For a few minutes,once everyone had settled into their seats and no one seemed to be searching for a nameplate anymore,the hall gradually quieted. It was as if the earlier buzz of conversation had been set aside by silent agreement. No matter who liked whom, and who couldn't stand whom, everyone understood this meeting hadn't been called to maintain connections.
First the casual jokes near the back died out. Then the whispered chats in the middle rows faded. Finally, even the people who always needed the last word stopped talking. Silence in places like this carried a kind of pressure you couldn't ignore. In the end, the only sounds left were the occasional scrape of a chair, a quiet throat-clearing, the controlled breathing of someone trying to sit still while already calculating consequences.
Then the doors near the raised platform opened,without ceremony, without theatrics. Just a normal motion. A man stepped onto the dais. He didn't look like an old man, and he wasn't a youth either,more like someone at the age where you'd seen enough to stop pretending, but still had the strength to hold real power.
He was tall, but not in the exaggerated way that only looks impressive from a distance. He was simply well-proportioned,lean, composed, meticulously kept. He wore a dark guild outfit with no needless decoration, but tailored so perfectly it sent an immediate message: this wasn't someone trying to look important. This was someone no one needed to remind.
His hair was dark and slicked back, a few threads of gray at his temples. His face was calm, almost blank, with that specific cool certainty of people accustomed to rooms where one sentence could cost hundreds of thousands of coins. But the most distinctive detail was his left hand,a thin, matte leather glove, even though the hall wasn't cold. When he reached the lectern, he rested that gloved hand on the wood as if it were habit. Something he always did, whether anyone asked why or not.
For a moment, he didn't speak. He simply looked over the room,slowly, without nerves,like he wasn't checking whether people were present in body, but whether they were present in attention. Then he gave the smallest nod.
Klein sat motionless, listening. But before the man spoke, Klein's gaze slipped sideways for a heartbeat,to the two empty chairs beside him, to the plaques reading Raviel and Tormek, still standing as if someone might walk in any moment. The familiar, heavy pinch hit him,an ugly reminder that some things couldn't be undone, even if you learned to live with them.
He let out a quiet breath, almost soundless, then shoved the feeling aside. He hadn't come here to fall apart over empty seats.
The man on the platform finally spoke. His voice was calm and clear, the kind that didn't need to shout to reach the last row.
"Thank you for gathering." His gaze moved across the hall,no smile, but no chill either. Just a man dealing in facts, not warmth. "As you know, my name is Leon. I am the twelfth leader of the Dungeon Faction within our Trade Guild."
He paused,not to build suspense, but to make sure every word landed where it needed to.
"I know some of you traveled far. Some of you had to leave your businesses and your people behind. And I know some of you are already tired of summons that don't include reasons."
Another short pause, just long enough for the thought to settle.
"I assume you're all wondering why I called you here. There are several reasons."
His eyes swept the first row,faces of the people who actually held the faction's weight,before he continued, more concrete now.
"The main reason is this: the leader of the Trade Guild has signed a trade agreement with a certain individual," Leon said. "And the largest impact of that agreement will fall on our Dungeon Faction. That is why I'm here,to present the details, to explain what changes in practice, and to do it clearly, before half-spoken assumptions in the corridors turn into rumors, lies, and needless conflict."
The hall remained silent, but it was a different kind of silence now,tighter, sharper. Everyone knew this was the part they'd come for. And that what they heard in the next few minutes would decide who was counting profits six months from now… and who was counting losses.
Leon paused again, then motioned toward one of the side corners of the hall,an efficient gesture, practiced, unshowy, like something he'd done a hundred times. At his signal, a woman in the faction's administrative attire stepped away from the wall, carrying a stone in both hands.
It was irregular in shape,dark, veined with pale streaks that looked like lightning frozen beneath the surface.
She walked calmly to the center of the chamber, where a low pedestal had been built into the stone floor,clearly meant for demonstrations like this. She set the stone into a carved recess and, without unnecessary words, tapped it twice with two fingers. Not hard,precise, like someone who knew the tool and its response.
Behind Leon, the air rippled. Then it parted like a thin curtain, revealing an image suspended in open space,no frame, no supports,held solely by the spell embedded in the stone itself. No one gasped or stood. Devices like this were common in their world, used for maps, trade routes, dungeon visualizations, expedition reports. The reaction wasn't surprise. It was focus.
Leon stepped down from the lectern and stood a few paces before the projection, his back to the image. For a moment he studied the crowd. On several faces, that specific uncertainty appeared,the look you get when you know something is wrong, but can't name it yet.
On the projection: an endless sea. Dark, calm, stretching to the horizon. And in its center, an unnatural slab of land,sharp, geometric edges, an almost perfect rectangle, kilometers long and wide, rising from the water like a foreign piece of reality that had never belonged there.
