Chapter : 1265

  Lloyd, who had remained a still, calm point in the heart of the cataclysm he had just unleashed, simply looked at the terrified man and his equally terrified spirit.

  "A Hellfire Crow," he commented, his voice a quiet, academic thing, the tone of a collector admiring a new, and slightly disappointing, specimen. "An interesting, if somewhat common, abyssal variant. Prone to arrogance. A distinct lack of tactical discipline. And a rather glaring conceptual weakness against… well, against actual fire."

  He then looked at Franz, a flicker of what might have been genuine, professional pity in his eyes. "You really should have done your homework," he chided gently. "If you had, you would have known that bringing a creature of shadow-flame to a duel with a master of annihilation-fire is not just a tactical error. It is a form of suicide."

  Franz, his mind finally, belatedly, rebooting from its state of pure, system-shocking terror, found his voice. It was not the smooth, purring instrument of a confident demagogue. It was the high, thin, and cracking shriek of a man who has just seen the face of his own, personal, and very fiery, god of death.

  "What… what are you?" he stammered.

  Lloyd simply smiled. It was not a kind smile. It was the smile of a predator that has grown tired of playing with its food.

  "I," he said, his voice a quiet, simple, and utterly final thing, "am the man who is about to teach you a very short, and very loud, lesson in the importance of proper threat assessment."

  He did not need to give a verbal command. His will, and Iffrit’s, were one.

  The nine-foot-tall demon of magma and fire moved. It was not a charge. It was not a blur of speed. It was a single, inexorable, and utterly unstoppable step forward. It raised its colossal, flaming zanbatō.

  The duel was a brutal, and beautifully, one-sided execution.

  The Hellfire Crow, acting on a final, desperate instinct, vomited a torrent of its black, abyssal flame at Iffrit.

  Iffrit did not even bother to block it. He simply walked through it. The lesser, corrupted fire of the Abyss parted before his own, pure, primordial flame, like water flowing around a mountain of incandescent rock.

  The crow shrieked in terror and tried to take to the air. But Iffrit was already there. The flaming zanbatō descended. It was not a wild, clumsy swing. It was a precise, elegant, and almost contemptuously casual movement.

  It did not cleave the crow in two. The flat of the massive blade simply… tapped… the crow’s wing.

  The effect was instantaneous. The wing, a beautiful, terrible thing of living shadow, did not just burn. It was unmade. It dissolved into a cloud of black, hissing ash, its conceptual reality utterly and completely erased by the touch of the annihilation-fire.

  The crow let out a final, gurgling scream of pure, spiritual agony and crashed to the ground, a broken, lopsided, and utterly defeated thing.

  Franz screamed as the psychic backlash, the full, undiluted agony of his spirit being so casually and so contemptuously dismantled, slammed into his own soul. He collapsed to his knees, his own, carefully constructed world of arrogant power and demonic pacts crumbling into a ruin of pain and abject terror.

  The entire, magnificent duel had lasted less than ten seconds.

  Lloyd was about to give the final, quiet command, the order to have Iffrit deliver the final, cleansing blow, when a new, and very unexpected, player entered the fray.

  A new sound cut through the quiet aftermath of the battle. The sound of a woman’s sharp, and very familiar, intake of breath.

  Lloyd’s head snapped up. And his own, carefully constructed, cold, and professional composure, for the first time that night, faltered.

  Standing at the edge of the garden, her own Royal Guard held at bay by a gesture of her hand, her face a pale, beautiful mask of pure, stark, and world-breaking realization, was Princess Isabella.

  She had seen it. She had seen it all.

  She was just in time to witness a sight that would shatter her entire, carefully constructed worldview. She was just in time to see Lloyd Ferrum, the failed student, the awkward professor, the glorified party planner, standing as the calm, and absolute, master of a magnificent, terrifying, and very, very familiar, demon of fire.

  The exact same demon, with the exact same power, that she had seen wielded by the legendary, mysterious, and heroic "White Mask" during the attack on the Academy.

