Dimensional Descent

"Who are these people?"

Within the Arundo family, a young man with a dark expression sat, staring out toward the 'heart warming' meeting between Elthor and the other geniuses of Earth. Of course, in the perspective of others, this was anything but a wholesome moment. He would have liked nothing more than to put an arrow between their brows.

Osron wasn't a person he knew personally. In fact, on a normal day, Osron wouldn't even be worthy of carrying his shoes. However, in this sort of situation, things were very different.

Every action made by a member of the Arundo family, especially when the person was as high profile as Osron to begin with, was a potential boon or blight on their reputation.

To a high level family, reputation was very important. Though it wasn't exaggerated as a saying like 'Perception was Reality', it wasn't very far off.

When a family grew as large as the Arundo, they actually entered quite a precarious state. They had so much territory to govern, rule and, most importantly, protect. In such a situation, their soft skills became far more important than how large their fists were. Even the Luxnix family experienced such a thing, or else they wouldn't have gone into such a state of hibernation for three generations.

To make a complicated matter simple, the stronger your front as a family, the more battles you could avoid because those far weaker than you would know not to waste your time.

As an example, take the Arundo's territory. They might very well have dozens of much smaller families surrounding them. Under normal circumstances, due to the prestige the Arundo family had built up, these lesser families would never deign to attack them.

if these families did all attack at once, the Arundo would still be able to deal with them. But, such a thing would result in the Arundo stalling their growth phase

a chess grandmaster would know to resign when a game reached a certain point

and people began to believe they lacked the skill

word was: Deterrence. Only with strong enough Deterrence could a family occupy large amounts of territory

their Crown Heir position, Isac. Much like the others of the Arundo, he too was a bowman, and, unsurprisingly, he felt that his performance in these Selections would decide whether he became the Crown Heir

are, but there are some

family rubbed his nose. He had quite a mischievous streak between his eyes as he seemed amused that Isac wasn't as well informed as he was. Of course, the only person who

beating around the bush, this matter involves us both. I don't know about you, but I

clearly not enjoying his distant

was slightly less powerful, his he had the far better social network. On the other hand, Isac was the stronger one, something Ysac accepted, but he lacked the skills a Patriarch should have. He didn't know how to speak to people or manage people, he

two wasn't so bad. Not every Crown Heir duo or trio was at each other's throats like Rychard and Gradeyr had been. Though, that was also

was right on this one. They were indeed a united

the Luxnix estate. There were even reports that a pillar of light was viewable from outer space. There's

didn't seem

resurfacing about him in the last few months. I thought it was just some political scheme to deal with the Luxnix,