Free Web NovelChapter 101: Last Minutes In Galen [II]
She brought up the raid and she claimed that the only reason he had bothered to save Serra was because he wanted to use the naive healer to cash in on a massive reward from the Church which wasn’t wrong...
He had grown to like her and Sylvia did too but she didn’t put that in the letter though.
She accused him of not actually caring about anyone but himself, completely invalidating the bond he had formed with the party...
She brought up Vex and Garrick as she knew how much those deaths haunted Serra.
She asked him point-blank if he even remembered the names of the men who had been slaughtered trying to save his miserable life, painting him as a sociopath who viewed his allies as disposable meat shields...
She tore into his complex relationship with Mirela.
She pointed out the brutal truth: he didn’t even have a hand in rescuing the goat-eared girl from the cultists.
It was all her and Serra’s doing. She accused him of lacking any basic human sympathy, stating that he was just letting Vex’s traumatized, broken cousin act like a maid to stroke his own massive ego...
And then she moved her sights to Zephyra.
She accused him of stringing the disguised royal along like a lost puppy, she pointed out that there were countless occasions where he could have stopped Zephyra’s delusions but he kept playing along, turning a fake engagement into a real one even though he clearly didn’t love her.
She demanded to know how many women he planned to manipulate, use, and hurt before his twisted pride was finally satisfied and then Sylvia finished the long brutal letter by systematically destroying his self-worth.
She told him that he didn’t see people as people.
He just saw them as tools to be used, exploited, and discarded when they were no longer convenient.
She mocked his physical appearance, calling his looks painfully average compared to the true refined nobles she was used to and she left him with a final crushing inescapable reminder: even if he hoarded all the gold in the world, even if he bought a fake title and dressed in silk, a filthy, worthless commoner was all he would ever be...
Sylvia stopped writing.
Her chest was heaving violently as she gasped for air, as if she had just run a marathon. She dropped the quill onto the wooden desk and it clattered loudly in the quiet room.
Her heart felt like it had been ripped out of her ribcage, thrown onto the floor, and stomped into a bloody paste.
She had just taken everything she had seen in Klaus, every vulnerability he possessed and weaponized it to destroy his mind.
But it was necessary. It was the only way to save his life...
He would hate her now... He wouldn’t come looking for her in the Capital... He would move on, he would survive, and he would be safe from her family’s wrath...
Sylvia stood up from the desk. She left the letter resting next to the flickering wax candle and she didn’t look at the cruel words again.
Sylvia couldn’t stomach it.
"Are you done breaking your own heart?" Aurelia asked quietly with her pipe long since extinguished, leaving only cold ash in the bowl.
"Yes," Sylvia said, her voice completely devoid of all emotion. It sounded like it was coming from a corpse. "Let’s go."
Sylvia walked to the front of the shop.
She unlatched the heavy wooden double doors and pushed them open, stepping out into the freezing night air of the empty street.
Aurelia followed closely behind her, pulling a thick dark winter cloak over her shoulders to ward off the cold.
They stood in the center of the cobblestone road and they looked at each other.
There were no words exchanged... There was no argument, no debate, and no lingering farewell to the town. They just offered each other a single solemn nod.
Sylvia bent her knees, channeling a massive surge of her golden aura into her legs, and leaped.
She shot into the night sky, clearing the three-story rooftops of the commercial district in a single effortless bound.
Sylvia landed silently on the slate shingles of a tall tavern with the immense physical impact absorbed entirely by her aura barrier.
She pushed off immediately, bounding across the sleeping town in massive, sweeping arcs, aiming for the outer defensive walls.
Behind her, Aurelia moved.
Sylvia glanced over her shoulder as she flew through the air, expecting to see her Grandmother struggling to keep up with the pace, perhaps relying on an item or a spell to close the distance.
Instead, Aurelia simply crouched down on the cobblestone street.
The older woman didn’t glow with a golden aura... she didn’t chant an incantation, and she didn’t seem to use any visible mana at all.
She just planted her boots and pushed off the ground.
BOOM!
