The journey from the bowels of the subterranean vaults to the exterior of Ophelius Hall felt like crossing between two completely different worlds.
While the grand south vestibule still echoed with magical explosions, the protests of the lower-class students, and the grinding of marble statues being smashed to pieces, the rear service corridors remained submerged in an almost spectral stillness.
Ed Rothtaylor led the march through the narrow halls.
Despite wearing heavy leather boots, his footsteps made absolutely no sound against the tiles.
Behind him, Lortelle Kehelland walked with forced elegance, trying to hide the evident magical exhaustion weighing on her shoulders after the ambush in the underground.
Bringing up the rear, Yenika Faelover walked with her arms crossed, shooting furtive, burning, and poorly concealed glares of deep distrust at the young merchant.
They finally reached the heavy iron door that opened into the back alley of the manicured gardens.
Ed stopped, rested a hand on the cold metal, and closed his eyes for a moment.
His mana sensitivity expanded like an invisible net, meticulously sweeping the outer perimeter.
“Clear within a twenty-meter radius,” Ed murmured, opening the door with a slight, controlled push that kept the rusted hinges from creaking.
“Move out.”
The freezing autumn night air hit them immediately, heavy with the unmistakable scent of dry leaves, damp earth, and the distant stench of smoke from the battles at the front of the building.
Barely a few meters away, camouflaged within the deep shadows cast by the towering hedges of the north garden, sat the covert carriage of the Elte Commercial Company.
It was an immensely luxurious vehicle, built from ebony wood and reinforced with dark steel, but it intentionally lacked the lit magical lanterns that usually announced the wealth of its occupant.
On the carriage door, barely visible in the gloom, was the engraving of the Golden Crown.
On the driver’s box, two coachmen dressed in somber black coats waited in absolute, tense silence.
Their rigid postures and hands resting near their belts gave them away—they were not mere drivers; they were private security professionals.
Upon seeing their true boss emerge from the darkness of the service door, both coachmen visibly relaxed.
One of them agilely hopped down to the ground and opened the carriage door.
“Miss Lortelle, we were just about to intervene.
The front is a complete mess,” the man whispered, giving a crisp, martial bow.
“Circumstances have changed drastically, Marcus,” Lortelle replied, stopping next to the carriage door without stepping up.
“My father is on the academy grounds tonight.
He has bought off the Head Maid.
His capital mercenaries must be surrounding the perimeter at this very moment, waiting for me to try and escape the vault.”
The coachman’s eyes widened in surprise, but his rigorous training overpowered his fear.
“What are your tactical orders, Miss?”
“You are the bait,” Ed intervened, stepping forward and assuming control of the logistical operation with absolute, natural authority.
“Get back on the box.
In exactly one minute, I want you to start this carriage and speed out of the alley toward Sylvania’s main road.
Make as much noise as possible.
Turn sharply, whip the horses mercilessly.
If Elte Kehelland’s assassins are watching the blind spots, they will take the bait, thinking Lortelle is fleeing inside in a panic.”
The coachman nodded firmly, instantly grasping the maneuver.
“We’ll draw those capital dogs far away from you, Miss.
Trust us.”
Lortelle shot a brief but sincere look of gratitude at her subordinates before they shut the empty carriage door and climbed back to their posts, ready for their suicidal sprint.
Ed turned toward the two girls.
The night was pitch-black, but the electrical tension between the spirit mage and the merchant was so dense it could practically be cut with a sword.
“The plan still stands, Lortelle,” Ed ordered with his usual pragmatic tone.
“You will hide in the Northern Forest, directly in my camp.
No one will look there.
But you cannot go alone.
Your mana is completely drained, you are injured, and the entire academy is swarming with furious students, professors on high alert, and guards patrolling blindly.”
Ed shifted his gray gaze to the spirit tamer.
“Yenika.
I need you to escort her.
You know the forest shortcuts better than anyone, and your magic can camouflage both of your tracks in the dark.
