mince my words; you are definitely the most outstanding member of your generation. You have talent, influence, and power, and your station within this newfound organization of yours would likely make you something of a peer of mine, yet you are young.  Too young. You simply do not understand the intricate ways of the world yet."

I was pretty sure he gave me a speech similar to this one in the past, and I could even faintly recall that back then, I had a hard time not rubbing his nose into the fact that I knew waaay more about the strings the world danced to than he could ever imagine. This time, it was slightly easier to resist the urge, so I only waved at him to continue.

"Large, established organizations are, at their core, still made up of people. Men and women who had to spend their entire lives working hard, currying favors, and often employing questionable and underhanded means to reach the stations they occupy. I am no different, and that is why I can understand how my peers in the Assembly think. It was due to this reason that, for the past several months, I did my best to conceal your activities and… escapades, from all prying eyes. It was as much for your sake as it was for the safety and peace of Critias."

"Oh, come on now," I interrupted a touch indignantly, but after taking a deep breath, I quickly tempered my outburst into a more level-headed, "Don't act like you're some good Samaritan who was secretly looking after my best interest the whole time. We both know that you did everything in your power to keep the Assembly off the island just to protect your own hide and cover your tracks." Taking another deep breath, I collected my thoughts a little, and after reminding myself that I was supposed to aim for some kind of collaboration with the old man, I further softened my point with a strategically absent-minded, "That said, I doubt my actions were that bad for your image. I mean, it was out of your control, and who would blame someone for an earthquake or a tornado?"

"The fact that you had correctly identified yourself with a natural disaster gives me a faint hope that you possess at least a modicum of the capability for self-reflection," the old man sniped at me in response, but before I could return the favor, he unlinked his fingers and tapped on the table. "Listen to me, Leonard. As the appointed arch-mage of Critias and a senior member of the Assembly, I would, without a doubt, receive extensive scorn for my inability to foresee and prevent your unnatural rise to prominence in its early stages."

"Unnatural?" I echoed him with one brow raised high, and he sharply exhaled through his nostrils, as if my reaction was amusing.

"Is it not? As I have just explained, rising to the pinnacle of a vast and influential organization requires years, nay, decades of relentless pursuit, using personal favors as ledges and contending peers as stepping stones. It is a cruel, arduous process every single senior member of the Assembly had experienced. Now imagine that you are one of these senior Magi, who sacrificed so much to achieve their current esteem, and you see a youth only a fraction of your age rise to meet you in but the span of a few short months. Would you not consider that unnatural?"

"Maybe," I granted him, and before I could add anything else, he all but slapped the table.

"Do you see now, Leonard Dunning, King of Dragons and Knights? Do you see now how everyone would view your achievements with deep-seated suspicion and would search for any and all explanations that could rationalize the impossible situation in front of their eyes? You cannot stay blind to this truth: the Assembly is not mobilizing its forces because they wish to keep this Draconic Federation of yours in check, but because they had already concluded that your rise is abnormal. Since it is abnormal, it must be the result of a plot by some prominent power, and if so, they are convinced the only reason for such a design to exist is to undermine their own power and authority they worked so hard to achieve. In other words, whether such a grand conspiracy exists against the Assembly or not, and whether you are the centerpiece of it or just a victim of circumstances, it matters little; so long as the other arch-mages believe so, you will remain the center of this storm, whether you think it concerns you or not."

In the wake of the old man's monologue, there were several seconds of silence, during which all I could do was blink and wonder exactly how I was supposed to react to all this.

"I… kind of tuned out and need to rearrange my thoughts a little, but while I do that… please tell me people don't seriously call me 'King of Dragons and Knights'…"

My response sent the arch-mage on a loop for a while, but in the end he told me, "I have heard that moniker on several occasions."

"Goddamit. Why do you people keep attaching more titles onto me!? I already have a hard enough time keeping them all under control!"

Lord Grandpa's brows slowly descended into a disapproving scowl, and hissed, "I am afraid you really were not paying attention to my words if that was the only thing you are concerned about."

"No, I paid attention, I just tend to address the things that really annoy me first," I shot back and inhaled deeply to center myself. "So, just to summarize your point, the Assembly is made up of power-hungry paranoid schemers, and since they view the world through that lens, they are now freaking out because they think I'm part of some kind of supernatural super-conspiracy." After a momentary beat, he nodded, so I continued with, "However, I couldn't help but notice a few curious word choices here and there. It almost sounded like you know better than them."

"I could hardly not do so, when I have experienced all of your exploits first hand, and know for a fact that your personality would not suffer being a pawn in the game of someone else."

I really, really wanted to ask about his impression of me, but it was best to stay on topic, so after getting my thoughts in order, I did just that.

"All right, so I think we're now clear on the Assembly's agenda. Come to the island to discover my connection to this conspiracy and how the Draconic Federation relates to it. Then, they are going to be disappointed when they discover that there's no such thing. What do we do after that?"

"We?" Lord Grandpa asked back, and this time it was my turn to frown at him.

"I came here with the express purpose to discuss how to treat the Assembly's mobilization and prevent the situation from deteriorating. Wasn't I clear on that?"

"You never outright said that," Armband Guy noted on the side, earning himself a scoff.

"Even so, it was very heavily implied." Turning back to the old man, I leveled the question at him again. "So? What do we do?"

"Are you asking me to cooperate with you?"

"Why would I need to ask anything? Aren't you all about keeping Critias safe and peaceful? It's also what I've been doing since the very beginning, so we should be on the same page already."

"If so, your track record is appalling."

"Says the kettle to the pot," I responded with a cheeky grin. "That means we have even more in common. All the more reason we should cooperate on this to prevent the island from becoming a supernatural battleground."

