Leylin turned around and lightly caressed Lita's lips before setting the teacup in his hand onto the side table. Reaching out, he took her soft, delicate hands and pulled her onto his lap as he settled back into his chair.
"How do you feel?" Leylin asked smoothly.
Lita wrapped her arms around his neck, interlacing her fingers behind his head and burying her face against his broad, warm chest.
Leylin chuckled at her sudden clinginess, though he admitted that her warmth was far from unpleasant. He wrapped a single arm around her waist, pulling her closer into his embrace.
"I am fine, thank you for asking," Lita snorted with playful indignation, pouting slightly. "Though if you were truly so concerned, why didn't you bother asking before dragging me through last night again and again?"
Leylin merely offered a casual shrug.
"By the way, I spoke with my aunt, Her Majesty," Lita continued, her tone shifting to a more serious register while a faint note of excitement crept into her voice. "I didn't disclose the full extent of your identity, just as you instructed. As you predicted, she grasped the underlying context immediately. She didn't press for details, nor did she question the gaps. In the end, she granted me complete authority to accommodate your every need and fulfill your terms."
She paused, looking up into his eyes. "As for Teacher Wright Reel, Her Majesty will neutralize his political faction at court. A single gesture from her is enough to scatter his political allies. However, she advised that you handle Wright personally, and she promised to manage any diplomatic fallout afterward."
Leylin nodded, an amused smile touching his lips. While Lita viewed this as a simple administrative arrangement, Leylin easily saw through Queen Crista's calculated maneuver.
'She is testing me.' Leylin thought. 'Wright Reel is a veteran Lieutenant-Stage Beast Tamer with decades of combat experience. For an unranked 'scholar' to eliminate such an opponent cleanly, he must possess strength far eclipsing a standard Beast Tamer.'
The Queen's cautious skepticism was entirely logical. If Leylin proved capable of neutralizing a peak Lieutenant, her investment in him would multiply overnight.
'Wright... I almost grew fond of that stubborn old fool.' Leylin mused, a faint, sinister glint flickering across his dark pupils. 'It is a pity. When an mutt transitions from mildly amusing to tedious, a bullet to the head becomes the only logical resolution.'
A dark, terrifying aura briefly flickered behind Leylin's eyes, a gaze that had once struck terror into the hearts of the South Coast's most powerful Magi. The inhabitants of this world had no concept of the horrors the "Eternal Nightmare" was capable of bringing down upon them.
Nearly a week had passed. The weather today was exceptionally foul; dense, bruised storm clouds blanketed the sky, split intermittently by jagged streaks of lightning and deafening thunder. Torrential rainfall turned the dirt roads into treacherous, thick sloughs of mud.
Despite the severe storm, a lavish noble carriage crested a ridge, its heavy wooden wheels churning violently through the mud as it sped toward the Rose Petal Royal Academy.
Inside the opulent interior, five figures sat amidst silk cushions and brass braziers: four scantly clad, breathtaking women and an elderly man.
The old man was Wright Reel.
Since Queen Crista's unexpected political intervention had derailed his recent maneuvering against Lucian Alistair, Wright had suffered immense prestige losses and squandered a fortune in political favors.
He had been forced to spend astronomical sums to request his remaining allies defect to the Fourth Prince's faction.
"That wretched bitch of a Queen," Wright snarled internally, his face contorting into a bitter scowl as he drained his goblet of wine in a single gulp. "Poking her nose into my affairs... I will see every one of her plans reduced to ashes!"
Seeking a vent for his surging frustration, Wright reached out and cruelly clamped his hand onto the sensitive skin of the young woman kneeling beside him, digging his fingers in with brutal force.
"Urgh!" The girl tried desperately to suppress her pain, but an involuntary whimper escaped her lips.
"What? Do you dislike serving me?" Wright sneered, his eyes narrowing as he increased his grip.
"N-No, Master!" the girl gasped in terror, trying to force a compliant smile through her pain, even as a tear slipped down her cheek.
"Good! Then you will love what happens next—"
BOOM! BOOM!
A violent explosion detonated beneath the carriage, instantly pulverizing everything within a fifteen-meter radius. The wooden chassis, iron axles, and silk hangings were blown into a cloud of shattered splinters and burning debris.
Amidst the swirling smoke and falling rain, a tall young man stepped forward. He wore thick steel armor and held a massive, broad-bladed cleaver across his shoulder. He glared into the center of the crater.
"I know an attack of that level wouldn't kill you!" the young man shouted over the howling wind. "Stop hiding and show yourself!"
SWOOSH!
A half-human, half-fox entity blurred out of the dust cloud, landing gracefully at the edge of the crater. The creature's body was heavily charred from the blast, yet it exhibited no signs of agony. At a visible, unnatural rate, the flames coating its fur extinguished themselves while the scorched flesh rapidly knitted back together.
"A warrior?" the creature growled in a shrill high-pitch voice dripping with hostility, as it fixed its golden, slit-pupiled eyes on the intruder. "Who are you?"
"It is my pleasure to make your acquaintance," the armored young man replied calmly, adjusting his grip on the cleaver. "I am Derick Greg. Is this your Beast-Merged form, the infamous Craze Inferno Fox? The signature technique of the Blazing Fox Lineage, granted with innate elemental fire control. No wonder a blast of that magnitude barely scratched you."
