Chapter 340: Blackmail and Mercy

Count Horvix’s estate sat just off the main boulevard to the central plaza, set back from the capital’s noise by tall iron gates and a run of manicured gardens. From the street it wasn’t gaudy like the palaces of dukes or princes—or like the homes of those few nobles allowed their own estates within the royal capital. Not many were, and fewer deserved it. Commoners—lucky ones with the coin to fight the competitive market—might secure a humble house somewhere in the Black Circle; the richest of them sometimes clawed their way into the Golden Circle, as if only the best of the Black and White Circle could slip into gold.

The façade was pale stone, three stories high, its tall windows framed in dark wood. Ivy climbed one wing, reaching toward a roof where sharp spires caught the morning light. Guards in polished armor watched the gate, halberds crossing whenever commoners lingered too long at the fence. Carriages came and went, wheels crunching over gravel raked smooth at dawn.

It was not the grandest house in the capital, but it carried an unspoken weight. A reminder: the man who lived here was not merely a noble. He was close to the king. Every noble knew it.

Now, a nondescript carriage rolled toward those gates.

Inside were seven people: three on one bench, four on the other. In the middle of one side sat Cadet Marco; Azriel was at his left, Veronica at his right. The poor cadet had gone pale, cold sweat glazing his brow ever since he’d been forced to sit between two royals who frightened him in different, equally efficient ways. The only mercy was that both stared out their windows and kept their silence.

Opposite Azriel sat Nol, watching the streets slip by—the stalls going up, crates carried, banners unfurled—as if the whole city were readying for a festival. Ranni sat in the middle with little Lia on her lap; the child craned for a view she barely had, eyes wide with curiosity. Next to Ranni sat Cadet Ella.

That was everyone. And the air in the carriage was awkward, tense, and unkind.

Perhaps it was Azriel’s appearance. Ranni’s fresh robe hid what it could, but the damage would not be dressed away. His face looked as if fire had swallowed it and only half returned it. Scar tissue glossed and pulled across cheek and jaw, down his neck and over his hands—shiny, ridged, uneven—mapping the places where he had cut himself. Yet whenever anyone tried to speak to him, he answered as if nothing at all had happened.

Or perhaps it was Nol, who hadn’t said a single word since they left the cabin in the Forest of Eternity—not when they parted from the villagers after the evacuation, not when Ranni tried to draw him out. When Azriel attempted a few words, Nol ignored him.

Maybe it was Veronica, who radiated displeasure and made no effort to hide it.

Or Ella and Marco, both stiff with discomfort, trapped between people they did not know how to be near.

Or little Lia, who would not speak to anyone but Ranni—and none of the others made that any easier.

Maybe it was all of it at once.

Still… Ranni blamed no one.

It had been a hard run of days. And the road ahead did not promise mercy.

Perhaps the smallest mercy was when the carriage finally stopped. The coachman called out that they had arrived.

Almost immediately, one of the guards strode up to the door and addressed the coachman. Ranni leaned over Ella, Lia still on her lap, and slid the window open. The sight of her face snapped the guard upright; he bowed at once and hurried to clear the street of loiterers.

When the way was finally empty, the others climbed out of the cramped carriage and stretched stiff limbs. The coachman, suddenly drenched in sweat after seeing the guard’s reaction, realized he had not been hauling a handful of wealthy sightseers to gawk at Count Horvix’s estate. He had been carrying people who mattered.

The guard stepped back to the driver. Before the coachman could stammer a word, the guard’s voice went cold.

“Speak of what happened, and your head will roll.”

The coachman bobbed a pale nod, snapped the reins, and rattled away at once.

“Finally,” Ella murmured, taking in the pale façade behind the iron gate.

“So this is where everyone’s been meeting—and where most of us have been staying in secret?”

Marco adjusted a new pair of glasses and peered at the stonework, the bars, the lock. Veronica tapped the toe of her boot, arms folded, unimpressed.

“How tepid,” she said.

“As expected from a mere count.”

Her words carried. Two guards came toward them; one stopped short and jabbed his halberd in Veronica’s direction.

“How dare a woman speak li—”

“Huh?” Veronica cut in, glaring once. It was like a bucket of cold water over the guard’s head.

“U-um… my lady,” the other guard stepped forward quickly, eyes darting through his visor, “please mind your words here. Who knows who might be listening.”

Veronica clicked her tongue and looked away.

Ranni watched it all, then glanced at Azriel. He and Nol stood side by side, both looking down the empty street—two silhouettes divided by an obvious, careful distance. They did not look at each other.

