The first ray of sunlight crested the eastern horizon, painting the night sky with strokes of deep cobalt blue that slowly transitioned into a pale lavender hue.
From the fourth-floor balcony of Ophelius Hall, Ed Rothtaylor watched as the light of dawn began to illuminate the pristine grounds of the Sylvania Academy.
The cold morning wind ruffled his ash-blonde hair, carrying with it the unmistakable scent of ozone and scorched wood.
The chaos that had consumed the ground floor over the last few hours was finally coming to an end.
With his heightened senses, Ed could perceive the hum of overwhelming mana pressure approaching from the southern gardens.
It was a dense, structured, and highly disciplined magic.
Peering slightly over the edge of the marble balcony, Ed saw several high-ranking professors storm into the premises.
Leading them was Professor Glast, wrapped in his usual aura of strict intolerance, casting precise, massive containment spells that immobilized dozens of rioting students at once, as if they were flies trapped in amber.
The building’s magical lockdown was being dismantled from the outside by the academic authorities.
The window of opportunity to escape without being interrogated was closing at an alarming rate.
Ed didn’t waste another second.
He adjusted his leather gloves, verifying with one last icy glance that he hadn’t left a single trace in the fire-purged room, and agilely vaulted over the balcony railing.
He didn’t use the interior stairs; that would be an unacceptable logistical risk.
Instead, he channeled a thin layer of Wind Essence into his hands and soles, and began to descend the exterior facade of the imposing hall.
He moved across the stone reliefs and window frames with the fluidity of a wraith.
In less than a minute, Ed touched the dew-covered grass of the rear gardens.
Taking advantage of the magical patrols’ blind spots and moving with military precision from hedge to hedge, the young man vanished into the underbrush, leaving behind the chaos of the noble district to delve into the comforting, familiar density of the Northern Forest pines.
Meanwhile, deep in the heart of the forest, the atmosphere inside Ed’s small wooden cabin was anything but peaceful.
The tension in the air was so heavy it threatened to splinter the log walls.
On the left side of the room, sitting defensively on a wooden stool, was Yenika Faelover.
Her arms were firmly crossed over her chest, and her eyes—usually sweet and compassionate—were fixed like daggers on her unwanted guest.
Around her, several lesser elemental spirits floated nervously, and a small fire fox growled territorially from her shoulder, bearing tiny fangs of flame.
On the right side, sitting with supreme elegance on Ed’s tool trunk, was Lortelle Kehelland.
Despite her torn coat and dust-smudged face, the young merchant kept her back straight and her legs crossed with an aristocratic grace that clashed sharply with the rustic setting.
And in the exact center of the cabin, wrapped in the thick blankets of Ed’s bed, curled up in a ball and drooling peacefully on the pillow without a single care for the impending cold war around her, was Lucy Mayrill, snoring softly.
Lortelle, deliberately ignoring Yenika’s murderous glare, spent the last few minutes meticulously analyzing the cabin’s interior.
Her mind, trained to appraise value and deduce the history behind objects, scrutinized every detail.
There were no luxuries.
No pretentious decorations or noble comforts.
There was a hand-carved hunting bow, meticulously oiled traps hanging on the wall, firewood stockpiled with mathematical exactness, and a tidiness so pristine and austere it bordered on spartan.
This wasn’t the hideout of a rich kid trying to simulate country life out of rebellion.
The place screamed survival and extreme pragmatism.
‘Ed Rothtaylor…
who taught you to live like this?’ Lortelle thought, feeling her fascination with the boy deepen.
‘You move with a purpose that no one in this academy understands.
And yet, you built this place with your own two hands.’
“I suggest you stop inspecting Ed’s things with that thief-like face of yours,” Yenika warned, breaking the tense silence with a sharp voice.
“You don’t have permission to touch absolutely anything.
You are only here because he politely asked me to bring you.
As soon as dawn breaks and Ed returns, you are leaving my…
I mean, his camp.”