Take her to the cabin and make sure nothing breaches the perimeter.”
The silence that followed Ed’s request was sliced by a sharp, arrogant, and melodic smile from Lortelle.
The merchant, even with her face stained with blood and on the brink of financial ruin, couldn’t stop her manipulative instincts from surfacing.
She had noticed Yenika Faelover’s glaring looks ever since they left the vault, and she knew exactly which buttons to push to destabilize her.
“Oh, the sweet and peerless Yenika Faelover, the pride of the second year, will be my personal bodyguard tonight?” Lortelle purred, tucking her hair behind her bloodied ear with feigned, venomous innocence.
“I feel so honored.
Though I do hope she doesn’t stab me in the back while we walk through the dark woods together.
After all, those glares suggest she’d much rather tie me to a tree as wolf bait.”
Yenika’s face, which up until that moment had tried to maintain a serious, stoic expression in front of Ed, ignited like an oil-soaked torch.
Her cheeks flushed a furious red, and her hands clenched into fists so tight her knuckles cracked.
“I am not some treacherous, creeping assassin like the people in your company!” Yenika exploded, losing all her patience, taking an aggressive step toward Lortelle as literal sparks of spiritual fire leaped from the tips of her brown hair.
“And I am absolutely not going anywhere with you!
Ed, I completely refuse to do this!”
Yenika spun toward the blonde boy, crossing her arms over her chest and sporting an adorable yet fierce pout of pure territorial indignation.
“I am not going to be her babysitter!
I went down into that horrible dungeon to make sure you were okay, not to escort this…
this manipulative fox straight into your bed!” Yenika squeaked, feeling her blood boil just imagining Lortelle snooping alone through Ed’s belongings and sheets.
“I’m staying with you!
If you are going back into that building full of hostile guards, I will watch your back!
Let her go hide in the forest by herself, she’s a big girl, she can walk and use her own money to save herself!”
Lortelle let out a soft, arrogant laugh, immensely enjoying the mage’s utterly predictable reaction.
“Are you feeling that insecure about your position, sweet Yenika?
It’s just a humble wooden cabin.
I promise I won’t mess up Ed’s sheets any more than strictly necessary to sleep.”
“Shut up!” Yenika yelled, instinctively summoning a small wind spirit that blew a freezing gust straight into Lortelle’s face, completely messing up her hair and forcing her to step back.
The situation was escalating dangerously fast.
From a silent tactical infiltration mission, it was morphing into a noisy turf war that threatened to reveal their position to the guards at any second.
Ed observed the interaction with clinical inexpression.
His mind processed the fight with the exact same coldness with which he analyzed an enemy combat formation.
Lortelle’s provocation was a tactic designed to establish psychological dominance, and Yenika’s reaction was pure, volatile emotional territoriality.
Arguing with Yenika using logic and probabilities as to why he needed to go alone wouldn’t work; she operated based on her strongest emotions.
Besides, time was running out. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
The sun would rise in a couple of hours.
He needed an instant, definitive resolution.
Without saying a single word, Ed closed the distance between himself and the spirit tamer with one long, firm stride.
Yenika, who was just about to summon another spell to annoy the smirking merchant, froze completely when Ed stopped right in front of her, entirely invading her personal space.
Before the girl could process the alarming proximity, Ed raised both hands, firmly enveloping Yenika’s hands within his own.
The young man’s hands were large, solid, and covered in calluses from constant, rigorous sword training, but they transmitted a comforting warmth in the middle of the freezing night.
Ed lowered his head slightly to be exactly at eye level with the mage, forcing her to hold his gaze.
His icy, attractive gray eyes lost all their usual calculating coldness and softened, focusing solely and exclusively on her, as if the rest of the damn world had vanished into the shadows.
“Yenika,” Ed said, dropping his voice to a deep, magnetic, and heavy whisper that vibrated directly in the girl’s chest.
“If I go with you and Lortelle to the forest, we will lose invaluable time.
