Chapter 524: Howlite, the younger
[Huh…this guy seems a lot less…creepy than the Marquis de Howlite was,] Frosttusk noted, [although he does look a significantly younger version]
[And his subordinate doesn’t look brainwashed…I still think we should keep an eye on him though…,] Nepherage concluded.
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“Master Alvis, I do believe we have been out long enough. Don’t you think your mother would be worried about you being out and about this late?,” an older gentleman dressed like a butler said with worry in his voice.
“Oh it will be fine, the sun is still out,” a young boy in the final years of teenagerdom retorted, “Besides, I have you here to protect me. Right, Dobin?”
“Uh, that may be true my liege, but it doesn’t change the fact that you need to be careful! We don’t want you getting hurt before-”
“Ooooh! That looks interesting too! Come on Dobin!,” Alvis shouted as he bolted out the door of the public forge.
“Wait, hold on!,” Dobin called out as he tried his best to keep up with his young ward.
Unfortunately for him, he would wind up losing track of his young master, the trickiness and energy of youth being a greater than the old man’s experience.
“Oh no, where’d you run off to…,” Dobin mumbled as he looked for his ward.
“Madam is going to kill me if you get hurt now!”
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[And the Howlites have left the building.]
[After them.]
[Which one?]
[The one that looked to be our lord’s generation.]
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The Sapling Festival, like any good cultural festival, had a tendency to attract people other than its go-to citizenship.
From as close as the neighboring provinces of Boiling Fang and Eroding Wing, to as far as the the Starlight Hegemony all the way in Radiant Feather, tourists, scholars and vacationers alike would come over from all over the world in order to enjoy the festivities…that is if they knew about it in the first place and could afford to do so.
The people of the Blossoming Scales Kingdom welcomed these foreigners though. Perhaps it was thanks to the influence of the Zhu Clan, but the general populace was always eager to exchange knowledge, cultural quirks and most importantly, money and goods.
It was once reported that exactly ten percent of all the kingdom’s wealth originated from these tourists, but the only ones who knew for certain about that fact was the king and his closest confidants…and maybe some not so honorable merchants.
Aside from these tourists and sightseers though, there was another category of people that would show up to these events: hopeful exchange students.
While the Zhen Clan wasn’t the most prestigious of training organizations, that right went to the super sects and academies that were under the direct guidance of Aether Demigods, they were the most accessible…physically.
The issues with the aforementioned super sects was the fact that they were located in rather inhospitable locations that also happened to be incredibly rich in high quality aether, meaning one had to be guided by someone who knew how to get to there in the first place and/or participate in a weird, esoteric tournament thing that took place in a S-class wandering ruin.
This ease of access was also a detriment for would-be hopefuls, because it meant that literally anybody could roll up and try to enroll for the Zhen Clan’s tutelage.
As such, the Zhen Clan prepared a variety conditions in order for these foreign exchange students to earn the right to learn from them.
Any would-be disciple just needed to fulfill one of these conditions to join, but these conditions were also hidden…except for one.
Every year, during the Sapling Festival, the Zhen Clan would open their gates to outsiders so that they could come and try to earn the right to learn from them via an organized competition.
What this competition was changed from year to year, but the prizes were essentially the same.
Runner-ups and chosen competitors would become outer disciples to the Zhen Clan, with all the benefits that would bring.
The grand prize winners, however, would become inner disciples and be able to learn from not only the Zhen Clan’s current head, Zhen Feng Shen, a bonafide major Aether Overlord, but they would also receive a one-on-one session with none other than the grand ancestor of the Zhen Clan, one of the three Aether Saints in all of Blossoming Scale, Zhen Shao.
Atop all of that though, the immediate families and factions associated with the winners would then receive an endowment of gifts that would help cultivate future members as well as become nominal allies with the Zhen Clan.
The type of allies that would help their disciple if their family was in trouble.
And it was because of this latter fact, that all manner of hidden geniuses and monstrous talents alike from all sorts of families would appear to compete.
It was just the thing a middling noble family needed to rise back up to the top of their respective power structure.
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“Behold! [Rising Black Phoenix Ink]!”
“Fascinating! Truly, fascinating!,” Alvis exclaimed as he watched the performance of a cultivator that specialized in making ink constructs.
Before his eyes, the performer infused his brush with aether and painted the image of a Phoenix midair.
A second later, the performer changed his aether input and caused the painting to come alive and fly through the air before bursting into fireworks.
“Oooh!”
“Aaah!”
As the crowd expressed their admiration for the performance, Alvis did the same.
However, he was also doing something a little extra on top of that.
‘I wonder if I can do something similar with my own aether…,’ Alvis thought to himself as he began to breakdown how the performer did his art, his mind buzzing as he sensed how the aether flowed.
Once he got a feel for the art, Alvis slipped away from the crowd and began to try and do what the performer had done.
Albeit, he used bits of aether created sand as opposed to ink to do so.
‘Hmmm. I’m not so familiar with phoenixes…perhaps a winged lion?’
In his hands, Alvis began to create a small sand sculpture in the shape of a winged lion, one that became increasingly more detailed as he continued to channel his aether into it. Once it was sufficiently detailed, he then tried to bring it to life in the same manner as the artist.
‘And then he did this…’
A subtle change occurred in Alvis’s aether, one that caused the miniature winged lion in his hand to suddenly roar and move like it was alive as well.
A smile appeared on Alvis’s face as thie event occured.
‘Perfect.’
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Alvis de Howlite was the heir apparent to House Howlite, the direct son of the current patriarch, the Marquis de Howlite, Georgios.
And he was for all intents and purposes, it’s only remaining hope for the house’s return to glory.
Originally, this burden was going to be handled by Alvis’s uncle, the previous Marquis de Howlite.
Due to…unforeseen circumstances though, and several corpses being found, Alvis’s uncle had to give up his title to his younger brother and subsequently leave the kingdom in order to find his fortunes elsewhere.
The family did attempt to contact him a bit after this tragedy, with the last any of them hearing about him was that he had made a name for himself in the frontier region in a place called Emerald Eye City.
Unfortunately, before any of them could get into contact with him in any meaningful way, they learned that he had tragically died in a fire…allegedly.
They had also learned that he was in contact with another familial offshoot known as the Wolfe Family, but they had also disappeared from the map due to them apparently trying to declare themselves overlords of a place called Stone Claw City.
House Howlite paid their respects to the fallen, and they had entertained the idea of calling for revenge, but they swept that idea under the rug once they learned that the latter was done in by an Aether Overlord. However, it should be noted that it was in the process of learning about this Overlord that they learned about the Zhen Clan and how they had this grand competition every year to induct new disciples, as well as the glorious prizes and endowments that came from winning this competition.
As such, they determined the best way to honor the fallen was to win this competition to regain their honor and for no other reason…or so they told people when they asked why they sent Alvis to participate.
Regardless of the reasoning though, House Howlite had the utmost confidence that Alvis would win this competition with no problem and get into the good graces of the Zhen Clan.
The reason being?
He was a certified freak of nature genius.
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“Young master!”
“Huh? Ah, Dobin! There you are!,” Alvis said with a smile on his face and the sand lion construct he had just made now lounging on his shoulder like a weird parrot, “I was wondering where you went. Come and look! I just learned a brand new trick from watching that ink performer over there! Think sand will do, or should I try and get my hands on some proper ink and pen?”