Lortelle blinked slowly, emerging from her thoughts, and focused her attention on the spirit tamer.
A feline smile, loaded with a dangerous cunning, formed on her lips.
She knew she was at a physical and magical disadvantage, but on the battlefield of words and psychological manipulation, Lortelle Kehelland always had the home-field advantage.
“You are exceedingly territorial for someone who doesn’t share a last name with him, Yenika,” Lortelle purred, resting her chin on her gloved hand.
“Anyone walking in right now would think you are the lady of this cabin defending her home.
Tell me, are you his official partner?
Or just an overly enthusiastic classmate who confuses general kindness with requited romance?”
The strike hit the bullseye with devastating precision.
Yenika’s face immediately ignited.
The territorial confidence she had tried to project wobbled under the weight of her own overwhelming shyness.
“I-I-I’m not…!
T-That is none of your business, you damn fox!” Yenika stammered, jumping to her feet and pointing a trembling finger at Lortelle.
“I am someone Ed truly trusts!
Someone who doesn’t drag him into fights with capital mercenaries because of her own greed!
You are a danger to him!”
“A danger?
Oh, darling, don’t be confused.
I am his business partner,” Lortelle corrected smoothly, immensely enjoying destabilizing the mage.
She crossed her legs in the other direction.
“And, judging by how he burst into that basement and massacred an entire squad just to prevent them from hurting me…
I would say our partnership is very, very important to him.”
Lortelle paused, tilting her head with an enigmatic, venomous smile.
“In fact, considering the sheer magnitude of the life debt I’ve accumulated with him tonight…
perhaps our simple business partnership should expand into a much more intimate territory.
Don’t you think that would be the fairest way to repay him for saving my life?”
“Don’t you dare!” Yenika shrieked, completely losing her temper.
The mana in the room spiked.
The small fire fox on her shoulder doubled in size, growling menacingly.
Yenika took two quick steps toward Lortelle.
“Ed isn’t interested in greedy manipulators like you!
He told me he finds your family’s methods disgusting!
If you approach him with those intentions, I swear I’ll let Tarkan turn you to ashes right here!”
“I would love to see you try!” Lortelle fired back, standing up as well, not retreating a single millimeter, raising her chin arrogantly.
“At least I can offer him access to the entire world, unlimited resources, and real power!
What can you offer him?!
Acorns and walks in the woods?!”
Just as the verbal dispute was one insult away from turning into a full-scale magical detonation, the heavy wooden door of the cabin creaked open.
Both girls snapped their heads around in unison, freezing in place.
Ed Rothtaylor stepped into the cabin.
His face maintained its usual stoic inexpression, but his dark coat was stained with dust and the hems of his pants were damp from the forest dew.
The freezing early-morning air and the boy’s sheer pragmatic presence flooded the room, instantly snuffing out the aggressive spiritual flames of Yenika’s fox.
The silence lasted exactly two seconds before the dispute erupted again, this time seeking his mediation. The source of this chapter is g.com.
“Ed!” Yenika exclaimed, running up to him and protectively grabbing the sleeve of his coat, shooting a lethal glare at Lortelle.
“Tell this snob to leave!
She’s been provoking me since she walked through the door!
Tell her you don’t have any weird intentions with her!”
“Please, Ed,” Lortelle interrupted, taking an elegant step toward him, completely ignoring the mage and softening her voice.
“Your ‘friend’ has been highly inhospitable.
I was just trying to process the night we had together, but she is far too possessive.”
Ed did not flinch.
He didn’t sigh, didn’t rub his temples, nor did he show the slightest sign of annoyance or discomfort at the blatant turf war.
With a fluid, calm motion, he gently slipped his arm out of Yenika’s grip without being harsh, completely ignored Lortelle’s provocation, and walked straight to the small wooden table in the center of the cabin.
He removed his leather gloves and set them on the surface.
