Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

 The master of ceremonies had been conducting sessions of this nature for fifty years.

He had seen negotiations where both sides wanted an agreement and only needed the format to reach it. He had seen sessions where one party arrived with the decision already made and the protocol was merely the mechanism for putting it on record. And he had seen… less often, but often enough to know the category when it appeared in front of him, sessions where the hall was a battlefield with chairs and courtesy forms instead of weapons. Where every procedural exchange carried weight that the words themselves didn’t show, and where the people in the room were simultaneously conducting two separate conversations, only one of which was audible but much less important than the other.

This was that third category…

The fight of this one was about time.

He had known it since Julius Dravenholm insisted on the full formal representation count, which was a procedure that existed in the rulebook and that no one had executed in its complete form for several decades because it served no practical purpose when nobody abused the rules it was designed to prevent abusing.

They were losing, and the second part would be the important one.

 He had verified it when Orion Starweaver left his army outside but was in no rush.

 And he had no remaining doubt as he managed the transition from the defense merits phase to the ownership claims phase, the point where everything that had been developing just below the surface was going to start being said out loud.

 “Defense contributions are hereby registered for previously minor-classified participants for the crisis period against mutants of the period two years prior,” he announced with the same monotone volume the protocol required and the perfect enunciation of someone who had long since stopped needing to think about it either.

09:13

 “Defense contributions are hereby registered for previously minor-classified participants for the crisis period against mutants of the period two years prior,” he announced with the same monotone volume the protocol required and the perfect enunciation of someone who had long since stopped needing to think about it either.

“The Starweaver Day faction, represented by Miss Luna Starweaver, certifies active participation in the defense of the external defensive perimeter with a recorded count of eliminations and effective defense certified by the highest-ranking tamers present. But also, the Starweaver Night faction, represented by Lord Orion Starweaver, certifies contribution in the Yino sector during the containment period.”

 He paused, as the record required before the relevant complication.

 “Both reward sets dispute portions of the same territory and leadership of the same family. Several of Lord Orion’s non-budgetary rewards were therefore deferred pending the majority of age of the young lady.”

Another pause.

“The session now proceeds to the evaluation of complementary academic merits in accordance with the fifth-year record.”

Orion’s faction delegate was a man with a broad, unreadable face who had learned to present Orion’s faction arguments with enough fluency that they sounded like his own conclusions. The master of ceremonies had seen him operate in two previous sessions, both of which had generated outcomes that were convenient for the opportunistic faction in ways that, reviewed afterward, had a clear shape to them.

 “The final classification of the fifth year cannot be certified,” the representative said, with the calm of someone who has prepared the argument in advance and is now simply delivering it at the perfect moment. “The final examination was interrupted without a determined result. Consequently, Miss Starweaver’s position in the standings cannot be established with certainty.”

Julius responded before the master of ceremonies finished registering the objection.

“The final standings don’t depend on a single examination,” he said. “The points accumulated across the first four confrontations place Miss Starweaver in second position independently of the result of the interrupted examination. If she won that last confrontation, she finished second. If she lost it, she also finished second. The margin over the third-place finisher is sufficient that the result of one examination cannot alter the accumulated standing.”

The battle had barely begun.

♢♢♢♢

“The academy records are available for verification,” Julius added, without raising his voice.

 The representative produced a response that the master of ceremonies recorded without giving it his full attention, because he already knew it wasn’t going to change the result of the argument. Julius was correct on the numbers, and everyone in the hall with sufficient judgment to evaluate that knew it.

 Luna, from her position, didn’t change her expression.

 The master of ceremonies had been observing her with discretion, he was someone who had spent years learning to read people in formal spaces, the skill developed not through study but through repetition, through the accumulated experience of watching people try to manage what their faces showed in rooms where showing it cost too much. Miss Starweaver was a young tamer with the posture of someone who had indeed ‘worn protocol clothing’ since before she had the judgment to choose it herself. No visible tension… But there was something in the stillness of her eyes when they moved toward the west side of the hall that was not neutrality. It was the exact opposite of neutrality, scarcely contained with considerable effort. To her left, Larissa Dravenholm. To her right, Liora Ashenway, whose attention divided itself between the hall and somewhere else with a frequency slightly higher than decorum advised.

 Luna’s global second-place standing of the year was registered with little to no problem.

 The ownership claims over Starweaver territory took forty minutes to untangle and develop fully, approximately twice what the master of ceremonies would have estimated for a session of this type under normal circumstances. The complexity came from the family’s own structure, which had been accumulating fault lines for years before anyone in this room had been asked to sort through them formally.

The Day faction controlled the eastern territories associated with the Sirius branch, the zones of lower population density but with the primary access points to the old commercial routes. Land that had been almost emptying since the disaster of nearly a decade ago, when most of the people who had lived there moved as far from the rift as they could manage, taking their presence and most of their contributions with them.

The Night faction controlled the western sectors, now of higher density, and the extraction zones, plus the majority of the military agreements that had been gradually pulling the family’s armed strength into Orion’s orbit since the disaster, and further consolidated during the last period of Sirius’s absence.

That absence was the thing everyone in the room knew was going to be mentioned.