  Chapter : 1266

  The pieces, the contradictions, the impossible, illogical data points of the past few months, all slammed into place in her mind with the force of a physical, and very painful, blow.

  The secret brother. The grand conspiracy. The hidden, ghost warrior of House Ferrum.

  It was all a lie. A beautiful, magnificent, and utterly foolish lie she had told herself to make sense of a world that was not making sense.

  In that single, silent, and absolutely world-breaking moment of clarity, she realized the truth.

  The monster. The hero. The legend. The White Mask.

  It was him.

  It had always been him.

  The moment of revelation, for Princess Isabella, was a silent, personal apocalypse. It was a quiet, internal event that was more violent and more world-shattering than any of the physical battles that had just taken place. Her entire, carefully constructed understanding of the world, her neat, logical, and utterly flawed conspiracy theory, had just been systematically, and very publicly, annihilated.

  She stood frozen at the edge of the ruined garden, a statue of pure, unadulterated, and comprehensive shock. Her mind, a sharp, analytical instrument, was struggling to reboot, to process the new, and utterly impossible, data.

  Lloyd Ferrum. The failed student. The awkward, bumbling academic who had been expelled from her own Academy for a spectacular lack of talent. The quiet, eccentric "Professor" whose appointment had been a personal, and very public, insult to her own sense of intellectual and martial superiority. The "glorified party planner" who had, with a series of infuriatingly clever and deeply confusing moves, somehow managed to stumble his way into the heart of the royal court.

  That man. That infuriating, paradoxical, and utterly unimpressive man.

  Was the White Mask.

  The legendary, mysterious, and heroic figure who had appeared at the Academy in a storm of fire and righteous fury. The god-like warrior who had single-handedly, and with a casual, contemptuous grace, dismantled an Ascended-level Curse Knight, a creature that had brought her own elite Royal Guard to its knees.

  The two images, the two identities, refused to merge in her mind. It was a logical impossibility. A square circle. A hot ice cube. And yet, the evidence was right there, a burning, nine-foot-tall, and utterly undeniable fact, standing in the middle of her father’s garden. The demon of fire was the same. The power was the same. The quiet, unshakeable, and utterly terrifying authority was the same.

  The secret brother, the grand, multi-generational conspiracy of House Ferrum, the hidden, ghost warrior trained in the shadows… it had all been a lie. A beautiful, magnificent, and utterly foolish lie she had told herself to make the world make sense again. A story she had invented to explain a power that she could not, and would not, attribute to the one, single, and deeply, personally, and infuriatingly, pathetic man she despised more than any other.

  The truth was so much simpler, and so much more monstrous.

  There was no secret brother. There was no conspiracy.

  There was only him.

  The monster, the hero, the legend… it was him. It had always been him.

  She looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time. She looked past the simple servant’s uniform, past the quiet, unassuming posture, past the infuriating, sarcastic smile that was now, she realized, not a sign of weakness, but a mask. A perfect, brilliant, and utterly impenetrable mask, designed to hide the terrible, magnificent, and god-like power that was sleeping just beneath the surface.

  And in that moment, she felt a new, and very strange, and deeply, profoundly, and almost comically, unsettling emotion.

  It was not anger. It was not humiliation.

  It was a feeling of profound, and very personal, and almost religious, awe.

  And it was immediately followed by a wave of pure, white-hot, and absolutely incandescent fury.

  She had been played. Not just by him, but by everyone. Her father. Her brother. The Headmaster. They had all known. They had all been in on the joke. And they had let her, the brilliant, perceptive, and powerful warrior princess, run around chasing ghosts, a fool in her own, private, and very public, comedy of errors.

  The humiliation of it was a physical blow, a hot, sharp, and utterly unbearable thing.

  While Isabella’s entire world was silently, and very dramatically, imploding, the battle in the garden was reaching its quiet, professional conclusion.

  Lloyd, seeing her arrival, seeing the dawning, world-breaking realization in her eyes, felt a flicker of something. It was not fear. It was not panic. It was a deep, profound, and very weary sense of… annoyance.

