At the banquet, Kazak, chief of the Black Marsh Clan and a member of its council of elders, watched the scene unfold. A trace of awe appeared in his brown, slit-pupiled eyes.
He had imagined all sorts of outcomes before coming here. The one thing he had never expected was for this assassination attempt to end with John, the governor of Faoken, personally overpowering Adam, a transcendent Mage, despite the gap in their tiers.
There was the mysterious spell John had just displayed, the devastating judgment he had passed on the Morning Star Clan afterward, and the new weapons Faoken had unveiled at today's demonstration.
Together, they had overturned everything Kazak thought he knew about Faoken.
Any schemes he had been harboring vanished.
He could not help recalling what Elder Silver Scale, the guardian of the sacred grounds, had told him before he left.
Perhaps Elder Silver Scale was right. With this governor's arrival, everything in Faoken is about to change. Faced with those terrifying weapons and the governor's extraordinary strength, if the Black Marsh Clan foolishly refused to cooperate...
The Morning Star Clan's fate today would be the Black Marsh Clan's tomorrow!
Kazak looked at the Morning Star Clan's elders. Their faces were stricken, their forced smiles had crumbled, and their eyes were full of fear and worry. He said nothing, merely raised his drink and drained it.
When he looked toward the human governor again, resolve flashed in his eyes, as though he had made up his mind. Hum!
Meanwhile, just as an unprecedented silence fell over the banquet, a barely perceptible pulse of mana rippled through the air. To everyone's surprise, Balga emerged from the folds of space where he had been concealed and made no attempt to hide the aura of his Crown Tier mana.
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