Awakening the Great Bloodline Chapter 154

Chapter 154: Contaminated Bloodline

On the way out of the forest, the snowfall had eased, but the air hung heavy. Calix absentmindedly turned the ring between his fingers. The faint grain of the horn-carved band pressed against his skin.

Volga, Hadiya, and Zahira watched him in silence. They all knew what he was turning over in his mind.

As the sunset spilled past his shoulders, Calix finally spoke. No matter how many tis he'd thought it through, this was not a subject he could simply let pass.

"The Gatekeeper's words…… Were they about my father?"

Yelayen paused for a mont. He gave a small nod, yet his gaze drifted sowhere far off.

"They were. But the ti is not yet right."

"……Is now not possible?"

Without aning to, his voice climbed a note. His breathing faltered as he struggled to keep his emotions in check.

"Calix."

The mage answered, the lines around his eyes set firm.

"When you press a blade to a wound that has not yet stopped bleeding, poison spreads instead of new flesh growing. Look to the ground beneath your feet. The path is still slick, and the burden on your shoulders is heavier than steel."

Calix bit down on his lip. He understood with his head, but accepting it with his heart was sothing else entirely. The necklace pulsed with warmth, as if trying to soothe him, though it cooled again almost at once. His heart lurched and staggered through two or three beats before finally returning to its usual rhythm.

'He knows.'

His eyes followed Yelayen's back. There were far too many things he wanted to ask. Yet he would not hear the answers he wanted. Mages were ever this wayward.

Their shadows overlapped for a mont, then slowly drew apart.

From that point on, for a fortnight, Calix swallowed the sa question every single day and pressed forward. The snow lted and refroze in turn, and with it his steps grew all the heavier. In the deep hours of the night he would wake, gripped by an unnaable dread. Each morning his fingertips went numb, and exhaustion clung to his ankles.

'Get a hold of yourself. What is this even about.'

While the others rested, Calix settled onto the stone railing of a watchtower that had crumbled to ruin. The faint sll of char pricked at his nose. Ash was sared across the railing in patches. He pushed down the anxiety over the secret of his birth and turned his gaze inward, toward the power living inside him.

'Half of it within my control, half beyond it.'

With every steadying breath, the double pulse grew clearer. His original Core sent signals from sowhere deep within, while the chaos the Gatekeeper had forced inside coiled around it in spirals, as though dancing.

It was much like the shape of a dam holding back a great river. If a dangerous mont ca, the chain on his finger would warn him. Of course, that did not an he could rely on the ring's power alone. Strength did its part not when it was bound to a tool, but when it moved according to one's will.

Calix rotated his mana and deliberately pressed against his own heart. That enormous force did not waver in the slightest. It only lted away, little by little, in ways that could barely be noticed.

'I have to make it mine before the dam breaks.'

If he didn't, it would be himself he was swallowed by first.

"Shall we get moving?"

At the sound of Volga's voice he lifted his head, and there were the banners of the allied forces' encampnt snapping in the wind. Before he knew it, it was ti to return.

A hocoming after one month away.

* * *

When Calix's party entered the camp, a cheer rose up like a welcoming call. The horses were soaked in sweat and the armor was streaked with mud and snow, yet the warmth in the air, brighter than before, lted away the fatigue.

Before the tents, new banners were flying. The crests of the Viale Alliance and the desert nation of Kalahim.

First ca the report that Yoman's army had brought down a Legion Commander in the continent's south. A month prior, a battle had been fought on a burning coastline. Word spread of the enemy's bodies filling the shore and the warriors who'd made it back sharing cups together.

At last, each front was drawing breath.

The news from the capital, however, was far from peaceful.

"The Emperor's firstborn has claid succession rights."

"That complicates things."

"It nearly did."

"……?"

By Adrian's account, the nobility had stepped forward to resist and it had co to nothing. He gave the credit to Royce for taking the lead, but it was not hard to tell whose hand had been at work.

