"Young Master Vaan,"
Seraphina bowed her head respectfully.
"You have returned. It is earlier than I expected.
So? Did you learn anything?"
Vaan questioned with a curious look on his face.
Going with someone like Eliza and witnessing how mages at her level operate with your own eyes, honestly, even Vaan was interested in a 'trip' like that. There were so many things he could learn. Now Vaan wasn't one of those nerdy types, but who in their right mind wouldn't be excited about Magic?
Especially when it was something Magic done by high-ranking Mages that could change the state of the battle with just their mere presence alone.
However, when Vaan showed interest in traveling with Eliza, Astra denied it.
'You would just be wasting your time. Whatever you have to learn, learn it here. You already live in the heaven all mages wish to get into.
Traveling with Eliza is a waste of time.'
Honestly, Vaan thought it was a little unfair and too protective of her by not allowing him to explore the outer world. However, seeing Seraphina's face when he asked if she learned anything or not, Vaan realized that that he might have misunderstood his mother.
"What happened? Why are you making that face? Was it not like how you expected it to be?"
Vaan questioned.
Seraphina, however, just smiled wryly, "I should have expected something like this that from the Vesta Mages. It was my fault for miscalculating. I have no one but myself to blame."
Honestly, with the expression she was making, Seraphina looked like she was traumatized.
And the more she acted like this, the more curious Vaan got.
Sensing that curiousness and eagerness to learn about her 'trip', Seraphina didn't let Vaan wait any longer either and started,
"The Phantom World wasn't exactly a strong organization, however, they were quite large, I expected us to prepare a little and understand their structure before we actually took action.
That was what I actually wanted to study,
How does the Vesta Family execute a hunt?
I thought I could learn something valuable, however, what I witnessed was completely outside of my expectations.
We simply barged into their Headquarters with only 4 of us, of course, I was no more than a burden, we only had 3 Mages who could take care of themselves in that situation.
I thought the fight ahead might get a little complicated and I might see Lady Eliza take serious action to avoid certain situations, however…
Using the Teleportation Portals, it took us 5 hours to reach their Main Headquarters, and 5 minutes later,
We were walking towards their second base.
For reference, there were around 500 people in their Main Headquarters,
And around 200 of them were mages."
Seraphina spoke, the smile on her face was so strange that Vaan felt goosebumps all over his body.
"5 minutes was all it took to take down 200 mages?" Vaan blinked.
No matter how strong Advance Mages and their spells were, 200 mages were a lot.
Heck, even crushing 200 ants couldn't be done within 5 minutes and these were complete humans we were talking about.
"No."
Seraphina shook her head.
"5 minutes was all it took to take down 500 men, take out the relevant information needed, seal the Phantom World's 'strong' information system without the rest of the members knowing, and move towards another Branch."
Seraphina clarified.
"H-How is that even possible?" Vaan stuttered.
He had done many operations where he had to take down enemy gangs in his past life, of course, he wasn't a fool, he never directly fought gangs that had nearly the same strength and backing as them,
When it came to direct takedown, he always targeted weaker gangs, the ones that were already on the verge of being destroyed because of his schemes, the trapped rats who had nowhere else to go.
However, even then, 5 minutes…
That was just too much!
This type of shit took hours!
Sometimes even days if the enemy turns out to be smarter than expected.
But 5 minutes!?
How does that even make sense?
What? Did the enemy just surrender as soon as they walked in? If they were that scared, they shouldn't have started this from the beginning!
Vaan couldn't make sense out of the situation, and seeing him acting like this, Seraphina sighed in relief.
She felt a sense of kinship with Vaan.
However, right now, she had to finish her report,
"We walked in, Lady Eliza revealed that we were from the Vesta Family and all the people there were to be executed, of course, the Phantom World resisted, the 200 hundred mages prepared their spells while the rest of the 300 men rushed towards us with their weapons, trying to overwhelm us with numbers.
But then,
Lady Eliza waved her hand.
And as if time had frozen, all the mages and men coming at us paused.
Their bodies were bound.
Lady Eliza then asked me who the leader was, I pointed at him, Lady Eliza appeared next to him, placed her hand on his hand, and started reading his memories.
She then started reading memories of a few more people, and then,
All 500 men were beheaded, while the people who had their memories read were captured.
That's how it ended.
In 5 minutes, the entire Headquarters was filled with rivers of blood and the same happened to the rest of the branches we visited after them.
In just 6 hours, the 50 branches spread all over the Vesta City were completely massacred.
Rather than a learning experience, it was more of a traumatic experience that I would never forget in my life."
Seraphina explained and this time, Vaan turned completely silent.
That binding Magic, he had seen her mother use that as well. She used it on him when he was trying to resist the Heal magic from those healers just when he came to this world.
At that time, Vaan just thought it was just a random magic, but now…
Vaan had no words…
Destroying the Phantom World in just 6 hours…
And this wasn't even the strongest Mage of the Family acting on her own…
It was only her subordinate.
What would have happened if his mother had acted personally?
Vaan finally realized what his mother was trying to tell him.
'Travelling with Eliza is a waste of time.'
Astra already knew what was going to happen, that was why she sent Eliza, she wanted those pests cleaned up as soon as possible, and this was why she also stopped Vaan from following Eliza.
Not because she was scared of traumatizing her child, but simply because it was not worth it.
It might have been an eventful journey if normal Vesta Mages were sent, they would have planned their attack, efficiently executed their plans, and would have taken their time in interrogating their opponents and learning more about them.
Eliza was just on another level.
There was nothing to learn in front of absolute strength.
Traveling with Eliza Vesta was a waste of time.
"What about the ones who were captured?" Vaan questioned, trying to calm himself down.
"They will be executed tomorrow morning.
Throughout the Vesta City, medical stalls will be set up. Skilled healers and physicians will be mobilized to treat those who have fallen prey to the Dreamweave and are now facing withdrawal symptoms due to all the Dreamweave being burned away by the Vesta Family Mages.
And from what I have heard, the treatment won't be free either, Lady Eliza said they would charge the fools who were caught by Dreamweave and could potentially threaten the Vesta City in the future.
Also, the Noble Families whose members were caught being addicted to Dreamweave will instead be punished for not reporting its distribution.
From how Lady Eliza was acting, it seemed like the punishment wouldn't be anything small either."
Seraphina summarized the entire situation.
Vaan nodded in understanding, he knew his mother's intentions so this wasn't actually a surprise to him.
With him researching a new Circle, many Mages have been eyeing on him for a long time.
Astra was planning to use this incident as a warning. The Vesta Family was in the right here, therefore, they were free to do whatever they wanted. Astra wanted to use this chance to imprint fear into the other families. She wanted them to know that if required, she could take extreme actions and there would be nothing they could do about it.
"Heh."
A smile appeared on Vaan's face as he thought about this.
With his mother standing behind his back, he really didn't have to worry about anything.
"Anyways, this is something Young Master might like."
Suddenly, Seraphina spoke up as she took out a book.
"What is this?" Vaan questioned.
"I noticed Young Master Vaan has been quite interested in gathering Spell Directories, so although I didn't have many chances, I did manage to get around 7 of them in these 2 days.
Though they may not be as great as normal Spell Directories since it doesn't belong to official mages but the rough ones.
It does have a few interesting spells though,
Young Master Vaan might want to study them."
