Book 2. The Grand Gathering. Chapter 11. The Banquet. (Part I)

“Ready yet?” Sinra asked along with a groan as he knocked on the door to the sibling’s room for the nth time.

Both the siblings and Anatis and Nila were inside, but they had refused to come out for over half an hour already. Really, they were already late for the banquet! What were those four thinking? What was so hard in choosing some other clothes if they didn’t like the azure ones he had prepared for them? Why were they taking so damn long…?

Thankfully, the door opened about half a minute later and the four youths walked out of the room.

“Finally!” Sinra exclaimed with relief. He didn’t even care anymore that Siana had outright refused to wear the azure dress, calling it ugly and tasteless. He didn’t care that because of her, Nila also changed her mind and decided to have her and Anatis wear something else; all he wanted was to hurry up and get to the banquet already. He really hated being late to anything!

“You must admit they do look good though,” Injar commented with a laugh and patted Sinra on the back. “Let’s get going or the entrance ceremony will start without us there,” he suggested despite knowing well enough that it wouldn’t.

After all, there was a special surprise waiting for Sinra and the others. Sinra’s uncle, the Grand Viscar Lamuel wouldn’t begin without his most important guests, now would he.

“Eh, let’s hurry up and go,” Sinra said with a sigh and led the group towards the great hall.

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“He causes so much commotion, but doesn’t even show up on time,” the woman with long, silky white hair complained to her master.

“It’s not important whether he shows up at all, so why do you care?” the red-haired, red-eyed man responded calmly. He, of course, knew that Sinra got help from two talented disciples belonging to Great Martial Schools, but just that alone didn’t mean anything. Two boys and some face from a few Great Masters wouldn’t be nearly enough to sway the competition in Sinra’s favor.

“Impudent brat,” the stern-faced man, Bernar, growled angrily. In contrast to Carkan, he had trouble keeping his calm when something angered his precious pupil, whom he had guarded and defended since infancy.

“I see your guardian is as foul-mouthed as always, elder sister,” a young woman who appeared to still be in her late teens approached Finella, sweeping her curly, long black hair to the side in a playful manner. At her side walked a slightly older woman, perhaps in her early twenties. She also had black hair, though hers were straight and not curly at all; she kept a calm, composed attitude as she always did, but today, she couldn’t help but reveal a rare smile of hers.

A few steps behind the two women walked three young girls, all the age of twelve. One of the girls was especially eye-catching, as she had silver hair and eyes.

“Eleonora, what do you want?” Finella asked sourly, not in the mood for squabbling with her little sister.

“Nothing important, I’m just wondering if your information network has gotten any better since the last time you competed with me,” Eleonora said with a chuckle, rubbing in Finella’s huge mishap in dealing with the merchant’s guilds the last year.

“If all you want to do is to speak empty words, then leave my Princess alone,” Bernar warned, but Eleonora only laughed at him.

“Judging by your guardian’s reaction, you really don’t know,” Eleonora smirked cheekily. “Your followers used to be the most powerful, but also incredibly dumb. Now, they are going to be only dumb,” she said with an amused expression on her face and before Finella or any of her supporters could respond, she walked away with the woman and three girls who accompanied her today.

“Even if she’s the fourth Princess, that’s going too far!” Bernar said loudly enough to draw the attention of most people gathered in the great hall, for what he received a scornful look from Finella and Carkan. They valued his loyalty very highly, but sometimes they wished he could control his emotions a bit better.

“Master, do you think that Sinra really did gain more than just the support of two kids who want to show off their strength?” Finella couldn’t help but ask with a hint of worry in her voice. Her little sister, Eleonora, wasn’t one to make empty threats or pick a fight for no reason. Since she made fun of her so openly, she must have truly had a basis for it.

“I can’t be sure, but it’s not like it matters,” Carkan said with disdain. “Even if the two Great Martial Schools throw some face Sinra’s way as they did to let him bend the rules of the Grand Tournament, it won’t change much,” he said confidently and shrugged his shoulders dismissively.

In the end, how much could involvement of a few kids who wanted to play around change? Sinra himself was still a kid, too. He couldn’t not see what Sinra’s party was doing as anything but fooling around of a bunch of brats who still failed to realize they intruded upon the adults’ playing ground.

