“Franz Martin Inferesse. As the new family head, is there anything wrong with what I’ve said?”

I answered Parker Planar’s suggestive words directly.

“No, there isn’t.”

There was a brief silence at the table.

“Our alliance is based on the families within it supporting each other and, when necessary, utilizing each other’s strength to maintain their stability.”

He scanned the room again, as if seeking approval. Seeing that no one objected, he continued.

“However, the Inferesse Family’s current situation is insufficient to support the alliance; on the contrary, they are in such need of help that they will weaken the alliance. Is there a mistake here?”

“No.”

“Then, what can the Inferesse Family offer to remain in the alliance?”

Well… nothing, frankly.

At least not yet.

But I can’t tell them that to their faces.

I need this alliance for now.

Even if I could somehow recover the family myself, it wouldn’t be easy. If I want to move forward at the pace I have in mind, I need to take any help I can get.

I don’t have much time.

But I don’t have anything to offer them financially either. The family is really in dire straits.

“We have nothing to offer.”

After my words, everyone settled down as if the outcome of the meeting had been decided. They began to lose interest, wanting to focus on whatever task was next.

“However…”

But with my next words, all their attention and focus returned to me.

“The fact that I have nothing to offer doesn’t mean it makes sense to remove the Inferesse Family, and therefore me, from the alliance.”

One of Parker Planar’s eyebrows rose slightly.

“Why, then?”

He seemed genuinely curious about what I would say.

I simply pushed my chair back and slowly stood up.

“Because I have far more potential than you realize, and I will be far more useful to you than my father ever was.”

I touched the caora.

Much less than I normally used, but enough to use my mana without harming my body. Enough that no one around me could tell I was using caora.

That was the point of the eye patch; I didn’t want them to see my left eye changing color.

The moment I stirred my mana a little, the calm atmosphere of the meeting room changed instantly.

Due to the traditions of the mafia here, there was no need for any protection inside the room. Anyone who tried to do anything in a room full of people like this would be severely punished by those at the top of the hierarchy.

But still, the moment my mana stirred, the meeting room was suddenly filled with guards, a bunch of guards focused solely on me.

It was as if they were waiting, just in case.

Just as I had expected.

The first thing I did was send a powerful gust of wind from my body outwards.

The guards who pounced on me were thrown back, not expecting such force from someone known to be as wounded and weak as I was.

But I moved even faster than their backward momentum.

I struck one of the guards flying backward in the stomach with my cane, then slammed my elbow hard into another’s head.

~baam!

The moment I heard the gunshot, I ducked to the side. The instant I dodged the first bullet, I created a barrier against the others. The second, third, and subsequent bullets all hit the barrier. The guard who fired them found me in front of his eyes the next second.

He abandoned his gun and tried to respond with his legs, but I simply placed my hand on his chest and blew him back with a wind spell.

I turned around quickly. When I saw more guards preparing their spells and weapons and charging at me, I was about to attack them too, but…

“Stop!”

Parker Planar’s voice echoed through the room.

“All guards, leave the room.”

The guards looked first at their family head, who had given the order, and then at me. But they still canceled their spells and put their weapons back in their holsters. They all left the room one by one, taking their unconscious comrades with them, and the door closed very quietly.

After seeing the door close, Parker Planar turned to me with a slight sigh. But before he could speak, applause echoed through the room.

The applause came from Simon Nomar. He wore a broad smile, looking quite amused.

“Very good! Well done!”

He paused for a moment when he saw everyone looking at him. He put his clapping hands back on the table, but instead of his smile fading, it grew even wider.

When silence returned to the room, Parker Planar turned back to me. His expression was much more serious.

“What’s your general level?”

“B- grade.”

A lie, of course. But after what they saw, they wouldn’t even think it was a lie.

I stretched slightly after giving my answer, pulled the caora back from my body, and sharpened my eyes.

Time to squeeze out more lies.

“Before my father passed away, our plan was to make the family look as weak as possible and develop me. That way, when I took my father’s place, no one would expect any shred of individual strength from me. I would use my talent and power to attract more allies, and so on. When we lost my father, all those plans were ruined, of course.”

I scanned the faces around the table.

While some looked quite shocked, the only one who seemed relatively calm was Simon.

“Anyway. In short, my potential is quite high; few people my age possess the power I have now. In such a situation, I don’t think it makes sense to exclude my family and me from the alliance.”

Parker Planar was about to speak when I quickly continued.

“And… that’s not the only thing I can offer the alliance.”

After taking my cane between my hands, I narrowed my eyes slightly.

