Chapter 120
When the seven Royal Academy students who had undertaken the sanctioned guild quest finally returned to the capital, the Royal Guild headquarters erupted into quiet but persistent murmurs. Clerks whispered across long oak desks, couriers passed messages with uncharacteristic haste, and the air itself seemed to hum with speculation. In the upper chambers, Grandmaster EledranHigh Commander of the Guild, sat at his heavy desk, reviewing the official quest reports with a scrutiny that bordered on suspicion.
The parchment before him was stamped with the Riverton City Guild seal, its ink still sharp and unblemished. He read the names twice. These were not the seasoned cadets or well-connected noble heirs who traditionally sought dangerous assignments, nor had they received the slightest aid from local guild branches. It was nearly unheard of. Even the most capable academy seniors, with their polished dueling skills and formal military drills, rarely fared well in the wild without veteran guidance. Many graduates never took a single quest in their lives.
Yet this group had traveled into the depths of the Weeping Vines—a territory infamous for its treacherous marshes and unpredictable mana surges—faced a corrupted Hallowtree treant, and returned in less than a day. That fact alone should have been impossible. But what unsettled Eledran most was a single name on the list: Daniel Rothchester.
The young weak looking man was no ordinary student. He was the long-lost son of Duchess Elleena Laeanna Rothchester, formally recognized by the royal court as her rightful heir, a revelation that had already sent subtle shockwaves through the academy's rigid social order. Now, it seemed, he was no longer content to remain a quiet presence. He had competed in re opened the student combat trials, to break the stagnation of the students inside the academy halls, reportedly besting some of the academy's noble factions , and now he had cleared an official guild quest with startling efficiency.
The Riverton guild leader's accompanying report left little room for doubt. The corrupted Hallowtree's remains had been examined on-site, and artifacts capable of recording and recalling recent mana use confirmed the students' version of events. The evidence was undeniable, and because the guild operated with near-complete autonomy from noble influence, there could be no quiet "adjustment" of the facts. The findings had been dispatched by pixie messenger, arriving in the capital with a speed only magic could achieve.
When the Royal Guild's elder council gathered to read the full report, their astonishment was plain. Young Lord Daniel Rothchester, barely reintroduced to noble society, had executed a quest with a level of precision and decisiveness that baffled even veteran assessors. Grandmaster Eledran set the parchment down with deliberate care, his thoughts heavy. This was no ordinary cohort of students. And if they continued at this pace, the ripples they made would not be contained within the academy walls they would spread through the guild, the capital, and perhaps the entire kingdom.
Grandmaster Eledran remained still for several moments after the council dispersed, the steady tick of the wall clock filling the chamber. Finally, he reached for the small silver bell on his desk and rang it once. The door opened almost instantly, admitting a lean, sharp-eyed man dressed in the understated garb of the Guild's intelligence branch.
"Spymaster Veylan," Eledran said without preamble, "close the door."
The man obeyed, stepping into the room and sealing the latch with a quiet click. "I take it this is about the Riverton report," Veylan said, his voice calm, though his eyes glinted with curiosity.
Eledran slid the parchment across the desk. "Read it."
Veylan scanned the document in his hands, his sharp eyes darting over each line with the precision of a man accustomed to finding what others missed. He read it once in full, then again, more slowly this time, as if testing the weight of the words.
His brow arched in quiet disbelief. "Seven academy students," he said at last, his voice low and deliberate. "No external assistance… the Weeping Vines… and a corrupted Hallowtree destroyed in under a single day." He set the parchment down on Eledran's desk with a faint tap. "That's either extraordinary luck, or"
"Extraordinary capability," Grandmaster Eledran finished for him without hesitation.
Leaning back in his chair, the High Commander laced his fingers together beneath his chin, his gaze steady and calculating. "And one of them," he continued, "is Daniel Rothchester. The others… I suspect… are no less remarkable."
