Steampunk Era: Mad Abield

"Your Excellency! Why must you be so forbearing!"

The questioning voice behind him made the old man somewhat irritable. The Temple Guards in front of him had pushed open the great doors of the Temple. He entered the hall with his head lowered and then turned to look at the young mentor standing there: "Where is Maiseer?"

"I have made him reflect on his actions, Your Excellency. Why didn’t you let us mentors enter the fray? How could the Church of the War God’s prestige be trampled upon like this?"

"You want me to send you in, just to have your heads chopped off by that child?" The old man looked at the young man before him: "Conrad, the Church of the War God gave you weapons not for you to throw your lives away meaninglessly. Maiseer killed a man; we were in the wrong there. But we must still cover for our own, because we are mentors, protectors of the apprentices. My only mistake today was not anticipating that he would step into the arena."

"Your Excellency... why are you so fearful of him?"

"A giant half-blood who has more than 30 points of strength without any Blessing Spell. Which one of you could defeat him?" The old man retorted as he looked at the young man.

The young mentor fell silent for a moment, then looked at his superior with an incredulous expression: "Your Excellency, how could he possibly have more than 30 strength!"

"The Bishop of Carterburg reported this piece of intelligence a month before the contest began. It was precisely for this reason that we tried to prevent this child from joining the competition as an apprentice because as long as he was there, there would be only one winner... My only error was that I failed to consider that this child would actually come to the competition as a spectator. He should have been either accompanying his princess girlfriend or someone else, not standing before me!" The old man said all this in one go and then coughed twice: "You are too distant to feel the pressure I felt when facing him. Although much younger than me, there was no concealment of murderous intent in his eyes. My old friend wasn’t wrong; he should have been one of ours at the Church of the War God. But the Goddess of Harvest was just too lucky. In the past few days, he even reached an agreement with many guilds and organizations, including our Church."

"Your Excellency, what should we do now?" The young man looked at the old man and asked.

"The problem with Maiseer is that he trusts too much in his own strength. This is not a good sign. Conrad, take good care of him, and don’t let him lose himself to power. I don’t want there to come a day when you have to behead your own apprentice... and I," the old man said with a bitter smile, shaking his head, "I will resign from this post and leave the Church. The Church of the War God is no place for cowards."