The strongest of each continent, with the exception of Eli and possibly Bethany, were standing in front of Eli while he sat on his obsidian and white marble throne. He had barely moved since people started entering and following Bethany’s plan, he had no intention of moving or speaking now. Representing his continent was a rather ordinary looking man named Winston, brown eyes, tan skin and brown hair with a bit of grey showing at his temples, he was basically an average, unremarkable guy. What did make him stand out was the look on his face, he hadn’t spoken a word yet but was looking at everyone as if every bone in his body wanted to murder everything he saw. It was pure unrestrained hatred, and despite Wintson not making eye contact with Eli, he was pretty sure that the anger was directed at him.

  Winston's antics seemed to bring joy to the order continent’s strongest for some reason. He was tall and slender, with uncharacteristically broad shoulders and just a hit of muscle. Introducing himself directly to Eli while completely ignoring Bethany, Ornorti went out of his way to show more respect than the other two standing with him, bowing low and speaking mostly into the ground with his head lowered. His long blonde hair framed his angular yet handsome face well and he carried himself like he was sure every woman in the room was staring at him. The sad truth was that most of the women were staring, but they were looking at Bethany and Alora’s outfits which strangely resembled a space princess from an old movie.

  The biggest surprise for Eli was the person representing the chaos continent, despite having no memory of her, he was absolutely sure that this sharp and fierce looking woman was his mother. Her magic felt just like the magic of the seal on his emotions that broke causing the magical accident that gave Tara her scars. He did not recognize her face but when they locked eyes, he remembered her gaze. Looking into her eyes was like watching a giant needle that was about to stab in your eye and there was nothing you could do about it. Lucy had told him her name was Liasandra Konzak and it was clear they had some physical similarities. They both had dark black hair and the same chin, along with almost identical pale skin tones. She introduced herself and told them all to call her by her last name Konzak.

  With the introductions out of the way Bethany spoke, “While you all know the rules, I will warn you that Ash is not subject to them and if things get out of hand he will take action.”

  Ornorti cleared his throat, “Ehem, what sort of action?”

  “Depending on how disrespectful it is,” Bethany responded but paused and glanced at Eli before looking back at him. “He could send them to their floor and bar them from the teleporters or just outright kill them. I think it's best if we just avoid causing problems so we are counting on your help to keep things as civilized as possible.”

  “Civilized isn’t really how my people do things but I take your point and I will keep them under control.” Ms. Konzak said in a completely deadpanned voice.

  “Our continent is not as… Unified as the others appear to be. However, I will pass this along.” Ornorti added with more pretention.

  “I refuse until you tell me which continent the big guy comes from.” Winston said then spit on the ground.

  Bethany’s hands tightened on her spear, but she glanced back to Eli who apparently did not respond, but he sent her a calm feeling through their connection. “Very well, can you all please return to your tables.”

  They went back to their tables and began discussing things with the other people from their respective continents. Ms. Konzak and Ornorti seemed to be giving orders to a few people on their respective sides but Winston didn’t go back to his seat. He sat on the edge of the table facing Eli while apparently trying to have some kind of staring contest with him but Eli refused to look at him. Instead, he was looking around the room at other people, not ignoring Winston, but instead showing him how unimportant he was. At first, Eli was not comfortable treating him like this since he knew it would set him off, but in the grand scheme of things that he had already been faced with and the scale of what he was sure would come, Winston really was unimportant.

  By this time he had had enough time to take a quick pass at everyone’s magic in the room with his magic sense, over 300 people. Only 2 had noticed, one being the woman that Aria was with, who had just winked at him, and other being his mother who glanced at him but showed no signs of hostility at his invasion of privacy. He had complete confidence that all were either as strong or weaker than Bethany. That's not to say she could beat them in a fight, she was very inexperienced and would likely lose to about half the room in a one on one match. Eli wasn’t sure he could win against everyone, there were about a dozen people who he felt had a chance at beating him in a fair fight, but this wasn’t a tournament or a battlefield of honor. He was the host here and felt no reason to fight fair in the slightest.

  The first vote window showed up to lords present, including Eli.

  “The first vote has started.”

  “Your vote must be cast in the voting room.”

  “This vote has 7 hours to be completed.”

  “You may cast your vote in 6 hours.”

  “You control 57 out of 1431 total votes.”

  “The vote is to decide if the top 100 list is public planet-wide”

  This looked like other system windows except it wouldn’t close, only minimize and the numbers were yellow and the times started counting down. The topic was not what he was expecting either so he checked his old system window and it was the last one in the list so he guessed it might be going in reverse. This one did seem like an easy one to start with and most people would probably choose yes to affirm their authority back home, but some would see it as a challenge since they knew they would not be at the top. Everyone they held authority over would see how low on the list they were without any context.

  People started whispering to those sitting close to them right away, Ms. Konzak grabbed a few people and went into one of the side rooms. After people saw them do that the other rooms filled up quickly and some used the teleporter to go back to their rooms or their continent conference room. Eli, Bethany, and Alora waited for a few minutes after the room settled and then moved to the teleporter and vanished, reappearing in his suite on the top floor. He immediately took off his mask and put it back in his inventory and walked out onto the balcony, he leaned on the railing and just watched the water.

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  Time seemed to slow to a crawl as he thought about how the world would react to his name, even if it was a fake name, at the top of that list. People would fear him, or kiss his ass, or want to kill him, or want to be him and it all just seemed like there was no upside for him. However, he could see that there was an upside for those around him since they could say who they worked for or who they represented and everyone on the planet would know. Maybe the system would let him put his guild symbol next to his name so people would know just by sight that they were associated with him. It was something he had been thinking about recently, how to give his people more leverage when he wasn’t around.