Veylan's expression was unreadable, though the flicker of interest in his eyes betrayed his thoughts. "You want them followed?"
"I want them understood," Eledran replied, his tone calm yet edged with steel. "Discreetly. Every movement, every associate, every unexplained absence. If they're merely ambitious students, then fine. But if they are something more… I intend to know before anyone else does."
The spymaster inclined his head slightly, but his question was blunt. "And if they are something more?"
Eledran's gaze did not waver. "The information written in this report is not easily manipulated. You know as well as I do that our contracts are bound by divine law—reporting falsely carries consequences few would dare risk.
"He tapped the parchment with one finger. "These results are true. Among the dozens of reports submitted for the Hallowtree quest, this one stands alone. It bears the highest reward point allocation if accomplished. Look at the others; quests are cleared with help from guild members or outright completed by hired outside parties. Not this one."
His voice dropped into a colder register. "We implemented the combat-earning point system for a reason: the monster stampedes are spreading across every region. The mana traces left in the Weeping Vines after the treant's destruction were registered at ten thousand energy units. That's the kind of reading you find after large-scale military engagements… not from a handful of students on a single day's mission."
For a long moment, the room was silent except for the faint rustle of the parchment in Veylan's hand. Then Eledran's tone sharpened. "If they prove themselves to be more than we think, then we decide, whether to guide them… or contain them. Quietly."
Veylan nodded once, tucking the report inside his coat. Without another word, he turned and slipped from the room, his footsteps already fading down the corridor.
Left alone, Eledran swiveled his chair toward the tall, arched windows that overlooked the capital. From this height, the city spread out before him like a living map, its towers, streets, and crowded marketplaces bustling with thousands of lives, most of whom would never know the names Daniel Rothchester or Melgil Veara Gehinnom. At least… not yet.
For the first time in many years, the Grandmaster felt a faint ripple of unease in his chest. The Royal Guild had survived centuries by predicting threats before they emerged. But now… now something or someone was moving across the board far faster than even the Guild's sharpest eyes could follow.
The heavy oaken door closed behind him with a muted thud, muffling the sounds of the Grandmaster's chamber. Veylan walked with unhurried steps down the guild's polished stone corridor, his gloved fingers brushing the inner lining of his coat where the report rested. Eledran's words still lingered in his mind, not a command to simply observe, but to understand. That was always the more dangerous kind of assignment.
By the time he stepped out into the sunlight spilling over the guild courtyard, his appearance had already changed. The crisp black coat was gone, replaced with the rough-spun tunic and weathered cloak of a traveling merchant. His gait shifted, his posture eased. To the untrained eye, he was no longer the Royal Guild's spymaster but just another man with errands to run.
Riverton lay two days' ride from the capital, and Veylan made his trip without drawing attention as he use high tier transfer scroll toward the small city that receive the quest report . The students' return route had been traced; their last known stop was the Sithe family farm, a modest plot on the edges of cultivated land, far removed from the capital's noise. He arrived near dusk, keeping to the shadows of the hedgerows as fireflies began their flickering dance.
From his vantage point beyond the fence line, he could see the vineyard's faint glow, rows of wooden poles crowned with illumination crystals casting their steady light into the night. The Sithe property was alive with quiet movement: the muffled sounds of voices, the clink of tools, and the low murmur of animals in the barns. And there, seated on the edge of a cut log near the property's border, was Daniel Rothchester himself.
Veylan studied him for a long moment. The young mass posture was relaxed, almost disarming, as he accepted a tray of food from the white-haired woman beside him, Melgil Veara Gehinnom, if the report was accurate. The last living blood of a clan that had been declared extinct. Two rarities in one place.
Behind the main house, other figures came and went: Lora Sithe, her brother Victor, and a few others he could not yet place. Their interactions were casual and familial. But Veylan knew better than to mistake warmth for weakness. This was the sort of setting where alliances formed without anyone realizing the weight they might carry.
