Lord of Steel ignored Richard’s words, but got back on track.

“So, would you like to graduate now or later?” he asked, correcting his posture and sitting straight in his seat.

“Later,” Wolf replied, and Headmaster Smith nodded.

“Do you wish to join the Mage Academy’s faction, the Duke’s faction, or do you wish to establish your own noble family?”

Wolf remained silent for a moment, causing Smith to crack a smile. He then answered Wolf’s unasked question.

“By joining either the Mage Academy or the Duke, you would give up becoming a noble with holds, unless your family already owns a fiefdom,” Headmaster Smith explained. “The Mage Academy is to protect humanity from outsiders, while the Duke is to preserve internal stability. If you choose the third option, your task will be to both maintain order and protect our race from external threats, albeit only in the area under your jurisdiction.”

Wolf frowned at those words, thinking of Mandy’s fate.

“You don’t seem to maintain the law and protect people in the Mage Academy,” the youth said bluntly.

Headmaster Smith shot him a sharp look.

“I don’t know.” Wolf sheepishly admitted, and Headmaster Smith nodded, then answered Wolf’s question.

“That’s not my job, and I’m already doing enough,” Smith said with a calm expression, seemingly not offended by Wolf’s accusation. “You’re too young, but you have to understand something. We are all things. Cogs in a great clockwork mechanism, lines and dots in a grand Spell Formation—”

“Shouldn’t the Mage Academy nurture talent?” Wolf interrupted the speech. His voice quivered with rage as he recalled his father’s words.

“It does,” Smith said seriously, as he nodded his head once. “But we barely have a handful of talent a decade. What do you think we should do with the rest of the people? Educate them, train them to kill, and then send them off among the populace where they have superior knowledge, cognitive ability and are strong enough to carve out a piece of land of their own? Who would be stupid enough to do that?”

Headmaster Smith leaned forward and stopped talking for a moment, letting his words sink in.

“Academy Founders weren’t stupid. Not by a long shot,” Smith said coldly. “We raise geniuses and search for unpolished diamonds, then we polish them. As for the rest, we dangle a carrot of money, education and power in front of them. Meanwhile, we send them to do communal work so that they can earn some benefits. Mage Academy’s job is to keep the hordes of subpar Mages busy, so that they don’t threaten our society and race.”

Headmaster Smith leaned back into his comfy chair and steepled his fingers.

“Naturally, we can’t keep everyone imprisoned forever. Nobles are already part of the social order and have education, money and power. We can simply let them go whenever they want to leave. And not all common-born Mages wish to stay. We resolve that through loans, which they have to pay off for the rest of their lives. Some people are lucky, they pay off their loans quickly and want to leave before they grow old and weak. We’re forced to let them leave. Otherwise, people wouldn’t join. But we keep track of anyone who leaves, naturally.”

*Pop! Pop!*

Smith cracked his fingers, making audible pops.

“If these people show an inkling of engaging in dangerous activity, Mage Academy creates missions to eliminate them,” the Headmaster explained, then popped his neck as well. “Why am I telling all of this to you? Because you’re not a pawn in this game. You’re the person this academy should nurture, even though you’re playing games of your own.”

Headmaster Smith stopped talking for a moment, as if he’d just remembered something.

“Right,” he said. “Do you know how to use your True Name?”

Wolf remained silent for a moment, still processing Lord of Steel’s words. He blinked before realizing this wasn’t yet another rhetorical question.

“You mean it lowers the Order of related spells?” Wolf asked.

Richard gave his boss a sharp look, while Lord of Steel smirked.

“So you don’t know,” the Headmaster said. His expression was impassive, but his voice revealed a hint of embarrassment. “No matter, we can teach you. This is an educational institution, after all.”

Wolf’s hair stood on end when he heard that line. Based on Headmaster Smith’s words, Mage Academy was more of a prison than an educational institution.

Lord of Steel cleared his throat.

“Do you know what your exact True Name is?” he asked, raising his eyebrow slightly.

“Death,” Wolf said as he nodded his head.

Richard smiled awkwardly, while Smith shook his head.

“You can’t be Lord of Death,” he said. “That is something beyond mortal understanding. Just like Life, Creation, Fate, Time and many others. We even considered some of those divine domains, Death included. For instance, I’m Lord of Steel, not Metal. Dick is Lord of Wind—”

“It’s Richard, Sir,” Richard said flatly behind his boss’s back, but Smith ignored him.

“—not Air. Your True Name is likely related to Death,” the Headmaster continued. “Like Incineration, Drowning or something. For instance, Lord of Swiftness or Slowness could mistakenly believe he is Lord of Time, but as soon as he tries changing the flow of time differently, he will realize he’s restricted.”

“Maybe the boy just wants an imposing title, Sir,” Richard chipped in.

