Chapter 27 Negotiations
The blinding flash vanished from his eyes as Asher looked around only to find himself in a spacious-looking room decorated with all kinds of medals, trophies, and ornaments. While he had never been here in person, he guessed that this was probably the office of the Principal.
Abruptly, he heard a voice that made him snap out of his thoughts as he had been wandering his gaze everywhere on the ornaments, each of his was an Artifact.
"So, what do you want and how did you do that", the Principal snapped at him as she was tired of dealing with a ton of work today.
"Well, I'll be straightforward then. I want you to give me a permit that freely lets me exit the Academy at my own discretion.", Asher calmly looked into her eyes as he spouted that out without a care of anything.
".."
For a moment, the Principal doubted what she heard. Just as she was about to get mad and shout at him, her words were bluntly cut off by what he said next.
"I know that it was you who caused 'that incident' to the 8th ranked guild [Starlight Syndicate]."
That was right, the reason why the stocks of that guild went down was related to the Principal itself.
Her face was now plastered with a shocked expression as she couldn't believe how a student could know about the fact that only those in the [Council] knew about. But before she could say something, she was once again cut off by a sentence that contained the most dangerous information concerning the Human race.
"I know that every race other than the Dwarves, Elves, and Dragons are preparing for war against our Human race at this very moment. Vampires, Demons, Werewolves, Trolls, Giants, Gnomes, Merfolk, and the other races. They're all going to wage a war against us in the next 5 years."
The Principal's eyes constricted for a split second as her mind was trying to process everything I had just told her. In less than a second, she made up her mind as she looked determined to kill me. But before she could do that, I continued
"I have an innate ability that lets me gather information using a skill and even possibly see parts of the future. Though, there's no guarantee that the future I saw would actually happen. I can help the [Council] gather the information that would normally be impossible to find and even inform them about events that would happen in the future. You don't have to worry about me leaking the information though just know that if you kill me here right now, the information I have will all be leaked out to the public which will cause mass panic."
"I also have immunity to all mental-related skills so there's no possibility of you getting anything out of me by interrogation. Well, the rest is up to you though."
Well-versed in the art of Bullsh*ttery, Asher knew that if [Bullsh*tting] was an element, he might as well have already become the founder God of it. Asher purposely decided to reveal some of the truth about him having a lot of information but mix it with lies such as him having it due to his skill. If he vaguely spoke about it, that'd make him seem more mysterious thus also making him more suspicious. In the worst-case scenario, he might even be killed as the [Council] would take chances in causing public unrest rather than trust someone as suspicious as me.
I was banking on the fact that the Eva Turner I knew from the novel would possess enough judgemental skills to make the right decision here.
Eva, the principal seemed to contemplating and weighing the advantages and disadvantages of negotiating with me.
"You know you can also check the files on me to know my background", I reminded her that I wasn't some shady guy from another race, rather I had been living in the nation of Athanasia ever since I was born. It would be easy to find out if my identity was forged or not for those in power.
"So what do you 'REALLY' want in return for all the information you'll be giving out? You can't expect me to believe that you'll be doing this all for free. Nobody's a saint in this world"
I scoffed as I agreed with what she said. If someone was acting like a saint, then it was simply that either they were acting or they were dumb pushovers which were a rare specimen in this world.
"There've been some kidnappings lately, in the Eden region. The people who've been kidnapped are mostly all kids under the age of 7 and all live in rural areas where there's no way of identifying them. If you look into it and investigate it personally, you'll find out that the ones behind this were the Vampires who were working together with the Gnomes to infiltrate our race by replacing those kids with ones from their races. They plan to send their kids with pure bloodlines to our race and eventually cause a lot of damage to us when they grow up in the future as the pillars of our own race."
"As for what I want in return for all the information I give to you, simply give me a permit to enter and leave the Academy as I so wish and give me a seat at the [Council]. Of course, you don't need to give me a seat immediately, I can prove my worth with my actions first so you guys can take your time."
What I hadn't expected was that Eva instantly nodded at me as if she thought that my conditions were not extremely overbearing. I once again realized that the people in the [Council] were not the same as these snotty brats attending the Academy. They were people who placed importance in the "worth" of a person rather than simply worshipping those who have bigger fists.
Someone like me who could provide classified information based on the other races would be much more valuable than a single [A] or [S] rank awakened. These people in the [Council] weren't ones who'd think that it was too beneath them to even work with someone much weaker than them. This was one of the things I really appreciated. Now I just had to take some time to show them I could really be useful and I'd get a seat in the [Council].
Though of course, they would still be skeptical about me being a spy from the other races sent to infiltrate with the knowledge fed to me by them. To prove it to them that I was safe to trust, I'd just sign a mana contract.
A mana contract was one of the types of contract that could force both sides of the people on the contract to force them to follow the written rules. If either of the sides broke these "rules", then they'd instantly face a backlash or even die depending on the grade and type of the contract.
Demons used another such kind of a contract to strengthen humans at the cost of what they demanded whereas Minor Gods would often share their divinity and strength with mortals, and in exchange ask the mortals to spread their faith far and wide, thus making them even more powerful through the increase in the "Faith" energy.
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