He crouched lower in the grass, the wind carrying faint snippets of conversation toward him. There was laughter, quiet and unguarded, followed by the shifting scrape of boots on packed earth.
The spymaster's lips curved into a faint, humorless smile.
Eledran had been right; this was no ordinary cohort.
And if they were truly as capable as the report suggested, then what was happening here on this unassuming farm was the quiet opening move of a game the rest of the kingdom didn't even know had begun.
While the Royal Guild's spymaster moved quietly through the fields, another force, far less subtle, was already making its way toward the Sithe property. Count Ailmar Dreswick, a man whose pride had been wounded more times than he cared to count since Lora Sithe's recent accomplishments, found that these sons and daughters of ordinary commoners had grown so strong that he thought they could not be simply ignored. As he approached the farm with a small force at his back, he knew that this confrontation would not end quietly.
The seven students' success in the sanctioned quest, their now growing reputation among the academy's circles, as the reports had already reached the royal academy headmaster and the grandmaster, and the fact that his own sponsored son, Halric Dreswick and a few of the cadets been soundly outshone gnawed at him like a constant itch.
The Count's first impulse had been to send more spies, but impatience and petty malice twisted his judgment. Instead, he called upon one of his less reputable retainers, a wandering hedge mage with a taste for coin and no qualms about bending the law. In a shadowed chamber of Dreswick's manor, the mage bowed low, listening to the count's instructions with a half-smile that suggested he was already picturing the chaos to come.
"You need not kill them," Ailmar said, his tone dripping with disdain. "Merely… remind them they are not untouchable. Scare them. Damage their precious land if you can. I want whispers of vulnerability to reach the ears of their neighbors."
The mage's orders were clear: travel under the cover of night, use his arts to summon a creature from the darker corners of the spirit realms, and loose it upon the Sithe farm. The Count imagined broken fences, scattered livestock, ruined crops, and a petty revenge, but one that would feed his annoyance and perhaps shake Lora's confidence.
It was a foolish plan, one born more from spite than strategy. Summoning in the open fields so near the Sithe barns would be impossible to fully conceal, and the risk of attracting unwanted attentionbe it from the guild, the academy, or other, more dangerous parties, was dangerously high. But Count Ailmar Dreswick was too blinded by his own irritation to care.
Somewhere on the winding dirt road toward the Sithe farm, the hedge mage knelt in the grass, chalking runes in a tight spiral while muttering in a low, fevered tone. The air thickened with the scent of burning herbs and coppery mana, and a ripple of unnatural pressure spread outward, invisible to the eye but heavy on the senses. He had no idea that his petty task would soon collide with forces far larger than his employer had bargained for.
Back at the edge of the Sithe property, Daniel had just set aside the last crust of bread from the tray he and Melgil had shared. He exhaled, long and heavy, but his moment of rest was shattered when a pulse of hostile mana slammed into his awareness. His eyes narrowed instantly. Melgil froze as well, her silver lashes fluttering once before her expression hardened.
"This is summoning magic," she said quietly, her voice taut. "It's almost identical to what Cassien Eladar used… but this" she glanced toward the distant treeline, her fingers tightening around the tray—"this is twice as strong."
Daniel rose in one smooth motion, his hand brushing the dirt from his trousers. "Protect the others," he told her, his voice low but unshakable. "I'll clear the path before it gets anywhere near the barns."
Farther off, in the shade of a tall elm, Veylan spymaster of the Royal Guild,had been keeping his silent watch over the farm for reasons of his own. The moment the summoning's mana flare tore across the land, he stiffened. His trained senses told him immediately that this was no wild creature wandering too close, no natural predator drawn by the scent of livestock. This was deliberate. Constructed. Controlled.
His gaze swept toward the faint, twisting haze on the far horizon where the summoning circle pulsed. So… the monster outbreaks in the outlying regions aren't all natural after all.