  More than an hour went by with him standing there alone on the balcony, Bethany and Alora were just inside waiting patiently for him to get his mind centered. Then, breaking him out of his trance like pondering, a system window appeared.

  “Liasandra Konzak is requesting access to your floor.”

  “Grant access? Y/N”

  “Bethany!” Eli yelled over the sound of the water and she walked up beside him. “My mother is requesting a visit to our floor. My first instinct is to allow her in, thoughts?”

  “Yeah but let me talk to her first, you stay out here where she can see you, but don’t pay any attention to her.”

  “Ok, but I won’t wait long. I have questions.” Eli said and then granted access, but as soon as she came through he used his will to force the teleporter wall off. He didn’t want her running or in the off chance she could do something once inside to allow more to come in, it was better to have it inoperable.

  “Welcome, Queen Liasandra Konzak. I am Bethany, your son’s closest aide and friend.” Bethany said with just the slightest motion of a head bow. “I’m afraid Eli is still working some things out, but he will be joining us shortly.”

  Liasandra turned back to face the teleporter wall sensing it had gone dormant. “You can call me Konzak,” she said while looking around and taking it all in. While she had been given an entire floor as well, hers was far more plain and with few windows. She gave Bethany a good look before speaking again, “You must care about him more than I thought.”

  “Please have a seat Ms. Konzak.” They both stopped talking until they were seated next to each other on the same side of the large table in the center of the room. “We trust each other a great deal and love each other on occasion. Which is why I wanted to speak with you privately before you spoke with him. You are aware of his memory loss, correct?”

  “I performed the magic myself.” Liasandra said then quickly began to explain when she saw the anger creeping into Bethany’s otherwise perfectly stoic expression. “It was to protect him.”

  “I’m sure you feel that way, but I would actually like to discuss why you are here now.” Bethany said, making it clear in her posture and tone that she was not happy with her response.

  “I would like to speak to my son, I have not seen him in nearly fifteen years. I can understand that you want to protect him, but I am not here to cause trouble.”

  “You are here for yourself, not for Eli. So let me make this plain, do not upset him.” just as she said that Alora came out of one of the bedrooms and sat on the other side of Liasandra. Bethany continued, “We are his family now and he will listen if we tell him its for his own good to avoid you.”

  A single tear ran down Liasandra’s cheek. “I can feel that you two have shared something traumatic with him leaving your faces scared. I want to thank you for being his family when I could not, I will respect your wishes. However, I will not lie if he asks me directly. I owe him that much.”

  “I think all three of us agree that you owe him more than that, but I will not push.” Bethany motioned in Alora’s direction. “This is Alora, Eli’s apprentice. We have not had magic as long as you have but he has been advancing his knowledge at a staggering pace and we are along for the ride. You will need to show us respect in front of him, even if we fail to show you any.”

  Liasandra didn’t miss that Bethany was a schemer and that she said that to her because she was planning on doing something later for Eli’s benefit. “Understood.”

  “Before we bring Eli in, I have a question,” Alora said, Bethany hid it but she was not happy about this change of plans. She had told Alora to remain silent before Eli’s mother had arrived.

  Liasandra paused for a moment then turned to Alora, “yes?”

  “Are you aware of what he has become? Do you understand how powerful he is and how fast that power is increasing?”

  Liasandra paused and took a breath, then another, “Not fully. There are two things here. In my old world those without heart nodes were called heartless or cursed heartless. It wasn’t just because of the lack of a heart node, it was because their power grew faster than their ability to control it and they would cause magical accidents, often killing hundreds. The second thing is that my grandmother is what you would call a fortune teller or oracle and she read my future and told me that I would be queen of all the tribes. She also said that a heartless man would take my throne.”

  Bethany’s eyes widened in realization but did not interrupt. Liasnadra continued, “I took power over the tribes with the kind of confidence that someone who knows they will win. Then I made only one rule, one single law that all tribes had to follow. All heartless must be killed when they are born. I’ve had my throne for over 120 years and to my knowledge six babies were murdered moments after their birth to avoid my wrath. That is until, while on a mission to your world, I met Eli’s father, who turned out to be a captain in the order worlds military. We had a month of non-stop passion until someone from his unit followed him to me and he was killed as a traitor.”

  Bethany put her hand on her shoulder to comfort her as she paused to collect herself. “After I found out I was pregnant I had to go into hiding because I didn’t want people to know when I had gotten pregnant. When Eli was born heartless the prophecy made sense, my son would succeed me on the throne, but it was too late. The other tribes wouldn’t go alone with it since their children had been sacrificed to my own law. I told my people I was going to work on advancing a node and would be in seclusion for a decade and when I couldn’t keep up the lie anymore I knew I had to hide him. So I sealed his emotions and erased his memories in hopes that without them he wouldn’t be able to develop any strength until he was much older. Hopefully old enough to be able to control it.”

  The three of them were silent for a while soaking it in. Then Bethany spoke, “Ok, I believe you and you have my support but do not bring any of this up to Eli. We need to get through this conference with his image as an unassailable deity intact. After the second vote tonight, I’ll convince him to let you come back and you can explain everything when he has enough time to process and recover from it before the next vote. For now, just speak to him about your continent's thoughts on the vote and maybe ask him for something to distract him.”

  “You know him better than I do, so I will trust your judgement.”

  “Eli, come in please!” Bethany yelled so he could hear through the closed door.