"The Arnhaunt young master was the last of them all."
"Is he weak or did he just want to hide his hand?"
"I think it's the latter. I mean, look how quickly be dispatched those puppets at the last minute."
"Maybe, but I feel like he was taking his time to find their weakeness, unlike the other pillars who blazed through. He might be weaker than them, if that's true."
While Asher completed his test at his own pace for his own reasons, this action of his had inadvertently made some of the audience lose confidence in him. Although Asher still had some supporters in the crowd, the others were beginning to look down on him and rank him below the other six students in the Seven Pillars.
This might not seem like much but some of the spectators were big merchants, top officials and even nobles. All these men and women had influences in high places and controlled an impressive level of power and wealth below the Marquis rank. If they felt disappointed by the future generation of a family, they would slowly begin to lose faith that their relationship with such a family would be fruitful, which in turn would mean that they would have to limit their partnerships and dealings.
To put this in an easier way to understand, if the direct descendant of a great family -particularly the son- turned out to be considerably more incompetent than his agemates in families of similar status, the family would be said to be in trouble. This was because if the child takes over and that gap remains, the family would fall behind compared to the others. And if the family falls behind, most would cut contact with them in order to minimise their loses and search for new better opportunities.
However, if the child did well and showed great potential, especially at a young age, many families, businesses and so on would want to associate with the family or maintain cordiality with them. This was because the future of the family would be looking certain and green.
A great warrior attracts great relationships.
In a world like the Kirin continent where might makes right, this sentence was almost like a rule of law. The stronger an individual, the more people that would want to associate with them. The same held true for families.
Asher's performance right now could be said to be disheartening to these figures of big clouts, and with rumours that he was a null, some were beginning to question their relationship with the Arnhaunt family. It was for this reason that quite a few of them attended this tournament; to assess the future generation of the various great families and the kingdom as well.
If it weren't for the fact that Asher had founded the White Maple chamber of commerce, was rumoured to be behind some of the potions and was the one completely in charge of the chamber of commerce and potion sales, many of these individuals would have began to lose faith in the Arnhaunt family. Now however, with Asher opening up new quarters in magic item trade for the Arnhaunt family, which was something they hadn't seriously delved in and many presumed they would fail, the bigwigs were interested in this young kid.
Nonetheless, might makes right and a great warrior attracts great relationships. The bigwigs might not judge Asher solely on his strength, but the majority of spectators would.
The Seven Pillars were meant to be the strongest students of this generation, from the perspective of the audience. They were supposed to be the current future generation of the great five houses (the Wesleys are excluded while the Castellans are included). For this reason, the spectators had high hopes and ratings for them. However, Asher had betrayed that hope of theirs.
Although the completion time of three minutes against four opponents of the mid rank second stage was very impressive, in a contest with students from the best two schools in the kingdom, such result would be relatively good but not the best. This was obvious from the fact that the best four students completed the task within two seconds while the slightly worse off students were done with theirs within a minute.
Asher, who much was expected from, had used three minutes and as such, there was a wave of disappointment amongst some in the crowd.
"The young master is really doing things how he wants." Luther, who had also tagged along with Ol' Fang and Isabella, commented.
"Typical of him. If he doesn't cause a storm here, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be satisfied. He might even be breeding one in his head as we speak." Ol' Fang said.
"Have faith in the young master. He must have his reasons for taking his time." Isabella defended Asher.
"I don't know what I should fear most, that kid's brainwashing technique or whatever scheme he's cooking up for this event." Ol' Fang said as he recalled how Asher had sneakily stolen a body part from the puppets before he left the cave.
'Sigh. It should be nothing serious. The academy wouldn't throw a tantrum over a recyclable material. If they do, I just have to beat that dog to give up.' Ol' Fang thought.
"That's rude, uncle Fang." Isabella replied.
"Yeah yeah." Ol' Fang waved her off.
"Asher's done and it's gonna take at least seven hours before the qualifiers is over. Do you guys want to keep watching or have a meal?" Ol' Fang suddenly asked.
"Sir, wouldn't you want to scout for any potential recruit?" Luther was surprised that Ol' Fang wanted to leave.
Apart from monitoring the growth of the descendants of the great families, another reason why the bigwigs -top officials, great family members and wealthy merchants- found this tournament worth attending was the fact that they could spot talents among the students and begin working on recruiting them.
Normally, they did this in the fourth year where after the tournament the students would graduate from the academy. Having graduated, recruiting them would be easy and effortless, and this was why the fought years' tournament was very popular. However, there was now a tournament for the third years and the bigwigs could send invitations to these students; but they would either have to wait for them to graduate to recruit them or request that they drop out and compensate them for that.
It was because of this that even after their descendants had completed the qualifiers, the members of the great noble families remained seated. Ol' Fang wanting to leave so soon was unnatural and Luther felt that they would be losing out if he did so. In the end, he might be Ol' Fang's student but it was his master who wielded authority and not him.
"Potential recruits?"
Ol' Fang stood up from his seat as he stared at the portion of the screen that displayed Asher's cave, albeit he was no longer there.
"If there's any, that kid probably has his eyes on them. With the way he's going, I doubt he would let this opportunity slide past." Ol' Fang smiled mysteriously.
If there was someone who understood Asher best in this arena, Ol' Fang felt that would be him.
"Don't stress it. He's going to do the work for us. Just watch."