"On top of that, the agreents with the high nobility are settled too. Olek Akron, son of Duke Akron, has joined the Mountain Rabbits, and we've firmly taken Marquis Ashapel's hand as well. He's agreed to open the border with Viale, so there shouldn't be anything tying our feet for the ti being."

"You've worked hard."

"Hard is hardly the word. I simply put together a reasonable board."

The reply ca back with a strangely competitive edge. While Calix had been away, the Mountain Rabbits had been carrying out their own work.

Just then, the very person at the center of it all made his appearance. Yaleyan Von Ashapel stepped out of a tent and froze where he stood as their eyes t.

The two n regarded each other in silence.

"……Will you have a cup of tea?"

After a pause, an awkward offer ca his way. Marquis Ashapel had set aside his pride to ask first, and Calix quietly inclined his head to accept.

He had things he needed to ask, in any case.

The inside of the tent was tidy. True to its owner's nature, only two or three docunts lay spread across the desk, and everything else was stripped of excess. Soon the noise from outside faded, and the lamplight spread in a soft glow.

The mont the attendant had set down the teacups and stepped back, Marquis Ashapel stilled his hand and looked at Calix. Holding each other's gaze for only a mont drew the tension in the room taut.

"You appear to have sothing you wish to ask . Am I right?"

"……I want to hear about my father."

The air froze in an instant. The one listening already knew what was coming, and the one speaking had already anticipated the other's reaction.

Even so, the tips of the Marquis's fingers trembled faintly.

He drew a slow breath and leaned back against his chair. His eyelids pinched almost imperceptibly and one corner of his mouth twisted.

"That man was filth."

Calix's eyebrow gave a small twitch. In the Marquis's voice lay sothing weightier than anger—a deep, settled revulsion.

He raised one hand again and ran it along the back of his neck. Rough fingertips traced the surface of the neural accelerator. Within his eyes, so mont from the past was reflected.

"Do you know your father's na?"

The question returned to him, and this ti it was Calix who reached back through mory. The na of the mad magitech engineer who had lived in the back alleys.

"……Nilo."

The first person to have fitted Calix with a neural accelerator. The Marquis heard that answer and smiled bitterly.

"He was a magitech engineer raised by the forr Marquis. He grew up with the full backing of the family. I myself kept company with him now and then in my younger years. But I failed to see it. That talent and character do not go hand in hand."

The Marquis's eyes clouded for a mont, then sharpened.

For just an instant, killing intent surfaced.

"That man…… Violated my younger sister."

Calix's molars ground together. The words beca a spike and drove into his chest. His mouth moved, but he could not bring himself to ask anything further.

The bookmark from his mother, sitting in the belt pouch, felt unusually heavy.

"He slipped away in the dead of night and never showed his face again. It was only months later that we learned an unwanted child had been conceived. That child could not be received as a blessing. Not simply because it was a bastard."

The veins on the back of his hand swelled as though about to burst, and the armrest let out a creak.

"That day—I should have killed him."

"……"

The color drained from his face, and the skin over his knuckles split, blood seeping through. A tallic taste spread through his mouth. The ring on his fourth finger humd and pulsed faintly.

'I was…… Sothing like that.'

Emotions ran out of control and a wave of mana rippled outward. Clatter—the teacup tipped over and its contents spilled, and the lamp overhead let out a creak.

The Marquis watched in silence. The heat of fury that had burned across his expression had already settled, leaving nothing but exhaustion in its wake.

The mont Calix had barely brought his surging Core back under control, the Marquis let out his unguarded thoughts in a worn voice.

"You were a blemish on the family na. So I removed you. When I took the Marquis's seat, I had you sent sowhere you would not be seen. Perhaps even this is nothing but an excuse. Yet—"

Their eyes t.

"Does it matter anymore. You are an Ashapel."

Silence stretched on for a long while. The air was quiet enough to hear the pop of firewood outside. At its end, Calix rose from his seat without a word.

