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n2260 Aftermath

nDays passed.

nThe aftermath of all the chaos Sam created took so much time for people to recover from.

nPeople no longer trusted each other and the first graders are all walking on eggshells. They are carrying the darkest secrets of so many instructors and elders. It is also safe to assume that everyone knows who their info mule is.

nEven though a rule has been passed saying that no one can kill the other in the academy realm, these first graders are still on the edge.

nThey all know from the experience, that the death is not the worst thing that could happen to a person.

nAnd they all believed that the things in their head could make the others resort to subjecting these info mules to those things than death. They couldn't relax for a second. When in fact, this should be the most relaxing time of their academy lives.

nThat's right.

nBy now, the pocket dimensions would have been over and the final sprint for the inter academy tournament would be going on.

nSince the freshman tournament is already over, things would be much more free for them. They just have to be witnesses as their seniors duke it out. But now, they are the most affected. None of them are willing to leave the academy and they thanked the gods for turning the missions off.

nOf course, even though Sam stopped making waves out in the open, there are still a lot of things happening behind the scenes.

nFirst one is that after the incidental day, the next payment day came without much trouble.

nLing Tian once again graced Sam with his presence.

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"What can I do to convince you to not make a fuss about this coming week? This is unfair since all the missions have been temporarily stopped. None of these people have any money and the academies are already running out of reserves.

nJust tell me what you need and I will make it happen. It would be better if you could tell me how to stop the whole thing.

"

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"Come on, Ling Tian.

nNot even the messenger council hasn't intervened regarding the coin situation. Why do you want to stop all of my fun? You are not being supportive at all.

" That was Sam's response.

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"After all the ** you pulled, can't you make a concession? These poor kids can't take your constant battering.

"

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"Do you really think these guys are that poor souls? You should go through my hub data once and see all the things these guys have done. I reckon you will bash in a couple of heads in to mush and that would be assuming that you have no moral compass to speak of.

nIf you are anyone with a ounce of compassion, you will run through these academies and leave a bunch of bodies in your trial.

nMe ripping them off is letting them off easy.

nAnyway, it is not like I didn't tell them to go and practice in the hub. You can say many things, but my hub's training plan is definitely beneficial to them.

"

nLing Tian wanted to argue, but he also knew what Sam said is the truth. All the people here… none of their backgrounds are clean. Of course, Sam is no saint and he is no place to judge, but if the gods don't do it, then Ling Tian can't blame the ones who are doing that at least.

nAnyway, because of this problem and because the students cannot loot anyone, a lot of them are losing their assets to the Joker, or to be precise, to Sam. This applied not just to the first graders, but also to the seniors.

nInstead of preparing peacefully for the upcoming tournament, they started losing their ** over getting money for the payment. Everyone got busy. Everyone is trying to make some sweet promises to others.

nSome people who hoarded some coins started coercing people into signing unfair contracts.

nThey would have done it before as well, but they were scared for their lives. Now that they don't have to worry about it. They have gotten bold.

nThere is another extreme group.

nEven though the messenger council has intervened and banned the students from going out, the communication between the students and the outside world is not cut off. The students contacted their families.

nThese families went ahead and held some of the smaller families hostage.

nHere, the student who belonged to that smaller family handed over that money to the student of the bigger family.

nThings became easy for them. Maybe this is the only time having a large background has come in handy and they could use that influence with maximum efficiency. Because of this the conflicts on the outside became extreme.

nHowever, the messenger council didn't intervene this time.

nBecause essentially, the students themselves are prompting their families outside to increase these conflicts, so there is really no reason for the messenger council to intervene.

nBut of course, these are not the only conflicts outside that are influenced by the academy realm. The problems Sam has ignited when they all visited the academy realm are still burning brightly. Some elders and fourth graders, because they are so scared of their info mules, they started targeting their families outside.

nSome of them even managed to drive their info mules to suicide. Of course, it was only a couple of people, so it is no big deal.

nApart from that, there are still so many families that have grudges that are looking for an opportunity to take revenge.

nEven with all that, the biggest conflict going on outside is between Telchines and Vlachous.

nThis is actually surprising even to Sam.

nBecause he expected Telchines to come after him to the academy realm and create chaos here. In fact, he banked on that happening and hoped they would create much more damage. But for some reason, the Telchines didn't come to him.

nInstead, all of their anger is directed towards the Vlachous family.

nEven though, the Vlachous claimed that they don't have anything to do with the plot and it was done solely by Christos, they didn't manage to convince the Telchines.

nThe most surprising part is that for some reason, Sam's name didn't come out anywhere. There is no news of the Telchines trying to gain access to the academy realm and there is no news of them investigating about Sam.

nHe even confirmed it with Ling Tian and he is sure about it.

nHe doesn't know what happened to Telchines, but they are definitely doing a lot of work that is only beneficial to Sam in long run. After all, Vlachous is one of the families he wanted to take down.

nBut the problem is that the nine families that were going after Vlachous kind of took a backseat. They also participated a bit in the mob fight that happened in the academy realm, but they are not the key members, so they didn't suffer much damage.

nWeirdly, they still took a step back.

nThey are looking for Telchines and Vlachous to tear apart each other. They even went as far as stopping their hidden damaging activities they usually do to deal with the Vlachous family.

nAfter around one month, these things became new norm and were thrown to the back of the people's minds. Because, this is the time for the competition to start.

nEven though there is a month for the start of the tournament, the internal tournaments have to be held in all the academies. For the benefit of the students, the academies finally decided to pick up the tab of their weekly payments until the tournaments are over.

nThis gave the students a slight relief.

nThe Olympian academies in particular decided to be particularly generous with their students. After all, they lost a ** ton of their candidates and they wanted to have every opportunity they could, to get a better ranking in the upcoming tournament.

n22:40

nIf they get a bad rank, they would be at a risk of dropping from being the divine academy and might have to be moved to the Astral Region within the academy realm.

nWith all the losses, they are already very close to that.

nFor that reason, the Olympian academies are all talking behind the scenes hoping that they could reach some agreement to have each other's backs in the tournament. After all, the first grader tournament was full of safety nets, in this one there is a great chance that a lot of people will die.

nIn fact, some tests are focused solely on that.

nSo, there is a need for them to be careful about it and conserve whatever pitiful number of students they have left.

nGambler academy as usual is doing it on its own, but the internal competition was conducted on the same day as the Olympian academies.

nFirst are the competitions for the auxiliary professions and it was for the second grade students.

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