The air tingled with tension.
The atmosphere grew electric as his heartless, cruel words hung in the air.
The Headmistress sharpened her gaze at his words.
She felt the urge to twist his head off with her magic.
In many ways, he was the kind of person that made her join Twilight in her willingness to deploy violence to reach her means of equitism.
"I'm afraid I cannot accept that," she coldly retorted. "I will not accept any of your twisted compromises, nor will I back down. The talent acquisition program will embed itself in not just this institution but also other institutions and the entire magicademic sector."
Her gaze narrowed. "Nothing you do will stop this. It will be my legacy to this nation and to the disenfranchised people of the slums. You may file as many lawsuits as you wish or stoop as low as funding and arming the Colohen Mafia to fight our operations, but in the end, we will still prevail."
"Woah there," the Nelnmont patriarch chuckled. "Don't make accusations you can't prove lest I sue you for slander."
He shook his chubby head with pronounced disappointment. "It's unfortunate that you are so stubborn. Especially when we have some common interests. If you truly care for your program, you might want to accept my proposal and pursue it in other ways that are not as bombastic as what you have chosen. Frankly, I don't have any particular problem with the slum talent acquisition program myself, if I'm being honest."
The Headmistress allowed herself a perfunctory smile of contempt. "Ah, yes. I almost forgot that you Nelnmonts are merely the lapdogs of the Karjakin, one of the thirteen Great Families of Elendir. A spot you can only dream of having."
The Nelnmont Patriarch's smile stiffened with a hint of displeasure. But he didn't allow her the satisfaction of seeing anger. And yet, he couldn't hide it from her as she simply gazed at him with magic circles appearing before her eyes, indicating that she could read him quite effortlessly.
"Enough," he grunted. "I will offer you my generous offer one last time. I would advise you to take it. Even with the Magical Penal Labor Act that allows you to simply offer your services to get off scot-free from your sentence, you can't escape all the consequences. You will never be trusted again if this gets criminally pursued and slam-dunked, as I'm sure you're smart enough to realize. So just be smart and accept my offer."
Unfortunately, try as he might, he wasn't able to hide his desperation from the Headmistress.
She leaned forward with a realization that dawned upon her.
"You… you're unable to get any other suitor of his caliber for your daughter, aren't you?"
His eyes sharpened, and yet, he didn't deny her words outright.
"I see," she murmured with a knowing tone. "No wonder you're so eager to get me to accept your offer. You truly don't care about the slum talent acquisition program at all. You just want to introduce a powerful talent like Cæ into your bloodline to restore magical vitality to your obsolete genes."
"THEY ARE NOT OBSOLETE!" the Nelnmont Patriarch roared as his eyes grew bloodshot with anger.
He froze as he realized the sheer colossal magnitude of the outburst he had had, before leaning back in his seat with disgruntled anger.
"I can only imagine how desperate you are if you want Cæ to wed your daughter to this extent," she remarked. "…It's interesting that you're this desperate about preserving your bloodline's magical power, but have only resigned to having one child. I can't imagine that it's out of choice, as someone like you would have bred like rabbits with as many women as you could if it meant restoring the magical power in your bloodline. Which means…"
Her eyes sized up his obese body. "…You're unable to. Fertility issues?"
His expression grew red with humiliation. "How dare you…!"
"Which means young Melia is your only hope," she continued with a knowing tone as she saw right through him. "And you want to ensure that you have the most powerful male talent you can get your hands on to preserve the magical power of your bloodline. But Cæ isn't the only powerful male talent. There is also Silian Sylvester, but…"
She took the opportunity to direct a derisive gaze at the Nelnmont Patriarch. "…you weren't able to convince his family that your bloodline was worth merging with theirs. How humiliating."
She correctly diagnosed their problem.
Of all the most exceptional talents that he deemed worthy of reigniting the seed of magic aptitude in their blood, none of them were willing to marry into the Nelnmont Family because they had better proposals.
Not even commoner families and young male adolescents were willing to arrange marriage as early as eighteen because such a thing was an alien concept to average people, who got married in their late twenties and usually did not arrange partners for their adult children.
The Nelnmont Patriarch was unwilling to wait this long because the longer they waited, the less time his daughter had to get pregnant and give birth. He sought to get her married as early as possible and ideally to a great talent who wasn't from the middle class and didn't have cultural compunctions about getting married.
Cæ, in his eyes at least, fit the bill well.
Ironically enough, the people of the slums and those of the elite families had more in common with each other as a matter of breeding patterns, much to the shock of demographers who studied fertility rates.
Albeit for very different reasons.
