Chapter : 881
Lloyd, playing his part to perfection, looked up at the knight, his eyes wide with a beautifully feigned, innocent confusion. “Arrest?” he said, his voice the soft, gentle tone of the doctor, a sound that was now laced with a note of pure, bewildered hurt. “Sir Knight, I do not understand. I have won the Challenge. I have defeated the Demon. What crime have I committed?”
“The crime of fraud,” the knight replied, his voice a flat, dead thing. “You have used a forbidden artifact to channel a power that is not your own. You have made a mockery of this sacred contest. The power you displayed… it is not the power of a man of your apparent age. It is an impossibility. You are a cheat.”
The accusation, spoken with such calm, official finality, hung in the air between them. Lloyd looked from the knight’s hard, unforgiving face to the sea of accusatory faces in the stands, and then to the sneering, triumphant face of Gias. He allowed a look of profound, dawning, and heartbreaking despair to cross his features. He was a man who had done the impossible, and his reward was to be branded a liar and a criminal. He was a hero, being condemned by the very people he had, in a way, just saved.
He opened his mouth to protest, to offer his defense, to begin the next, intricate phase of his verbal, psychological manipulation.
But he never got the chance.
For in that moment, from the high, shadowed, and almost forgotten Royal Box, a new voice entered the drama.
It was a woman’s voice. And it was a voice of absolute, unquestionable, and chilling authority. It was not loud, but it was as clear and as pure as a crystal bell, and it cut through the tense, heavy atmosphere of the arena like a blade of light, silencing every whisper, capturing every ear.
“He is not a fraud.”
Every single person in the arena, from the lowest beggar to the highest lord, from the one-eyed knight to the broken champion, from the hidden spymaster to the two shocked assassins in the upper tiers, all of them, as one, turned their heads and looked up at the Royal Box.
The veiled Princess Amina was standing at the balustrade, a solitary, slender figure of sky-blue silk. Her face was still hidden, but there was no mistaking the regal, commanding power in her posture.
“The power he wields is his own,” her clear, melodic voice continued, each word a perfectly enunciated, and utterly irrefutable, decree. “And his age does not violate the rules of the Challenge. He is a legitimate victor.”
A new, and even more profound, wave of shocked, disbelieving silence fell over the arena. The Princess herself had intervened. She had spoken. And she had not just defended the challenger; she had stated, as a matter of absolute, unequivocal fact, that his age was legitimate.
The one-eyed knight was frozen, his hand still on his sword, his mind a complete and utter blank. He was a man of the law, a man of rules. And the word of a member of the royal family was a law that superseded all others. But… how? How could she possibly know? How could she speak with such impossible, absolute certainty?
Gias, whose triumphant, righteous fury had been the catalyst for this entire confrontation, could only stare, his mouth hanging open, his mind a sputtering, short-circuited mess.
And Lloyd, the man at the center of it all, was, genuinely, profoundly, and completely… surprised.
He stared up at the veiled, enigmatic figure in the Royal Box, and his mind, the great, strategic engine that had anticipated every possibility, that had planned for every contingency, was a complete and utter blank.
This was not part of the plan. This was an anomaly. A new, beautiful, and utterly terrifying variable that he had not, and could not, have possibly foreseen.
How in the name of all the gods and demons did she know he wasn't a young man? The secret of his true, eighty-year-old soul, the one, single, foundational truth of his existence that was his most guarded secret… she had just announced it to the entire world, as casually as if she were commenting on the weather.
The game, which he had been so certain he was controlling, had just been taken over by a new, and far more mysterious, player.
Chapter : 882
High in the upper tiers of the arena, nestled in a shadowed alcove that offered a perfect, unobstructed view of the carnage below, the two assassins, Jager and Kael, had watched the entire, impossible spectacle unfold. They were far enough from the roaring crowd that they were in their own, private pocket of silence, a silence that was now filled with the thick, heavy weight of their own profound and furious disbelief.
Kael, the brutish man of action, was a statue of pure, uncomprehending rage. His hand, which had been resting on the reassuringly solid haft of his battle axe, was now gripping it so tightly that his knuckles were white. The hand-crossbow he had been so meticulously cleaning the day before lay forgotten on the stone bench beside him, a child’s toy in the face of the cosmic, overwhelming power he had just witnessed.
His mind was a roaring forge of frustration. He had come to Zakaria to hunt a man. A lordling. A clever, slippery, and surprisingly powerful lightning user, yes. But a man nonetheless. A mortal, killable thing of flesh and blood, protected by a single, formidable bodyguard.
The being he had just watched, the four-meter-tall titan of solar fire who had unmade a Transcendent-level Demon with the casual, artistic grace of a master sculptor… that was not the target they had been briefed on. That was not a simple man.
“This… this is the target?” Kael finally managed to hiss, his voice a low, gravelly growl of pure, venomous anger. The words were not a plea; they were an accusation. “The soap-merchant? The lightning-user from the intelligence reports? Was our benefactor trying to get us killed?”