The thick cobblestone street beneath Aurelia’s feet instantly shattered into fine powdery dust as a massive, ten-foot crater formed in the road from the sheer force of her jump.
Aurelia launched into the sky like a fired siege missile.
She didn’t bounce from roof to roof like Sylvia as she cleared the entire span of Galen Town in one single, continuous, terrifying arc, soaring hundreds of feet high above the defensive walls and disappearing into the darkness of the fields beyond.
Sylvia landed on the outer stone wall of the town with her golden eyes wide with genuine shock.
’Why the hell is that woman so strong?’ Sylvia thought with her mind struggling to process the absurd display of physical power. ’She didn’t even use aura to enhance her muscles. That was pure, raw physical strength. If she was this powerful... how did the executioners ever catch her?’
Sylvia shook off her surprise... She couldn’t dwell on it now. She leaped off the stone wall, dropping down into the deep fields marking the outer limits of Galen Town.
The temperature out here was much colder with the grass crunching loudly under her leather boots as she walked toward the designated extraction point hidden in the tree line.
Aurelia was already there, standing casually in the snow with her hands tucked deep into the pockets of her cloak, completely unfazed by her massive leap.
Waiting for them in the center of the clearing was a massive, elegant transport carriage. freewebnøvel.com
The reinforced wood was painted a deep, polished black, and the heavy doors bore the intricate, unmistakable gold crest of the Longlon Clan... a blooming lotus wrapped in thorned chains.
Two large heavily armored warhorses huffed aggressively in the cold air with their hot breath rising in thick white plumes.
Standing at attention on either side of the carriage were two guards. They wore the distinct heavy plate armor of the Longlon personal military, armed with long wickedly sharp halberds designed to cleave through monster hide.
When the guards recognized the two women approaching through the snow, they immediately snapped to attention with their armor clanking loudly as they offered crisp military salutes.
Sylvia walked forward, her golden aura flaring slightly to push back the cold wind.
The guard standing near the carriage door reached out to pull the heavy iron handle.
He was a veteran soldier, his face lined with old scars and his dark eyes hard and unforgiving. He looked past Sylvia, his gaze landing directly on Aurelia and a vile disrespectful sneer crossed his lips.
He turned back to Sylvia, offering a cruel, mocking smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
"Welcome back, Lady Sylvia," the guard said, his tone dripping with obvious condescension. "We were worried you might actually take a liking to the dirt out here. Glad to see you didn’t run off and breed with a filthy commoner like the old hag did."
The clearing went completely dead silent. The wind howled violently through the snowy pines, but it couldn’t mask the sudden oppressive drop in temperature.
Aurelia’s lips twitched slightly. She didn’t look angry, and she didn’t look hurt by the insult. She just looked deeply annoyed, like she had stepped in something unpleasant.
She slowly turned her head to look at Sylvia and Sylvia was already facing the guard.
For the first time in their entire lives, Sylvia and her Grandmother were operating on the exact same wavelength.
The insult wasn’t just directed at Aurelia’s tragic past; it was a direct, unapologetic attack on Klaus. It was an attack on the man Sylvia loved, the man she had just left behind in that bed.
The guard’s mocking smile faltered as he looked into Sylvia’s glowing golden eyes. He expected to see a humbled broken girl returning from exile but instead, he saw nothing but cold, empty unfathomable death.
"Lady Sylvia?" the guard stammered, taking a clumsy step back, his hand dropping away from the carriage door.
Sylvia didn’t draw a weapon and she didn’t even break her slow, measured stride. She simply raised her right hand, her fingers pressed tightly together to form a flat, rigid blade and swung her arm in a casual horizontal arc.
A highly condensed, razor-sharp crescent of raw golden aura detached from her fingertips and it moved so incredibly fast that the air itself screamed in protest.
SLICE!
The aura blade passed cleanly through the thick, enchanted plate armor of the guard’s torso as if it were made of wet fragile paper.
It cut seamlessly through his heavy chainmail, his skin, his spine, and out the other side before dissipating harmlessly into the snowy woods behind him.