If I take you to the room, I will be putting you in the direct line of fire of professional mercenaries, and that is a tactical risk I am not willing to take tonight.
I need you to trust me.”
Yenika Faelover’s brain simply ceased to function.
A complete, fatal system error.
Feeling Ed’s warm hands enveloping hers, having his face so absurdly close that she could count his eyelashes, and hearing that deep, pleading tone of voice demolished each and every one of her solid mental defenses.
All the burning anger, the territorial jealousy, and the indignation evaporated in a millisecond, replaced by a wave of embarrassment, shyness, and nervousness so massive she felt her knees tremble.
“I am asking you, please, Yenika.
Do this for me,” Ed added, gently squeezing the girl’s hands, executing the perfect psychological coup de grâce.
The face of Sylvania’s greatest spirit tamer reached a shade of scarlet red that rivaled top-tier fire magic itself.
Pride, stubbornness, and anger simply went down the drain.
“I-I-I…
y-yes…
w-well…
if y-you put it like that…” Yenika stammered, entirely unable to articulate a coherent sentence.
Her eyes were spinning, and her heart was beating so hard she feared Ed would hear it echoing in the night.
She nodded frantically, completely subjugated by the blonde’s lethal charm.
“I-I’ll do it!
I’ll take the fox safely to the cabin!
B-But you have to promise me you’ll come back to the camp without a single scratch!”
“I promise.
Go now.
The clock is ticking.”
Ed released her gently, taking a step back to give her back her space.
Yenika, still dizzy from the proximity and with a goofy smile blooming on her lips, roughly grabbed Lortelle by her uninjured arm and began dragging her toward the tree line of the forest at an impressive speed.
While being dragged toward the dark pines, Lortelle looked back at Ed over her shoulder.
The mocking smile had completely vanished from her face.
In its place was an expression of genuine, profound fascination.
The young commercial prodigy had just witnessed the boy neutralize one of the academy’s most unstable and powerful mages—not with brute force, but with a terrifyingly precise psychological read.
‘You are truly lethal, Ed Rothtaylor,’ Lortelle thought, fading into the shadows of the forest.
‘You know exactly what currency to use to buy the will of every single person.
Fascinating.’
Just as the two girls disappeared into the trees, Ed raised his right hand toward the carriage box, giving the visual signal for execution.
The coachman nodded, cracked the reins violently, and let out a shout.
The two powerful dark stallions reared up, and the heavy carriage shot out of the alley toward the main cobblestone road, wheels grinding and kicking up sparks as they hit the stone.
The distraction worked with absolute perfection.
From his hidden position, Ed watched as four unnatural shadows agilely detached themselves from the tall hedges of the north garden.
They were swift figures, dressed in cloaks that absorbed the moonlight, moving with a speed and stealth that no regular Sylvanian guard possessed.
Elte Kehelland’s assassins had taken the bait.
They saw the company carriage fleeing in a hurry and, logically assuming Lortelle was inside trying to escape the lockdown, they sprinted after it, rapidly moving away from the facilities.
With the garden perimeter finally clear, Ed turned around.
He pulled the dark hood of his leather coat over his head and slipped back inside the building through the service door, melting into the darkness like a ghost.
The contrast inside Ophelius Hall remained staggering.
While the first floor and the main staircases were ruined by the assault of the lower-class students, the rear service stairs Ed used were intact and sepulchrally silent.
He took the marble steps two at a time, keeping his breathing strictly controlled and his mana completely suppressed within his own circuits so as not to alert any residual magical sensors in the building.
He finally reached the fourth floor: the North Residential Wing, exclusive to the heiresses of the great noble houses and the wealthiest female students of the academy.
The corridor was an obscene display of opulence.
Solid mahogany doors with gold inlays, carpets that muffled footsteps, and walls adorned with fine art.
Everything was shrouded in silence, as most of the residents had been evacuated or were hiding terrified in their rooms due to the riot on the lower floors.
