The next morning, as Jane set off to begin her routine inspections, the position that Wayne had held before being sent to volunteer service was filled in by Jeffery Croft, one of Wayne's several cousins in the candidacy for the position of the next Patriarch.
August had returned to his home with Aunty Rue. Being far too young to begin any physical training with her, August was assigned a set of tutors, each being masters within their respective fields.
The intelligence of the young boy had long since been seen through by the higher ups of the Croft family. Wanting to ensure that the bright child is raised to give the family the highest returns, a top education was something that they deemed essential for August.
Excluding the weekends, August was made to attend lessons once a day for 3 hours at a time. Each lesson would end with an assignment due at the start of the next week's lesson. The type of assignment could be anything from a practical assignment to a written exam.
The lessons that August attended would be considered the basics for families with the ability to Enhance their children with anything above B-Grade Enhancers. For others, the lessons would be akin to high school lessons.
It was this very reason that the best academies and universities in the Eden Federation were typically filled up with students coming from more elite backgrounds.
There, of course, are exceptions to this rule. Every year will have a certain amount of students who were able to raise themselves from less fortunate situations and gain access to these top schools. Some would gain the more physical or athletic type scholarships, while others would find themselves admitted simply due to the intellect that they have shown.
Most of the time, however, when those students are measured against students that come from families like that of the Crofts, there is simply an insurmountable wall. A gap that can't be filled.
That was the advantage of the elite. No matter in which time or space one finds themselves, it was the wealthy who were powerful, and the powerful who held the advantage.
August was both a good and a bad example of this idea. The privileges that he has received from his family are hard to beat. The education he received, the grade of enhancer that he has received, everything he has been given from the time that he was born to the present has been of a higher level than some would ever see in their lives.
However, August was also akin to a sponge. No matter what kind of information was put into him, it would be absorbed readily. Even against the other top tier families at the level of the Crofts, there was no match to the level of intellect August held at his age. Even if those children could also 'learn' the same things as August, it was a different thing to be able to 'understand' and 'comprehend' what was being taught.
While August may have been too young to directly train with his protector Rue, his free time on the weekends still gave him ample opportunity to watch her practice the skills that she had developed during her time as the Chief of Security aboard the Crate Ship.
Rue was not some old monster like Alexander Croft, who would have had several thousand years to develop his set of skills. Nor was she as old as Jane or Wayne. She had barely reached 250 years old when she achieved her promotion to such a position. This achievement could be attributed to her talent, which, in part, is true. But what was more important than her talent, was the type of martial skill she trained in.
The Milky Way Galaxy that the Eden Federation is located in is over 13 Billion years old, but the Eden Federation itself is barely 100 million years old itself. Much of the lesser martial arts found in the Federation are martial arts that the Federation had developed themselves. But the higher level ones, the ones found only in the highest ranks of the government, sects, and families, those martial skills come from the predecessors of the Eden Federation. From sovereignties that date back to several billion years before the Eden Federation even became a thought in the founders' minds.
That was the level of martial art that had made its way to the protector, Rue.
Of course, one must have a certain level of talent to train this art, and Rue certainly had a significant amount of talent to reach the proficiency that she had.
Still, despite the difficulties that this martial art presented, August was able to understand and comprehend it. Though practicing it was still out of reach, and improving it even further away, the technique had been thoroughly ingrained in his mind. Yet another example of the combination of August's high intelligence and the S-Grade Enhancer coming to play in his life.
That was how August's initial years passed. When his mother was on the planet, there was not much time that the two spent apart. When she went off planet for her yearly inspections, the tutors and his protector, Rue, became the focal point of his young life.
Yet no matter how high the young boy's intelligence was, his life experience and common sense were lacking. Perhaps they were lacking even more than others his age. Like some Universal Law was taking place, offsetting his high intelligence with an underdeveloped understanding of how the World 'works'.