Veylan's eyes narrowed. Whoever was behind this had just revealed their hand—and their target.
Daniel moved fast. His boots barely disturbed the dew on the grass as he cut across the vineyard rows, eyes locked on the faint shimmer of mana spilling from beyond the far fence. The air was growing heavier with each step, the taste of magic like iron and smoke on his tongue. Somewhere beyond that fence, a gate was opening—and whatever was stepping through it was meant to wreak havoc here.
Behind him, Melgil sprinted toward the farmhouse, her voice ringing out to alert Victor, Elandor, and the others. She did not waste time questioning Daniel's decision; she had seen the way he fought before, and she knew this was a task only he could meet head-on.
Veylan, cloaked in his own concealment magic, ghosted along the outer perimeter of the Sithe land. From his vantage point atop a sloping ridge, he could see the warped light of the summoning circle twisting in the distance. Not a random attack, he thought grimly. Too precise. Too targeted. His suspicions about the recent monster outbreaks deepened—this had the same unnatural sharpness, the same deliberate design.
The summoning completed with a soundless crack in the air, as if reality itself had been pried open. From the circle's heart crawled a creature the size of a carriage—skin like split stone, eyes burning with cold violet fire. Its claws dug deep furrows into the earth as it stepped forward, head swinging toward the Sithe farm.
Daniel didn't slow. He angled his body low and let the formless armor around his arms and shoulders thicken, the weighted bracers forming without visible seams. By the time the beast caught his scent, he was already in its path.
The creature's head snapped toward him with a guttural roar, but Daniel didn't flinch. "Not one step closer," he muttered under his breath,and launched forward. His first strike slammed into its front leg with the force of a falling boulder, snapping bone beneath stone-like hide.
From the ridge, Veylan's eyes narrowed. The precision, the weight behind that blow—it wasn't the kind of strength a sheltered academy youth should possess. This was something else. Someone forged in the kind of fire most men never survived.
And for the first time, the spymaster began to understand why the name Daniel Rothchester was quietly starting to unsettle very powerful people.
The beast lunged, its claws tearing at the ground in a spray of soil. Daniel's world narrowed to the rhythm of its movements—the twist of muscle beneath its stone-hide, the glint of violet light just before it struck. He sidestepped, the weighted bracers on his arms dragging slightly with their added mass, but his movements stayed sharp. The monster's swipe cut air where his head had been a heartbeat before.
Then Daniel countered. His right fist, heavy with the invisible armor's growing density, came down in a hammering arc against the creature's skull. The sound was wet and cracking all at once, like stone splitting under a mason's chisel. The beast staggered, violet flames guttering in its eyes, but it did not fall. Instead, it reared up, bellowing, its roar rattling the barn doors at the far end of the property.
From her position by the farmhouse, Melgil saw the brambles at the fence line ignite under the corrupt mana seeping from the creature's wounds. She drew a small talisman from her pocket, casting a warding barrier around the livestock pens before sprinting back toward Victor and Elandor. "Keep everyone inside!" he took out a axe and stood guard .
Veylan, from his ridge, was piecing together the puzzle. The summoning circle's structure was rough but functional, a hedge mage's work, not a master's. Still, the materials and mana cost were far too steep for something so small-scale unless someone else had bankrolled it. The timing, too, was too perfect to be coincidence. His lips pressed into a thin line. Dreswick. That arrogant fool.
Back in the clearing, the beast lunged again, faster than before. Daniel dropped to one knee, letting the monster's strike whistle past his head, then drove his armored fist up beneath its chin. The force lifted the creature off its forelegs for a fraction of a second—just long enough for Daniel to plant his other palm against its chest. Mana surged from him in a sudden, controlled burst, detonating outward.
The resulting shockwave sent dust, shattered bone, and flecks of violet fire scattering across the field. The beast collapsed in a heap, the unnatural light in its eyes fading to dull embers before going out entirely.