He turned toward the merchant, adopting the posture of a general confirming the success of an operation.
“Our play is made, Lortelle,” Ed announced, his voice firm and monotone.
“The room in Ophelius was occupied by three professionals from the capital’s underworld.
I neutralized all three and purged the room.
I left no witnesses, no corpses, and no trace for the academy to follow.
And most importantly: the bird is in the air.
The order flew toward the imperial capital half an hour ago.”
Ed’s words dropped over the room like a lead block, instantly paralyzing the jealousy-fueled argument.
Lortelle lost her breath.
The sheer magnitude of what the blonde boy had just accomplished hit her with overwhelming physical force.
Ed hadn’t just infiltrated the most heavily guarded zone in the academy; he had silently exterminated capital assassins who would have killed her without hesitation, erasing the evidence like a true ghost to ensure her plan worked.
The adrenaline that had kept her standing abruptly left Lortelle’s body.
Her legs gave out.
She slowly slid down the log wall until she was sitting on the wooden floor, letting out a trembling breath of pure relief.
She had survived.
Her father hadn’t managed to kill her.
“If the pigeon is already halfway there…
it means the guild will receive my liquidation order right as the market opens,” Lortelle murmured, recovering a bit of her breath and lucidity.
“My managers will sell off our strategic reserves.
Elte will lose his power and the investors’ trust.
It’s only a matter of time before I absorb the power vacuum his fall leaves behind and take absolute control of the Company.”
Lortelle sighed, rubbing her dust-smudged temple.
Although the final victory was secured, the immediate present was a logistical nightmare.
“However, until I travel to the capital to legally purge my father’s loyalists and unify the factions in my favor, the main accounts of the Elte Company are frozen to me,” Lortelle explained, looking up at Ed.
“Fortunately, I have my own private businesses and independent investments in the black market and other minor guilds.
I’m not in absolute destitution…
but those funds will take a couple of days to become liquid.
And right now, I cannot go back to Ophelius Hall.
There are surely more thugs looking for me in the gardens.
I…”
Lortelle paused, looking down at her dirty hands and torn coat.
“In this exact, precise moment, I don’t have access to my gold, I don’t have clean clothes, and I don’t have a safe place to sleep.”
Ed, standing in front of Lortelle, observed her in silence.
His expression didn’t change, but in his mind, memories intertwined.
Not the memories of the excommunicated student Ed Rothtaylor, but the deep memories of his past life as a Korean office worker who perfectly knew the lore of this world.
Ed knew the truth.
He knew that Elte Kehelland had ordered the brutal murder of Lortelle’s real parents in an alleyway when she was a little girl, only to take her in as an orphan, raise her in the dirt, and brainwash her until she became a commercial tool.
But those cold facts from a story intersected with another, much more real and personal scar.
His life before that—his existence as King Grey.
He knew exactly what it was like to be an orphaned child, with nothing in the world, left to fend for himself in cold streets, surrounded by people who only wanted to use him, stab him in the back, and throw him to the wolves in the name of power and politics.
Looking at Lortelle on the floor of his cabin, Ed didn’t see a fictional character or the arrogant Sylvanian merchant.
He saw someone who shared the same raw, isolating past he had suffered.
However, Ed didn’t display evident compassion.
He wasn’t going to demean her by pitying her.
“You will stay here,” Ed said.
His voice was flat, unwavering, a pillar of absolute stability.
“This forest is my territory.
No one from the Elte Company or the academy will look for you in this camp.
I will provide you with fire, provisions, and perimeter protection until it is safe for you to travel to the capital.”
Lortelle slowly looked up.
Her large eyes met Ed’s icy yet strangely comforting gaze.
Amidst the chaos and betrayal of her family, this stoic boy was the only solid ground she had left.
A painful, warm lump formed in the merchant’s throat.
She stood up somewhat clumsily, closed the distance, and impulsively let the weight of her body fall forward, resting her forehead directly against the shoulder of Ed’s dark coat.
She closed her eyes, exhaling a sigh that released all the accumulated tension of the night.
“Ed…” Lortelle whispered, with a gratitude so raw and real that it completely disarmed the tense atmosphere.
“Thank you.
Really…”
But the moment of vulnerability and emotional connection was interrupted with all the subtlety of a magical explosion.
“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?!” Yenika Faelover erupted, her face redder than a ruby and her eyes injected with pure jealousy.
Sparks of spiritual fire crackled violently around her, and Yenika stomped over in three quick steps, grabbing Ed by his uninjured arm and yanking him as if she were trying to rescue him from a burning pit.
“Get away from him, you cheating fox!
He said he’d give you asylum, not that you could use the situation to hug him!”
Yenika’s sudden hysterical shout and the mana fluctuations in the small room had an immediate collateral effect.
A sleepy, profoundly annoyed groan arose from the bed.
The thick blankets moved slowly, and a tiny figure with white hair poked her head out.
Lucy Mayrill, the most powerful mage on the continent and Sylvania’s walking disaster, rubbed her puffy eyes with the back of her small hand.
She yawned, showing her white teeth, and glared at the two girls with a deep frown.
“Ugh…
you’re making too much noise…” Lucy mumbled, her voice thick with sleep.
“I was having such a good dream about wild boar jerky…
Ed, can you tell them to shut up?
I want to go back to sleep…”
Lortelle blinked, completely thrown off balance.
She turned her head, fixing her calculating eyes on the small white-haired mage who was, casually, wrapped in the boy’s sheets.
Lortelle’s vulnerability was replaced in a millisecond by a deep scowl and a glare loaded with a strange, sharp possessiveness.
She looked Ed up and down, crossing her arms.
“Ed…” Lortelle said, in a suspiciously low and dangerously sweet tone.
“Would you be so kind as to explain to me why Lucy Mayrill, the academy’s greatest prodigy, is sleeping comfortably in your bed?”
Yenika, who also seemed to suddenly remember Lucy’s existence, joined the interrogation, puffing out her cheeks.
“Yeah, Ed!
It’s true I saw her first when I got to the cabin, but you owe me an explanation as to why you let her sleep here!”
Ed stood in the center of the small room.
To his left, the most influential spirit tamer in the academy was glaring at him with burning jealousy.
To his right, the heiress to the continent’s largest commercial empire was interrogating him with feline possessiveness.
And in his own bed, the future archmage of the world was yawning without a care, demanding silence to continue her nap.
For a brief instant, Ed’s calculating mind simply stalled.
He sighed deeply, feeling a mild headache approaching, but without altering his perfect stoic expression.
‘I went from trying to survive alone in the woods hunting squirrels…
to having my camp turned into an ego warzone,’ Ed thought, with a tired and resigned mental tone.
But then, as he watched the three of them—powerful, influential, and for some strange reason, choosing to be in his small, humble log cabin instead of their luxurious halls—King Grey felt a very faint, almost imperceptible warmth in his chest.
‘My life has changed too much since I arrived in this world,’ Ed concluded in his mind.
He closed his eyes for a second, listening to Lortelle’s demands and Yenika’s grumbles.
‘But…
I suppose it’s not so bad.’
Ed cleared his throat, reestablishing his flawless business facade to escape the drama.
“Do not confuse the terms of my asylum offer, Lortelle,” Ed said, majestically ignoring the questions about Lucy and locking his gaze on the merchant with a negotiator’s coldness.
“This is not charity.
I will charge you a twenty percent daily interest rate on the cost of your accommodation, food, and protection, calculated on top of your pending tab.
You will pay me in pure gold as soon as you absorb Elte’s power and your assets become liquid again.”
Lortelle looked at him, instantly realizing he was using the commercial contract as a shield to change the subject and avoid dealing with the emotional situation in the cabin.
It was a clumsy, blatant excuse, but at the same time, it was entirely on-brand for him.
