You call this the mastermind?

At this moment, Mrs. Chelsea didn't realize that someone was paying attention to her, and she didn't know that she would die tomorrow.

Under the bright ring chandelier, she was chatting with her future "son-in-law" about trivial matters.

"I haven't seen Juliana for a long time. Is she still teaching the Defense Against the Dark Arts class at Fort St. Grant?"

Mrs. Chelsea's voice was not clear, but rather hoarse. With her calm face and dignified posture, she looked like a black viper elegantly coiled on a branch, quietly spitting out its tongue.

"Yes, but my mother is only a part-time job now."

The blond boy who answered had a rather ordinary face, and his tone was full of pride when he talked about his mother.

"If someone else takes over, she will resign from her teaching position."

"Concurrently?"

"Yes, my mother has been elected as the vice president of Oak College."

"That's great news."

Mrs. Chelsea smiled when she heard this, "But it will be more difficult for your father to remarry."

"Dad doesn't know this news yet."

The boy said with an embarrassed expression: "Some indigenous people in the Southern California colony are difficult to manage. He followed the army to suppress the rebellion at the beginning of the year."

Mrs. Chelsea squinted her eyes unconsciously, and then suddenly changed the subject.

"I heard that Fort Saint Grant had a conflict with the people of the Original Truth Church recently?"

"It seems so. My mother didn't mention it much... But I think with the madness of that group of cultists..."

The atmosphere of the chat between the two sides can't be said to be pleasant, but it can be regarded as harmonious.

In fact, the marriage between the two families has long been determined. Although the engagement ceremony has not been held yet, since the tacit understanding has been reached, there is basically no need to discuss anything.

So although the blond boy was a little restrained when facing his future "mother-in-law", he didn't feel any pressure at all.

...

However, when an uninvited guest suddenly sat next to the boy, he suddenly had a bad feeling.

The uninvited guest was a handsome man of the same age, followed by a brown-haired follower in his twenties. The two did not look like wizards.

However, the boy was very wary of this person, even hostile.

Because he knew him, the guy named Mellen.

Because of the scarcity of numbers, it is common for wizard families to hold various social gatherings, especially when facing an ally family with hundreds of years of friendship.

Therefore, although the blond boy is not a local, he often comes to visit and is not unfamiliar with this city and some people in the city.

During his last visit, a year ago, he and his mother had met this guy named Mellen, and his mother praised him for his good looks.

If that were the case alone, the boy would not be alert.

But afterwards, his mother wrote to the other party, and they are still in contact now. The two sides have become pen pals.

This made the boy alert.

His parents, like him, were married by arranged marriage. His father was very satisfied with the arranged marriage, but his mother was always dissatisfied. She even divorced his father two years ago.

Whether his mother has her own private life in private is something that no one can say for sure.

Therefore, the boy has sufficient reason to suspect that the guy named Mellen in front of him, who has black hair and blue eyes like his mother, may be his half-brother who has been separated for many years.

Otherwise, how could his mother, the vice-president of a top wizard school, be so active in contacting an ordinary boy in the secular world?

Of course, if it was just this, he wouldn't be nervous.

But now that he met the other party in this situation, he had to think more.

"Maybe my mother was afraid that Mrs. Chelsea didn't like me, so she specially called a backup?"

"Or Mrs. Chelsea once expressed dissatisfaction with me, so my mother specially called a backup?"

He couldn't sit still.

An ordinary person does not pose a threat to the marriage between wizards, but if it is an ordinary person with wizard blood, the restrictions are not so harsh.

Although being robbed is the worst case, you can just change a family to continue the marriage.

But this is not decent at all.

More importantly, Mrs. Chelsea is not an ordinary "mother-in-law". She seems to be so kind that even ordinary people can be invited to the banquet. In fact, she is a "big shot" with a strong presence in the entire wizard world-

One of the three major wizard banks, the largest shareholder of the Glitter Bank, the honorary vice president of the International Wizarding Union Council, a member of the Wizard Education Committee, the core backbone of the Era Explorer Association, the behind-the-scenes controller of the Blackstone Ocean Trading Company...

One of these titles is enough for ordinary wizards to look up to, and Mrs. Chelsea has a lot of them.

If it weren't for the small number of her family, which greatly limited the spread of her influence, if it weren't for the hundreds of years of friendship between the two families, and the close relationship between his mother and Mrs. Chelsea, the family to which the boy belongs would really not be qualified to marry the other party.