Jager, who was always so cool, so composed, so serenely and condescendingly in control, was silent. For the first time since Kael had known him, the elegant, aristocratic mask had cracked. His pale, handsome face was ashen, his grey eyes wide with a look of profound, analytical shock. He was a master of a game whose rules had just been taken, torn to shreds, and set on fire before his very eyes.
Their intelligence, the foundation upon which their entire, carefully planned operation had been built, was not just flawed; it was a catastrophic, laughable, and suicidally incompetent work of fiction.
“They told us he was a lightning user,” Kael continued, his voice rising in a tone of furious, indignant disbelief. “They said his spirit was a wolf! They said his primary weakness was his arrogance! They did not say… they did not say he could become a mountain of fire!”
The sheer, breathtaking scale of the intelligence failure was a thing of almost beautiful, perfect horror. They had been sent to hunt a lion, armed with a net designed to catch a rabbit, while being told to watch out for a particularly nasty badger.
Jager finally found his voice. It was not his usual, silken, confident purr. It was a low, strained, and slightly shaky rasp. “The reports… were clearly incomplete.”
“Incomplete?” Kael let out a harsh, bitter laugh. “Incomplete? Jager, a report that fails to mention that the target is a walking cataclysm is not ‘incomplete’! It is a betrayal! Our benefactor either lied to us, or his own spies are fools. This changes nothing about the mission, but it changes everything about our methods.”
He surged to his feet, his massive frame radiating an aura of pure, frustrated energy. He was not panicked. He was angry. He was a warrior who had been sent into battle with a faulty map. “This waiting is over. The time for subtlety and traps is done. He has shown his hand. Now we show him ours. We know where he is. We strike now, hard and fast, before he has a chance to recover from that display. We hit him before he can vanish again.”
Jager did not move. He remained seated, his long, slender fingers steepled before his lips, his gaze still fixed on the arena below, on the small, unassuming, and now once-again human form of the man who had just shattered his entire universe.
The initial shock, the intellectual vertigo, was already beginning to recede in his mind, replaced by the cold, familiar, and comforting logic of the professional. He was a master assassin, a strategist, a man who saw the world not as a place of mythic beings, but as a series of complex, and ultimately solvable, problems. And this… this was the most complex, most beautiful, and most interesting problem he had ever encountered.
“Sit down, Kael,” he said, his voice quiet, but imbued with a new, cold, and unshakeable authority.
Chapter : 883
Kael, who had been on the verge of grabbing his axe and storming the arena himself, hesitated. He looked at his partner, at the new, strange, and deeply unsettling stillness in Jager’s eyes. The shock was gone, replaced by something else. Something colder. Something far more dangerous.
Stolen story; please report.
“Sit down,” Jager repeated, his voice a soft, silken, and utterly unbreakable command.
Kael slowly, reluctantly, sat back down, his own warrior’s rage momentarily quelled by the sheer, absolute force of his partner’s will.
“You are a soldier, Kael,” Jager began, his voice a low, analytical hum. “You see an unexpected fortification, and your instinct is to attack it head-on with overwhelming force. It is a sound, if predictable, tactical response. But a direct assault now, even with his power presumably drained, would be a fool’s errand. His bodyguard, the King-level shadow, is still out there. And now the entire city, the entire royal court, is watching this man. A public attack would be suicide.”
“So we do nothing?” Kael growled, his voice incredulous. “We let him walk away?”
“We do not do nothing,” Jager chided gently. “We simply do it smarter. You are correct. The old plan is useless. The time for simple traps is over. The target’s power level requires us to escalate our methods. Dramatically.”
A new, strange, and terrible light was dawning in Jager’s grey eyes. The shock had been replaced by a pure, unadulterated, and almost joyful professional excitement. The hunt, which had become so tedious and so boring, had just become the single greatest challenge of his entire, long, and illustrious career.
“Our mission has not been aborted,” he said, his voice a low, triumphant purr. “It has simply… been upgraded. This is no longer a simple elimination. This will require a level of preparation, of resources, and of artistry that we have not employed in years. Our benefactor wanted a dead lordling. We will deliver him a legend’s fall. And the price for such a service will be… magnificent.”
He looked at Kael, and a slow, cold, and deeply predatory smile spread across his face. “Our hunt is not over, my friend. It has simply become more interesting. And far, far more profitable.”
---
Kael stared at his partner, his mind struggling to keep up with the dizzying, terrifying leaps of Jager’s logic. The man was insane. He had just witnessed a being of seemingly infinite power, a creature that could create and unmake mountains of fire, and his reaction was not to reassess the risk, but to see it as an opportunity to inflate their invoice. But Kael was a warrior, and a warrior’s code was simple: if the enemy is stronger than you thought, you find a bigger, sharper sword. Jager was proposing they build a new one.
“Escalate our methods?” Kael repeated, the words feeling thick and stupid in his mouth, but his tone was now one of grudging, professional curiosity rather than indignant rage. “Jager, what methods do we possess that can possibly counter that? He has his own monstrous fire spirit, and he is protected by a King-Level bodyguard. We are two men.”