“As you know, even though we are an alliance of seven families, we haven’t risen much in the hierarchy. Our alliance has always been more about maintaining stability, and in that regard, with only a few obvious exceptions, it has generally been successful.”

The first person to understand what I was talking about was Frensa Dasim. The look of surprise on his face gave way to understanding with each word I spoke.

“But do you think that’s enough? Yes, I may no longer be in that position, but we are all heads of families who occupy at least a certain place in the hierarchy. There may be many more above us, but there are also many below us. Why are we only striving to remain ‘stable’ when we have a force of seven families at our disposal?”

The others also began to grasp where this conversation was heading.

“Some of you are afraid, perhaps. Which is understandable. We are all in a place where we could be perfectly content with our position.”

I paused for a moment.

“I’m not like that anymore, though. But… why are we struggling to stay where we are when we could go further? Our greed can’t be that… small, as residents of Old Gundam. In my opinion, this alliance has the potential to reach much better places, but it’s not trying to use that potential because it’s afraid that if it tries anything, the order established so far will be disrupted.”

The atmosphere in the room had completely changed. Before, they were about to sign my and my family’s death warrant, but now… they were tense.

Because each of them possessed that greed I mentioned.

They were just afraid. They were terrified of losing everything they had; of destroying the order that they, their fathers, or their grandfathers had worked so hard to create.

“I have ideas.”

They just needed a trigger. One that would expose their greed and suppress their fears.

And that trigger would be me.

“Ideas that my father and I planned to implement long ago when the family gained enough power, but which now seem absurd to even consider…”

I fixed my gaze on each of their eyes, one by one.

“But now, with this alliance, those ideas don’t seem so far-fetched.”

And finally, I approached the table for the first time.

I adjusted my chair, which had shifted slightly when I stood up, and sat back down at my place at the table, clasping my hands on the tabletop.

“This is the last thing I can offer. An opportunity for everyone here to rise far above where they are now. A chance to be part of the detailed plan my father and I have spent years creating.”

Everyone here knew that Phillip Inferesse was the smartest person among them.

After all, he was the very reason this alliance existed in the first place.

He was undoubtedly the one who contributed most to strengthening the alliance and maintaining its stability.

And I thought I had made them see that I, in the guise of his son, could be at least as capable as him… even much more so.

The Franz Martin Inferesse I wanted to show them was an ambitious man.

Parker Planar was the first to emerge from his pensive state. He took his eyes off me and glanced around the table. He saw that Frensa Dasim was thinking quite intently. Simon Nomar continued to smile as he had from the beginning, while the other family heads fluctuated between tension and thoughtfulness. He continued to observe them for a while. He was giving them time to think; after all, this wasn’t a matter to be decided on the spot.

After three minutes had passed, he finally sighed.

“I see that your opinions are generally mixed. Therefore, I am in favor of a vote to achieve the best result.”

When all eyes at the table turned to him, he continued.

“We will conduct the vote in two ways. First, as people who have seen Franz Martin Inferesse’s potential and ideas, it will be about whether he and his family should remain in the alliance.”

He paused briefly, then asked everyone at the table, except me, quite clearly.

“Those who think the Inferesse Family should continue to be part of the alliance, please raise your hand.”

A total of five hands went up.

The only person who thought I shouldn’t stay was the oldest man in the room, who didn’t hold a particularly important position.

“Those who agree with Franz Martin Inferesse’s ideas about rising in the hierarchy and believe the alliance’s purpose should change in this direction, raise your hands.”

This time, four hands went up.

Besides the elderly man from earlier, another family head did not raise his hand.

Parker Planar took a deep breath and fixed his green eyes on me.

“Then it is decided.”

It was as if he was trying to gauge my reaction. He was observing my facial expression, even my body language. But when I didn’t give him a single clue as to what I was thinking, he continued his speech, frowning slightly.

“The Inferesse Family will remain in our alliance and will receive the necessary assistance to recover from all families collectively. Furthermore, once sufficiently recovered, they will explain in detail the plan devised to move higher in the hierarchy at the twentieth meeting of our alliance. Following this explanation, another vote will be held to finalize the decision.”

No matter how much I tried not to show it, a sense of relief washed over me at that very moment, as everything was going exactly as I wanted. I didn’t really care about the family heads standing in front of me, their gazes filled with a mixture of expectation and tension, which was quite uncomfortable.

They weren’t that important.

They didn’t really have much of a role other than helping me recover the Inferesse Family, after all.

Even though I would actually raise them in the hierarchy… at a certain point, I would end up taking everything they had anyway.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep