Chapter 127: Brief Panic

They all looked like they had come to a conclusion by the time he finished speaking.

The last thing Ethan said while now turning to Eduardo was, "All that is left is his weapon."

Eduardo nodded in understanding. He knew he had to call and confirm with Roland once more on the progress of burning the body along with Katarina.

Right then, there was a honk at the gate outside.

At first, the others looked alarmed and turned toward the entrance.

But Ethan said calmly, "It’s Hayley."

The barrier spell had been adjusted earlier to let her come in freely.

Ethan then turned to Eduardo and gave him a nod, prompting the butler to leave and check with the gate so that he could let them through properly.

Not long after, the door into the living room opened again and Eduardo entered with company behind him.

It was Hayley, along with two others following close behind her. One of them was a much older man who bore almost identical features to Mr. Marvin himself. He had the same strong jawline and sharp eyes, though his hair was grayer at the temples.

Percival’s eyes widened as he paced forward quickly. "Uncle Melvin!"

This was their father’s fraternal twin brother.

Melvin answered Percival back in a peculiar accent that sounded distinctly different from the standard Gritnian dialect. "Ey there, nephew! Look at you all grown now!"

The two other younger-looking guys stepped in behind Melvin with white wolf hair like Percival’s and Hayley’s. They were Melvin’s sons and Percival’s cousins.

One of them immediately lunged forward and forced Percival into a headlock between his arms as if trying to strangle him playfully.

"Still weak!" the cousin laughed as he ruffled Percival’s hair.

Percival struggled against the hold but was laughing too. "Get off me, you bastard!"

The other cousin joined in by grabbing Percival from behind and lifting him off the ground while both of them wrestled him around. It looked like some kind of exaggerated aggressive roughhousing game that only made sense to werewolves.

The royals, Rayleigh and Isabella, stared in silence at the scene unfolding before them with mildly bewildered expressions on their faces.

Hayley walked past her uncle and cousins toward where Ethan was standing. She noticed the Princess nearby and said politely enough, "Hey there."

But instead of waiting for a full response or engaging further with Isabella at all, Hayley turned quickly to Ethan with genuinely interested eyes and said with a smile: "Hey, pretty boy."

Isabella moved aside just slightly and did something with her eyebrows briefly as if trying to silently communicate: okay, that’s rude.

Ethan said with a much straighter face than usual toward Hayley: "Hey."

Then he looked up at her uncle and cousins with visible discontent on his face as they continued wrestling Percival around loudly in his living room.

Hayley glanced back at them briefly before turning back to Ethan and saying casually, "You know Uncle Melvin, right? Well, I came with them because you’d need all the help you can get."

Ethan sighed and said quietly enough that only she could hear him, "We sort of had it handled."

Hayley looked at him with a puzzled expression for just a moment before laughing lightly. "You have not faced S-Tiers yet, have you? How do you think you’d be able to take down more than ten of them with the numbers you have in here?"

Ethan sighed again but nodded as he gestured around for them all to sit somewhere properly.

"Excuse me for a moment," Ethan said simply, before turning away from everyone present and walking toward the staircase leading upstairs.

Both Hayley and Isabella watched him with curious eyes as he disappeared up the stairs.

——

Some minutes after Ethan disappeared upstairs, Isabella stood from where she had been seating and walked toward the staircase.

Hayley had been meaning to do the same, but when she saw Isabella walk past her, she stopped mid-step and turned away in quiet observation.

Isabella reached his room and found Ethan seated on the couch. He had one arm on the armest, with a distant and thoughtful gaze as though lost somewhere deep in his own mind.

Isabella walked over and sat down close beside him. "Hey babe," she began gently.

"Hey," Ethan said back.

She shifted slightly to face him better and said, "Talk to me. What is it?"

Ethan looked at her for a moment before saying simply, "I’m worried."

Isabella’s brow furrowed just a bit. "The plan? It’s well thought out at least. What’s the problem?"

Ethan shook his head. "It’s not that." He paused, then continued. "I was able to factor and come up with solutions for every other thing except one. What comes after."

Isabella asked, "How so?"

Ethan exhaled and said, "When you kill one of the League’s heads, you trigger a rule that places a full continent-wide hunt by the others. Every single leader across every country comes for you. It doesn’t matter if you’re justified or not. It doesn’t matter what the dead leader did first. The moment they fall, the entire organization moves as one to eliminate whoever was responsible."

He paused again before adding, "But when I summoned Joe, he said there was a way to avoid that. And that’s by getting hold of a particular coin he referred to as the Nummus Absolutio."

Isabella looked at him with a puzzled expression. "What’s that?"

Ethan said, "According to Joe, it’s a coin that wipes away guilt for killing a leader. Every leader of their association is in possession of one."

He continued, "I am to acquire this coin, smear it with Lucien’s blood, and according to Joe it would automatically send the required message to the others across the continent. It tells them that the kill was sanctioned or justified under their own rules somehow."

"That is very strange," Isabella said slowly.

Ethan nodded in agreement. "But the thing is..."

He trailed off briefly before continuing.

"Let’s say even if I can somehow get this coin from Lucien in the middle of everything going on during that fight... what’s the guarantee that what Joe says actually works?"

He looked at her directly now. "Joe said he’s never really confirmed if this is true or not since no one actually goes on to kill the leaders in the first place. But it’s just something they know about within the League."

Ethan stood up abruptly and began pacing as frustration crept into his voice. "I might have all these summons and powers, but one of the leaders of this organization rules a whole country, Isabella." His voice rose slightly now. "I am totally unsure if I can deal with that kind of threat coming after me. And I refuse to let someone who doesn’t deserve that fate carry that burden."

Isabella exhaled slowly and walked up to him. She reached out and took his hand gently in hers.

"Babe," she said gently. "Look at me."

Ethan sighed at first but then turned toward her anyway.

She took his other hand as well now, holding both as she looked up into his eyes with calm certainty.

"If this coin doesn’t work the way Joe thinks it does... then we’ll handle what comes after together when it happens," she continued. "But right now? Right now you focus on what’s in front of you first. We’ll take down Lucien and his people today because they came for you twice already and they won’t stop unless you stop them first."

She smiled just slightly then and added, "And besides... you’re not carrying any burden alone anymore, remember? You’ve got me now too."

—-

A/N

Five More Chapters will be posted in some hours