The poorest bred due to a lack of access to contraceptions, due to lowered income, and a general lack of other dimensions of pursuit, and due to strength in unity. At the same time, the richest bred to maintain and expand their wealth and influence as well as great familial pride.
It was no wonder that one of the most prominent lawyers in Colohen City was unable to control his backlash when she pinpointed the precise sources of internal anguish that was his familial pride and the humiliation he had undergone.
He was desperate for Cæ to accept his marriage proposal on behalf of his daughter so that the extraordinary talent that Cæ had displayed in the talent acquisition programs would enter their bloodline.
"Watch your words, Heart Seer," the Nelnmont Patriarch growled, referring to her mage epithet, gritting his teeth as he felt uncontrollable rage mounting up from within him. "Do not make an enemy of me."
She tilted her head slightly with an unamused expression. "You say that as though we aren't already enemies."
"We don't have to be enemies," he breathed deeply, calming himself down and regaining the composure characteristic of a lawyer. "I am proposing a rather reasonable compromise, and yet you are sticking your head in the sand. I didn't want to speak to you with your lawyers because lawyers alone don't understand the political element to the incentives that you and I operate with. I'm sure that is why you haven't insisted on having lawyers in this meeting."
She didn't respond.
He was right.
She understood that the legal battle's proceeding would have nothing to do with the provisions of the laws, and everything to do with the political conflict of the slums. It meant that lawyers could not only not help her, but could also impede her interests as well.
"Regardless," she continued with a cold tone. "I have heard your offer and I have heard your rationales, and after careful consideration, I have chosen to reject your offer."
He gritted his teeth. "Don't be a fool, Lenolia—"
"This conversation has come to an end," she coldly cut him off. "Get out, unless you wish to truly speak to me as a parent about your child's magicademics."
Her tone made it clear that she was unwilling to compromise.
His expression darkened. "You will regret this."
He got up with some effort, lifting his obese body off the chair, throwing a dirty glare at the Headmistress before departing from her office with an angry hobbling gait, followed by the two senior mages who guarded him.
She heaved a sigh after the door to her office shut hard.
"There is no other route out of this."
Her tone was heavy.
She was to face a lengthy and heavy adjudication of her misappropriation of the Elendir Institute of Magic's funds to set in motion a sequence of events that allowed her to announce and go through with the Slum Talent Acquisition Program.
It was likely that she would be found liable for embezzlement based on her fiduciary obligations as the Headmistress of an academic institute, the more her lawyers went through the arguments produced.
It was a miscalculation.
She had anticipated a lot of things with her astute prowess of estimating the future. She had predicted the reaction of the elites and the Colohen Mafia, as well as their subsequent coalition. She has predicted the other angles of attacks that they would levy, she had even prepared for some legal action, but she didn't expect that the Nelnmont Family would get involved to the degree that they had given that they has increasingly become a sort of black sheep in elite affluent community for their declining magical talent, which was a major source of social esteem.
She had miscalculated the significance of that variable, which was now potentially costing her her entire career, credibility, and potentially criminal prosecution.
It was a bitter pill to swallow.
And yet, she was not willing to back down just because the costs were heavy.
It was only in difficult moments when a person's commitment to their ideals and principles was tested, and it was a test that she firmly passed, by choosing to make progress for equitism in not just the Elendir Institute of Magic but also the Democratic Republic of Elendir.
She was willing to be criminally prosecuted, but she would do everything in her power to protect the Slum Talent Acquisition Program from those who sought to destroy it. She foresaw a day when this one program would cause a snowball effect as every institute would begin looking for talent in the slums to outperform their peers with said talent.
In her mind, this would empower people in the slums by giving them magic opportunity, and would eventually lead to a slum faction of mages who would advocate for better enfranchisement of the slums.
The political pressure would do wonders for the people in her mind.
For this dream, she was willing to go to prison like an ordinary individual, if she had to. If she could avoid the worst, she gladly would, of course, but if not, then she was willing to take the fall for the sake of her ideology.
BAM
The doors to her office flew wide open, drawing her attention as her eyes lit up with surprise at the person who had arrived.
"Headmistress Lenolia," he panted, gasping for air.
"Mr. Cæ…?" she frowned with a confused expression. "What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to have gone to the Colohen Slums for the talent acquisition projects?"
Cæ's expression grew serious yet jubilant once he collected his breath.
"I figured it out, Headmistress," he continued, ignoring her question. "I figured it out."
She stared at him with a peculiar expression. "…Figured what out?"
His dichromatic gray eyes lit up with vigor.
"The solution to end the legal battle," he declared. "To end it and emerge victorious."