Lortelle let out a light, airy laugh, feeling an enormous weight lift from her shoulders.
“I accept your usurious conditions, Ed.
You are the most terrible partner I could have ever asked for.”
Ed nodded, sealing the deal, and walked over to the wood stove.
“I’ll prepare breakfast.
Yenika, help me.
Lortelle, don’t touch anything.
And Lucy…
just go back to sleep.”
Hundreds of miles away from the peaceful cabin in the woods, in the loud, chaotic Imperial Capital, the morning light bathed the towering buildings of the financial district.
In the opulent main office of the Sylvania branch, Elte Kehelland sat behind his immense solid mahogany desk.
The burly, ruthless patriarch of the commercial company held a steaming porcelain teacup.
His expression was one of absolute, smug arrogance.
Everything had gone perfectly.
According to his precise logistical calculations, his ambitious adoptive daughter was currently locked in the Ophelius vaults.
His elite assassins in room 407 surely had the carrier pigeon secured.
Tomorrow, he would travel back to the capital to consolidate his absolute power over the investors.
The heavy double doors of his office were suddenly thrown open with such violence that they crashed against the marble wall.
Elte frowned, ready to whip the insolent fool who had entered without knocking, but the threats died in his throat when he saw his Head of Accounting.
The man’s tie was undone, his hair was drenched in sweat, and his face was pale.
He was trembling violently.
Behind him, through the open door, Elte could hear the absolute chaos reigning outside: clerks running and screaming, the frantic, ceaseless ringing of the stock exchange emergency bells, and the roar of a crowd.
“What is the meaning of this damn uproar?” Elte demanded, feeling an icy knot form in his stomach.
“Why haven’t I received the magical report from my men in Ophelius Hall?”
“S-Sir…” the accountant stammered, his lips trembling with terror.
“There is no report from the assassins.
T-The magical life contact with them was abruptly severed in the middle of the night.
Sir…
they are dead.
All of them.”
Elte clenched his fists.
If the elite assassin guild had been exterminated…
“Where the hell is Lortelle?” the patriarch hissed, abruptly standing up.
“I-It doesn’t matter where Miss Lortelle is now, sir!” the accountant screamed, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, slamming the heavy ledgers onto the desk.
“An hour ago, a messenger cylinder sealed with Miss Kehelland’s irrevocable authority arrived directly at the capital’s warehouse guild!
She gave the order for total liquidation!”
The expensive, fine porcelain teacup slipped from Elte’s hands and shattered against the marble floor, spilling the boiling tea.
“W-What madness are you spouting?” Elte whispered, all the blood abruptly leaving his face.
“They are selling, sir!
Her loyal managers are emptying our warehouses across the continent!” the accountant sobbed, grabbing his head.
“They are selling our mineral monopolies, our silk routes, our invaluable mana stone reserves, all at an immediate loss!
The market just opened and has been completely flooded!
Our stock prices have plummeted seventy percent and are still in freefall!”
Elte Kehelland stumbled back and collapsed into his leather chair as if his knees had been cut.
His eyes stared into the void, unable to process the crushing magnitude of the financial catastrophe.
“The investors…” Elte babbled, feeling like he couldn’t breathe.
“The great noble investors of the capital…”
“They are already here, sir,” the accountant said with a hollow, hopeless voice, pointing toward the massive office windows, where the terrifying roar of a furious mob of nobles and lenders swirled outside the building’s doors.
“They are demanding your head.
The company…
the Elte Company is ruined.”
Elte Kehelland, the ruthless and calculating patriarch who had manipulated and murdered without mercy for decades to reach the top, buried his face in his trembling hands.
In a single night, a simple, anonymous first-year student—whom he didn’t even know—had massacred his best men and guaranteed the total destruction of his empire.
The sun had risen in the imperial capital, and with its light, the reign of the Great Fox of Sylvania had come to an absolute end.