Auric ate carefully, trying to be careful with his table manners.

Mathias glanced at Auric. After trying to figure out what happened to him and still not being able to find out anything about it, he couldn’t contain his curiosity anymore.

"How is school?" Mathias asked.

Auric raised his head before smiling. "It’s fun. Pretty tiring, but it’s fulfilling."

"Do you want to remain at Kallarnos University?"

Auric thought for a few seconds. "No, I’ll pass. I believe that Grand Magica College will give me what I want."

"Kallarnos University is the number one university in this country. You’re saying that Grand Magica College can give you what you want, but Kallarnos University can’t?"

What Auric wanted was time. He could improve on his own just fine. People might go crazy just to get into Kallarnos University, but what Auric wanted was time.

Even if he could copy all the elements from all the people in this school, he simply didn’t have time to improve himself.

In fact, the amount of energy in his body had been quite stagnant after coming to this place. He was so busy that he didn’t have time to improve his energy.

That was why he preferred Grand Magica College.

Of course, he knew that a select few, who were truly talented, could actually evolve their avatars to the mature form. In Grand Magica College, the only requirement for graduation was to evolve one’s avatar to the adult form.

So, the people here were definitely more talented since they could evolve one more time before graduating.

However, Auric wasn’t exactly enticed by it. He had no problem evolving his power. But it would soon become troublesome, especially for his unique element.

When he reached a certain point, the number of people who had a unique element would decrease significantly. At that time, he would probably spread his name globally so that he could copy their elements.

It didn’t matter whether he went to Kallarnos University.

Hence, Auric could say, "I’m sure that I can reach my goal faster if I study at Grand Magica College rather than Kallarnos University."

"Hoho? What is your goal? I can support you."

Auric shook his head. "It is a goal that I have to achieve on my own. Relying on someone else will just take away the desire to fulfill that goal."

"Is that so?" Mathias nodded in understanding. "In that case, I wish you luck."

"Thank you."

"That’s right. How is your progress for that conference? I heard you’re planning to go to the Magic Conference."

"The paper is ready. I will just have to fix some typos, and Professor Schad will send it. After that, I just have to prepare for the presentation."

"Is that so? You are very smart. I feel like my granddaughter is lucky to have you as her student."

"I should be the one feeling happy to have such a teacher."

"Oh? Why is that?"

"She has helped me a lot. Without her, I wouldn’t have been able to achieve all this so fast."

"Is that so? Isn’t that the job of a teacher? Besides, don’t you feel troubled? After all, my granddaughter keeps doing things as she pleases. Even I have a hard time controlling her."

"Well..." Auric scratched the back of his head.

"It’s fine. You can be honest with me. Your teacher won’t know about it."

Auric didn’t say anything about the first part. He agreed that Maya did things as she pleased, but he still wouldn’t badmouth her because of it, even to her parents and grandparents.

Instead, Auric answered, "Not at all. I believe there is a meaning in her actions. She cares about people more than she shows. Maybe she just needs people to understand her. What do you think about her behavior... I think it’s probably just her not caring when people can’t understand her."

Mathias was shocked. In fact, he wasn’t alone with Auric in the dining room.

His wife, Genetia, was here as well. His daughter-in-law, Lunaria, was also here with her first son, Jeremy.

They were quite surprised by Auric’s assessment. It didn’t sound like Auric was just glossing over it to make Maya look better.

"Is that so? I really think that she’s the lucky one to have you as her student." Mathias smiled. "What do you plan to do next?"

"I’m just going to spend my time like normal. I have to open my store tomorrow, so that’s what I will do. I’ll spend the rest of my time either training or studying."

"Is that so? Will you be troubled by the store? Do you want me to send you some people to help you with the store?"

"I think it will be fine. For a new store like mine, the number of customers is usually low in the first week. Although I feel like I’m bragging when saying this, once people enter my store, they will probably take a picture of me and start recommending it. So, it will probably be the second week that the store will be busy."

This was also another reason Auric thought he could handle the study just fine. Without the mayor revealing the fact that he was an evolution master in front of the students, the Night and Day store would probably be pretty deserted for one or two weeks.

The capital city was busier, so he expected that its popularity would increase in just one week.

"I see. In that case, I will ask that again next week." Mathias smiled. "By the way, I have been meaning to ask this. You’re pretty close with that heiress from the Astler family, right?"

"Ellia?" Auric looked up. "Well, if you ask me whether we’re close or not, then yes. We’re pretty close. She has been teaching me a lot of things and helping me with many others."

"You’re not her boyfriend or something?"

"No." Auric shook his head. "Is there something wrong?"

"Nothing. I’m just curious about what the youngsters these days are doing. Back in my day, everything was so chaotic." Mathias chuckled.

