"I have finally found you."
The voice, low and resonant, spoke from directly behind . My blood ran cold. It wasn’t Lord Sapphire. It wasn’t the butler. And it wasn’t any of the n from the line of aspiring instructors. I froze, every muscle in my body tensing, my heart hamring against my ribs. The S-tier artifact notification, which had just been a persistent notification at the edge of my vision, now pulsed with new words in an almost panicked intensity, as if the system itself was reacting to the presence behind .
[ ALERT! S-TIER ARTIFACT PROXIMITY SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED ]
Lord Sapphire, who had been about to re-enter the manor, also froze. He slowly turned, his expression shifting from a polite dismissal to a cold, assessing scrutiny. His gaze swept over the cloaked figure standing a few paces behind .
"Who may you be?" Lord Sapphire’s voice was calm, but filled with an undeniable edge of authority, a subtle warning.
The cloaked figure chuckled, a low, dry sound that held no humor. "That’s rich," the voice replied, "coming from an unranked."
My mind reeled. Unranked? Lord Sapphire? The head of one of Ostina’s most ancient and respected noble houses? The man who casually wielded a C-tier sword technique and commanded a hidden armory? How could he be ’unranked’? The term itself was unfamiliar, not sothing I recalled from the novel’s descriptions of power structures. It implied a system of hierarchy, of power, that I was completely unaware of. What did it an? And who was this man, so bold as to insult a high noble to his face?
The cloaked figure then reached up, his gloved hand moving with deliberate slowness, and pulled back his hood.
He was a middle-aged man, with sharp, almost hawkish features. His face was weathered, lined with experience, and his dark hair was streaked ever well. But it was his left eye that truly captured my attention. It glowed. A faint, ethereal blue light emanated from his left eye, pulsing with a subtle, internal energy. It was unnatural, otherworldly.
As he removed his hood, he also unsheathed his sword. It was a long, broad blade, its hilt simple, unadorned. And then, he opened his left eye fully.
Imdiately, the entire mana environnt around us shifted. It beca incredibly dense, thick, almost suffocating. The air itself seed to hum with an overwhelming presence of raw mana, as if the man’s very being was leaking power, saturating the atmosphere around us. It wasn’t a controlled release, like Evelina’s ditation, or a focused technique like Lord Sapphire’s Thunder Clap. It was a raw, untad outpouring, a sheer volu of mana that made my skin tear, my hair stand on end. It was like standing at the heart of a mana storm.
The man smiled, a grim, humorless expression that sent a chill down my spine. His blue-glowing eye fixed on , then on Lord Sapphire.
"Finally," the man said, his gazed fixed on and his voice resonating with a strange mix of weariness and profound satisfaction, "after more than three hundred years, I have found the one that will save my soul." His gaze then sharpened, fixing on Lord Sapphire with an intense, cold fury. "And to top it up, I found a cult mber I can kill."
Lord Sapphire’s face, which had been grim, now beca utterly, terrifyingly impassive. All traces of surprise, of curiosity, vanished, replaced by a cold, deadly resolve. His eyes, usually so expressive, beca flat, unreadable pools of rage. He didn’t ask again. He didn’t need to.
With a subtle flick of his wrist, a guard, who had been standing a few paces behind him, imdiately stepped forward. The guard held out a sword, its was wrapped in pure black linen, which made the blade look like a dark, almost obsidian sheen that seed to absorb the moonlight rather than reflect it. It was a weapon designed for sothing I didn’t know at first, maybe for the shadows? Lord Sapphire took it, his grip firm, his movents fluid.
"I won’t ask," Lord Sapphire said, his voice a low, dangerous growl, filled with an unspoken threat. "Who are you?"
The man with the glowing blue eye rely smiled, a chilling, triumphant expression.
"I’m Herald of Eudenia."
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