Daniel stood over it, breathing hard, steam curling from his skin in the cool morning air.
From the ridge, Veylan let out a slow breath. This was no fluke. The boy didn't just fight—he fought like someone who had been forced to survive against things far worse than this. And that meant his presence here, on this farm, wasn't just happenstance.
"Count Dreswick," the spymaster murmured to himself. "You've just stepped into a game you are not ready to play."
He turned from the ridge, already preparing his own report to Eledran. The monster outbreak was no natural event,this was the work of human hands. And Daniel Rothchester had just proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was far more dangerous than anyone in the capital yet realized.
The last wisps of corrupted mana were already dissipating into the morning air when Melgil reached Daniel's side. She didn't speak at first, just placed a hand lightly on his forearm, feeling the coiled strength still thrumming beneath the surface. His breath was steady now, but there was a shadow in his eyes that told her this fight had pulled up memories he didn't care to revisit.
At the edge of the field, Victor Sithe approached cautiously, his boots crunching over scorched earth. "Is… is it dead?" he asked, eyes darting between the heap of broken limbs and Daniel's sweat-slick frame.
"It won't rise again," Daniel said simply, stepping away from the carcass.
Behind Victor, Thessa held their youngest close, her gaze moving from the monster's mangled body to the shattered ground where Daniel had stood. In all her years on the farm, she had seen storms rip down trees and wild boars gore through fences, but never had she seen a man stand alone against something so unnatural and leave it broken in minutes.
Lora, wide-eyed, ran up to her mother. "It came out of nowhere, Mama. Just like the one in the academy trials… but bigger."
Thessa's grip tightened on her daughter's shoulder. The earlier conversation about Daniel's lineage returned to her with full, unsettling clarity. The Duchess's son… the Gehinnom heir… under my roof. The magnitude of it all was no longer something she could set aside as a fanciful story.
Melgil stepped forward before the murmurs could grow into questions. "No one outside this farm needs to know the details of what happened here," she said, her tone calm but edged with steel. "If word spreads, it will invite more trouble—and the kind we are not ready to face."
Victor exchanged a glance with Thessa, then nodded slowly. "Aye. This stays between us."
Far up on the ridge, Veylan's silhouette vanished into the tree line, already gone to deliver his report to Grandmaster Eledran. The spymaster had seen enough to know that whatever game Count Dreswick thought he was playing, he had just set a storm in motion. And storms, once begun, rarely stayed where they were told.
Count Ailmar Dreswick was pacing in the drawing room of his estate when the door creaked open. The hedge mage he had hired stumbled in—alone, empty-handed, and reeking faintly of scorched cloth and burnt hair.
"What happened?" Dreswick demanded, his voice already tightening with impatience. "You were supposed to make it look like a wild outbreak, not—"
The mage raised trembling hands, his face pale and glistening with sweat. "My lord… the creature was summoned, but it never reached the barns. A man—young, fast—cut it down before it could take more than three steps onto the Sithe property. I barely escaped with my life."
Count Ailmar Dreswick froze mid-stride. "A young man?"
"Not an ordinary man," the mage replied, his voice shaking. "A fighter. I've never seen movement like his. And the magic…" He swallowed hard, as if even recalling it unsettled him. "It was different. Old magic, but tightly controlled. He didn't hesitate—not for a moment."
From his seat near the hearth, Halric Dreswick, the Count's only son, leaned forward with a frown. "Daniel Rothchester," he said, the name tasting like suspicion.
The mage blinked in confusion. "You… you know him?"
Halric turned to his father. "he is Rothchester, father !" The Count's face paled as he realized the implications of his son's words. "If Duches Elleena Rothchester find our about , then we are all in grave danger," he said with a heavy heart. The mage's eyes widened in fear as he understood the true magnitude of the situation.
" what did you do father?"
" And why haven't you said anything about this person before?"