“If you say so,” Finella agreed uncertainly. She herself was very skilled in dealing with people and negotiating with them… but she has always had trouble seeing the large picture. She was most efficient when dealing with matters she knew everything about, not in the long-term games Eleonora and Sauras liked to play.

“What do you think about those two boys? Can they be contenders for top spots?” Finella brought up, getting somewhat worried about the results of the Grand Tournament. Although Laura was very strong, she had only turned eleven a month ago. Some of those participating would be almost two years older than her, like for example, the two kids Sinra recruited into his camp.

“Rumors are often overexaggerated,” Carkan snorted disdainfully. “There’s no way they can match Laura or Alen, those two are special. Even if they have some ability, normal means cannot be a match for secret arts,” he said with a smirk. Laura was an incredibly talented kid; even though she was a year and a half younger than Alen, the pupil of the first Prince, she was already nearly at his level.

The only question this time around would be whether she could finally manage to overcome Alen or not. Those two kids from the ‘Great Martial Schools’? They would be made to learn the difference between the heaven and earth and would need to realize they had been nothing but pitiful frogs at the bottom of the well.

“They are strong, both of them,” Laura said all of the sudden, causing Finella and Carkan to feel rather startled and confused.

“How come you know that?” Finella asked in a low voice.

“We already met them, did we not?” Laura asked and despite herself, smiled slightly. This Princess of hers loved to act high and mighty, but in reality, she was quite a ditzy and an airhead.

Finella frowned, recalling the only time when she and Laura met Sinra and some friends of his. “No, it couldn’t be them!” she thought as her face turned a little pale. She had already screwed up once by offending a son of the guild master without knowing, what Eleonora used against her and robbed her from the deal with the merchant’s association, so she really didn’t want to have repeated the same mistake!

Even though Carkan was saying the two boys weren’t important, it still couldn’t benefit her to antagonize people closely related to the Great Masters of her country…!

At that very moment, the large door to the great hall opened loudly and a group of six people entered. Since everyone else had arrived by now and everyone was waiting only for them, all the gazes were naturally drawn in to look at the latecomers.

“We really are late, huh?” Laien grinned and exchanged a glance with Siana, who walked by his side and was holding onto his arm.

“It’s not my fault Sinra delivered us the clothes at the last minute,” Siana said casually, not feeling guilty about making them late at all. “We couldn’t have gone in something so tasteless as a one-color azure set,” she emphasized, knowing that her big brother wouldn’t have wanted to wear something like that either.

Laien laughed quietly. Yes, those clothes perhaps weren’t ugly, but they were terribly boring. To be so unamusing as to make everyone wear indistinguishable sets for a party? Wasn’t that akin to a crime? In comparison, the two of them presented themselves much better in what Siana apparently bought for them a few days ago with this party in mind.

Laien himself ended up in a black suit, which mixed the sense of formality and gave off a feeling of being suited to battle and traveling, too; Siana simply knew him all too well. She knew he wouldn’t have liked something straightforwardly formal, so she chose him mostly clothes with a spark of adventure in them if one could call them that.

As for Siana, she unexpectedly picked something that wasn’t a dress for herself. Although her clothes had a more womanly feeling to them, she wore a black suit which was fairly similar to Laien’s. Due to her velvety, long black hair and the somewhat boyish air which the suit gave her, she ended up being incredibly eye-catching and very distinguishable from all the other girls present in the great hall.

However, as much attention of the guests and the various Princes and Princesses laid on the siblings and their black-themed clothing, the pair of Anatis and Nila didn’t fall behind.

Unlike Laien and Siana, the two of them didn’t experiment with unusual choices and simply wore a suit and a dress. They used the white-golden coloration of their clothes and accessories very well to bring out the most of their natural features; of the beautiful golden hair and blue eyes which both of them shared in common. As a result, they became perhaps even more dazzling than the pair of siblings walking alongside them.

“Look at them showing off,” Sinra murmured with a resigned smirk. He also enjoyed the undivided attention of his many siblings… but he wished some more of it was centered on him, not on those four who always seemed to compete to be the brightest light in the room.