The arch-mage remained tensely silent for a long time, but I didn't mind. It just gave me more opportunity to do the whole meditation-circulation-thing.  It was kind of working.

"You appear awfully flippant about the prospects of all-out war," he noted dourly.

"To be fair, I'm kind of used to this sort of thing. For the past couple of months, I've been going from one deadly dangerous conflict to another, so you can't really blame me for getting desensitized."

"I am not blaming you, but I do think you are not fully aware of what you are dealing with." When I didn't respond right away, Lord Grandpa's face became pensive, and before long he turned to Armband Guy. "Pascal. Please go ahead and prepare the Nexus Chamber."

"The Nexus Chamber? Are you sure, my Lord?"

"Yes."

Before I could get a word in, Pascal all but jumped to his feet, and by the time he got there, the doors were already wide open to allow him to pass through.

"What was that about?"

I didn't even try to hide my misgivings, but the arch-mage didn't seem to care as he stood up and stepped over to me.

"I wish to show you something. Come, walk with me."

I still wasn't one hundred percent sure what was going on, but I figured I might as well indulge the old man. I was also a little curious, as while I had observed the School complex through Far Sight numerous times, this was the first time I'd ever heard of this 'Nexus Chamber' place. It sounded like some kind of well-kept secret, and I was always a sucker for those, so I grudgingly followed after him.

After leaving his office behind, we headed deeper into the institute. Since it was a weekend, there were only a few placeholder Magi idling around, and they gave us a wide berth when they saw us coming. I had no idea how far we were walking, but since the previous conversation was on hold, I figured I might as well bring up something else to pass the time.

"I'd like to ask something." Turning his face at me, the look in the arch-mage's eyes said he didn't expect me to speak up, but he soon gave me the go anyway. "I was planning to hire Peabody. Are you okay with that?"

"You wish to hire him?" he asked back, sounding downright flabbergasted.

"That's the plan. You know that I have my own research division, right?" He looked at me like I just stated the obvious. "Friedrich told me Peabody used to do research about homunculi, and he thinks we have the tools to let him complete it, but since he was obviously working with you on something similar, I figured I'd first ask if it's fine with you if I poached him."

"What makes you think he was doing any kind of work with me?"

He played dumb, so I flatly told him, "The two homunculi around you? Well, the two that I know of, but I think that's already enough evidence to figure out what happened."

At first, he only frowned at me, but then when we reached a stairwell and headed down, he finally blurted out, "Archibald can make his own decisions. If what you can offer him might grant him even a sliver of a hope to complete his magnum opus, I dare not stand in his way."

"Great. You're unusually obliging today, aren't you?"

"And you are only mildly infuriating," he shot back.

"As opposed to?"

"Mind-bogglingly infuriating," he spat out, and I couldn't help but chuckle at him, at least until I remembered another tangentially related topic.

"But speaking of homunculi, while I realize this is really not the right time for it, but after this whole thing with the Assembly cools down a bit, I'm planning to do something about the classification of homunculi. If I wanted to petition something like that, where should I start?"

Instead of answering my actual question, Lord Grandpa looked at me uncomprehendingly.

"I'm talking about the fact that they are un-people'd."

That finally jogged the gear in his head, but it then resulted in yet another frown occupying his face.

"I fail to see how doing so would do more than cause heated arguments, and it would not resolve any of the consequences arising from their lack of true souls."

"Let me worry about that part, will you?"

He grunted in something that resembled approval, but before I could ask about where to start with the paperwork again, we arrived at a narrow corridor with a single metal door at its end, with Armband Guy waiting right next to it.

"The room has been prepared for use," he told us the moment we arrived, and opened the way for us to enter.

I was curious what this was all about and peeked inside, but at first glance, the whole place was empty, save for the thick ambient mana suffused in the air. That was both disappointing and kind of confusing. I was expecting some kind of secret project, or maybe a magical doomsday weapon, but by the looks of it, all we had was an absurdly spacious square chamber with a bunch of lights embedded in the concrete walls.

While I was looking around, Lord Grandpa passed by me and gestured to follow after him, and with some hesitation, I complied. For a moment, I wondered if maybe the insides of the room were magically concealed in order to hide them from prying eyes, but I instantly realized that I would've most likely just seen through that with my magic-o-vision. Sure, there was a haze of magic in the air, yet it felt more natural than the one in the study, and didn't seem to conceal anything. But if not that, then what was the arch-mage trying to show me.

"This is the deepest chamber of our School," he told me out of the blue, drawing his attention back to me. "By consequence, it is also naturally closest to the Ley Line Nexus upon which our School was constructed."

Just as he said that, I heard a scraping noise, and realized that Armband Guy just shut the door on us. Suddenly beset by a sense of foreboding, I tentatively asked, "So… What exactly do you want to show me? There's nothing here?"

"Am I not in front of you?" he answered back with a borderline cocky smile, and before I knew it, the whole place flashed in inverted colors before it settled into a familiar hue of purple.

"… You can't be serious."

"I most certainly am," Lord Grandpa answered with his arms behind his back, and then after uttering a few syllables that sounded like butchered Latin, his feet left the ground and he gradually rose into the air until he was looking down on me. "As I have told you, while you have certainly faced many hardships in the recent past, you are woefully unaware of the power the arch-mages of the Assembly wield, and the potential destruction you may face when faced with one. As such, I consider it a necessity to provide you with the opportunity to experience it first-hand, and hope that the understanding would serve to temper you."

"{… Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is one of those, 'I told you so' situations, young knight.}"

Prompted thusly, I glanced down at the sword on my waist, and with an equal amount of trepidation and exasperation, I pulled it free of its scabbard with the words, "Shut it, Cal. Not a word."