Chapter 616: Chapter 616 - Taming Respect

The young noble evaluated him, clearly trying to determine if Ren was someone important or simply audacious. His eyes swept from Ren’s expensive ’off-colored tunic’ down to his polished ’comfortable-first’ boots, then back up again with growing confusion. The clothing style screamed new wealth, and the face was unfamiliar.

"Your family," he repeated with a tone suggesting disbelief, his lip curling slightly. "And who exactly are you?"

Ren simply looked at the noble without changing his neutral expression and sighed, somewhere between bored and annoyed at "this type of thing".

He’d dealt with enough entitled nobles at the academy to recognize the pattern, the posturing, the assumed superiority, the need to establish dominance over anyone perceived as inferior.

The butler, positioned discreetly behind Ren, considered intervening. His hand twitched toward his side, where a formal introduction card rested, but only correctly used for higher ranked nobles than his employer...

And speaking now would also diminish his young employer, would make it seem he needed to be defended by someone of lower rank than the aggressor.

So he only clenched his jaw and waited, even if his decades of service were telling him this would not end well.

The property agent, a middle-aged man who clearly wanted to avoid trouble, didn’t think so deeply. So he cleared his throat nervously, his voice coming out higher than intended. "Excuse me, young lord, but this is Lord Ren Patinder and..."

The young man raised a hand in front of the agent’s face to silence him for his "impertinence". The gesture was dismissive, the kind of casual cruelty that came from years of never being challenged.

There was a moment of silence while the name registered. The young noble blinked, frowned, clearly searching his memory for whether he should recognize that name. His expression cycled through confusion, consideration, then settled back on arrogance.

’I don’t know any important "Patinder"...’ he finally thought.

"I don’t care who they are," the noble interrupted with disdain, waving his hand as if swatting away an insect. "If they don’t know their place, someone has to teach it to them."

Had he just threatened his parents too?

It was then that something changed in the air around the noble. Subtly at first, then more obvious. His hair began moving as if a breeze touched it, except there was no breeze anywhere else. The carefully styled locks lifted and swayed in an invisible current.

The noble frowned, trying to turn around, but discovered his feet had lifted slightly off the ground.

"What...?" His eyes widened as he rose several more centimeters, his boots now dangling uselessly above the cobblestones.

Ren hadn’t moved. Hadn’t said a word. Hadn’t even shifted his weight or changed his breathing. He just watched him with those eyes that now subtly glowed with jade light full of elemental power.

The noble spun in the air involuntarily, making a complete rotation before he could react. His arms pinwheeled, trying to find purchase in empty air, his carefully maintained dignity crumbling with each undignified flail.

"How dare you?" he roared, his wounded pride overcoming his common sense. His face flushed red with humiliation and rage. "I’m an 8th year student at Silver 3 rank!"

He activated his fusion with the desperate intensity of someone whose world was suddenly not following the expected script. His Elemental Wolverine merged with him in a flash of light and energy, a beast popular among nobility, and this one was in a perfect situation because he had directed his cultivation toward wind affinity itself.

The noble’s control over the element shot up to 300%, Tier 3, enough to dominate most wind elemental beasts even of his same rank.

Power flooded through him, the familiar rush of fusion making him feel invincible again.

He immediately tried to cancel the control Ren had over the surrounding wind, pouring his enhanced will into the air currents. He could feel them, sense every eddy and flow, and he reached out with his powerful Tier 3 control to seize them, thinking about the endless ways he would use to recover his dignity.

He would slam this upstart into the ground, make him grovel, teach him what real power looked like and...

Nothing happened.

The wind kept moving exactly as Ren wanted, completely ignoring the fused noble’s attempts to influence it. It was like trying to push against a mountain, no, worse, like pushing against something that didn’t even acknowledge his existence.

"Impossible," the noble murmured, his face paling as the reality of the situation began to sink in. His Tier 3 control should have at least created some resistance, some push-back. But there was nothing. "What kind of wind master is helping you?"

The noble tried to perceive energy around them, extending his enhanced senses to find the hidden expert hidden behind the hypothetical curtains who must be assisting this boy. But nothing... no signature, no presence, no indication of any external interference.

’Impossible, the brat isn’t even fused!’

The noble began spinning in the air much faster now, the world becoming a blur of colors and shapes. His stomach lurched as the rotation accelerated, soon becoming dizzy and disoriented. The carefully prepared breakfast he’d eaten that morning began its unwelcome journey back up his throat.

Ren finally spoke, his voice soft but charged with power that made everyone present except his parents feel a chill run down their spines.

"No master... just a young man who has almost 500% elemental control. In all elements."

The words hung in the air like a death sentence. Five hundred percent. All elements. The implications were staggering, impossible, the kind of thing that shouldn’t exist outside of ancient legends.

To emphasize the point, the wind that had been manipulating suddenly cooled dramatically. The temperature plummeted so fast that moisture in the air condensed instantly. Ice crystals began forming in the air around the noble, water fusing with wind to create a miniature ice storm that surrounded him completely.

Each crystal caught the light, creating a dazzling but terrifying display of elemental mastery.