Free Web NovelChapter 82: Chapter 82: The Puppet Prince
Chapter 82: The Puppet Prince
The Rank One Apex Villa was entirely silent.
Inside Draven’s bedroom, the curtains were drawn tight, sealing the room in absolute darkness. On the hardwood floor lay the perfectly preserved corpse of Neville Hennessey.
The golden boy’s skin was pale, and his chest was stained with the dried blood from the fateful day he was ambushed by the Abyss.
Draven stood over the dead Hero. In his hand, the Sovereign’s Soul Stone pulsed with a faint, ancient crimson light.
’A hyper-intelligent soul adjusting to an S-Rank vessel,’ Draven analyzed coldly.
’Let’s see just how perfect this mimicry truly is.’
Draven knelt beside the body. He didn’t hesitate. He pressed the jagged black crystal directly against the center of Neville’s chest.
SHCK!
The stone sank into the dead flesh as if the body were made of water.
For a single terrifying second, a web of pitch-black, demonic veins exploded across Neville’s pale skin.
The ambient temperature in the room plummeted to absolute zero.
The ancient, terrifying pressure of the Sovereign soul tried to assert its native dark dominance.
But then, the Mythic item adapted.
The hyper-intelligent soul rapidly scanned the physical vessel.
It recognized the innate S-Rank holy talent deeply ingrained in Neville’s mana core.
Realizing that dark magic would slowly destroy a holy vessel, the Sovereign soul instantly, violently shifted its entire nature.
FWOOSH!
The pitch-black veins vanished. In their place, a blinding, pristine, and incredibly warm golden aura erupted from the body. It was the exact, undeniable signature of Neville’s holy mana.
The fatal wounds on his chest began to stitch together at a terrifying speed.
The pale, dead skin regained its healthy, aristocratic flush.
The golden boy’s chest expanded as he took a massive, sudden gasp of air.
Neville Hennessey’s eyes snapped open.
They were the exact same bright, heroic blue eyes he had in life.
But the arrogant, naive spark that used to reside in them was completely gone.
In its place was an ocean of profound, ancient intelligence.
Neville didn’t panic. He didn’t scream.
He slowly pushed himself off the hardwood floor. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓
His movements were not the clumsy, heavy motions of a teenager in armor.
He moved with an impossible, liquid elegance, like a phantom dancing in the dark.
He looked at his golden hands, tested the holy mana flowing through his newly repaired veins, and then turned his bright blue eyes toward Draven.
Neville stepped forward.
He gracefully swept his right arm across his chest and lowered himself into a flawless, deeply reverent kneel.
"I am humbled to finally stand in your presence, my Lord," Neville spoke.
His voice was identical to the original Hero’s, but his tone was incredibly smooth, polite, and dripping with absolute, fanatical devotion.
Draven looked down at the kneeling boy.
He felt the unbreakable, absolute blood-pact tethering the ancient soul directly to his own mind.
The Sovereign would gladly tear out its own heart if Draven simply blinked in that direction.
"You adapt quickly," Draven noted smoothly. His pitch-black eyes gleamed with dark satisfaction.
"To serve you poorly would be the greatest of sins, my Lord," Neville smiled politely, keeping his head bowed in utter submission.
"This vessel possesses a rather robust holy affinity. I have perfectly aligned my spiritual wavelength to match its original frequency. Even a Level 200 divine scan will find nothing but the pristine soul of Bastion Seven’s beloved golden boy."
It was perfect. A highly capable, obsessively loyal servant hiding behind the face of a saint. fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm
"Stand up," Draven commanded.
Neville rose to his feet with impeccable grace, his hands resting respectfully at his sides.
"Your name is Neville Hennessey," Draven briefed him coldly.
"Your father, Patriarch Vance Hennessey, just burned a decade of his lifespan to avenge your apparent death. He is currently grieving, enraged, and vulnerable."
"I understand, my Lord," Neville nodded. His blue eyes curved into a polite, chilling smile.
"I am to be the miracle he prayed for. I will return to the House of Hennessey as the prodigal son. I will be the perfect heir, and when the time is right, I will hand you the keys to his entire domain."
"Exactly," Draven smirked.
The absolute intelligence of the Sovereign made explaining things a breeze. He didn’t have to micro-manage this puppet.
It was a flawless political weapon.
Draven turned away from the boy. He raised his right hand.
He pushed a fraction of his mana into the black geometric tattoo etched into his skin.
VWOOM!
The physical world dissolved instantly. The walls of his dormitory faded into black mist. Gravity vanished.
Draven stepped onto the polished obsidian floor of the Astral Server. The endless, starless void stretched out in every direction.
The silence here was absolute.
He willed the glowing interface into existence. He selected the target from his registry and initiated the astral pull.
