For the first time in a while, Cæ felt his nerves tingling with nervousness.
For the first time in a while, he felt his heart being gripped in a vice.
An old nostalgic sense of tension and stress began weighing down on him, a sensation he thought he no longer experienced ever since he lost everything for the second time, with nothing more to lose.
And yet, the more progress he made towards his ultimate ambition, the more he had to lose.
In this case, his business and perhaps even his life were at stake.
Even though his resolution of doing what it took to fix the world had not grown weaker, the consequences of failure in his path to accomplishing that goal grew larger and larger. And today, an escalation in the consequences occurred.
"Cæ?"
"Big bro?"
Two voices broke him out of a reverie, bringing him back to reality.
He found himself standing before a concerned Feidin and Sorenon.
Two people from two different halves of his life stood before him together for the first time. His eyebrows furrowed as the shine of the morning Sun glared in his eyes painfully. Around him in the dispatch facility of the Elendir Institute of Magic, two different groups that would be partially be partaking in the same operation were making the final preparations together.
On one side, in the docked Havens, into the storage and transport trucks of the Elendir Institute of Magic. An enormous number of the Haven units stretched as far as the eye could see within and outside the facility, dropped in by the transportation company that Trinity Housings was contracted with for its distribution.
The Elendir Institute of Magic, in particular, the protocols that Cæ himself had set for his operations, didn't permit the usage of distribution vehicles that were outside of the direct control of the Elendir Institute of Magic.
This way, they could prevent their enemies from planting spies and saboteurs within their ranks disguised as a simple neutral third party.
Thus, Trinity Housings had to manually unload the entirety of all their supplies of Haven units into the magicademy's inventory before having the Havens transferred into trucks that were in the control of the Elendir Institute of Magic.
Of course, this was temporarily in the control of the magicademy, but interestingly enough, Cæ didn't find that he lost any mana despite that. Even though he has learned in his mana mechanics course in the Elendir Institute of Magic that control was what defined to whom the mana of certain magicapita went.
It meant that institutional checks and balances that prevented the Elendir Institute of Magic from unilaterally just stealing ownership and the deterrence of the law protected Cæ's right to ownership, thereby giving him a more fundamental control over the magicapita.
It was an interesting nuance that his nervous mind found itself randomly visiting.
"Cæ?" Feidin frowned, snapping his finger in front of him, breaking him out of a reverie yet again.
"Are you ok, big bro?" Sorenon gazed at him with dubious eyes, shifting his glasses in unison with Feidin.
It was only then that he realized that the two of them shared more similarities than he had realized, despite being of much different ages.
Cæ shook his head. "Sorry. Big day for me. In two different ways."
This was why Cæ found himself uncharacteristically out of his usual stoic composure and calm.
He breathed deeply, calming his nerves down before his attention returned to the two of them.
"Alright," his eyes sharpened. "I'm back. What do you have for me?"
"The Havens are half docked," Feidin remarked, squinting as he furrowed his eyebrows under the uncharacteristically bright morning Sun. "Soon, we will have made all the preparations. Dlint and his men have prepped themselves well and are ready. Thanks to the Elendir Institute of Magic lending its premium enchanted gear, their security is very high, and they're quite relieved that they don't have to go deeper into the more dangerous parts of the slums by themselves."
Cæ nodded. "Of course. I would never send them deeper without major protection to sell housing units; that would be almost suicidal. Rest assured that they will receive the full protection of the non-mage and magetant teams of the Elendir Institute of Magic."
He turned to Sorenon with a prompting nod.
"Ah, I just want to report that the senior magetants of the Elendir Institute of Magic's security department have reported for duty and are undergoing preparations as per protocols." Sorenon pointed towards a particular cabin within the facility where the senior magetants were gearing up exactly as they were supposed to.
"Good notification," Cæ nodded. "I will have a word with them before we dispatch and express my appreciation for their services."
Senior mages were powerful and were among the most powerful mage units to be deployed in regular operations, and represented the upper echelons of the magical power that a country routinely and regularly deployed.
While masters and archmages were in the tactical and strategic levels, respectively, senior mages received the highest deployment rates after apprentices.
The joint operation that the Elendir Institute of Magic and the Trinity Housings would first be deploying together was a large operation featuring many, many civilians, students, and employees of the Elendir Institute of Magic.
On top of that, the operations were going to be taking place in the more dangerous areas of the slums, with the known resistance of the Colohen Mafia and the upper-class families of Colohen City and the rest of the country to a certain extent.
Senior magetants were the bare minimum with the standard in mind.
The two organizations began rapidly preparing for the enormous operations that they would be participating in.
The protocols for the two sides cooperating was truly complex and would require all members of the operations to function exactly as they were supposed to, otherwise there would be chaos.
The people of the Elendir Institute of Magic weren't the issue; they were executives who were trained in such operations and to ensure that things unfolded exactly as the Student Council and, in this case, the task force ordained.
The problem was Dlint and the other employees of Trinity Housings.
They were former residents of the slums who had shifted after receiving the decent wages of Trinity Housings to the inner city.
They were dedicated and earnest, sure, and were very grateful to Trinity Housings for giving them the employment opportunities to leave the slums, but the simple and undeniable fact of the matter was that they were unskilled.
