"What?!"
"Silco got his hands on Hextech gemstones?!"
"More than one, at that!"
"Are you insane?"
"Why would you do that?!"
The Council chamber exploded into chaos, every councilor trying to seize control of the floor.
Caleb calmly dug at his ear.
What a racket.
Even the two female councilors besides Mel had lost their composure and were shouting at the top of their lungs.
"Quiet!"
In the end, it was Jayce's roar that brought the room to order.
"Go on," Jayce said, fury barely hidden in his eyes, but he had to understand the situation first.
"There's one thing about you people from topside that's always been especially unbearable."
Caleb cleared his throat and began.
"It's not that you dump your pollution into the fissures. It's not that the enforcers do nothing."
"And it's not even that bloated idiots like that can sit on the Council."
The bald man beside him flushed a dark, furious red.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Be quiet." Mel cut him off without a trace of politeness.
Compared to his family's little fortune, Caleb—the man who had somehow conjured Hextech gemstones out of thin air—was far more important.
"Topside's biggest problem is its self-righteousness."
Caleb's tone stayed flat, as if he were talking about what he'd eaten for breakfast.
"You treat your decisions like favors. When the Undercity should do this, when it should do that—you decide all of it."
"One day you hold a meeting and decide Zaun gets a few scraps. Or a war."
"A couple years later, some genius gets another bright idea and comes up with a new way to handle the Undercity."
"You've never respected them."
"Are you finished?" Jayce snapped. "Then explain the gemstones."
"I copied them," Caleb said bluntly.
"You copied them?" Jayce's eyes filled with confusion.
"Hex-crystals are, in essence, taken from the brackern in the Shuriman region," Caleb said evenly. "And when Hex-crystals are pieced together, that's where the most basic Hexcore comes from."
"In other words, that was the key component in the explosion years ago, and the key tool Councilor Talis used to build the Hexgates."
"If you refine a Hexcore, it becomes a Hextech gemstone."
The councilors were already staring at him in shock. This man really did understand Hextech.
And not just vaguely—he knew it in astonishing depth.
Was he seriously some kind of secret prodigy trained by Heimerdinger?
One after another, the councilors turned to Jayce. The meaning in their eyes was simple enough: Was any of that true?
Jayce himself was beyond stunned.
He and Viktor had spent years struggling through their research, and they had only managed to develop Hextech gemstones before Progress Day.
Then it hit him.
He wasn't the only person whose life had been saved by a mage, and there certainly wasn't only one mage in the world.
If Caleb had encountered one too, then it made sense that he might have come into contact with knowledge like this.
"That much is true," Jayce said at last, lowering his head as his mind raced. "The crystals did come from Shurima."
When Caleb saw Jayce's expression loosen, the corner of his mouth lifted.
"Of course, you and Viktor aren't the only ones exploring the path of Hextech."
The other councilors' expressions grew complicated.
No matter how deeply they drowned themselves in luxury, or how weak or muddleheaded they might be, anyone who had sat in that chamber long enough understood what Hextech represented.
"Hextech gemstones have unmatched stability. They get rid of the Hexcore's tendency to explode the second it takes a hard hit."
"And their energy output doesn't drop at all."
Only Jayce and Mel already knew that. The other councilors' eyes burned as they stared at the man standing in the center of the chamber.
A moment ago, he had merely been surprising.
Now he was a walking gold mine.
Just think about it: the Hexgates, built with only the Hexcore, had already made Piltover famous across the world.
If stable Hextech gemstones like this could be widely adopted, how much wealth would they bring?
Jayce had understood Hextech, and that alone had carried him from the lower nobility all the way to becoming the speaker of Progress Day and a councilor.
This Caleb—
He had to be won over.
That was what most of the people in the room were thinking.
The head of House Kiramman was secretly delighted.
This kid knew her daughter. They had gone on adventures together in the Undercity.
At the same price, compared to the other councilors who knew nothing about his background, her advantage was obviously the greatest.
"Then why did you give the gemstones to Silco?" Mel asked.
That wasn't a bet she had made, and it wasn't one she could have made.
She had backed Jayce and Viktor before, and House Medarda's gains had soared all the way up.
But with Caleb, Caitlyn of House Kiramman had given that family a slight edge instead.
"A while ago—well, not all that long ago—the Undercity launched an uprising against topside."
"The two sides fought on the bridge. What happened in the end?"
Jayce fell silent in thought. He had only been a child then, traveling with his mother outside the city.
"What else would happen?" the bald councilor said with a chilly laugh. "The Undercity was crushed. It's only recently that they've even started showing signs of pushing back against us."
The mechanical councilor spoke in a voice devoid of emotion. On matters like this, aside from Heimerdinger, he was the one most familiar with it.
"Zaun stopped the war through sacrifice," Caleb continued.
"Their leader, Vander, chose a way of coexistence based on peace, and the price was the people's quality of life."
"Silco took it a step further. He sacrificed that quality of life too, but in a more aggressive way."
The councilors focused intently on him.
After all, they had only heard fragments about that uprising. None of them knew it as thoroughly as Caleb did.
"But under Silco's rule, the Undercity at least gained some backbone."
"They no longer had to meet gunfire with their own flesh the way they did last time."
As they listened, the councilors fell into thought.
They could understand why he had given Zaun Hextech gemstones.
But that was bad for Piltover.
Very bad.
"Mr. Caleb, given the current situation, what is it you want?" Shoola asked after thinking for a long while. She had listened to every word with the utmost care.
Compared to a violent agitator, she was far more willing to believe the young man before her was some kind of extraordinary figure.
"Zaun needs self-governance. It needs Piltover's technological support."
"You owe that city too much. If they want to riot, that's only natural."
"You should be grateful that what I want isn't war, but equality between the two cities."
"We are not afraid of war." A trace of disdain flashed in Jayce's eyes.
So what if Caleb understood Hextech? Jayce and Viktor had spent years walking this road.
Just because someone else had been down part of it too, did that make all their experiments and sweat worth nothing?
"You'll find out." There was a hint of a smile in Caleb's eyes instead. "With that, I'll take my leave."
After Caleb left, the chamber did not erupt into heated debate.
It sank into a long, heavy silence.
Who was he? Where had he come from? What other secrets was he hiding?
And if he came from neither of the twin cities, why did he want equality between them so badly?