Ed advanced down the hallway, counting the doors and checking the golden plaques until he reached his objective: Room 407.
The presidential suite assigned to Lortelle Kehelland.
He stopped three feet from the door.
His instincts, forged in the fire and blood of a thousand betrayals in his previous life, sent an icy warning down the back of his neck.
The mahogany door was closed, but upon focusing his sharp gaze on the main runic lock, he noticed something any normal student would have overlooked.
The magical dust around the gears was slightly disturbed.
There were three thin, almost microscopic silver scratch marks on the wood next to the handle.
The lock had not been opened with the original key; it had been picked using lockpicks coated in neutralizing mana.
A rapid, silent, and highly specialized infiltration technique not taught in any legal academy on the continent.
He was not alone in this hallway.
The room was occupied.
Lortelle had warned him that her father would leave a “guard” in her room to secure the pigeon, but whoever was on the other side of that door were not mere hired thugs.
They were professional assassins from the shadow guilds of the imperial capital.
Killers trained to slit throats in the dark, left there as life insurance by Elte in case Lortelle escaped the vault and tried to send a counterattack message.
Ed rested his right hand gently on the hilt of his tungsten-alloy katana.
His mind processed the logistics of the encounter in milliseconds.
These men worked for the competition.
They were assassins ready to kill.
If he defeated them and merely left them unconscious, they would eventually wake up.
They would regroup, contact Elte Kehelland, and give him a detailed report on the tactics and physical appearance of the first-year student who ruined their plans.
Leaving professional witnesses alive in a corporate war was an unacceptable error, a logistical suicide.
The decision was instantaneous and cold.
The rules of engagement he had used with the heroes and the maids were hereby revoked. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
Ed gently turned the doorknob, confirming it wasn’t locked from the inside, and pushed the door open slowly, stepping into the expansive, luxurious suite.
The interior was pitch-black.
The thick velvet curtains blocked out any ray of moonlight.
Ed took two steps inside and closed the door behind him with a soft click, sealing himself in absolute darkness alongside his enemies.
The silence in the room was suffocating.
Yet, through the darkness, he perceived three slight alterations in the airflow.
Three controlled breaths.
One was crouched on top of the massive mahogany wardrobe to his left.
Another was hidden behind the thick curtains of the canopy bed in the center of the room.
The third, the leader, stood by the closed balcony doors, right where the carrier pigeon’s cage was located.
“A clueless student who walked into the wrong room,” a hoarse voice whispered from the back of the room.
It was the leader by the balcony.
The low, drawn-out accent of the capital was unmistakable.
“Tough luck for you, kid.
Kill him quickly and quietly.
We don’t want to alert the professor patrols.”
The assassin on top of the wardrobe dropped down in complete silence.
His black cloak absorbed what little light there was, and in his right hand, a curved, poisoned dagger sliced through the air directly toward the back of Ed’s neck, aiming to sever his spinal cord.
Ed did not turn around.
In the last possible millisecond, he channeled orange mana into his legs and activated the Mirage Step.
His body shifted four inches to the right, letting the dagger tear through empty air.
Before the assassin hit the floor and could recover his balance, Ed pivoted on his own axis.
The faint electrical hum filled the room.
Ed unsheathed barely four inches of the black tungsten blade and, with a movement so fast that blood didn’t even have time to splatter on his clothes, he slashed laterally.
The blade passed through the assassin’s throat with terrifying ease, severing the carotid artery and the trachea in a single, clean swipe.
The man collapsed onto the carpet, drowning in his own blood without being able to utter a single cry.
The second assassin, hidden behind the bed curtains, lunged forward upon seeing his comrade fall.
He was armed with a magical garrote wire that glowed with a faint, lethal green light.
Ed looked at him with icy indifference.
He took a step forward, closing the distance before the mercenary could pull the wire taut.
Ed’s left hand clamped down like an iron vise around the assassin’s wrist, fracturing the bones with a dull crunch.