Therefore, Mrs. Chelsea's identity as a "son-in-law" is very valuable and must not be taken away by others.

Therefore, when the bastard who was suspected to be his "brother" greeted him and sat next to him, the boy said in an unhappy tone: "Who are you?"

"Who told you to sit here?"    …

Why is this person so hostile?

Mellen felt a little puzzled.

He saw that Mrs. Chelsea might die, so he came to try to see if he could reverse this fate.

In his opinion, it would be a pity if such a lovely beauty suddenly disappeared.

And more importantly, he had just awakened his golden finger, and now was the time when he needed experimental subjects.

But it seems that not everyone can be the target of his experiments.

At least there were only three or two kittens around who could make his golden fingers react.

So Meren naturally chose the one that was most pleasing to his eyes.

The results don't seem to be very popular...

Are they talking about something secret and don't want to be disturbed?

But if that’s the case, shouldn’t we find a private place to talk?

Mellen glanced at the dense crowd around him from the corner of his eye, feeling a little puzzled.

But on the surface, he didn't feel the slightest embarrassment of being excluded. Instead, he smiled apologetically at the other party.

"I have to disturb you because I have something to do. I'm sorry."

"Perhaps before doing this," the young man said coldly, "you should ask for our consent?"

"Of course, that's why I'm sitting here."

As he spoke, Mellen took out a deck of playing cards from his pocket, started shuffling the cards in his hand, and said: "This matter is related to this playing card, please take a look."

Mrs. Chelsea was the absolute protagonist of this banquet, and there were already a lot of attention around her. When Mellen used a very gorgeous technique to control the playing cards in his hand to clatter, he instantly attracted a lot of attention.

And when he shuffled the cards and miraculously turned the top red A into a black A, it even caused a cry of surprise.

"I suddenly had this ability to switch the colors of cards, and I thought it might be magic."

Meren, who had no idea that he was showing off in front of two real wizards, said seriously: "Someone told me, you may know why this is happening."

Upon hearing this, Mrs. Chelsea looked at Melen with strange eyes and said nothing, while the blond boy sitting next to Melen showed a mocking smile.

The so-called magic skills are difficult for ordinary people to figure out, but for a wizard with strong eyesight, he can easily see through the flaws.

The guy in front of him was so clever that he got here by tricking them. He was simply overestimating his abilities.

Mellen didn't know what the other person was thinking. Seeing that no one spoke, he then performed other card magic tricks.

Predict card selection, turn cards into a straight flush, control cards from the air...

The techniques became more and more complex, and the techniques became more gorgeous. With more and more guests gathering around him, he had no shortage of cooperating companions. The bursts of surprised cries became the loudest noise in the party hall.

"Mother obviously didn't tell him anything about wizards and magic."

After watching for a long time, the blond boy who had been observing at the side was finally completely relieved, so he sat comfortably on the sofa and smiled as he watched the poor guy in front of him, who was suspected of being a bastard brother, perform hard.

If this guy really knows the true identities of the two of them, then he will understand that the more exaggerated he is now, the more he will look like a funny clown in the eyes of Mrs. Chelsea.

…

The reality was different from what he thought.

Mrs. Chelsea, who was sitting opposite Melon, did not find anything funny about Mellen's appearance at the moment. Instead, she admired the boy's hard work with interest.

This is a difference in thinking between men and women.

To the young man, Melen's current appearance was very funny, because his magic skills were very poor in the eyes of wizards.

But in Mrs. Chelsea's view, the big boy who tried his best to express himself, with sweat even overflowing from his forehead, had a special charm at the moment.

However, this is just a trivial attitude of appreciation.

This change in attitude made her even more determined not to let her daughter have contact with Melen.

…

"Obviously you have no idea what's going on."

After showing off for a long time, there was no response from the two of them. Mellen seemed to be frustrated and put away the cards, but then he changed the subject.

"Fortunately, my visit this time has not been fruitless."

As he spoke, he stretched his hand back, and a certain brown-haired young man standing behind him handed a cloth bag inlaid with gold wire into Meren's hand.

"It seemed like a magical pocket,"

As Melen spoke, he winked at the blond boy next to him who was smiling sarcastically for some unknown reason.

"Maybe we can guess what's in it?"

Seeing the pocket, the smile on the blond boy's face suddenly froze.