The grand dining hall of the Ashborne Keep was a stark testant to the family’s austere, martial history. Unlike the lavish, gold-gilded manors of the Capital’s central nobles—who proved that you could buy wealth but not necessarily heritage—the Ashborne hall was built of ancient, polished dark wood and unyielding stone. Heavy ancestral banners hung from the high vaulted ceilings, and the warmth in the room ca from a roaring hearth rather than delicate mana-lamps.
I sat to my father’s right, while my mother sat to his left.
Despite the imposing, military atmosphere of the room, the long oak table was piled high with hearty, steaming northern cuisine—thick slabs of roasted venison, dense root vegetable stews, and heavy, crusty bread.
"Eat, Lucien. You need to put so actual at back on those bones," Lyriana insisted, practically piling a third helping of roasted venison onto my plate. "The Capital’s food is too delicate and needlessly complex. It doesn’t build proper muscle for a growing boy."
"Thank you, Mother," I said, picking up my fork.
I took a bite. It was heavy, rich, and intensely savory. It lacked the refined, delicate culinary magic of Lily’s dishes, but it possessed a rugged, nostalgic warmth that the original Lucien’s body imdiately recognized and craved.
Throughout the first half of the al, Count Darius remained entirely silent. He systematically cut and ate his steak, his single eye occasionally flicking toward . He was observing my posture, my breathing, the quiet efficiency in the way I held my cutlery. He was looking for the arrogant, sloppy, temperantal boy he had banished.
He wasn’t finding him.
I set my fork down and wiped my mouth with a linen napkin. I couldn’t ignore the mammoth in the room any longer.
"Mother," I began, gesturing vaguely toward her completely altered figure. "I don’t an to be blunt, but... are you expecting?"
Count Darius abruptly choked on his wine. He slamd his goblet down onto the heavy oak table, coughing violently into his massive fist. A faint, highly uncharacteristic tinge of red appeared on his scarred, weather-beaten face.
Lyriana’s face, however, lit up with a radiant, unabashed glow. She placed a hand tenderly over her rounded stomach.
"I am!" she bead, her dark eyes sparkling with absolute delight. "You are going to be an older brother, Lucien. The healers say I’m about four months along."
Four months.
My mind raced. Four months ago was exactly when the CrystalVale The Park incident happened—the ’Day of Shattered Glass.’ That was when Mother had rushed to the Capital to visit .
Was she so relieved and happy after seeing doing well—seeing that I wasn’t a total failure anymore—that the deep wedge my exile had driven between her and Father finally vanished?
They had finally reconnected.
I completely derailed the ga’s lore just by surviving and minding my own business, I realized, utterly bewildered but faintly amused. The butterfly effect of simply not being a piece of trash had literally birthed a new Ashborne heir.
"That is... wonderful news," I said sincerely, offering a small, genuine smile. "Congratulations, Mother. And to you as well, Father."
Darius cleared his throat loudly, forcefully regaining his stoic, warlord composure. He crossed his massive arms and leaned forward, resting them on the table. The clinking of silverware stopped.
The brief mont of familial warmth vanished instantly, replaced by the freezing, heavy atmosphere of a military interrogation.
"Enough about that," Darius rumbled. His single eye locked onto , piercing and sharp. "Let’s talk about the things you have been doing in the south. A ’High-Threat Anomaly’ neutralized in the Iron-Sand Desert. A Desert Regent. A High-Ranking Demon."
He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a dangerous baritone. "Just two first-year cadets, solving a predicant that should have wiped out a border garrison. I didn’t know you were so brave. Are you getting used to playing the hero these days? Because your reckless deeds don’t seem to be stopping."
"I didn’t play hero, Father. I survived," I answered calmly, eting his intimidating gaze without a single flinch.
"A High-Ranking Demon is not sothing a bronze-tier Academy cadet simply ’survives,’" Darius countered. "A beast of that caliber requires a Gold-Rank vanguard just to hold the line. Yet the Association report says the demon’s head was completely obliterated. By a firearm."
He was pushing . He was deliberately applying pressure to see if I would crack, lie, or start bragging about my power the way the old Lucien would have.