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  Chapter : 1267

  This was an unforeseen, and deeply inconvenient, complication. His perfect, secret identity had just been catastrophically, and very publicly, compromised. Another layer of his carefully constructed life had just been stripped away, and he knew, with a sinking, and very tired, certainty, that this particular revelation was going to be the source of a great many, very loud, and very, very complicated, future conversations.

  But that was a problem for future Lloyd. Present Lloyd had a more immediate, and much more pressing, problem to deal with. A downed, but still dangerous, Crown-Ranked enemy, and a garden full of witnesses.

  He decided to end the fight. Cleanly. And quietly.

  He gave a silent, mental command to Iffrit. The order was not to kill, but to disable. A public execution in the royal gardens was, he decided, a breach of etiquette that even he would have a hard time explaining away.

  The nine-foot-tall demon of fire moved with a speed that was a blur, even to Isabella’s trained eyes. Its colossal, flaming zanbatō, a weapon that could level a fortress, descended. But it was not a clumsy, overwhelming blow. It was a move of pure, surgical, and almost contemptuous precision.

  The flat of the massive, molten blade did not strike the cowering Hellfire Crow’s body. It simply… tapped… its wings. A gentle, almost delicate, gesture.

  The effect was instantaneous. The crow’s magnificent, twenty-foot wings of living shadow and abyssal flame did not just burn. They were unmade. They dissolved into a cloud of black, hissing ash, their conceptual reality utterly and completely erased by the touch of the annihilation-fire.

  The Hellfire Crow, its ability to fly and its very reason for being gone, let out a final, gurgling, and utterly defeated squawk and collapsed to the ground, a broken, lopsided, and now utterly pathetic thing.

  Franz, who had been kneeling on the ground, clutching his head in psychic agony, screamed as the final, crippling blow to his spirit slammed into his own soul. The psychic backlash was a cataclysm, shattering the last, fragile vestiges of his own, corrupted spiritual core.

  But he was not given the luxury of a quiet, agonizing collapse.

  The moment the spirit was down, Annalisa and four of her elite "butlers" were on him. They moved with the silent, brutal efficiency of a pack of wolves on a wounded deer. Before Franz could even attempt to resist, before he could reach for a hidden blade or a suicide artifact, he was disarmed, bound in a set of heavy, silver-etched chains that sizzled as they made contact with his demonic aura, suppressing his power, and forced to his knees.

  His head was pushed down, his face pressed into the cold, hard, and now deeply, personally, and professionally humiliating gravel of the garden path.

  The entire engagement, from the first, silent appearance of the assassins to the final, professional, and utterly anticlimactic capture of their leader, had been a masterpiece of brutal, silent, and deeply, profoundly, and almost comically, efficient warfare.

  Isabella could only stare, her mind struggling to reconcile the "glorified party planner" she had so gleefully and so publicly mocked, with the terrifying, silent, and utterly masterful commander who had just, without even breaking a sweat, dismantled a Crown-Ranked demonic threat and its entire elite honor guard.

  The man was not a puzzle. He was an impossibility. A walking, talking, and deeply, profoundly, and infuriatingly, humble violation of the fundamental laws of her world. And she, the warrior princess, the hero of the kingdom, had just been reduced to the role of a stunned, silent, and utterly irrelevant, spectator in his magnificent, terrible, and secret war.

  The silence in the garden, in the aftermath of the swift, brutal, and almost insultingly efficient battle, was a thick, and very charged, thing. The remaining Curse Knights, their commander captured and their demonic spirits broken, had been systematically, and very quietly, exterminated by the rest of the ghost brigade. The garden was now a silent, moonlit tableau of death, a beautiful, artistic, and deeply unsettling arrangement of black-armored bodies and dissipating, shadowy energy.

  Lloyd stood at the center of it all, a quiet, unassuming figure who was now, in the eyes of everyone present, the most terrifying thing in the entire garden. He gave a silent, mental command, and the magnificent, terrible, nine-foot-tall god of annihilation that was Iffrit, dissolved into a swirl of crimson embers and vanished, his immense, overwhelming presence gone as quickly as it had appeared.