Without giving him a moment to react, Ed sidestepped, slid the black katana under the man’s guard, and drove it cleanly straight into his heart.
The second mercenary’s body convulsed for a second before Ed extracted the blade, letting him drop dead to the floor like a sack of lead.
The entire sequence had taken exactly four seconds.
The group’s leader, standing by the balcony, stumbled a step back, tripping over a chair.
Absolute terror seized his nervous system.
The darkness of the room no longer felt like an advantage; he felt as though he was locked in a slaughterhouse.
The blonde boy was no student.
He moved with the lethality, efficiency, and absolute lack of hesitation of an executioner who had massacred entire armies.
“What the hell are you…?” the leader hissed, drawing two short swords, sweating cold, and trembling uncontrollably.
Ed straightened up slowly, flicking the fresh blood from the blade of his katana with a sharp flick of his wrist.
His gray eyes locked onto the mercenary leader.
“I am someone who despises loose ends,” Ed replied, his voice chillingly calm.
Driven by pure, animalistic panic, the leader screamed and lunged with a double thrust aimed at Ed’s chest.
Ed did not retreat.
With a circular motion of his wrist, he intercepted the two short swords.
The New Eridu metal cut through the imperial steel as if it were wet paper, slicing both weapons in half.
Before the broken blades even hit the floor, Ed stepped in, twisted the katana, and delivered a perfect upward diagonal slash, tearing through the leader’s chest and splitting his sternum in two.
The man collapsed, dead instantly.
The room returned to absolute silence.
Ed sheathed his weapon with a soft, metallic click.
He evaluated the three corpses scattered across the luxurious suite.
Blood was soaking into the expensive carpets, and there was splatter on the mahogany furniture.
If he left the bodies here, the academy would launch a massive multiple-homicide investigation inside Ophelius, and the trail might eventually lead back to him.
He could not leave evidence.
Ed raised his right hand.
Unlike Yenika, he was no prodigy in expansive elemental magic, but his control over base mana was infinitely superior to that of any ordinary mage.
He channeled pure mana and transformed it into basic fire magic.
However, instead of launching a fireball, Ed began to compress the flame.
He used wind magic to create a tiny vortex around the fire, injecting it with oxygen and concentrating the heat until the orange flame turned into a vibrating, blinding white light.
With a precise movement, Ed directed the superheated fire over the first corpse.
The temperature was so absurdly high, and so tightly concentrated into a specific area to avoid burning the room, that the assassin’s flesh, clothes, and bones incinerated almost instantaneously.
They turned to fine ash in seconds, emitting no toxic smoke thanks to the perfect combustion.
He repeated the process with the other two bodies, and finally passed the white flame over the bloodstains on the carpet, evaporating them until nothing remained but grayish dust.
With a gentle puff of wind magic, Ed swept the ashes into the room’s fireplace, eliminating any visual or biological trace that three professional capital assassins had ever been there.
The cleanup job was neat, clinical, and absolute.
Satisfied, Ed walked over to the balcony.
He pulled away the dark cloth covering the silver cage and found the sturdy, gray-feathered carrier pigeon, which cooed softly at the sight of him.
Ed pulled the metal cylinder from his coat pocket.
It was small, but it contained the most destructive financial liquidation order the corporation would ever see.
With precise fingers, he secured the tube to the ring on the bird’s leg.
He opened the heavy glass balcony doors, allowing the freezing wind to enter the room.
Holding the pigeon in his hands, Ed looked out toward the horizon, in the direction of the imperial capital.
The sky was just beginning to tint a very faint, deep blue.
“Have a good trip,” Ed murmured.
He released the bird, which spread its wings and shot up into the night sky, quickly becoming a small black dot fading into the clouds.
Ed leaned against the marble railing, feeling the cold wind against his face, a faint, almost imperceptible smile forming on his lips.
As the sun rose and the market opened, Elte Kehelland’s empire would crumble piece by piece.
And he, simply doing his job, had secured the checkmate.