Worry rose in Ranni’s chest.

‘I shouldn’t have let him do it alone,’ she thought.

‘At the very least, I should have stayed. Helped.’

He had said he was fine. But no one is fine after skinning themselves—in body and mind. Especially not someone so young. He was just sixteen years old, after all…

Maybe it was because he was a prince—because the title of being from the great clans still had weight even in her bones—that she’d yielded too easily to his words. She shouldn’t have.

“Please allow us to escort you inside,” a guard said quietly, “before more people come down this street and see you.”

Ranni nodded. The gates swung open.

Lia slipped to Ranni’s side and squeezed her hand, wide-eyed with wonder. Ella and Marco wore much the same expression. Veronica, Nol, and Azriel walked without a flicker of interest.

…Wealth dulls the thrill of what others measure their lives against.

As they walked, one of the guards fell into step beside Ranni and bowed his head.

“These past few days, more and more have arrived here safely,” he said, careful and low.

“Those who were wounded were treated at once by the Count’s command. We’ve done our best, and no one suspects what’s happening here… so you needn’t worry. And perhaps… um… you might tell the others to be more lenient with our lord?”

Ranni regarded him with a complicated look.

Veronica’s mouth curved.

“From his tone—and how obedient they are—it sounds as if Lioren has put a leash on the Count.”

Ranni’s face darkened.

“More accurately, he placed the Count under house arrest in his chambers and used that to keep his men in line. Also, Yel— I mean, the Count’s daughter, being in a coma, has helped keep him from doing anything… reckless.”

Veronica snickered.

“Then he has been merciful.”

Azriel kept a smile from breaking, but it pressed at the corners of his mouth. If what Ranni said was true—if all of it was true—then yes. This was mercy.

“That is mercy?” Ella asked, dry as dust.

“Blackmailing a Count and all his men?”

“It is better than killing the Count,” Azriel answered evenly, “and everyone else here. And it seems he hasn’t resorted to torture. So yes—Veronica is right. Lioren has been very merciful. The other heirs have been… oddly quiet as well.”

He glanced toward Ranni.

“Quiet enough to make you wonder what their agenda is, no?”

Ranni’s expression sank a shade darker. She said nothing. Veronica’s smile deepened, catching the drift of Azriel’s words. The two guards, meanwhile, were sweating through their armor. Killing the Count. Torture. Perhaps they truly had been lucky…

“It’s because—just like me—the others have been cultivating. To get stronger.”

For the first time since the Forest of Eternity, Nol spoke. Azriel looked at him and let the moment pass without reply. Ranni’s gaze flicked between them; seeing the distance they kept, she pressed her lips together and held whatever she wanted to say. Veronica frowned as they walked.

“You say that,” she murmured, “yet I’ve also heard they kept hunting—fighting important people in this world. Most of them advanced a rank. For that to happen in a handful of months—without consuming mana cores from void creatures, which I doubt they have—they would need to drink the mana in the air dry day and night, without sleep, doing nothing else. It doesn’t add up. Their cores levelled up too fast.”

Nol met her look without much expression. The others turned to him—everyone but Ranni, whose face went still and unreadable. Nol returned his eyes to the path.

“You’ll understand once we get there,” he said, and let the silence close again.

Ranni watched them all quietly. Every step showed the truth of them: exhaustion ground into their bones, hunger sitting cold behind their ribs, sleep hovering just out of reach. Since leaving the hidden village, none of them had wasted a moment. They’d split from the others of the village in the tunnels and moved straight here, no stops, no breath. The passages had carried them to the colossal wall that cut the Forest off from the southern Black Circle. They kept going.

Yes. They all needed rest.

The guards, too, were studying the group—and lingering longest on Azriel. First, because of his words. Then, because of what his face would not let them look away from: the terrible scars that refused to be hidden by his beauty, the way he moved with a stillness the others did not have. From posture alone, they could tell he was noble-born—like Veronica, like Nol. Ranni as well. But Azriel… Azriel somehow carried the air of someone from a higher court altogether, a rank you recognized without being told.

At last they reached the entrance. Two more guards stood waiting and, at the sight of Ranni’s face, threw the doors wide.

They stepped into the main hall. Light gathered and went soft across polished stone. And there—arms folded behind his back, a friendly smile tucked into the set of his mouth—stood a familiar figure.

“Finally, after so long,” he said, voice warming the space between them.

“It seems everyone is here.”

Everyone stopped where they were. Relief and sheer fatigue pulled something loose in Ranni’s chest; she let out a breath she’d been holding since the tunnels.

“…Cadet Vergil.”