That evening.

The meeting with the Elders and Instructors was commenced. Bloody Chariot, stood at the head of the table, where the seat for the Dean was placed. This is a large meeting hall. With the long table in the center, and more tables on either side. It is meant for the meetings with the whole staff.

Everyone has their own assigned seat, except for Bloody Chariot.

In fact, half of the people in the staff doesn't even know he is the Grand Elder of the Academy. They only know that there is a Grand Elder hidden and he is very powerful. Even in the remaining bunch, most of them haven't seen him once. They only know of his existence and his legends.

As for the remaining who managed to see him, only a select few ever got a chance to interact with him.

To be fair, Bloody Chariot might be the only Staff member, who is getting paid by the Academy without doing anything at all.

His eyes swept the room. Around one tenth of seats are empty.

It has already been five minutes since the starting time of this meeting.

He stood there in silence and then saw an instructor hurriedly running and was about to enter the room.

"Stop there, please.

"

Bloody Chariot slowly said and the instructor halted his tracks. The foot hovered in the air and he didn't dare put it down. He didn't even dare retract. Because at that moment, he felt like his neck is being gripped by an invisible python, ready to bite down and swallow him whole.

"Please step back and stand at the doorway. Tell the people that will come after this moment to stop there as well and make them wait there.

"

The instructor nodded and retracted his foot. He stood at the side of the door, like the gatekeeper.

After that, Bloody Chariot finally addressed the room.

"First and foremost, let me introduce myself.

I am Bloody Chariot. Some of you might know me, some of you might not. I am a Grand Elder of this Academy. I usually take a passive stance in the Academy and won't involve myself with the regular operations.

As you know the situation is not ideal for our academy and it seemed like with the absence of the Dean came some complacency among our staff.

This even led to a drastic raise in incompetence.

To put it short, I was forced to step up. Now getting to the point…

I am going to be the Acting Dean of the Academy, in everything but the name.

I will take every single responsibility of the Dean's role, I will be handling all the Academy's affairs and I will be commanding you for the time being.

"So, on to our agenda.

We need to talk with the Gambler Academy to stop the Academy War. Right now, the whole realm is going through a severe crisis of coin scarcity and the reason is clearly hub. Someone deliberately pulled off that contribution stunt.

It is so vicious and on point. Nobody even dared to go there and check what was actually contributed, because no one has any spare coins left.

It was that bad.

So, we need to focus on finding out who did it. My initial suspicion is that it's hub's doing. They might just be trying to use this long winded approach to occupy a vast territory and heaps of riches and resources from all the Academy realm's students.

We need into investigate in that angle also.

And for that, we shouldn't be locking horns with another academy which could potentially drain us of our power.

Second thing, we need to get all of the students out of the Gambler Academy's imprisonment. From what I heard, only the Noble league's students were left out and that is because the Noble league families spent the money to bring them out.

Which means, our academy not only owes the Gambler Academy money to release the students that are still trapped there, we also owe money to the noble league families.

After all, the students were captured in the academy war and they should be relieved with the academy resources. The noble league also knows this. But why do you think these greedy bastards so eager to spend their own money?

Why do you think they haven't demanded any of it back yet?

Out of the goodness of their heart? No, to breed their influence the academy more and more. And we need to wash that away.

So, we are going to repay them whatever they have given us until now.

"

Everyone got shocked. They looked at Bloody Chariot in unison with their eyes and mouths wide open. They knew of the exorbitant prices demanded by the Gambler Academy. It is going to cost a fortune, if they really have to pay.

Of course, they also knew of the problem Bloody Chariot mentioned, however they just believed they wouldn't fall into the trap of those families.

They believed themselves to be smarter than that. But only Bloody Chariot understood why they shouldn't be involved. As powerful as these elders and instructors, when it comes to the legacies of the deception those families inherited with their messy internal politics and the deity boot licking, these elders are mere children.

These people could never stoop as low as a family or a clan.

However, he is not going to explain himself. After passing a few more ultimatums, Bloody Chariot went to have the final meeting of that night.

It is with a former student of the Academy.

The one that is in the middle of this whole storm. Icarus.

Even though Icarus is reluctant to meet with anyone, up on Sam's instructions he decided to meet with Bloody Chariot and they agreed to meet promptly within the Hub.

Bloody Chariot figured he would take a look at the Hub while he was at it.