FWOOSH!
Sirius Statanham materialized in the void. The Underworld Don wore his tailored suit.
He instantly dropped to one knee, bowing his head with profound reverence toward the shifting, faceless void of darkness that Draven projected as his avatar.
"My Lord," Sirius greeted him.
"Rise, Sirius," the layered, godly voice echoed through the endless dark.
Sirius stood, his scarred face entirely impassive.
"Awaiting your orders."
"I have a highly sensitive package that needs to be transported tonight," Draven commanded.
"You will meet my physical proxy at the designated blind spot behind the inner armory in ten minutes. You will bind the package, transport it to the abandoned warehouse district in Sector 4B, and dump it in a highly suspicious, yet visible, slum alley. The Vanguard patrols must find it within the hour."
"Consider it done," Sirius nodded smoothly. He didn’t ask a single question.
Draven waved his hand, dismissing the astral projection.
SWOOSH!
Draven opened his eyes. He was back in his dorm room. The transition was completely seamless. He grabbed his featureless white mask and his dark tactical cloak.
"Let’s go, Hero," Draven said to Neville.
"It’s time for your grand return to the stage."
The rain was falling heavily over the slums of District Four, washing the soot and ash of the Beast Wave into the gutters.
Sirius Statanham stood in the pitch-black shadows of a narrow alleyway.
The underworld don wore a heavy black overcoat over his tailored suit.
He was smoking a cigar, the cherry glowing dimly in the dark.
VWOOM.
The space ten feet in front of Sirius rippled with a faint, purple-blue spatial distortion.
"Zero" materialized out of the void, wearing his pristine white mask.
Stepping out of the spatial tear directly behind the First Finger was a boy in dented, bloodstained golden armor.
Sirius took a slow drag from his cigar. His scarred face remained entirely impassive, but internally, his mind was reeling in sheer, unadulterated shock.
As an underworld boss, Sirius made it his business to know everything. He knew exactly who the boy was.
He knew Patriarch Hennessey had torn the Wildlands apart looking for him. The kid was supposed to be dead.
Yet here he was, standing quietly behind the First Finger of the Embracing Hands, radiating a flawless, blindingly pure golden aura.
But as Sirius looked closer, a cold shiver ran down his spine. The boy’s aura was perfectly holy, but his eyes... they were far too intelligent, far too still.
He was looking at Sirius not with the arrogance of a noble, but with the cold, polite assessment of an apex predator.
’The Lord didn’t just find him,’ Sirius realized with absolute, terrifying clarity.
’He broke him. The golden boy is a pet.’
"Sirius," Zero’s musical voice hummed from behind the white mask.
"Boss," Sirius replied respectfully, crushing his cigar under his boot.
Zero patted Neville gently on the shoulder.
"Our young friend here had a very rough time during the Beast Wave," Zero explained casually, his tone dripping with theatrical sarcasm.
"He barely escaped the Cult’s ambush. He has been hiding in a damp, miserable cave in the Wildlands for weeks. He managed to slip back into the city during the chaos today, but alas, the exhaustion was simply too much for his noble body."
Zero tilted his head, looking at Sirius.
"Bind him. Deliver him to the spot."
"Understood," Sirius grunted.
He pulled a set of heavy, rusted iron chains from a nearby supply crate and roughly bound Neville’s wrists.
The golden boy didn’t resist. He offered Sirius a polite, entirely unnerving smile as the chains locked into place.
Zero warped the space around his body and vanished, leaving the underworld don and the resurrected Hero alone in the rain.
Twenty minutes later, Sirius dragged the chained boy into a dilapidated, foul-smelling slum alley in Sector 4B. He shoved Neville into the deep mud near a broken doorway.
Neville complied immediately. He flawlessly dropped his heart rate, forced a sickly pallor onto his skin, and allowed his golden aura to flicker weakly, perfectly mimicking a boy on the absolute brink of death.
Sirius watched the performance from the shadows. It was terrifyingly perfect.
Satisfied, the Underworld Don melted back into the darkness, disappearing into the underworld network to await further orders.
Lying in the freezing mud, Neville Hennessey slowly closed his bright blue eyes, waiting patiently for the curtain to rise.
Miles away, standing in the pitch-black darkness of his Academy dorm room, Draven Mordis looked out his window.
His gaze was fixed on the towering, heavily fortified spires of the Hennessey Estate in the noble district.
He reached down and picked up the featureless white mask resting on his desk.
’A grieving father is a dangerous thing,’ Draven thought smoothly, slipping the mask over his face. ’But a grieving father who is suddenly handed a miracle... is the easiest thing in the world to control.’
VWOOM.
The space around Draven warped, and he vanished into the void.
It was time for the First Finger to collect a debt.
