"I never expected we'd get an extra allocation of funds like this.
But Roland, perhaps we shouldn't have agreed to that distribution.
Those people are Orthodox mages, after all. Their ranks and experience are higher than ours overall."
After the meeting, Lie Yi and the others left with Roland, and he couldn't help voicing his thoughts.
"Whether we agreed or not, it would have come to much the same thing," Roland said. "Everyone discussed and settled on it. I didn't make the decision alone."
"At least for the initial eight million, it would have been wiser to push for an equal split," Lie Yi said. "Even if we lost more than we won afterward, we could slowly make up the difference."
Roland laughed at that. "What, don't you have any confidence?"
"Of course I do," Lie Yi said. "But developing a school takes time."
"I agree," Roland said. "That's why I secured three years for us to catch up."
"How could three years be enough? We'd need at least five to ten years, if not longer."
Lie Yi shook his head.
"East Lainer has suffered through years of war, and the quality of its prospective students is terrible. What few outstanding talents it has are concentrated among the children of the nobility.
But even those noble children can't compare with the Black Dragon Dynasty and the Red Sand Legion.
That's because West Lainer has always maintained the iron-fisted system of a military aristocracy. Among the descendants of the Black Dragon Dynasty in particular, quite a few possess Warlock bloodlines, which give them an enormous advantage at the lower tier."
"That's true," Roland said calmly.
The caliber of East Lainer's nobility had already been plain to see when they fought the endless waves of rebels, bandits, refugees, and warlords.
If they