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"You still haven\'t gotten that appointment from Allen Rovenne!? Didn\'t I say it can be unofficial as well if necessary?!"

From Dan\'s perspective, it was Count Serdos who appeared more cornered about this than him. It just so happened that the Count was the target of snide remarks in the year-end gathering held in the main territory of Marquis Grauksh that was joined by many influential nobles including the Marquis and others who were of the same rank as him.

They hadn’t outright said it, typical of nobles, but it was clear that they were pointing at him by saying \'Someone who\'s a failure as the head of the family that even his son looks down on him\'. Still, he could endure it one way or another. However, what he couldn\'t endure were the biting remarks of Marquis Grauksh who gave him a rundown of the Marquis Meeting. The Marquis had straight out said \'Who could have expected that the father would fall so short compared to his prodigal son... It\'s just a waste to expect anything at this point\' with a sigh.

The Marquis Meeting had just been held a while ago, but seeing that there were still no rumors about Dan further pressured Count Serdos.

Dan\'s achievements had put him in second place of his class. This fact alone should have garnered an endless stream of praises from everyone.

However, the situation had taken a different turn this year. The birth of the many clubs that Allen had come up with as a way to further his dream had caught many people unaware, and the people who were delegated as heads of these clubs were pushed into prominence.

Humans were a lump of desires.

Count Serdos hadn\'t even stopped to think how much effort it would have required Dan to reach second place, yet he started to expect even more. He wasn\'t content with a mere 2nd rank. In a way, he was just the kind of person who would kill a goose that laid golden eggs hoping to get a heap of them immediately.

But if he really had to blame someone for his predicament, then he could only blame himself. Had he not bragged about how Allen came to visit his best friend during the summer vacation and rubbed it on other people\'s faces again and again, perhaps he could have saved himself from the mockery.

"I tried to, but he\'s quite busy..."

Dan lowered his head in an apologetic gesture, but on the contrary, he hadn’t really talked about it with Allen except once. To start with, it was forbidden for unaffiliated people to directly send invitations for parties or meetings to students of the Royal Academy.

Nobles were nobles, and they wouldn\'t miss out on using everything at their disposal, especially the ones closer to the top guns, just to recruit the students into their camp, which would be a huge obstacle to their studies. It was a lesson from the past after many geniuses had been ruined due to falling for the adults’ honeyed words. Hence, the rule had always been strictly enforced.

One of the few options they could use to circumvent this was through other students, and even then only through personal discussions. Nothing more, nothing less. And as for Allen, he had refused everyone\'s invitations, including Meria Dragoon’s who was the overall supreme leader of the territory that his hometown was a part of.

Zatsinger and Leverance too had openly shown their interest in him, but he hadn\'t glanced their way one bit despite this.

Dan was sure that Allen wouldn\'t be bored enough to come to a dinner meeting filled with nothing but stiff talk without any particular reason. Plus, if he accepted one, then there would be a trail of people pushing him to accept their invitation as well, which would just waste his valuable time.

It was a rather easy to reach conclusion. Well, it was another matter that there was probably hardly anyone else who would shoot down invitations left and right like Allen does.

Every one of his classmates was aware of the turbulent power balance that had Allen at its center, and there was a tacit understanding between all of them to avoid crashing it on a whim. Or well, in truth, they were all just afraid of stepping into such a mess. From our perspective, it was a cesspool of political intrigue delicately hanging on a thread altogether, and while they haven\'t been caught up in it, just a glance at it was enough to upset our stomachs. Yet, Allen was so nonchalantly swimming across it that his classmates were sure that he seriously had some screws loose in his head. In fact, even Bester, whom Allen had praised as a sensible fool, had to be careful in making a move when stepping into such a political maelstrom.

Considering all of this, one had to admire Fey who had been the first to come into contact with him when no one even knew about the Rovenne territory out in some hinterland, or Jeu who had declared her intention to chase after him even before they shared any words and who had an uncanny intuition and courage of steel.

Was it women\'s intuition, or were they just that exceptional?

Returning to the topic, Dan obviously didn\'t intend to break that rule. Plus, even if he pushed through with it, the meeting would still be a pain he could already tell, and as a matter of fact, he had already asked Allen out of formality, and he had already received his rejection.

Allen did say \'I don\'t mind doing it if it can ease your troubles so you can focus entirely on the Sail Club? I’ll definitely pick some great words to say to him. Kukuku\' while giggling. However, Dan had said \'no need\' in a fluster. There was just no way he could allow the meeting between Allen and his father to happen when the former had even refused Meria Dragoon\'s invitation. That would be akin to jumping in front of a hornet willingly.

"It was wrong of us to expect anything from the son of a lowly concubine either way, Father. It\'s the same with that bastard company, mere commoners would have no way of knowing just how cutthroat high society politics of the revered nobility can be."

The disdainful remark came from Codie, the tentative heir of the Count family, and Dan\'s elder brother. The irony was that he himself had been avoiding social interaction due to his ineptitude. Though that had been changing recently after he received the praises, or perhaps, you could say he had ridden on the wave of the scant remarks, such as \'The future of Graukash now lies in the Serdos’ hands. We\'re all counting on you!’, he had received during the end of the summer vacation when an array of influential nobles had come to congratulate him for Dan\'s achievements. It was one of the reasons why he was in the Royal Capital during this season of blooming social life.

Count Serdos turned to glare at him.

"You think you can say those words when you haven\'t done anything at all, Codie? The least you can do is to learn your place in society, and get rid of that arrogance of yours."

Codie was yet another reason behind Count Serdos’ headaches. Before, while he was already quite arrogant, he had enough sense to keep it private. But then, the inferiority complex he had that made him the butt of the jokes for many somehow vanished as Dan showed his excellence, making his meager caliber stand out even more.

