"Simon Wilbury, sole son of Baroness Wilbury and Major Wilbury," Soran said.
'If his mother is a baroness, it means that she's a True Mage,' Shang thought with furrowed brows. 'Military titles are normally only given to warriors, and, as far as I know, a major is also usually at the Commander Stage.'
'They would definitely have the funds to commission a Cleaner.'
"Can you tell me more?" Shang asked.
"As the sole heir, Simon Wilbury was supposed to become a True Mage and lead the Wilbury household," Soran said.
"However, he was born without an Affinity."
"Without an Affinity?" Shang asked with raised eyebrows.
Being born without an Affinity was possible, but it was rare.
Soran nodded. "Being born without an Affinity makes it very difficult to become a Mage. While it is possible to train in Element Neutral Magic, these kinds of Spells only become prevalent near the very top of the Adept Realm. Even if someone wants to specialize in Element Neutral Magic, they would still need to gain experience with some Elements."
"If someone wants to purely advance on the path of Magic, they need to master the manipulation of Mana. Something like that requires practice."
"But since the Element Neutral Spells are either extremely easy, like Mana Shield or Mana Step, or extremely hard, like Mind Read and Mana Force, it is very difficult for someone to become a True Mage by only relying on Element Neutral Spells."
"Getting started isn't an issue. Becoming a True Mage after becoming a Peak Adept isn't an issue."
"But everything between is an issue."
"Imagine you are building a very big and complex contraption, but you only know what parts you need and how to create the most complex part of the contraption."
"You have all the parts, and you have the core, but you don't know how to build everything."
"That's the situation these kinds of people are in."
Soran leaned back in his chair. "Of course, there is a way to still succeed."
Shang looked at Soran. "The warrior path, right?"
Soran nodded. "By strengthening your body, your mind gets strengthened regardless, and as long as you don't have a warrior's body, the strengthening also wouldn't be that much weaker."
"Simon Wilbury would have only needed to reach the Early Commander Stage. At that point, his mind should have become powerful enough to train in the more complex Element Neutral Spells."
"So, of course, his parents sent him to the Warrior's Academy. From what I've heard while compiling his file, it was his father that taught him nearly everything Simon knew about fighting."
"And he was really good at it," Soran said.
Shang only looked at Soran.
"On the very first day, Simon was fighting for first place in not only his class but the entire Grade."
Shang nodded.
That truly was impressive.
"Sadly, after losing to an even more talented warrior, Simon lost all his drive. It was like he no longer cared about being in first place, which resulted in his eventual decline."
"A couple of years later, Simon was still very strong, but he wasn't even in the top 5 of his Grade anymore. The other students simply worked much harder."
"Another issue was also that he only very rarely went hunting, and he earned most of his Contribution Points by stealing resources from other students."
"As you know, we don't forbid stealing resources. That's mainly to give the students a safe place to learn about these things. Some students learn how to steal, which will help them in the future when they need resources. Other students learn how to protect themselves from thieves. You would much rather learn this lesson by only losing a couple of days' worth of Contribution Points instead of some very valuable ore you nearly gave your life to obtain."
"And Simon Wilbury could be viewed as a sort of 'teacher' that taught how to protect yourself from people coveting your things," Soran explained.
"He was pretty successful in his banditry."
"That was until he ran into you," Soran said.
Soran took out Simon's file again and pointed at a place on the first page that was about halfway down.
"Everything I told you was only in the first half of the first page," Soran said, "and the reason why this file is so long is entirely related to the changes in Simon's life after you two met."
Just by looking at the length of the file, Shang could imagine that this day had completely changed Simon's life.
"What happened after that?" Shang asked.
Soran pushed the file away again and looked at Shang.
"His physical wounds had been healed in a matter of minutes. Our Water Mage is very good at healing."
"But for the next week, it was basically impossible for anyone to have a normal conversation with Simon."
"At first glance, he appeared normal, but whenever he talked to anyone, he would talk very fast, stumble over his words, and his voice would be very high."
"In short, he fell into a minor panic as soon as another human interacted with him."
Soran leaned his head on one of his fists as his eyes looked at the file lying on the table.
"Mervin took special care of Simon, and he tried to get Simon acclimated to human society again."
"And it worked. Just one month later, Simon was normal again."
"However, two things were not the same."
"First, when Simon was supposed to spar, he would commit a great number of mistakes due to nervousness."
"Second, even though Simon hadn't hunted much in the past, from that moment on, he has never hunted again."
Soran pointed at the file again. "70% of this file are reports and evaluations from different teachers regarding Simon's abnormal mindset and his problems at the academy."
"Of course, things only got worse. The other students noticed how weak Simon was, and they made fun of him for not even having the courage to spar with them. They called him weak-willed, pathetic, and a disgrace to every warrior."
"After several months of all of this, Simon finally had enough and lashed out. His rage exploded forth, and he pulled out his weapon."
"He tried to kill another student, but the student evaded the attack and kicked Simon to the ground."
"While Simon had been dealing with these things, the other students had continued training, and Simon couldn't even be counted as average by this point."
"A teacher arrived shortly after, and Simon was expelled. Drawing your weapon on another student without them drawing theirs first is forbidden."
Soran pushed four of the five pages of the file to the side.
"That happened a bit more than a year ago," Soran said. "From what I've heard, he returned to his parents, and they put him through therapy and intense training. They were doing their best to push Simon forward until he was outstanding again."
"And five months later…"
"They found his corpse hanging from a noose inside his room," Soran said.
Silence.
Shang took a deep breath.
Shang had somewhat made peace with this entire incident, but he still had some regrets.
After all, he viewed Simon as a kid.
"He died around seven months ago," Soran said as he looked at Shang. "And you said that the Cleaner mentioned that he has been searching for you for about six months, right?"
