Enjoying a moment of peace as he was eating, Allen was humming a song he had heard when he was still but a child in his early days as an apprentice. He was in a particularly good mood today, despite all the weird stuff that happened just earlier. First being his failed experiments with his elemental merging, second being that Leo guy claimed he was his long-lost brother. However, today was a day to celebrate new prospects into the university. While they were few in numbers compared to some years, Strauss enjoyed the small talks he had with some of them. Most seemed like good kids, still needing guidance. What he felt alarming though was the fact that more and more of those kids were orphans. Every year, the number of abandoned children joining this academy at a very young age always seemed to increase.
Lost in his thoughts, the elemental scholar nearly missed the change in the air around him. Raising his head, he raised an eyebrow in curiosity at the gathering crowd around a table. He couldn’t quite make what was being said, nor the people that the mob surrounded, but with the ever-increasing excitement of the crowd, he could clearly hear now what was being spoken.
Rising from his chair and leaving his almost-finished breakfast, Allen joined the gathering of students and checked for himself what the big deal was about. But as he went towards the crowd, he could figure just how bad the situation was when he heard the words “Dragon God” and “Archetype”. Only two names popped into his mind when he heard that.
As he arrived on the scene, it was a bit too late. He had heard the goading from a few students, provoking the Archetype Disciple into spiting her opinion on who would win in a fight between the two godly beings. As such, it brought the Disciple of the Dragon to challenge the former to a duel.
It was such a gods be damned shame. From the beginning, Allen felt like Meruin had no intention of dueling Xinhua, but eventually her frustration got the better of her and it turned out this way. All this because of the students probing the Storm Mage until she would snap out.
And just when the duel was being confirmed, chaos erupted into the hall. People were disagreeing with each other, turning into yells and some even into fist fights. It didn’t take long for a large squad of Enforcers to jump into the fray and try to bring back order into this mess.
However, there was one thing Allen despised about the Enforcers, and it was their brutality and their habit of jumping the guns and bring physical punishment to everyone disobeying the university’s laws, instead of trying to take a more peaceful approach. Granted, this situation was perhaps too chaotic to be resolved peacefully, but trying to solve this issue with more violence was definitively not the way to go, at least that’s what Strauss always believed.
Walking into the crowd, dodging people getting thrown out of nowhere or fists being thrown randomly, Allen reached the place where Xinhua and Meruin were, glaring at each other. While he felt pretty much angsty by the situation, the Elementalist could not bring himself to disfigure the girls with a frown. Instead, he smiled, as he always did.
While he wanted to stop people around him from fighting, he could not do so. Even if his voice would be able to reach everyone, he didn’t have the authority, nor the power to stop both students and Enforcers alike.
“For shame, ladies. Just look at what you did now. Was that really necessary?” Allen questioned the now two rivals.