"Dear! What are you implying with that?! God forbid, are you saying that the heir of the Serdos family ought to be subservient to someone like Daniel, a commoner\'s child?! How can you fall so short in recognizing the hierarchy?! Codie-chan has only been here for a few days, so you\'re just being unreasonable in asking for any result so soon. Tell me, am I wrong?!"

And there came the third source of Count Serdos\'s headaches— Brient, his legal wife and the mother of Codie. As much as he had wanted to retort at the order of hierarchy that she had commented on, the Count was frankly just not good at dealing with her. Anytime he would berate her beloved son, she would immediately hiss at him like a cat whose tail has been stepped on.

They had a political marriage, and as someone from a respected lineage, she was eloquent and garnered much respect in noble society. Her only shortcoming was her strong bias for lineage. Even though Dan had been piling up brilliant achievements, she hadn\'t shown any hint of accepting him, and this had Count Serdos at his wit\'s end.

Meanwhile, Count Serdos had gotten caught up in his work, giving him a reason to escape her nagging. However, the result of his continuous neglect made their relationship of husband and wife just as distant. It was a common scene in whichever world you picked.

His chiding had always meant to push Codie to get his act together, but the argument between husband and wife showed just how ineffective it had been.

And yet again, Count Serdos had averted his eyes from the problem again and again.

Seeing no rebuttal coming from the Count, Brient, who had been all but ready to go full ballistic, instead turned to Veena, Dan\'s biological mother.

"And mind you, Codie-chan\'s accusation was correct. Veena\'s little sister— was it Mimosa? Whatever. Hasn\'t she gotten a little bit too bold recently? Who does she think she is?... For a mere company from a rural port town, she has the gall to sponsor a Royal Academy\'s club without informing her lord… Commoners are just getting too bold nowadays. Truly enviable!"

Veena lowered her head with an apologetic look, but otherwise she didn\'t have much thought going on behind her expression.

Life in the Count family had been unpalatable for her, and now, she would gladly welcome it if they ever decide to throw her out of the family. So it was probably a bit too late already to assume her resentment for the joke of a situation she was in. But aside from her \'Whatever\' attitude, she actually found her husband pitiful. The situation he was caught in had surpassed the level he could deal with.

On the flip side, however, Brient couldn\'t swallow that look of calmness and indifference on Veena\'s face regardless of how much she berated her. Recently, she had been losing more and more grip on her anger due to that reason.

And having grown up in a different environment with a different set of values, Brient had no way to see through Veena\'s heart.

"...I can\'t express my apology enough for the actions of my little sister. And Dan, you, too, should learn not to cause trouble to your father."

"Understood."

And the final nail in the coffin that made the Count pull his hair in frustration was the report that Mimosa had bestowed the Royal Academy\'s Sail Club a ship.

It should\'ve been a commendable fact that a merchant from his region actually managed to become the sponsor for a Royal Academy club… At least, that was how it should have been. But the Count was trying to bury the fact that Dan was his illegitimate child that he had neglected in the earlier days. He certainly didn\'t like the fact that the said sponsor was none other than Serene Sea Co. where Dan had been raised.

The report from Dan stated that Allen just happened to visit the port town for sightseeing, happened to meet Mimosa there, and had taken a fancy to their ships, so he pushed for a sponsorship contract. But, the story was just too coincidental to be true, so he couldn\'t fully believe it.

Besides, whether it was true or not didn’t matter. The problem was how the world saw Serene Sea Co. In other people\'s heads, they must have assumed that Serene Sea Co. had deep ties with the Serdos family, and more so with Dan.

He received plenty of probing from other nobles like \'Wow, you really hid yourself so cleverly. Say, why don\'t you tell me the truth? I assure you, your secret’s safe with me’. He had a rough time making excuses all this while. After all, he couldn\'t say he didn\'t know about the sponsorship deal as their lord, could he?

He had summoned Mimosa once to this secondary house, and he had tried to coerce her, threaten her, and he even asked for a price to take over her company. However, having prepared herself for the worst already, Mimosa took in everything with a stride. In her own words, she wasn\'t such an easy woman who would throw a pie in front of her for crumbs.

Her elder sister still has the shoulder of this little sister to rely on was her message. Count Serdos\'s head had almost burst out at Mimosa\'s implied meaning.

He even thought of conceding this matter had the Sail Club actually had some achievements and made the world see them in a new light. Alas, he never got the desired result he had wanted, and instead, they even faded out of the public eye.

......Either way, he needed to take control of the situation. So the Count used all sorts of methods to harass Serene Sea Co.\'s side store that they had recently opened in the Royal Capital. Unfortunately, the Crane-Dragon Union, their patron, had poured water on all of his efforts.

The man that went by the name Gin was especially a thorn he couldn\'t remove from his side.

Count Serdos\'s mind had once again started to escape from reality when the family\'s steward jumped into the room with a pale face.

"I-It\'s an urgent matter, Master! Marquis Grauksh himself has arrived as a messenger regarding the disaster in the Grauksh territory!"

"The M-Marquis himself, and a-as a messenger?! Who in the world sent him?... For what reason?!"

The Steward knelt and said,

"Yes, His Excellency mentioned an urgent request for the Young Master Daniel. And, h-he came in the... that.... a magic car with the Yuglia Royal Family crest, affirming that he\'s here under the command of H-His Majesty!"

After a moment of spacing out, everyone\'s gazes creaked in Dan\'s direction.

Dan shook his head slowly, indicating he had no idea what it was about as his face muscles twitch uncontrollably.