Even Dlint, who was the most skilled among them only had informal experience as the head of a small warehouse and his military contributions prior to that. The rest all were merely school pass-outs with no background in any other field, although they had plenty of experience in a variety of odd, often unflattering and undesirable, jobs.
But compared to the executives of the Elendir Institute of Magic, they didn't have protocol discipline or understanding. They weren't nearly as efficient or effective. It was one of the reasons that Cæ was more nervous than he otherwise would have been.
However, he was still ultimately confident that they would not mess up simply because of two reasons.
First, they had a decent amount of preliminary experience with selling Havens in the slums.
Even though there was more protocol and coordination, it didn't change the fact that they were ultimately going to be focusing on something that they were familiar with. Cæ's powerful imagination allow him to conduct mental simulations of their participation, which allowed him to foresee another variable in their favor.
Their familiarity with the depths of the slums.
In this particular case, he trusted them over even himself.
After all, he hadn't spent too large a part of his life in the depths of the slums.
His goal to leave the slums and lead a good life in the inner city meant that his eyes were always focused inwards towards the inner city. He had left the most dangerous regions of the Colohen Slums by the time he reached high school, and his memories of them seven years later were dimmer.
In other words, the employees of Trinity Housings were the most prepared for the environment that they were about to get into.
This was an important prediction that Cæ hoped would come true, for it would prove that employees of Trinity Housings were worthy additions.
Something that the executives of the Elendir Institute of Magic seemed to have a hard time accepting.
"Do not touch the mana crystal of the artifact with your bare hands, you filthy mongrel!"
The loud verbal abuse of an executive assistant of the Elendir Institute of Magic drew attention around her.
Her expression crumpled with contempt she glared at one of the employees of Trinity Housings who clumsily placed a premium testing kit back upon a table stacked with more than a hundred testing kits that would be used by all testing teams.
The contrast between the two sides couldn't be sharper.
The executive of the Elendir Institute of Magic conducted herself in disciplined manner that was worthy of the Institute that she represented.
Her attire was immaculate, comprised of a perfectly pressed and neat formal attire, as was the manner in which she comported herself and the work that she completed. In comparison to the undisciplined and unorganized former citizens of the slums who worked in an unsystematic manner even for tasks as simple as docking Havens into a truck.
Naturally, the two polar opposite work ethics within a single joint operation collided, causing friction.
The Trinity Housings employee gritted his teeth as his expression crumpled with anger. "What the fuck you did just call me?"
He stepped up to her in a physically threatening manner, frustrating the executive even more.
"Uncouth coolies like you have no business setting foot in our pristine institute," she sneered. "You can't even follow basic protocol, you're no different from an animal."
She spoke with candor even in the face of a physical threat.
It was a sentiment that was clearly echoed among the other employees of the Elendir Institute of Magic, even as their expressions conveyed a degree of disgust towards the people of the slums.
Whether it was their clothes, the manner they comported themselves, and unfortunately, certain inevitable, but small lapses in civil sense and personal hygiene that further fueled prejudice that those of the inner city had towards the people of the slums.
"That's enough."
Cæ's powerful tone cleaved through the tense atmosphere.
His eyes sharpened with seriousness. "I will not tolerate scuffles during preparations for our operations, is that clear?"
"…I understand, Director," the executive assistant's tone changed as she addressed the ultimate superior in her chain of command. "However, I could not overlook a lapse in protocol as severe as touching the mana crystals with one's bare hand."
"Sorry, boss…" the employee relented, stepping back. "But this one was pissing me off."
The air was tingled with a hint of tension as the various employees paid attention to the little spat from the corner of their eye even as they handled their work. Cæ knew that he needed to handle this with perfection, lest he damage morale on either side and increase tensions.
STEP
He arrived before the two with a slow gait, even as they grew a little nervous.
His presence was as intense as ever while his severe expression magnified the scars across his face and neck and his sharp eyes were made even more intimidating by the dichromatic color of his eyes, particularly his right eye, the iris of which was a very light gray, blending into the white of his eyeballs in an eerie fashion.
His gaze first fixed on the employee of Trinity Housings.
He had more authority over him since he was paying his wages.
"Protocols exist for a reason," Cæ told him sternly. "She scolded you for touching the mana crystals, not just for the artifact's sake, but also for your own sake. Although there are safety measures, it is not recommended for non-mages to touch mana crystals directly. There have been accidents that have led to injury and even death."
"…Sorry, boss. I didn't know." The man stirred with a hint of alarm and regret while the executive assistant nodded with appreciation.
Then his gaze shifted to her.
"However, that is no reason to verbally abuse someone, Miss Faire," he read the name on her badge. "That too, with a chosen insult that is nothing short of a derogatory slur towards people from a certain socioeconomic class. You have pointlessly escalated what could have been a very simple warning by using hostile communication."
Miss Faire lowered her head with a relenting expression. "…My apologies, director. I went too far. I will be more careful with the way I instruct in the future."
Cæ heaved a soft sigh. "It's fine. Both of you ensure it doesn't happen again and remember that we are here to work together."
If grown adults could be so prone to prejudice and conflict based on class differences, then Cæ truly worried for when adolescents from the slums would join the Elendir Institute of Magic as students.