Ch53.Unexpected Situation

--I see that I have unfortunately only gotten one response to the previous chapter, so I will just take this as you accepting the current path that I am taking and I will just go ahead with my plans without worrying too much.

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I have started walking around the City, watching as many new and hopeful children are running around, rushing towards the various Academy tents, hoping to be accepted into a great academy and you can see the shine of grand dreams and hopes in most of them. Unfortunately for many of these kids, unless they have great talent, they will be rejected multiple times before possibly getting lucky and get accepted into an average Academy. It is still weird to think that I am only one year older than all of them, I guess that I often forget this body's actual age since I have long given up trying to 'act my age'.

As I walk along the streets, I make sure that I stay within either my territory, Nafets territory, the natural zones or the high end areas that have no gangs since they are controlled by Nobles. The Academy tents are usually set up in either the Noble areas or neutral zones since these zones are only neural because of how difficult they are to control. Due to the fact that there will be a massive influx of people visiting those areas every year, it becomes difficult to stay in control of those territories. Another major factor is that it is hard to stay in control of areas that get visited by unnecessarily powerful Mages, each with a high status as well.

As I am looking around at the surrounding new people, I can see that many are stealthily looking at me. These people are either rival Gang Bosses or people that are intimidated by my presence, since after becoming a Circle 1 mage, I started rapidly growing again and am currently almost 2m tall, with muscles that appear as if they were carved into stone, I still have my baby face, but with my head and eyebrows being shaved bald, it is quite hard to determine my actual age.

I have not adapted my 'look' much since before, I still wear long cargo pants with multiple pockets, army boots and a tank top. My arms tattoos are completely visible and the panther Tattoo on my back can vaguely be seen through my vest. I have been considering getting some more tattoos, but I want each tattoo I get to have a certain meaning so that I can brag about the stores each of them tell when I get drunk.

As I am walking down the street, I take my Pipe out of my pocket, pack in a bit of high quality 'Blaze' and light up, this Blaze has been processed multiple times so that the smoke doesn't affect those around me, It wouldn't be a good idea to make everyone I walk passed go crazy. Although having it processed reputedly costs way too much money, I quite like the enhanced quality it brings and the Magic energy 'High' is quite enjoyable even though it doesn't affect me mentally at all.

I go about my own business, ignoring all the weird gazes as I make my way towards one of the Alchemy Academies tent, their are a few different Academies that specialize in Alchemy and I intend to visit them all. I plan to hopefully scout some students from there, I just need to aim for any student that seems confident or completely calm, these are the ones that most likely have confidence in either their current alchemic skills or their intelligence and potential in the field of Alchemy.

As I arrive at the first tent, I see the usual long line of students lining up, I start walking along the side of the line as I observe the students lining up, at one point I get called out by one of the students saying, "HEY YOU, where are you going!? You aren't supposed to approach the tent from anywhere but the line!"

I stop walking as I hear that and turn to see a young boy with black hair pointing at me, I get quite excited seeing this as I hope his confidence in calling me out is well placed. I then slowly walk up to him and take a deep puff of my pipe, lean down to get closer to his face and blow the smoke into his face, although he won't feel the 'high' from this, the smoke alone will cause him quite some discomfort as well make him cough quite a bit. He backs up a bit, showing a shocked and confused face as he starts coughing, I reply "How talented are you at Alchemy?"

My reply was completely contrary to my 'rude' actions, there is a reason I am acting like this and I know that I can't actually cause any real trouble here. The academies usually don't pay too much attention to other Mages, unless they go too far or act against their interests, just intimidating a student would be fine as long as I don't verbalize my intimidation. After the little guy finishes coughing, he backs away some more and looks up at me with clear fright in his eyes, after seeing that, I know he won't survive in Swernoot Academy and even if he was talented, facing my Academies 'atmosphere' will inevitably lead to breaking his spirit, therefore influencing his alchemy abilities and resulting in him quickly becoming useless to me, since I need someone to actually thrive and start producing Drugs for me I cant just accept anyone, they need to have at least a little bit of guts .

I just sigh, seeing that he doesn't even have the guts to respond, I just start walking back down the line as I look for anyone that isn't affected by me. As I start getting close to the tent, one of the tents guards looks over to me and points to the back, signaling that I can't come any closer and that I should return to the back of the line.

I stop walking and gesture for him to come to me as I hold out a large gold coin in my hand, the guard looks at me with disgust before grabbing something from his pocket and talking into it. It seems like bribes wont work here, oh well I tried, as I started walking away I heard a shout from behind and as I turned around I saw the guard running towards me with someone slowly following behind him, 'Shit, why would anyone bother actually coming out to see me! I did nothing besides trying to bribe a guard!'

'There is no way I will get away from anyone coming from an Academies tent so I will have to bluff my way through this!', I then turn around completely and started walking towards the guard and that person with a large smile on my face, trying quite unsuccessfully to appear as 'innocent' as possible. As I got close to them, I bowed slightly and said, "Thank you for agreeing to see me, I didn't think your guard understood my meaning judging by the look on his face."

I saw the visible confusion on both the guards face and on that man, obviously not expecting my response. I am quite sure they came out to 'teach me a lesson' in order to gain some type of reputation or reaction from the crowd. I ignore their reaction and continue by saying in a loud voice, "I have a small business proposal for your academy, as our locations are quite far apart, I have not been able to contact you previously and had to wait until today to try my luck. It is a good thing you are generous enough to come out and meet me."

I then take a small breath before continuing, "I have my own meeting room set up to discuss some business, you can follow me if you would like to procced there , if not, I can return to the tent tonight, after all of your tests are done, to have our discussion."

I then just continued to display my best smile as I waited for their response, 'hopefully they flat out reject me, this is a very risky move that I am pulling right now! Please just laugh at me and walk away!'

Unfortunately that man seemed to be quite difficult to handle as he smiled back at me and gestured for me to lead the way as he said, "Of course, our guards are highly trained. I would be happy to discuss some business with you, please lead the way." And then he said in a very soft tone that only the guard and I could hear, "You better not be messing me around, I don't have time to waste on nobodies!"

I just laughed and started walking towards my house, although I doubt anything will go wrong, I will definitely feel more comfortable in my own home where I have some defensive Runes in place as well as giving me at least a small chance to fight back as my backup plans will be put into place as soon as I see one of my clan members and give him the signal.