At this moment, the last external judge, the famous Third-Ring diviner Hao Brooks, also arrived at the judges' seats, which meant the defense could officially begin.
Lock glanced at Wizard Edgar in the audience. Wizard Edgar nodded at him from his seat.
Lock nodded back in response.
At the same time, Lock turned his gaze toward Witch Catherine.
This was the defense for the funding applications submitted to the Truth Institute, and it was the first time his cooperating wizard mentor had come to watch.
Her seat had been empty for the first three defenses.
Was it because Special-Grade Funding was unusual? Lock scratched his head. However, the primary participants in a Special-Grade Funding application were basically all her students. It would indeed be hard to justify her not showing up at least once.
The Green Dragon Throne stood and announced the beginning of the defense, then invited Antoine to come onstage first.
After calling Antoine's name twice, no one came onstage. The Green Dragon Throne then announced expressionlessly, "The ten-minute countdown begins now. If Antoine does not appear, he will automatically be considered to have completed his defense."
Clearly, if he missed this defense, his application for Special-Grade Funding would definitely fail the institute's internal review.
Time passed second by second.
Lock looked up at the alchemical clock atop the conference room. The ten minutes shown on it quickly passed. The alchemical clock monitored the changes in time at the particle level, so its accuracy was extremely high.
It seemed Antoine would not be returning for the time being. He had apparently been trapped in the ruins of a collapsed world. Quite a few wizards from the Elder Council had even believed he could make it back in time for the defense, but now it seemed that had merely