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TN: WE ARE ON BOOK 4!!

“You may enter, young master . ”

Jerome led Damian till they reached the front of the office . Damian took a deep breath in front of the large door then pushed the heavy door aside and walked in . Before leaving for boarding school, he’d only been inside this room once .

The Duke had called the boy to tell him he was going to boarding school .

[I have done my part and declared you as my successor . The rest is up to you . Graduate . Then this place is yours]

From that day on, it became Damian’s life goal to inherit the t.i.tle of the Duke, someday . He’d never thought of the reason or what he would do after he became the Duke . The goal was just the boy’s meaning for existence . It was his worth for living .

Now, Damian had found a true goal . Becoming the Duke was simply a means towards that goal .

Power

.

He wanted to have power . Only with power could one protect whom they want to protect . Just as his father was able to protect his mother because he had the power, Damian wanted to have it too .

Damian admired his father . His father was a great knight and the strongest man in the world . However, he had no confidence of becoming like his father so he had to find a possible way for himself to become stronger . The greatest power the boy could obtain from his efforts alone were the abilities/knowledge he could gain at the academy .

The air inside the office was a little breezy . The unique shallow fragrance of wood drifted off the furniture and doc.u.ments were piled up on the s.p.a.cious desk positioned diagonally to the entrance . In the quiet office, only the intermittent sound of pages being turned could be heard .

Damian walked quietly and stopped a few steps away from the desk . Hugo lifted his head and saw Damian then lowered his

his head back to his doc.u.ment .

“Is this going to take a while?” (Hugo)

“No . I came to tell you I will be returning back to the academy . ”

“I believe it will be difficult to keep up with this semester’s courses at this point . ”

“Yes . But if I return now, I will be able to listen to the session for the semester break . I can replace the semester I missed with this session . ”

“You can graduate even if you don’t complete one semester . ”

“I want to have the best grades . ”

“I told you, you only need to graduate . ”

“I just want to do that . ”

“Why?”

“I want to gain power by increasing my knowledge . ”

Hugo lifted his head .

Damian was a little nervous receiving his father’s gaze . Hugo carefully studied Damian . The boy stood upright and his gaze was lowered to the floor but there was no sign of intimidation .

It was much better than his va.s.sals that turn timid once he laid eyes on them . Hugo

Hugo recalled the first day he saw Damian . The eyes of the child Philip brought were clear and pure . That was why he couldn’t help but believe Philip’s words saying that he was his brother’s son .

A child of the Taran blood would not have such eyes unless it was his brother’s child .

“Power, huh . ”

Hugo chuckled and turned his gaze back to the doc.u.ment . He signed it with a pen and moved it to the side .

“Scholars do not rule the world . How do you know that the knowledge you’ll learn and nurture from the Academy will become your strength?”

Damian was taken aback by the unexpected problem presented to him .

“If you graduate, regardless of your grades, this place is yours . If it is as the Duke of Taran then that should be significant power . ”

Whether the boy kept his grades and graduated or earned the best grades and graduated, the position of the Duke was the boy’s . Hence, no matter how much effort was put into it, the

into it, the result was still the same .

Damian wanted to gain new strength, not one given to him by his father but one he gained with his own hands . As for the greatest strength that student Damian could gain from the academy with his efforts alone? There was only one thing that came to mind .

There was an organization called ‘Conference’ consisting only of students in ‘Ixium’, the academy which Damian attended . In Ixium, the power of Conference was remarkable . The Chairman of ‘Conference’ was called ‘Sitha’ . Damian was still quite young so he’d had no direct encounter with them and members of Conference were mostly senior students .

Every once in a while as he walked the school grounds, he got to witness students watching the road for these ‘conference’ members as though they were kings . Even when he saw that, at the time Damian did not have much interest .

Because then, the boy’s goal was simply just to graduate . However now, he was interested .

“I will become ‘Sitha’ . ”