As such, despite the way that his so-called family had all but usurped his father's position within the family, August remained oblivious to the attempts of isolating him from the rest of the Croft family. By the time he had reached the age of 8, except for his mother's position, August's immediate family had lost most of their holding within the Croft family.
It wasn't that there weren't any who wanted to help, it was just that they were stuck between their position and those who were doing everything they could to keep them from helping.
It still would have taken several decades before those hostile to August and Jane would have been able to do anything to get them out of the family, considering the benefits that Jane had brought at the discovery of the special crystal that had been since labeled as the Crux Crystal. Yet what happened during August's eighth year of life changed everything for the family.
Much like all years prior, August would spend the majority of the year with his mother. Even when she was working, August would either be in the same office or nearby going through his daily lessons. And like every year prior, at the final quarter, Jane would set off planet for an inspection of a certain number of the mines under the Croft family control. While the provinces that she would inspect changed every year, the only one that she consistently investigated was the very same province that held the Crux Crystal.
There were several reasons for this, all due to the importance that the Crystal held toward the Croft family. The profit that the Crystal had brought in was just one small factor. Where the real importance lied, was in the benefits that had been given to the Croft family by the government for this monumental discovery. Adding on all the ongoing experiments that the Croft was using the Crystal for, it was no light statement to say that the Crux Crystal had cemented itself as one of the top ten most important resources of the current Croft family.
So, in this eighth year of August's life, just like every year for the past five, Jane had set off to inspect the province of this Crystal. The only issue was that somewhere along the way, she disappeared. Along with her disappearance, the entire province hosting the Crux Crystal disappeared along with her.
While the abrupt disappearance of the province and those within it was surprising, it was not necessarily an impossible occurrence. Each power in control of a quadrant had technology that was more advanced than what could be seen even in the richest of families. It was simply due to their abilities of gathering experts that allowed for this to be true. Even the wealthiest powers wouldn't be able to compete with the wealth of the government that they pay taxes to.
Thus, technology with the capability of warping small planets was more of an open secret. The first thing that anyone would assume after the disappearance of the province hosting the Crux Crystal, is that one of the other large powers had gotten word of the existence of the Crystal and had taken steps to take the resource for themselves. The power of the Crystal was not to be underestimated, its potential was limitless.
The Eden Federation was not among those included in this suspicion, as every powerful family had some sort of watchful eye within the depths of the Federation. The second they had taken the province out of the Croft's control, the Croft family would have known.
The only thing that needed to be figured out was which of the three other large nations had taken it for themselves.
What should be known, however, is that when technology that warps space to this degree is used, there will always be some form of evidence of its use. A ripple in space would be detected by any spatial sensor, no matter its size. The first ripple would be where the warp initiated, in this case it would be at the province that hosted the Crux Crystal. The second ripple would be where the warp ended, indicating which power had hijacked the province and the location they had brought it to.
But in this case, there was only the initial ripple. Something only possible on two occasions. Firstly, if the power had technology that enabled concealment of the second ripple. However, this was not possible for two reasons-- the technology would have been utilized at the origin to delay response, and any power would have spies within the other power to give them information on their camouflage technology. The second possibility that results in a single ripple, is that the warp ended in a location outside of the range of any quadrant's sensors.
At the level of the Eden Federation, whose sensors-- both those that are hidden and those that are known-- cover the entirety of the Galaxy, the only possible location for the Province to have ended up would have been outside of the Milky Way. The main powers of the four quadrants may be powerful-- extremely so, at that-- but none held the capabilities to venture the dead space in-between galaxies, let alone reach a new galaxy entirely.
The four main powers were not stupid enough to believe that life only existed in their 'small' galaxy. Yet even if a power from another galaxy had taken this resource, what could they do about it? Only those more advanced than them would have been able detect such a resource from so far away, but for them to take it...
It was better for those involved to just think that the province hosting the Crux Crystal, and all those who were in the province at the time, had never existed.