The guard froze in place and he blinked once with his mouth opening to speak, perhaps to apologize or scream, but only a thick bubbling geyser of dark blood poured over his lips.
The top half of his armored body slowly slid backward, detaching perfectly from his waist.
THUD!
The heavy torso hit the grass with a sickening crunch.
The man’s internal organs... long, steaming coils of intestines, a ruptured stomach, and gallons of hot crimson blood spilled out of his bisected lower half, painting the pristine grass in a horrific, steaming display of gore.
The lower half of his body collapsed a second later with the heavy armor clanking uselessly against the frozen ground.
The second guard, standing near the warhorses, let out a terrified, high-pitched shout.
He dropped his halberd with the weapon burying itself in the snow and his knees knocked together violently as he stared at the butchered, steaming remains of his comrade.
Sylvia didn’t even blink at the carnage. She lowered her hand with her expression remaining perfectly bored and regal.
She channeled her aura.
The golden aura surrounding her body spilled outward like a tidal wave, washing over the mutilated corpse on the ground.
The energy ignited the blood, the spilled organs, and the heavy armor, burning them with the terrifying intensity of a miniature sun.
In less than three seconds, the guard was incinerated entirely, leaving absolutely nothing behind but a scorched smoking black mark on the grass.
Sylvia slowly turned her golden eyes toward the second guard. The man was trembling so hard he looked like he was vibrating, his eyes wide with terror.
"Get in the driver’s seat," Sylvia ordered.
Her voice wasn’t a yell. It was a terrifying, quiet whisper that cut effortlessly through the howling wind. "If you ever speak a single word out of turn, or if you ever look at my Grandmother with anything less than utter reverence, I will peel your skin off while you are still breathing. Do you understand me?"
The second guard swallowed a scream. He snapped off a frantic desperate salute, moving so fast he nearly hit himself in the face with his metal gauntlet.
"Y-yes, My Lady! Understood, My Lady!"
He scrambled up the side of the black carriage, grabbing the leather reins with shaking hands, desperate to get as far away from the monster masquerading as a noble daughter as possible.
Aurelia walked past the scorched, smoking mark on the ground without looking down.
She opened the heavy carriage door, stepping up into the lavish velvet-lined interior. She looked back at Sylvia with a small, almost imperceptible smirk playing on her lips.
"Nice swing," Aurelia commented dryly, before disappearing into the dark carriage.
Sylvia stood outside for one final agonizing moment.
The cold wind whipped her silvery-blond hair wildly around her pale face as she turned around, looking back at the distant, dark silhouette of Galen Town.
Somewhere in that town, in a warm, comfortable bed, Klaus was sleeping.
He was wearing her silver ring on his finger. He was covered in her scent, and his skin still held the warmth of her touch.
In a few short hours, he was going to wake up to an empty bed... He was going to find that dark shop, he was going to read that letter, and he was going to hate her for the rest of his life...
A single final tear escaped her eye.
This time, she didn’t let her golden aura burn it away. She let it fall. She felt the cold drop trace a path down her cheek until it fell from her chin, hitting the grass beneath her boots.
’I’m so sorry, Klaus...’ Sylvia thought with her heart finally shattering into a thousand irreparable pieces.
She turned her back on the town, climbed into the dark carriage, and pulled the heavy door shut behind her, sealing her fate.
The terrified driver cracked the reins, the warhorses screamed, and the Longlon carriage disappeared into the freezing, endless night, leaving Galen Town and her heart far behind.
...
The morning sun broke through the frosted glass of the bedroom window, casting a warm golden hue across the ruined sheets of the mahogany bed.
Klaus stirred, letting out a quiet groan as his consciousness slowly returned.
’Wow... I slept like a baby.’
His muscles were deeply sore, carrying the satisfying ache of a man who had pushed himself to the physical limit the night before.
"I guess that’s what I get for trying to do it with someone physically stronger than me... What a bad choice..."
But he didn’t regret it... not in the slightest. He kept his eyes closed, reaching his left arm across the mattress to pull Taula closer to his chest.