"I know some of you are looking at this and don't understand what you're seeing," Leon said evenly, as if he'd plucked the thought straight from their heads. "And that's understandable."
He shifted aside so the projection was more visible to the entire hall. Then, with the faintest smile,nothing amused in it, only the awareness of weight,he said, "The individual the leader of the Trade Guild signed the agreement with… is Aurelian."
A wave of murmurs ran through the room,not shouting, not chaos, but a sharp snap of collective attention. The name carried its own gravity. A few people's eyes widened. Others leaned toward neighbors. Whispered questions began to circulate between rows.
"Aurelian…?" someone breathed, disbelieving.
"That Aurelian?" came from somewhere else.
"But he never," The sentence broke off, hanging in the air.
They spoke of him like a phenomenon, not a man,remembering how he'd spent years avoiding politics, commerce, and every kind of arrangement. He appeared only when the kingdom stood at the edge of collapse, when a catastrophe-ranked dungeon opened and there was no one else left who could shut it.
Only the first row,Paul and a few men beside him,stayed composed, nodding almost in unison. The information wasn't new to them, even if its consequences still were.
Leon let the whispers breathe for a moment. Then he raised a hand,not sharply, just enough for the room to begin settling again.
"As you know," he continued, "Aurelian, despite being the strongest entity in our kingdom, has never before signed any agreement,with the royal family, with the noble houses, or with the Trade Guild. He cut himself off from the world, appearing only when the situation demanded his intervention."
A brief pause.
"However, in the past month, that has changed," Leon said. "The Trade Guild, together with the Adventurers' Guild, has signed a contract and formed a formal alliance with an institution that is only now being created."
He turned back to the projection, as if the thing hanging above the sea was the key that unlocked everything.
"The Academy of the New Era," he finished. "Under Aurelian's direct patronage."
After that, the silence didn't hold. Despite the hall's size and official atmosphere, it filled with a low, nervous murmur,conversations that started in whispers and grew as more people stopped pretending they understood and began asking each other questions no one had answers to yet.
"Academy of the New Era…?" someone muttered a few rows back, leaning closer to a neighbor. "So he really wants to found his own academy?"
"But why?" another voice replied, honestly baffled. "The Royal Academy in Eldren has existed for generations. Vasthar and Lorien train mages for the biggest noble houses in the kingdom. That's been enough for everyone."
"Enough for the houses," someone corrected quietly, then added with uncertainty, "But even so,why another one?"
More than a few people looked again at the sea suspended in the air, as if expecting the projection to explain itself,add a name, a plan, a schematic, anything that would make the fragments in their heads click into place. Right now it all sounded like puzzle pieces dumped on a table without instructions.
"And what does that image have to do with any of it…" an older man whispered from one of the side sections. "It looks like a piece of land ripped out of reality."
"An academy under Aurelian…" someone else shook their head. "He's never dealt with education. He avoided people."
The murmurs weren't hostile. They weren't rebellious. They were uneasy,hungry to understand,because everyone here knew that if Aurelian had entered into an agreement like this, it wasn't whim or symbolism. It was something that would reshape the kingdom's entire structure of power, trade, and dungeons.
Leon let the voices circle for a few long breaths, watching their faces. Then he lifted both hands,not sharply, but heavily, like someone about to set something on the table that no one would like, but that had to be said anyway.
"I know many of you don't understand why another academy is necessary," he said, his tone firmer now, stripped of room for guesswork. "And I know you're comparing it to the ones that already exist."
He turned and extended his hand toward the image, fingers pointing at the unnatural block of land rising from the sea like a scar.
"The place where the Academy of the New Era will be built," he said clearly, emphasizing every word, "is right here."
Most of the audience hadn't even finished arranging the meaning of that sentence in their minds when the image behind him shifted,smoothly, without sound or flash, as if the device itself had decided the next piece of information needed to appear now.
The sea vanished. In its place: a dim underwater expanse. Deep beneath the surface sat a massive, irregular structure,the portal of a dungeon, embedded in the depths. Runes and fractures glowed with a faint, unnatural light that looked heavy even through projection, alien in a way that made the skin tighten. Like they were staring at something that never should have existed this close to the world of humans.
Several people inhaled reflexively. Others leaned forward, trying to catch more detail,recognizing, with disbelief, what they were seeing.
A catastrophe-ranked dungeon.
Not something you watched often.
"And this," Leon said calmly, with a faint, almost technical smile,one that sounded more suited to a merchant discussing a new trade route than a man describing a threat to the world,"is the portal of a catastrophe-ranked dungeon located directly beneath that landmass."
He let the words settle before adding the next, heavier piece.
"And it will be one of the primary engines supplying energy to the Academy."