Count Dreswick stepped toward the tall windows, clasping his hands behind his back as he gazed over Riverton's sunlit rooftops. "Know him? No. But I know his bloodline, and I know trouble when i plants its roots too close to her holdings."
His voice was low and filled with concern as he continued, "We must act swiftly to protect our land." Count Dreswick's eyes narrowed as he contemplated the best course of action to safeguard Riverton from the potential danger that surely come knocking at his doorstep.
He turned sharply, eyes hard as flint. "Leave the Riverton city," he ordered the mage. "Now. Before anyone connects you to this mess. If anyone asks, you never set foot near the Sithe farm."
The mage bowed stiffly, retreating in hurried, uneven steps until the heavy doors thudded shut behind him.
For a long moment, the Count remained still, watching the distant horizon as though it concealed some creeping threat. To most, the Sithe farm was just a patch of reclaimed marshland.
But to him, it had become something far more dangerous a foothold for powers he neither controlled nor understood. And that was something he could not allow to grow unchecked.
The echo of the closing doors had barely faded when Halric rose from his chair, crossing the room with measured steps. His jaw was tight, but his voice was low and controlled. "I told you not to act," he said, each word deliberate. "I told you—specifically—that the young man with two different eye colors is someone our family cannot face head-on."
Count Ailmar Dreswick didn't turn. He kept his gaze fixed on the horizon, fingers clasped behind his back. "And I'm not in the habit of letting strangers plant themselves in my lands unchecked. The Sithe girl's accomplishments were already attracting attention. Now this boy is killing summoned beasts at their doorstep? No. I won't be made to look powerless."
Halric stepped closer, his tone sharpening. "Powerless? You've done worse than look powerless. You've made us look foolish. You've taken a situation we could have quietly watched and turned it into an incident that will be whispered about in every corridor worth listening to. That mage was lucky to return alive. Do you understand what that means?"
Ailmar's lips thinned, but he said nothing.
Halric's voice dropped lower, his words heavy with warning. "That boy—Daniel Rothchester—is not just some skilled fighter. He's dangerous in ways you don't even begin to grasp. You call my thinking cautious; I call yours shallow. And now, thanks to your narrow pride, we've drawn his attention to us. If he decides we're an enemy…" Halric's mismatched eyes hardened. "We won't survive it."
For the first time, Ailmar turned from the window, his expression cool but faintly unsettled. "You speak as though you know him."
"I know enough," Halric replied. "Enough to say this: if you keep poking at what you don't understand, you won't just create a bigger issue—you'll start a war you can't win."
The silence between them was thick, the only sound the faint creak of the floorboards as Halric stepped back, letting his father digest the weight of his words.
When Halric finally left his father's study, the tension in the air clung to him like smoke. He descended the marble steps slowly, his mind replaying the images he had tried to keep buried.
The student combat trial.
He had been there, an observer among dozens when Daniel Rothchester had stepped into the arena. At first, Halric hadn't thought much of him. Just another scholarship student, maybe talented, maybe not. But then the fighting began.
Velric Draan, Cassien Eladar, and their summoned horde of monsters had been a spectacle meant to intimidate. What happened instead had silenced the entire hall. Daniel hadn't just fought; he had dismantled them. His movements were too fast, too precise, like someone who had spent a lifetime surviving fights far deadlier than school trials. And when the magic came, it was unlike anything Halric had ever seen old, resonant, but perfectly controlled.
Most disturbing of all was not his power, but the people who seemed to stand behind him. Melgil Veara Gehinnom, the last known heir of a clan thought lost to history, had fought beside him without hesitation. Others, equally formidable, seemed ready to move at his word.
Halric had made a decision that day: say nothing, do nothing, and hope their paths never crossed in conflict.
And now, thanks to his father's arrogance foolish action , that fragile distance had been shattered.In the quiet of the hallway, Halric's mismatched eyes narrowed. If Daniel Rothchester decided the Dreswick family was a threat, there would be no discussion, no warning only an ending.