Auric couldn’t imagine what happened 120 years ago. Mathias should already be in his nineties, even though he still looked twenty to thirty years younger than his actual age.

Mathias should have experienced the apocalypse with his parents. Back then, strength was the most important, so Mathias had all this strength because of necessity. In fact, most of the oldest families in the country were once or still led by rank 6 humans like Mathias.

Back then, survival was the priority.

"It was chaotic back then. No laws applied to you. Everything was changing so quickly. I held the value of the old, so I only had my dear Genetia with me.

"But because of the necessity of survival and the lack of laws, Edward had two wives."

"Well, Dearie Christie passed away after she gave birth to Maya, so we were the ones taking care of her." Lunaria smiled.

"It didn’t take too long before the law returned, using the former law as a reference." Mathias nodded. "But the world has become stable compared to that time. At least we’re not changing our law every day. Hahaha."

Auric didn’t know exactly what he was supposed to say here.

"Dear, you’re making Auric uncomfortable." Genetia gently slapped his arm, reminding him that he shouldn’t talk much about the past.

"Right?" Mathias chuckled. "Oh, you’re done eating? Do you want more?"

"No, I’m full. Thank you." Auric shook his head calmly.

"In that case, let’s have you take a bath. You must be tired." Genetia hurried to him.

Auric didn’t reject her.

With only Mathias, Lunaria, and Jeremy left in the room, it was time for the real topic. Mathias’ expression turned solemn. "Now, what do you two think?"

"What do you mean, Father?" Lunaria asked in confusion. "Are you perhaps talking about Auric’s situation? We can’t do anything right now because we don’t have any proof. I’m not sure about pointing fingers at the Astler family without any proof yet. Besides, it doesn’t look like he’s planning to talk about it."

"No, I’m not talking about that. Auric’s character is already clear to everyone. However, he is simply too talented. Besides, his relationship with Maya is not bad."

Jeremy stood up. "I see. So that’s what you want to know, Grandfather. Only he can say something like that to Maya. Understand her... That’s probably what we’ve been lacking all this time."

Lunaria tilted her head in confusion. "Well, that might be true. All this time, we have been showering dearie Maya with love, but deep down, we have been doing so a bit excessively because of dearie Christie. We haven’t really tried to understand Maya."

Mathias nodded. "That’s why I think we need to do something."

"Do something?" Lunaria raised her eyebrows.

"I plan to break their relationship!" Mathias grinned.

"What? Father! Maya will be sad," Lunaria protested.

"It’s fine, isn’t it? Isn’t that what we have been doing all this time?" Jeremy smirked, finally understanding the meaning. "Break their relationship to create a new one, not as a student and a teacher but as equals. It will make it easier for them to get married."

"...What are you talking about?" Lunaria glared at Jeremy. "Forbidden relationships are definitely the best!"

"Says someone who has to share her love with another person."

"Don’t you dare talk badly about your late second mother!"

"I’m not badmouthing her. I’m just talking bad about your fetish!"

"I’m going to disown you!"

"All right. That’s enough!" Mathias slapped the table, glaring at them.

Both of them fell silent soon.

Mathias raised one finger. "Whatever the case, I’m planning to make him my grandson-in-law! Your opinions about that?"

"I don’t exactly have an opinion about it. But Maya is much older than him. Don’t guys usually like someone younger?" Lunaria asked.

"I don’t know about that, but I’d rather see him with Maya rather than see him with the girl from the Astler family. For both Maya’s happiness and the family’s interest." Jeremy shared his opinion.

"Age is just a number. Thanks to the existence of magical energy, aging can be delayed and life expectancy is increasing. Right now, people like me can easily live for a hundred years. Besides, I don’t like the idea of the Astler family getting him." Mathias narrowed his eyes.

"But if we intervene too much, Auric might not like it." Lunaria sighed. "We can’t do much, especially if Maya is not even seeing him properly."

"Indeed. Well, Xavier might have been a ferocious wolf in the past, but he has an incompetent son and an idiot daughter-in-law. However, his granddaughter might be even more ferocious than Xavier himself."

Lunaria suddenly raised one finger. "Then, how about this? If we win, we will just be happy with it. If we lose to that girl, we are going to manipulate the politics and change the law to allow polygamy again! I’d say a contingency plan. We can come up with all kinds of reasons, such as the population getting reduced to less than 10% of the original population after the apocalypse, and so on."

Jeremy suddenly raised his hand. "I have another plan! Something that we can do right away! We just have to make Auric famous! At that time, people will know that he belongs to us!"

"Not bad, son. The problem is how to make him famous." Lunaria frowned. "Auric is hiding his power, so he surely doesn’t want to be famous so quickly."

"I have a plan for that." Jeremy grinned.