Chapter 201: An Old Grudge
[Royal Capital – Noble Residential District]
In one of the mansions in this district, the sound of shattering objects rang out again and again, sounds that continued for quite some time.
It was the villa assigned to Lucius Langthon, who, the moment he’d returned from the meeting at the academy, had launched into a spiral of rage and destruction.
He’d kept it up ever since, for some time now, perhaps dozens of minutes, perhaps hours. Only the terrified servants of the villa and the people living nearby knew for certain.
His breath came out ragged, his teeth clenched, his eyes bloodshot with a fury that never seemed to find enough of an outlet, no matter how many objects he sent shattering to the floor.
The villa assigned to him for his stay in the capital was far from modest, but in that moment, every trace of its elegance seemed to exist for no other purpose than to be destroyed.
Several minutes passed before his chest stopped heaving, before his breathing finally steadied. Only then did Lucius turn toward the study door, where a figure had stood motionless and silent the entire time, without so much as flinching, without showing the slightest reaction to the destruction unfolding just steps away from him.
"Well?" Lucius said at last, his voice still tight, rough. "What did they say?"
The man in the doorway was elderly, tall, his back straight despite his evident age, a bearing that spoke of decades of rigid discipline. Part of his face was covered by a thin mask, elegant yet unmistakably functional, concealing whatever lay beneath it.
He waited a moment before answering, as though carefully choosing each word.
"They refused, my lord," he finally said, his voice calm and measured, without the slightest trace of fear despite the state of the room. "They consider the assignment too risky. Especially now that the girl is under the academy’s direct protection."
Lucius clenched his jaw but didn’t interrupt.
"Ever since His Majesty decided to personally back her," the butler continued, "there have been powerful individuals assigned to ensure her safety at all times. They’ve stated they cannot act with the necessary level of security. Not under these conditions."
For a long moment, Lucius said nothing, his gaze fixed on an indistinct point as he considered his options.
"However," the man added, noticing his master’s silence, "they said they could send someone in two weeks. That’s when the girl is scheduled to participate in the battle to support a city near the capital. Under those circumstances, her safety won’t be guaranteed to the same extent."
A flash of something crossed Lucius’s eyes.
He understood immediately what that piece of information meant.
He nodded slowly, a bitter smile that never reached his eyes spreading across his face.
"Good," he said, his voice firmer now. "Accept whatever sum they ask for. Whatever conditions they set. I don’t care what it costs." He paused, his eyes narrowing slightly. "As long as they bring me that girl alive."
The butler dipped his head in a brief, composed bow.
"It will be done, my lord."
He turned and left without another word, his footsteps fading silently down the corridor.
That man was the Langthon family’s longtime butler, the one who managed the manor in Lirath, in the baron’s absence, one of the few survivors of the disaster that had struck the city, though surviving hadn’t meant coming out unscathed.
Part of his face, the part now hidden beneath the thin mask he always wore, even to this day, was a permanent reminder of that day. Scars that had never fully healed, marks no treatment had ever managed to erase.
He’d been fortunate, all the same. Fortunate to have survived, and even more fortunate not to have ended up corrupted like so many other survivors of that incident.
Since then, he’d continued serving the baron, partly out of loyalty, partly because there was little else left to manage in a city reduced to little more than a heap of rubble and memories.
Until fairly recently, the capital had kept active teams stationed in the area, tasked with hunting down and eliminating the last remnants of void energy still lingering there, an operation estimated to take no more than a few weeks. But then the situation across the entire continent had shifted dramatically, and every effort in that direction had been quietly shelved.
Every available resource had been redirected toward a single goal: defending against the Abyss’s attacks, which had grown more frequent, more intense, over the course of the past year.
Everyone, from the humblest farmer to the highest-ranking noble, understood by now that another calamity, similar to the one that had nearly destroyed the entire continent in the past, was bearing down on the kingdom.
And yet, despite all of it, despite the weight of a threat looming over every single life on the continent, Lucius Langthon’s heart still beat for one thing alone.
His revenge.
And to achieve it, he was prepared to sacrifice anything.
Even if the target of that revenge was a talent with the potential to elevate the strength of the entire kingdom in the years to come.
Left alone in the ruined study, Lucius let himself drop heavily into the chair behind his desk, indifferent to the shattered glass and splintered wood scattered all around him. On the surface, his breathing had calmed. His face had settled back into something close to composure.
But inside him, the rage hadn’t died down at all.
He didn’t believe a single word the two girls had said. Not an ounce of it. Especially not when Selena had described, with that cutting coldness that irritated him so much, how his two sons were, apparently, dead.
He didn’t believe it.
He didn’t want to believe it.
And that was precisely why he intended to extract the truth from her by whatever means necessary, before deciding what to do with her.
That girl’s face, her features, reminded him of someone else. A woman he had once loved, but whom, due to certain circumstances, he had ultimately killed with his own hands. A woman who had never returned his feelings, not even until the very end.
Even after all these years, the thought of her still left a bitter taste in his mouth. The resentment he had felt back then had never truly faded, slowly taking root inside him and festering with time.
And now, at last, he intended to put an end to it once and for all.
By eliminating that girl.