The scrape of the chair legs against the floor rang out briefly. There were no parting formalities.

"Just as I thought…… The very image of your mother."

Yaleyan Von Ashapel watched that retreating figure and murmured softly.

* * *

After that, Calix carried on outwardly calm. He laughed when his companions cracked jokes, and when sothing important needed handling he stepped forward just as he always had.

Yet the turbulence within him could not be perfectly hidden. He fell into brooding more often, slept fitfully, and without realizing it found himself scratching at his scabbard with his fingertips.

His unrest was small, but an elf's keen senses did not let it pass unnoticed.

"Calix."

Airien called his na quietly.

"Your body is here and still, but your mind keeps trying to race ahead."

Calix noticed that the mask he wore on his face had begun to crack. But before he could put together any sort of excuse, she was already guiding him toward the forest.

The hour when the shade of night had settled in thick and damp. The two sat side by side before a stand of withered undergrowth. The sll of pine resin clinging to the bark mixed with the cold night air and drifted outward.

The woman asked nothing. Instead, she taught him how to match his breathing. In the faint light, only the quiet rhythm of breath passed between them. Calix followed along without thinking, gradually turning his ear toward the sound of his own heartbeat.

Thud.

Just then, a single leaf fell from sowhere overhead. With a glance, she told him only to 'watch until the end'. The leaf sank slowly downward.

At first, his breathing moved a beat faster. Then twice, three tis, four tis. Keeping pace with the drifting of the falling thing, the rhythm ca to match the beating of his heart.

"Slowly, without haste."

"……"

"Don't suppress it—let it pass through. Tomorrow, and the day after."

It was, without question, an unremarkable scene. Only the withered brush of midwinter shaking itself loose. And yet, strangely, that natural, unhurried flow settled into his chest.

Without saying a word, simply staying still—the snowflakes, the cold wind, the moonlight blanketing the world, all of it he let pass by.

[Nature Attunent '2%' increased, now at '68%']

She called this 'the elven ditation'. A thod of resonating with nature within silence. From then on, Calix learned how to bring his mind back to rest.

Another among the Mountain Rabbits, anwhile, offered help in a sowhat more direct fashion.

"My cook comrade, what on earth is going on? Out wandering in the middle of the night with a big-eared woman!"

"It's just……"

It was Gregor—the old man who had lost his mory. A covenant-bearer who could not conceal a secret, nor was ant to. Calix laid out his troubles honestly, and the other responded in his customary way.

"Your mother must have been a woman of great strength! A thing to be truly grateful for!"

"……A thing to be grateful for."

It started off in an unexpected direction, then turned earnest without warning.

Gregor shrugged and went on, unhurried.

"No person is without flaw. I know how to raise a shield, but not how to nd one. So a dwarf handles that."

"……"

"Is that all? I'm quite hopeless at leading people too. So the leader comrade takes that role, and finding the way falls to the mouse comrade. Gold coin matters go to Volga, and my als…… That is your comrade's part!"

It was a grumbling tone, yet wisdom lay underneath it.

The old man went on to say flatly that none of it was Calix's fault.

"Your mother is the sa. If she made that choice, as her child you must respect it. Why is it your head that's in a knot? You only need to leave it to her."

The tangle in his chest didn't straighten all at once, but those final words reached sowhere deep.

"Leave it to her…… And that's enough."

Calix murmured it low and let out a long breath. So of the heat clinging to the back of his neck finally loosened. Just then, without warning, Gregor's expression turned stern.

"And so it is. Well, if that alone isn't enough, there's only one thing for it!"

"……?"

"Bring your sword! When a man has stray thoughts rattling around, he needs to work up a sweat!"

And from that day on, Calix swung his sword without rest whenever ti allowed.

'After the war ends…… I'll find Nilo.'

Moonlight caught the blade and glittered—until at last it was cut apart by the arc sweeping from the sword's tip—and with it, his stray thoughts spilled away as well, shedding one layer at a ti.