Chapter 225

"Having a maid really is convenient, isn't it? He never has to prepare his own lunch bento...!"

Before long, a familiar voice drifted over from the rooftop stairwell. It was Jasmine, one of Alexis's two sidekick besties, and her tone was dripping with envy!

Rowan turned and saw Alexis and her two friends, Jasmine and Mindy, walking over with bentos and a soft cloth in hand.

"Rowan, that helicopter just now was...?"

Alexis looked puzzled as she gazed at a helicopter in the air not far off, which seemed to have only just pulled away, and she asked Rowan with a trace of wariness. When she had first come up from the stairwell, she could still faintly make out traces of wind pressure where a helicopter had lifted off from the open rooftop. Clearly, whoever it was had only just finished with Rowan.

"That was the helicopter that came to pick up old man Kagemaru. He and I just closed a deal," Rowan said, with nothing to hide, brushing it off lightly.

The moment he said it, all three girls, not only Alexis but Jasmine and Mindy too, wore the same odd expression. They each thought at once about what kind of "deal" this guy meant. Most likely he had squeezed Chairman Kagemaru for a fortune again. Maybe this time he had even shaken out the old man's entire nest egg... After all, this was someone who simply could not stand to take a loss.

"But won't sending Chairman Kagemaru back like that cause some kind of trouble?" Alexis asked with real concern.

"No need to worry. I didn't completely let him go." Rowan smiled lightly and raised the Shadow Charm ring in his hand to show her. Then, like a magician, he made it vanish, and who knew where he had hidden it.

She didn't know the specifics of the deal Rowan had made with the chairman, but from his words Alexis could vaguely guess. She let out a breath, smiled, and nodded.

Then, together with Jasmine and Mindy, who had spread out the cloth and were taking out sandwiches and rice balls, she settled in as she always did, basking in the sun on the rooftop and eating lunch with Rowan in peace!

"The whole Seven Stars business is finally over, and we get a peaceful life again for once," Jasmine sighed.

"Speaking of which," Mindy said, as if suddenly remembering something, "when Jasmine and Mindy went back to the Obelisk Blue girls' dorm ahead of Alexis to get our bentos, we sort of overheard something halfway there. When Vice Chancellor Bonaparte and Professor Crowler were heading back to the office, they were talking about abolishing the Slifer Red dorm or something."

"Abolishing Slifer Red?!" Alexis gasped.

Rowan's expression turned subtly strange as he looked over, waiting for Alexis's two friends to fill in a few more details. Even Camula, the vampire maid, glanced over with interest. After all, anything that affected Rowan would affect the environment she lived in too.

"It was more or less that," said Jasmine, her medium-short red hair swaying as she held a rice ball with one bite taken out of it, trying to recall. "Bonaparte seemed to be proposing some kind of elite education system. He thinks a slacker dorm with only five students, Slifer Red, has no reason to keep existing at all."

Rowan and Alexis both looked her way.

"He even said they should clear out all the Slifer Red students."

"The people who deliver Emotion Points have shown up all at once, huh..." Rowan muttered, his expression turning strange.

As he remembered it, in the original course of events, this short, round Vice Chancellor's philosophy was indeed much like the mushroom-headed professor's used to be. Both were pioneers of elite education at Duel Academy! Wanting to clear out the Slifer Red students. Wasn't that a coincidence!

Just earlier, Rowan had been wondering how he could earn more Emotion Points during the month or so before the new victims... ahem, new students arrived at Duel Academy! After all, even though he now had the "fortune" of eleven thousand Emotion Points, once he started redeeming things for real, it might not be enough if there were too many valuable skills to buy. Besides the two remaining Mark of the Crimson Dragon skills, there were options like the one that had appeared once before when the system shop refreshed, a genuine ability that surpassed even the Superior Still Water Clarity, and those were quite valuable too! Not to mention abilities like letting Duel Spirits materialize, and other nasty new decks. As for Emotion Points, Rowan would never think there were too many.

"So what did Professor Crowler say?" Alexis asked right away.

The mushroom-headed professor was the Acting Chancellor now, and he also seemed to have some small history with Rowan. If he made trouble together with Bonaparte, a man cut from the same cloth, while Chancellor Sheppard was away, Slifer Red might really be in some danger.

"Professor Crowler... the Acting Chancellor, he voiced his opposition at the time," Mindy answered.

"He said Slifer Red's real strength is nothing like what it looks like on the surface, and that it might even be the strongest of the three dorms."

Rowan had to admit that Professor Crowler's attitude toward Slifer Red, and especially toward Rowan and his crowd, had changed completely.

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