Chapter 10 - Council

RED CARVAN: location - Forkland

A group of 15 sat around a desk. They were located in a large concrete room devoid of any windows and along with it life and the only source of light was a single large glass ceiling light. It reflected the moods of the people in the room, they had serious faces as they discussed, and none of them was in the mood to be joking.

"Three, three platinum-graded aptitudes in a single year instead of three in a decade. I can not tell if this is a blessing or a curs…."

"Hush Jeneev! We do not speak of 'that' word for we have no idea what we may invoke, do not forget the past, do not forget!" A tall elderly woman said. Her name was Nibai and she had no colour to her skin, she was as pale as a ghost and skinny enough that her skin touched her bones. Her moment of anger had brought no colour but to her face and instead made her a living banshee, with the strength of the people in the room the sight of her would make people believe she was the angel of death coming to take their souls

Janeev had no choice but to concede, he recognised his mistake. Aptitudes came in all shapes and sizes, words were not exempt and the members in this room had to be very careful. "My apologies Nibial, I realised my mistake. I had a slip of the tongue as this is a rare occurrence, it is all too weird, suspicious, almost as if something is being planned"

The other fourteen nodded their heads to show that they accepted his apologies. A familiar man spoke up. "During the past 100 years, tensions have been rising all throughout the world. It is not our place to intervene unless it breaks the rules of the command centre. In the Forkland Kingdom alone. The ancient clans have always been at odds with each other and have been split into two groups, the totalitarians and the authoritarians." Grandmaster Sonic said.

Kareem shook his head in disagreement," Wrong. Not all of them can be fitted into those two moulds, they are far too limiting and unrepresentative. Take the Heartcrest clan for example, they are the closest to the command centres ideal when it comes to what a clan should be, they do not vie for power and instead act like peacekeepers. Sure by your logic, then they would close align to an authoritarian rule."

The grandmaster continued, "I know that of course I do but in my opinion, it doesn't matter whether or not x family or x clan is in this faction and y clan is in that faction, at the end of the day all I can see is the smoke arising from the tension. We have to be careful to not trigger anything, you all remember the hidden war don't you"

"Yeah, fucking bloodbath that was, I don't even want to go back to that. So any good men died during that battle and it was because of a fucking joke! Those people aren't human, they animals" an engaged Janeev shouted. He had always been quick to lose his temper. Purple smoke billowed out from his poor to show his anger but they quickly settled. He could not have reached his level of strength without some level of control.

"Aish, alright we get it. However, be a little more mature next time". As one of the more experienced in the room the Grandmaster had insane levels of emotional maturity, he was sad but that was no excuse.

"Since it has come to this let's move on." Grandmaster Sonic said. "Let's ignore the anomalies and continue our annual council. As always we will discuss the students first. My south Forkland has reported 98,981 lower-graded students and 10 higher-grade students. This is within line with past trends and is therefore within the expected range. We have received fewer students this year, however, we have no gold-grade students, so we skip directly to diamond."

At first, the other fourteen thought that the South Forkland Academy was stretching when they mentioned being within the range. On average each academy was expected to receive around 100,000 new students, to be 1000 students less than that means that you're 1% behind the other academies. It was only when Grandmaster Sonic mentioned the lack of any gold-grade students.

This was another surprising revelation. To have such as concentrated number of talents one must have divine luck. They wanted them and made attempts to hide it as the desire could be seen in their eyes. It was easy to mask one's face and put on a facade but the eyes never lie and will betray you, but, alas they had to make do with the students that they were given. Aptitudes grades were a sign of potential not a sign of success. There were plenty in the past who wasted their aptitudes mostly high-class wastrels and there have been numerous cases of low-grade aptitudes reaching high ranks. Gold-grade aptitudes no longer seem as unwanted, they would do just fine.

The others followed suit and reported the statistics of their academies. The other notable academies were the Central Forkland Academy and the North Marlyland Academy. The only other ones to have Platinum-graded students. "Three Platinum grades. Two in Forkland, one in Marlyland. This is an unprecedented situation and I don't think anyone fully understands the weight of this."; which they were right.

When Anka had his aptitude tested, the room was filled to the brink with mostly 13-year-olds, they were shocked but only because of the prestige behind the grade. They also didn't know that there were two more platinum ranks in the continent. Apart from those in this room only the Syvernisi and TOI should know this.

In normal times, there would be three platinum graded students in a decade and they would be reserved the best treatment and training to increase their strenth as much as possible. Now that that time span has been shrunk by a tenth they would have to compete with each other by having their platinum-graded students compete in all manner of things, intelligence, strength, speed, soul power control and aptitude mastery to name a few.

You may think that a bunch of children fighting against each other is nothing to warrant any concern but you couldn't be any more wrong. Fatalities in the academies so long as they were not premeditated and outside of combat were not punishable. It is simply following the rule of survival of the fittest. The weak have no right to be in the academies if they think they can just coast by with absolutely no problem.

There is a reason why aptitudes become harder to control when you increase in grade, the complexity increases and they become broader, less defined and therefore more reliant on the user. So if you increase their intelligence to high standards, you will have killing machines in the form of children

Another headache was that it was easier for information to spread. The Novaium has inherited a vast information and technological network from the command centres which they use to protect there special class students. With how spectacular the students were it would be three times harder to accomplice a task that shouldn't be that difficult and is now made more complicated.

Seeing that the conversation had run dry after that statement, Birche, the assistant head at the North Forkland kingdom suggested that they talk about the aptitudes of their special classes. It was an interesting topic that they hadn't done before. This could perhaps open up some avenues they were not considering, for example, they could cross-reference them to see which types of aptitudes were the most common or had to most variation.