As soon as Xu Ye left.
The four nobles relaxed all over, their shoulders slumping.
Anderson tidied his hair and pushed himself upright against the railing beside him. "Look at yourselves. As nobles, how can you be so cowardly? I'm very disappointed in how you behaved just now."
"Are you really going to obey him?"
Dusha rolled her eyes. "Anderson, he's stronger than us anyway. I'm willing to follow him."
"So am I."
"I have no objections."
Anderson said, "..."
He twirled his hair awkwardly. "Fine, then I'll follow him too. Who knows how many other illegitimate children my father has? I don't have much standing in the family anyway. I might as well take a chance."
"I've always felt that times are about to change."
A glimmer of shrewdness appeared in Simon's normally guileless eyes. "You feel it too? Prices have been rising sharply lately, and taxes keep going up. Even Sky City has started stockpiling huge amounts of grain, and every department has had its budget cut considerably. Things must be getting tight on the front lines."
"The founding of Crimson also marks the Five Great Powers shifting from division to cooperation. Maybe it was a compromise, maybe they had no choice, but either way, circumstances forced their hand. That alone tells us how bad things will get."
"The four of us all know each other's situations. With things going the way they are, we'll end up as commoners sooner or later. There's no hope of us remaining nobles."
"We might as well take a gamble."
"Isn't that why we came to the training camp?"
"We refuse to be suppressed, to settle for the status quo, or to simply drift with the current."
The stout, fair-skinned boy's words silenced the other three. "Xu Ye keeps a lot hidden.