His hand brushed against nothing but empty cold linen.
Klaus opened his eyes and he sat up with the thick crimson comforter falling away from his bare chest.
The bed was a mess.
The pillows were thrown onto the floor, the sheets were tangled into tight knots, and right in the center of the mattress was a distinct, drying patch of dark red blood mixed with their dried fluids but the blond warrior was nowhere to be found.
He looked around the quiet room.
Her cheap cotton nightgown was still lying in a crumpled heap near the foot of the bed, right where he had tossed it last night.
’She’s an early riser...’ Klaus thought with a fond smile touching his lips.
He didn’t feel panicked.
It made logical sense in his head at least.
Taula was boastful and loud, but she was also surprisingly self-conscious about certain things.
Waking up naked in his bed, knowing that Zephyra and Serra were just down the hallway, was probably too much awkwardness for her to handle on her first morning so she likely snuck out before sunrise to avoid the interrogation.
Klaus threw his legs over the side of the bed with his bare feet and hit the cold wooden floorboards.
He walked over to the washbasin, splashing some freezing water onto his face to clear the lingering exhaustion from his mind, then he dried off, picked up his dark trousers from the floor, and pulled them on.
He fastened his leather belt, grabbed a clean black shirt from his wardrobe, and strapped his iron sword to his hip.
Klaus glanced down at his left hand... The silver ring she had given him caught the morning light, shining brightly against his skin and he walked out of his room and headed down the quiet hallway.
He pushed open the door to the first room on the right which was Taula’s room.
Her armor was still there in its usual stand and her massive two-handed battle axe was also there but Taula was nowhere to be found.
’She went to her Grandmother’s shop,’ Klaus concluded easily. fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm
He walked out of the Forest-Edge Compound, leaving the other girls to sleep in.
The morning air of Galen Town was crisp and biting, carrying the distinct chill of the approaching rain.
The cobblestone streets of the commercial district were already bustling with merchants setting up their stalls, mercenaries looking for hangover cures and town guards patrolling the alleys.
Klaus walked through the crowd with a relaxed pace.
For one of the first times since he had been ripped from Earth and dropped into this dangerous world, he didn’t feel the constant buzzing paranoia of impending death.
The heavy invisible armor he wore around his heart felt lighter.
He had actually opened up... He had made a promise... He had looked a girl in the eyes, accepted her vulnerability, and given her his own after the last one.
’I did good right... Melanie?’
She probably wouldn’t like it though.
He turned the corner, entering the narrow alleyway that led to the entrance of Aurelia’s herb shop.
He expected to hear Taula’s loud laughter echoing through the thin wooden walls and he expected her to be bragging to her Grandmother about how she finally won the competition against Zephyra.
Instead, he found silence...
Klaus stopped a few feet away from the door and his dark eyes narrowed.
The heavy wooden door was slightly ajar as Klaus drew his iron sword in a single fluid motion.
The metal hissed against the leather scabbard.
He stepped forward, pushing the door open with his boot and he kept his center of gravity low with his eyes scanning the dark interior for any signs of an ambush.
"Taula?" Klaus called out but there was no answer.
The herb shop was dead.
The front windows were tightly shuttered, blocking out the morning sun and trapping the stale, cold air inside.
The familiar comforting scent of brewing tea was gone.
Klaus walked past the tall wooden shelves with his eyes darting into every corner.
There were no signs of a struggle... None of the glass jars were broken... The floorboards weren’t scuffed by combat boots....
He reached the front counter... the shop was entirely empty.
Klaus lowered his sword with a cold knot of dread slowly forming in the pit of his stomach.
He turned his head, his gaze sweeping the room one last time, until it landed on the small wooden desk tucked into the far corner of the shop next to the desk that Taula had fallen on him the first time they met.
Sitting in the center of the desk was a single thick piece of expensive paper.
Next to it rested a feathered quill, an open bottle of black ink,and a wax candle that had burned all the way down to a puddle with its tiny flame flickering weakly in the drafty room.