  The world seemed to breathe a collective, and very relieved, sigh.

  Chapter : 1268

  Lloyd then turned his attention to the captured enemy. He walked over to the kneeling, bound form of Franz, his footsteps the only sound in the silent garden. He crouched down, bringing himself to eye level with his defeated foe.

  "Now," Lloyd began, his voice a quiet, conversational, and utterly terrifying thing. "You and I are going to have a little chat. You are going to tell me who sent you. You are going to tell me everything you know about the Seventh Circle's operations in this kingdom. And you are going to tell me what your master, Beelzebub, is planning. And you are going to do it now."

  Franz, his face a mask of bitter, impotent hatred, simply spat a glob of bloody saliva at Lloyd’s feet. "I will tell you nothing, you Northern dog," he hissed. "My master will unmake you. He will unmake this entire, pathetic, and self-righteous kingdom."

  Lloyd simply sighed, a sound of profound, and very deep, professional disappointment. "I was afraid you'd say that," he murmured.

  He did not raise his voice. He did not threaten. He simply reached out and placed a single, gentle finger on Franz’s forehead.

  And he activated his Black Ring Eyes.

  He did not use a seal of negation. He did not use a seal of pain. He used something far more subtle, and far more monstrous. He used the "Seal of Severed Identity."

  He did not attack Franz's body or his soul. He attacked the very concept of who he was.

  For Franz, the world did not go black. It simply… ceased to be. His name, his memories, his loyalties, his hatred, his very sense of self—it was all just… gone. He was a consciousness adrift in a perfect, featureless, and utterly silent void. He was not a man. He was not a demon worshiper. He was nothing. A blank page. A silent, empty room.

  The experience lasted for only a single, terrible, and eternal second.

  And then, Lloyd lifted his finger.

  Reality, and with it, his own, shattered identity, crashed back in on Franz in a single, roaring, and agonizing wave. The sheer, psychic whiplash of ceasing to exist and then being forced to exist again was a form of torture so profound, so absolute, that it made a mockery of any simple, physical pain.

  Franz screamed. A raw, animal, and utterly broken sound. The sound of a soul that has just been systematically, and very personally, unmade and then clumsily stapled back together.

  "Let's try this again," Lloyd said, his voice still that same, quiet, and now infinitely more terrifying, conversational tone.

  And in the background, a silent, and very pale, Princess Isabella watched. She had just witnessed a form of power, a form of cruelty, that she had not even known existed. The man she had thought a hero, the man she had thought a commander, had just revealed himself to be something else entirely.

  A monster. A beautiful, brilliant, and utterly, absolutely, and terrifyingly, merciless monster. And he was, without a doubt, the most magnificent, and most terrifying, thing she had ever seen. The unmasking was complete. And the reality of him was so much more, and so much worse, than any of her most fevered, and most foolish, imaginings.

  The silent, psychic scream that was ripped from Franz’s soul was a sound that would haunt the dreams of everyone who heard it. It was a sound of a mind being broken, not with a clumsy, brutal hammer, but with the cold, precise, and utterly terrifying art of a master surgeon.

  Princess Isabella stood frozen, her own, formidable Royal Guard a silent, and now utterly irrelevant, wall of steel behind her. She was a warrior. She had seen death. She had seen battle. She had seen the raw, chaotic, and brutal face of war. She had never, in her entire, privileged, and very violent life, seen anything like this.

  The man she had been so foolishly, and so arrogantly, taunting and testing was not a man. He was a force of nature. A quiet, smiling, and deeply, profoundly, and almost casually, cruel entity who could, with a single, gentle touch, unmake a person’s very soul.

  The revelation was a silent, personal apocalypse. It was a complete, and utterly irreversible, recalibration of her entire understanding of the world, and of her own, now seemingly pathetic, place within it.

  She watched, her mind a silent, horrified, and deeply, profoundly fascinated void, as the battle—if such a one-sided, psychological demolition could be called a battle—concluded.