Derick whistled softly, and from the shadowy treeline surrounding the muddy road, four more armored figures emerged. Moving in synchronized precision, the four knights encircled Wright Reel, drawing their weapons with cold efficiency. Wright glanced at them indifferently, his ears twitching as he took in their positions.
"The Greg Family?" Wright sneered, his merged fox face contorting in utter disdain. "So your family's pathetic ambition has finally crawled out into the open? How naive of your Patriarch to send mere warriors against me. Even that young fool himself couldn't survive five minutes in a direct fight with me."
Wright straightened his posture, his fur bristling as his spirit aura flared into the storm, "You have immense gall to ambush me on the steps of the Royal Academy. Low-born servants attempting to revolt against true Beast Tamers... it seems your kind desperately needs to be reminded of your place."
"We shall see, Lord Reel," Derick said quietly.
KACHA!
At Derick's signal, the four surrounding knights suddenly erupted with distinct elemental light.
Their bodies swelled as beastly energy flared across their armor, and they lunged at Wright from four directions simultaneously.
Wright's crimson tail lashed out like an iron whip, dodging the lead knight's downward sword slash with effortless grace.
The heavy tail slammed directly into the knight's raised forearm, although the knight managed to block the physical impact, intense azure flames instantly ignited across his steel gauntlet.
The knight retreated rapidly, attempting to smother the fire, but the azure flames clung to the metal, rapidly charring through the reinforced steel and cooking the meat beneath.
Realizing the nature of the fire, the knight drew a side-dagger with his left hand and, without a moment's hesitation, severed his own burning right arm at the elbow in a flash.
"Be careful of his tails!" the wounded knight roared, cauterizing the stump with his seiging aura as he stepped back into formation.
Wright dodged the remaining four attackers with contemptuous ease. Within seconds, he had maimed one assailant while forcing the other four into a desperate defensive stance.
Wright looked past them, locking eyes with Derick as he let out a harsh, barking laugh. "What did you expect to happen? Warriors were decreed by the ancient gods to serve as our hounds! A privilege granted to the low-born! Any servant who dares raise a blade against his master must be put down without mercy!"
Derick watched the battle unfold with a slight trace of disappointment. These five knights were elite warriors loyal to House Greg.
After Derick swore his soul in servitude to Lord Farlier, his eminence had bestowed blessings upon his retinue, raising these men to the level of Sergeant-grade combatants.
Yet against a veteran Peak Lieutenant like Wright Reel, their lack of combat ability made them little more than target practice.
Suddenly, Wright opened his sharp jaws, a blinding ball of condensed, white-hot energy gathering within his maw.
BOOM!
A concentrated beam of searing white energy blasted directly toward Derick who instantly blocked with his huge cleaver.
"Young Master, watch out!" the one-handed knight bellowed.
Desperate to protect his lord, the injured guard charged at Wright's flank. Yet even while maintaining the energy beam focused on Derick, Wright moved with terrifying speed and technique.
Sweeping his left arm back, his razor-sharp claws cut through the guard's steel chestplate like wet paper, driving straight into his chest cavity and ripping out his still-beating heart in a single motion.
"One down, five to go," Wright purred, tossing the organ aside. He glanced briefly toward the Rose Petal Academy in the distance; the surrounding territory remained eerily silent, devoid of any guards or academy patrols.
The azure flames engulfing Wright's legs intensified, shifting into a deeper, more volatile shade of blue that radiated suffocating heat.
The remaining four knights were forced to take a step back, their armor burning from the ambient temperature alone.
"Heh... so this is the pinnacle of what a True Beast Tamer can exhibit," Derick murmured softly, shaking his head. A glowing, golden rune suddenly materialized across his forehead.
Unlike his guards, who had accepted strength enhancement through experiment changing into Bloodline Knights, Derick had chosen a far more grueling and arduous path at his master's directive.
"Derick," Leylin's cold, echoing voice resonated from the depths of Derick's memory. "I could grant you what you consider immense strength this very instant through bloodline modification. However, I advise you to tread the path of the Saint Knight instead. Your natural talent along the Knight's pathway is the highest I have seen. It took you a mere three months to progress from an ordinary human to a Preparatory Knight, then a Knight, and now you stand at the threshold of a Great Knight. True strength can only be forged if you build the foundation yourself."
A surging, terrifying wave of dense energy began to pour from Derick's body. Wright's laughter cut off abruptly as he took a cautious glance, his instincts screaming in alarm.
This level of threat... from a mere warrior?
"You claimed that I am a low-born," Derick said, his voice overlapping with an ethereal, resonant echo as a brilliant gold aura burst from his armor. "You claimed that warriors are destined to serve Beast Tamers as livestock."
Derick raised his massive cleaver, the heavy steel blade enveloped in blinding, gold spiritual energy.
"I agree. For ordinary warriors, that is indeed the reality of this world," Derick declared, his eyes burning with absolute fanaticism. "However... I am no ordinary warrior! I am a Knight forged through the divine grace of His Eminence's blessings! I am his Envoy! His Crusader! I am the Demon Knight!"
The spiritual pressure of a Spiritual Convergence Saint Knight erupted into the storm, shattering the mud beneath his boots rivalling Wright Reel's azure flames.