By the time the meeting ended, no definite conclusion had been reached about cooperating with the Xinfei Merchant Guild. Apart from asking Archmage Camilla's stance on the matter, President Gascoigne had given no indication of his own position from beginning to end.
The other parliamentary elders were long accustomed to this. Their president generally refused to state his position clearly until the very last moment anyway.
Besides, many of the parliamentary elders considered the matter of the Xinfei Merchant Guild too trivial to warrant any attention.
Although it involved a respected archmage, and Xinfei Merchant Guild President Xu Yi was himself a great mage worthy of consideration, the people directly concerned were merely apprentice and second-level mages.
According to the figures, such low-level mages accounted for over eighty percent of all mages on the Sains Continent. Yet in these elders' eyes, all of them combined were less important than a single archmage.
Rather than rack their brains over those people, they would be better off thinking about how to win over the newly elevated Archmage Camilla.
Even if these apprentice and second-level mages could no longer get by in magical circles, it hardly mattered. Countless people with magical talent joined their ranks every year, so the Mages' Guild had no reason to worry about its foundations.
After the meeting, however, President Gascoigne asked Great Mage Ferguson to stay behind, making it clear that he wanted to speak to him alone.
The other parliamentary elders were not surprised. After all, the matter involved Archmage Camilla, and judging by the president's earlier attitude, he seemed to attach considerable importance to her.
Presumably, he had kept Great Mage Ferguson behind to ask more about Archmage Camilla.
Yet once everyone else had left and only President Gascoigne and Great Mage Ferguson remained in the