“We are not just two men,” Jager sighed, his tone one of a patient teacher explaining a complex concept to a particularly strong, but very literal, student. “We are artists. And our art is not just in the killing, but in the preparation. You are still thinking in terms of a direct confrontation, of our strength against his. And in that arena, you are correct. We would likely lose.”
He leaned forward, his grey eyes gleaming with a new, feverish, and almost religious intensity. “The target has shown us his true, overwhelming power. That was his mistake. He believes he is unassailable. He believes his raw force makes him invincible. And that is the very arrogance we will use to destroy him. We will not challenge him to a duel. We will construct a kill-box so perfect, so absolute, that his power will be rendered completely and utterly irrelevant.”
“And how do we do that?” Kael asked, his voice a low, skeptical growl.
“With resources, my dear Kael,” Jager replied, his voice a soft, silken, and utterly venomous whisper. “And with knowledge. We will contact our benefactor. We will present him with the new, terrifying truth of the target. And we will make a request. A request for a tool that is reserved for only the most high-value, most powerful of targets. A tool that our order has not deployed in over a decade.”
He paused, letting the weight of his chilling implication sink in. “We will request a dispensation to acquire a ‘Soul-Catcher’ shard.”
Chapter : 884
Kael’s blood ran cold. He was a killer, a brute, but even he knew the legends, the dark, forbidden whispers of the Soul-Catchers. They were not simple weapons. They were artifacts of black magic, crystalline shards imbued with an Abyssal curse that did not just kill the body, but was said to devour the very spirit, to erase a soul from the cycle of rebirth. They were a weapon of absolute, final damnation.
“That is… forbidden magic,” Kael said, his voice a low, warning rumble.
“It is effective,” Jager replied, his voice a soft, cold, and utterly final statement. “The target’s power is immense, yes. But it is the power of a spirit user. And a Soul-Catcher does not care about the strength of a spirit. It cares only about the soul to which it is bound. It is the perfect, conceptual counter to a man like him.”
He leaned back in his seat, the picture of calm, composed, and utterly ruthless strategic planning. “The new plan is simple. We will acquire the artifact. We will then construct the perfect ambush. Not in the open, not in an arena. In a confined space. A place with no room to maneuver, no room to summon a mountain of fire. And we will strike not with our own power, but with a power that unmakes reality itself. He will be dead before his own formidable bodyguard can even react.”
The plan was monstrous. It was a violation of not just martial codes, but of the very laws of the gods themselves.
And it was absolutely, undeniably, and brilliantly perfect.
Kael was silent for a long moment. He looked at the man opposite him, at the cold, beautiful, and utterly inhuman intelligence in his partner’s eyes. A true warrior faced his enemy head-on. But he was not a true warrior. He was an assassin. And an assassin’s only honor was the successful completion of the contract.
He gave a single, slow, and reluctant nod. “The pay will need to be doubled. This is a new level of risk.”
Jager’s smile widened. “My dear Kael,” he purred. “I believe our benefactor will be more than happy to oblige. After all, we are about to deliver him a legend.”
The two assassins sat in their shadowed alcove, their own, private, and terrible alliance reforged in the fires of their shared ambition and their newfound, monstrous purpose. The old plan was dead. The new hunt, a hunt for a weapon that could kill a soul, was about to begin.
The Royal Arena was a tinderbox of raw, volatile, and deeply confused emotion, ready to explode. The crowd, which had just moments before been baying for the blood of a fraud, was now a silent, gaping, and utterly terrified mass. The Royal Knights, who had been on the verge of arresting a common cheat, were now frozen in a state of profound, procedural, and deeply existential paralysis. And Gias, the broken champion, could only stare, his own, personal humiliation now a small, insignificant footnote in a story that had just become a cosmic, epic poem.
They were all staring at the veiled Princess Amina, the slender, enigmatic figure in the Royal Box who had, with a few, quiet, and absolutely world-shattering words, completely and utterly upended their entire reality.
“He is not a fraud,” she had said. “The power he wields is his own. And his age does not violate the rules of the Challenge. He is a legitimate victor.”
The statement was a triple-pronged assault on the very foundations of their understanding. She had not just declared him innocent; she had declared the impossible to be true. She had stated, as a matter of absolute, unequivocal fact, that a young man could wield the power of a god, and that his age, the very crux of the accusation, was a non-issue.
The silence that followed her decree was not just a lack of noise; it was a vacuum, a void created by the sudden, violent implosion of seventy thousand individual certainties.
The one-eyed Royal Knight, the commander of the unit, was the man trapped at the very epicenter of this conceptual earthquake. His entire world was built on a simple, iron-clad foundation of rules, of laws, of the known and predictable order of things. And the Princess had just taken that foundation and had turned it to sand.
He was a soldier, and his first, and most ingrained, instinct was to obey. The word of the Princess was law. But he was also a veteran warrior, a man whose own, hard-won experience screamed at him that what she was saying was a lie. A beautiful, royal, and politically convenient lie, perhaps, but a lie nonetheless.
