Civilization Chronicles: Rise of the Divine Creator

Scratching his cheek awkwardly, the young boy earnestly requested, ”Please just call me Lucas, Great Elder.”

”Ho?” Pauline raised her brow ever so slightly, her eyes taking on a teasing glint Lucas had seen many times from his Master, ”In that case, you too should address me casually. Come come, try calling me ’Elder Sister’.”

”No no no, I couldn’t possibly do that,” Lucas waved his hands frantically, thinking that this mother-daughter pair really did share some similar traits, even if their personalities were completely different.

”And why not?” Pauline, refusing to back down, argued, ”As a matter-of fact, with you being my mother’s First Disciple, and I just her Third Daughter, if we go by the traditional definitions of seniority, I should be the one addressing you respectfully as my elder sibling.”

Was there some truth to what Pauline was saying here?

Yes.

But the logic she was using was definitely a bit twisted.

Master-Disciple relationships were generally considered to be on the same level as those of parents and their children, with a First Disciple being equivalent to an eldest child; however, there were limits to how far this kind of logic was applied in real life.

For instance, say a Master took a 10-year-old child as her First Disciple, but had a 175-year-old daughter.

99.9% of people across the Blue Sky Continent would agree that the new Disciple should, at the very least, refer to their Master’s daughter as ’Aunt’.

Only the most pedantic and anal-retentive of individuals would insist that the significantly older daughter refer to the new Disciple as their elder sibling.

And that, was the exact situation which was playing out right now.

Everyone in the room understood this, Lucas especially, which was why there was no way he was ever going to side with Pauline on this matter and vigorously shook his head in refusal.

Naturally, he wasn’t the only one.

”ELDER SISTER! YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS?!” Elliot Balfour, Eris’ grandfather and a notorious anti-Lucas crusader, roared furiously.

In response, Pauline simply glanced over at her little brother, glared hard at him, and scolded, ”Watch your tone, Elliot.”

Under the cold stare of his stern older sister, Elliot actually flinched slightly as numerous past traumas surfaced in his mind, but this was too important for him to simply back down.

Lucas getting close to his precious little granddaughter was bad enough! If Elliot also had to start calling Lucas ’Elder Brother’, he would never be able to lift his head up again, so despite Pauline trying to intimidate him into silence, he uncharacteristically stood his ground and declared, ”I apologize for my outburst, Great Elder, but I cannot accept such a breach of protocol. That little bast... Young Master Lucas may be the Matriarch’s Disciple, but he is still a Junior!”

Most others in the room also nodded, thinking that it wasn’t appropriate for Lucas and the Great Elder to address each other so informally. Not only would that create a great deal of confusion chaos in the social hierarchy of the family, it was obviously just silly.

From the start, most had figured that Pauline was just making a bad joke and hadn’t taken this episode too seriously, but it was still better to be safe rather than sorry.

The pro-reason side unexpected gained a champion a few seconds later when Allina Crest chose to speak up, ”Forgive me for interjecting here, Great Elder, but I also believe that in public settings, decorum should be maintained.”

When Pauline heard this, her brow rose slightly; however, after going over her old friend’s words again in her head carefully, the Great Elder smiled and nodded, ”You’re quite right, Commander Crest, a certain degree of formality should indeed be maintained, in public.”

Feeling like things were about to get dicey again, Lucas hurriedly cut in, ”Now that the Marquess has fle... has departed, I believe we should wrap up this meeting and return to our own individual assignments. We have a lot of work to get done, and a limited amount of time to accomplish it all.”

”Great Elder,” Lucas directly addressed Pauline next, ”I understand that you only recently returned from seclusion, so I imagine there are a great many things you need to review and deal with. The matter of the Trade Conference, while important, is not an urgent concern, so perhaps we could re-convene to discuss this matter say... 10 days?”

Having mostly dispelled her earlier frustration from letting her mother escape, Pauline decided to cut the young boy some slack and nodded, ”10 days it is, Young Master Lucas.”

”Very good,” Lucas nodded as he quietly breathed a sigh of relief, ”In that case, I will also take my leave for tonight.”

With that said, the boy gave a quick, formal salute, turned on his heels, and made for the office’s exit as quickly as he could without actually running.

Eris and Christina followed suit, as did most of the others, soon emptying out the room, leaving only Pauline and Allina behind.

.....

”So, what do you think of your mom’s new Disciples?” Allina asked, her tone and posture relaxing considerably now that it was just her and her old friend.

”I can see why she chose them,” Pauline commented casually, also allowing a degree of casualness to slip into her tone, ”The reports I received don’t do them justice.”

”Heh, just wait until you actually get to know them,” Allina chuckled and shook her head, ”Especially Lucas. Don’t underestimate him, or he’ll eat you alive.”

Turning to her long-time friend, Pauline asked with genuine curiosity, ”And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Shooting her friend a wry look, Allina snickered, ”It means you shouldn’t try testing him like that again. If you want to gage how well he handles unexpected situations and pressure, or how quick he is when forced to think on his feet, you can just find some actual problems for him to deal with, instead of trying to invent one.”

”You’d trust him to handle an immediate, in the moment crisis, with real lives at stake?” Pauline asked back, only to receive a wry look from Allina, one that seemed to scream ’Are you really asking that?’

Thinking about it for a moment, Pauline blushed slightly and scratched her cheek, ”Right, silly question.”

The report Pauline received on Lucas was hardly comprehensive, and she hadn’t had time to review all of it, but she had skimmed the summary at least. After taking part in organizing the biggest mass evacuation in the Rockwell Kingdom’s history, why wouldn’t she be able to trust Lucas with some small local problems?

Shaking her head, Allina let out a sigh, ”You might have been able to get away with it this time, but if you keep pushing him, he’ll start hitting back, and you won’t like it when he does.”

The rather frank and blunt warning Allina was giving her caused Pauline to raise her brow slightly.

It was very rare for the woman she treated like a little sister, and if her little brother Samuel would stop being so dense might actually become her little sister, to be so blunt, but that only went to show how highly Allina thought of Lucas.

Even the implication that Lucas, a Fourth Step Body Tempering boy could hit back at her in a way that would cause her trouble was difficult to believe, but Pauline knew Allina well enough to understand that she wasn’t just making an idle joke.

Whatever the case was, it seemed that after nearly a year of peace and calm in meditative seclusion, life was about to get interesting for the Balfour Family’s Great Elder.