Naturally, however, since the occasion was a fairly formal one, both pairs had sigils of their respective schools at their clothes. Neither of the two sigils was large or designed to be the standing out, but practically all of the people present noticed them.

Finella couldn’t help but groan inwardly as she looked at the four familiar youths. When she remembered what exactly had she said to the black-haired kid and how pompously she had treated the golden-haired one… she started feeling sick. She had done so much to build up the strength of her camp, but she always suffered because of such random failures…!

“Tch,” Carkan frowned. Each and every time he saw his little brother, especially when he appeared to be so pleased with himself, he felt like punching him in the face. However, the awareness that Injar had long since grown more powerful than him and he couldn’t bully him anymore was like a thorn in his side; not to speak of the biggest humiliation of his life, when his own master had chosen his at the time seven years old little brother instead of him as her personal disciple…!

“Look at them looking so happy just because they recruited some kids to fight for them,” Carkan said angrily, impatient to see the brats humiliate themselves the next day.

“She really is blushing,” Eleonora chuckled, peeking at Alex out of the corner of her eye. “You were right that she has a crush on that boy,” she added with a smile, exchanging a glance with Anna.

“You shouldn’t tease her too much, she’s already acting embarrassed enough,” Anna commented wryly, resulting in Alex giving both her and Eleonora a grumpy stare.

The two women chuckled and hid their wide smiles behind their hands. Now that they had made the decision to ally themselves with Sinra, they became much more relaxed compared to how they tended to act in the past.

Meanwhile, a young very confident looking man smiled to himself. “Laugh while you can, little brother. You really do not know with whom you are trying to pick up a fight with,” the young man snorted lightly and glanced at the black-robed, middle-aged expert who had been delegated to accompany him today.

None of his siblings knew… but the future King of the Sarkcente Kingdom had been decided more than forty years ago, when that old man took interest in him and became his teacher. This whole prolonged competition was nothing but a smokescreen and not even for the sake of insiders, but especially those who were watching from other countries.

With how much power and intelligence he had gathered in his hands and while adding it up to that old man’s immense resources… had he wanted, he could have crushed Finella, Eleonora and all his other siblings a long time ago. He could have even overthrown his father had he wanted! Thus, it truly didn’t matter whether Sinra got a strong support from the Red Dragon School; in the grand scheme of things, it wouldn’t change much at all.

“I don’t like those two boys’ auras,” suddenly, one of the two red-haired red-eyed twin brothers spoke up. “I can’t be sure, but they should be similar to Alen and Laura,” the youthful-looking man added grimly.

“What?” Sauras allowed his tongue to slip, revealing more surprise than he would have wanted. “Can you tell which secrets they possess? How strong they are?” he asked quietly. Although he wasn’t worried about the broad picture… losing the Grand Tournament would still be extremely unpleasant, not to mention the loss of potential founds which the victorious camps would receive.

“I can’t tell unless they use them,” the man shook his head. “They aren’t hiding their auras so I could sense the presence of the secrets, but that’s about it,” he explained, the look in his eyes turning serious just like the gaze of his twin brother.

For now, those kids wouldn’t pose a threat to them or the experts of their camp, but in twenty, thirty years… they would become a major obstacle. Yet, at the same time, they would become a valuable military asset of their country, what caused the two of them to feel conflicting emotions with regards to those two youths.

“Why didn’t teacher tell me about this?” Sauras frowned. “Could it be even he didn’t know? Well, he just returned and the boys revealed their strength only recently…” he thought with a sigh but ended up smiling to himself nevertheless. On the off chance that Alen lost to either of those two, it still wouldn’t be the end of the world.

He had a lot of faith in that pupil of his but had the twelve-year-old not been so lazy, there wouldn’t have been anything for him to worry about.

“Maybe it would even do him well to lose tomorrow, he would start taking his training more seriously,” Sauras mused, wondering how dazzling Alen would become if he truly put his whole heart to training and becoming stronger.

“There they are, finally,” Lamuel said with a sigh and gestured his subordinate to get moving, then himself headed onto the stage in the center of the great hall.