Lord Ice Moon POV

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"This is the third day since he received the letter."

"If he doesn't come today, we had won and ridiculed him."

"Really? If he just ignored us, then wouldn't he be winning here? I mean, what can we even do?"

"S-Shame him! Of course, that's what we can do."

Ten Rank 3 Elders of my Sect, all of them with different families, abilities, appearances, and temperaments sat down around a large wooden table, I, as the Sect Master, was sitting in front of this table while watching this quartet of fools speak whatever they come out with.

The challenge for the tournament had arrived in Drake's hands almost three days ago, there was a time of three days before he was to accept, so I suppose if this is the third day and he hasn't come, then it can be assumed that he had no interest in the petty games of these Elders.

Now I am beginning to regret having allowed them to have their way with this… I believe this was just a stupid thing. I might have gotten too far with my own ideas. Or perhaps that dream with the dragon ended making them dumber. Nonetheless, I don't think this is even necessary, to begin with.

"Well, if he dares to ignore us, we cannot possibly let it slide, right?"

"Indeed, we should revoke his access to our dungeons, after all, he's getting too cocky with it."

"Yeah! Does he think he owns it or something? Our sect arrived here hundreds of years ago, it is our property."

"But he pays a lot for it, more than we actually make by ourselves in a week. He has actually helped our slowly falling economy… And the constant flow of magic items helps us extract them for useful materials. We had even been dismantling them to make personalized artifacts and weapons… I think he has been of great help."

"What?! He's an egocentric and selfish man, the other day he didn't let me speak with him! And even kicked my butt!"

"Stop lying, he would never do such a thing, Lord Drake is a very polite man, he sells me his stuff and he has a charming smile… I think of him every day. Too bad he has a wife."

"I disagree, he's a disgusting man that actually allows those lowly beasts and those small people to serve him as non-slaves, without using his authority as a superior giant over them… It feels like he's mocking us that we have our slaves…"

"All of you, that's enough. I am losing my temper already." I sighed. I was about to end this and tell them to not do this tournament nor try to bully this man again. I believe it would be interesting to see his capabilities, but to go this far seems quite unfair to me.

Nonetheless, if I could get the chance to know him better and perhaps slowly assimilate his sect to mine, it would be for the best. But he seems mysterious and strong, we cannot play around with a man like this, even if I really wanted to see if I could suppress him and absorb everything he has. Deep down, there needs to be some decency before we touch rock bottom and we end up acting as a demonic sect. After all, we belong to the righteous sect's faction.

Other sects will sooner or later notice what we are doing and will try to suppress us by defaming us of exploiters of weaker sects, which we don't want now.

Honestly, all of this game of good and evil is a façade, a stupid façade holding up to a dumb ideology that a woman that lived almost a million years ago left behind.

The venerable of ice is dead, and whatever she said is slowly fading away, but the authority of the Righteous Faction, which holds its roots in the strongest sect in the entire world, the Heavenly Aesir Descendants Domain, is still as great as ever.

We had already been recognized as a righteous sect, acting maliciously behind their backs is fine, but if we do it in front of everyone else in the world, and we just dare to suppress a friendly sect out of pure benefits, then we'll surely get the attention of unwanted people, especially because they already have some spies spread in my city.

At most, we must devour this sect bite by bite instead of being rash like these fools.

"But Sect Master…!"

"No buts, stop this right now or I will make you stop."

At my words, I released my Rank 4 Mana Aura, and everyone fell silent.

There were a few of these idiots which Drake and his group had shamelessly offended, which I don't really care about, but that had made them hold a strong grudge against them.

After all, despite how imbecile these men can be, they're my Rank 3 Elders and represent my sect. If one of them is offended, it means he's offending the entire sect.

I know it is something that cannot be tolerated, so I have to act in some way, but this is going too far. I don't like to be too showy, but more discreet with my acts.

But, now that I think about it, him not coming here could quite possibly mean that he doesn't care about our position nor authorities, and might as well be planning something himself to suppress us? Hmm… Then he might be more shred than we originally expected.

Cautiousness is necessary to proceed with this. Drake might be a more mysterious man than we truly believe. Sometimes I feel the urge of quickly killing him to end this annoying pain in the ass while taking his things for now, but I must be patient. That's not how a righteous sect acts after all.

Such a complex situation… And this is all the fault of these same greedy Elders who actually allowed someone that didn't belong in our sect to enter our dungeons so they could get someone to do their job…

However, before things were to end, a man entered the room.

It was Drake.

"Sorry for coming late, I had many things I needed to do first, dear Elders."

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