The statement stunned Wolf. Even more shocking was Headmaster Smith’s nod of agreement. The youth remained silent. He was certain his first True Name was Death, and the ramblings of these two old men couldn’t shake his belief; at least not by much.

Then, Wolf noticed as the mystical thing South mentioned took effect before his very eyes. After saying it was impossible, the two True-Namers completely lost their interest in Wolf’s True Name.

“What’s your surname?” Headmaster Smith asked, unaware that he was changing the subject.

“Do I have to answer that?” Wolf asked, and Lord of Steel smirked once more before shaking his head.

“In that case, you’ll find out when I make it public,” Wolf said coldly, but then realized Smith could take his words the wrong way and continued in an apologetic tone. “I can’t let the cat out of the bag too soon. In case you’re worried, I have no enmity with the Silverhound Duchy. Only certain individuals and families who live here. But even those grudges are fairly new. I was honestly thinking of letting the matter drop, but after what happened today…”

Some of Wolf’s suppressed anger flared again for a moment, but then died down almost instantly.

Richard and his boss remained silent, and Wolf thought their questioning was over.

“Is that all?” he asked, but the Headmaster shook his head.

“One more thing,” the man said. “Do you want to keep doing those joke missions of yours? No, let me rephrase that. Do you wish to continue robbing our students of their experience and pocket money? Or do you want to go on proper missions for True-Namers?”

Seeing the glint of excitement in Wolf’s eye, the Headmaster raised his hand as if to stop him.

“We don’t have those often, but there are two that are permanently open and whoever wants to can take part,” he explained, trying to point out the world wasn’t always on fire. “There’s no reward for those missions. However, whatever gains you make are your own and Mage Academy will buy your loot from you, if you’re willing to sell. We also provide long distance teleportation return trips free of charge, as long as you make some progress in the danger zones which you visit.”

“What are the missions?” Wolf asked with interest, but then he remembered his situation and his enthusiasm died down. “As you probably know, my private life is a mess right now. I’m not sure how much time I’ll need to straighten it out.”

“Beast slaying,” Headmaster Smith said, ignoring nonsense which didn’t suit him. “To be more precise, slaying Demonic Beasts. As well learned as you are, you probably know that there are three classes of beasts. Animals, Monster Beasts and Demonic Beasts, the latter being the most ferocious.”

The man then stopped, realizing he may have overestimated Wolf’s education.

“You know about centennial Demon incursions?” he asked, and Wolf nodded.

“Good.” He smiled, then continued his explanation. “Two of those rifts left something behind after closing. One location is smaller, and mostly taken care of by now, but the other is a different story. It’s at the Beast-lands border and we block a portion of Monster Beast migrations with it.

“That border zone has been there for centuries,” Smith said, and Richard’s lips trembled like he’d held back from making a snide remark. “We’re maintaining it at a certain size so that it doesn’t endanger us, and yet provides meaningful defense. In the last couple of decades, nobody really had the time to prune the zone and it could use a bit of our attention—”

“What Sir’s trying to say is that he’s extremely lazy and didn’t want to bother with this issue,” Richard said while rolling his eyes. “Sir, annually spends at least fifty days making pointless little plots, which fail miserably, but can’t find two weeks to sort this out.”

“Dick! Is that the way you speak about your employer?” Headmaster Smith turned around, looking Richard in the eye with an indignant expression.

“It’s Richard, Sir.” Richard said flatly, before answering his boss’s question. “I would never talk like that about an employer, Sir. However, if I’m talking about you, I don’t have any qualms about it.”

“I am your employer,” the Headmaster shouted, acting like a child throwing a tantrum.

“You are also the man that keeps calling me Dick for more than half a century, despite knowing how much it ticks me off.” Richard’s tone of voice remained flat monotone during the entire exchange, while Lord of Steel spoke as if he was on an emotional roller coaster.

“Are you guys all right in the head?” Wolf said aloud, noticing the fact only once it was too late.

“He’s completely off his rocker,” Richard said emotionlessly. “Apparently, living too long does that to people. He took me down with him about thirty years ago. I remember going crazy for two decades before I finally snapped.”

When he heard that, Wolf subconsciously nodded. South is probably crazy as well. But his insanity is different. He doesn’t have these mood swings. In fact, whenever Matilda’s not around, he acts like he's bored to death. It’s like he’s waiting for something or someone while building up his soul. He mentioned being pursued several times. But, he’s so strong. What could possibly force him to hole up in an alley, with nothing else to do other than grow stronger?

“Um,” he started, seeing the two kooky old men were about to bicker.

“Yes?” both kooky old men asked and locked their gazes on Wolf.

“Is that everything?” Wolf asked while shrinking his neck, but Headmaster Smith shook his head.