"The demon was summoned through a desperate, highly flawed sacrificial ritual by a corrupted student," I explained, keeping my voice steady, analytical, and completely devoid of arrogance. "Its physical vessel was incomplete. Furthermore, the ruin we were trapped in possessed a massive, dormant array of ancient magic. I utilized an unstable holy relic we found within the tomb to temporarily breach its outer shell, and Lady Elisha provided the heavy artillery to keep it pinned. It was a tactical execution of a weakened target. Not a fair duel."
I deliberately omitted the true nature of the Rosary, the System, and my mastery of Divine Force. I frad the entire encounter purely as a pragmatic, ruthless exploitation of the environnt and the enemy’s weaknesses.
It was exactly the kind of language the Lord of the North understood.
Darius stared at . The silence stretched, thick and oppressive.
Without warning, the ambient temperature in the room plumted to sub-zero.
A suffocating, localized wave of Platinum-Rank killing intent exploded from Darius and slamd directly into across the table. It was heavy enough to make the heavy silver platters rattle and the crystal wine glasses crack under the pressure.
It was a raw test of my spirit. If I were the old Lucien, my knees would have buckled, my teeth would have chattered, and I would have fallen out of my chair in pure, unadulterated terror.
[Sixth Sense (Lv. 3) detects an overwhelming, non-lethal pressure!]
I forcefully suppressed my body’s natural flinch response. I didn’t reach for a weapon. I didn’t break eye contact. I just sat there, my posture completely rigid, breathing slowly and evenly through the crushing, invisible weight.
Ten seconds passed. Then twenty.
Darius suddenly closed his eye, and the suffocating pressure vanished into thin air, as if it had never existed.
He sat back in his heavy wooden chair, letting out a long, heavy exhale.
"You didn’t blink," Darius noted, a bizarre, entirely unfamiliar emotion flickering across his scarred face. "A year ago, you would have wet yourself and begged for rcy if I so much as raised my voice."
"A year ago, I was a foolish child who didn’t understand the weight of the Ashborne na," I replied quietly. "I’ve learned that monsters do not care about nobility, Father. They only care if you are strong enough to kill them before they kill you."
Darius Ashborne stared at for a long ti. Then, very slowly, a deep, rumbling chuckle vibrated in his chest. It wasn’t a warm, fatherly laugh, but it was one of genuine, unfiltered approval from a veteran commander.
"Pragmatic. Ruthless. And you finally grew so fangs," Darius said, picking up his wine goblet. He raised it slightly in my direction. "It seems the Capital’s dirt managed to scour the arrogance out of you after all."
He took a sip, then set the goblet down firmly.
"The official decree of exile stands until you graduate. I will not have my word mocked by the political snakes in the center," Darius stated, his tone leaving no room for argunt. "But... since you have clearly changed for the better, and turned over a new leaf, I will lift the financial embargo. You are not to use the family’s na outside to show off, but you will no longer be barred from the family’s resources."
"I understand, Father. Thank you," I said, suppressing an internal sigh of massive relief. Unrestricted access to the Ashborne treasury was a massive win for my apocalyptic preparations.
A grim, terrifyingly eager smile stretched across Darius’s scarred face.
Beside , Lyriana suddenly clapped her hands together, her dark eyes shining with absolute delight. "Oh, this is wonderful! The n of the house are finally getting along! Now that business is out of the way, Lucien, tell —how are things going with that lovely girl from the Solre family?"
I choked on my water.
Darius paused, his fork stopping halfway to his mouth. He slowly turned his head to look at , his lone eye narrowing with a completely different, distinctly paternal kind of interrogation.
"A girl?" the Lord of the North rumbled.
"Ha... haha..." I coughed, grabbing a napkin.
"What? Why are you being so hesitant?" Lyriana pressed, completely ignoring the murderous aura leaking out of her massive husband. "Don’t tell you broke up with her! Or are you two still just playing that ’just friends’ nonsense?"
"Ahem," Darius coughed loudly, trying to assert his presence. "Am I missing sothing, Lyriana?"
But Lyriana didn’t give him an ounce of face. She kept her eager eyes locked entirely on .
"So, tell ! Did anything progress between you two?"
I awkwardly rubbed the back of my neck, desperately avoiding my father’s burning glare.
"Yeah..." I admitted softly. "We... we confird our relationship. She is officially my girlfriend now."
Lyriana gasped in pure delight. She burst into hearty laughter, reaching over and aggressively patting my back.
"Yes! That’s my boy!" she cheered triumphantly, while Count Darius sat frozen in his chair, processing the fact that he is so oblivious to his son’s affairs.
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