Chapter 94: Chapter 93: Victoria Frost
Chapter 93: Victoria Frost
Elias stared at Liora’s favorability sitting at fifty-nine percent and went completely silent.
System Theta, after a beat, asked cautiously, [Host... does this count as her having fallen for you?]
"No," Elias said flatly. "But it proves one thing, at least. My understanding of the favorability scale is accurate."
Sixty percent meant love.
Clean, exact, absolute.
What Elias had not expected, not even a little, was that Liora’s control over her own emotions could be this precise. She had planted herself exactly on the edge of liking him and stopped there with almost mechanical discipline, as though the whole of her body had already gone over the cliff, yet she was somehow holding herself in place by a single finger.
Did she have a system too, or did he?
He let out a small, dissatisfied hum.
Still resisting.
As if liking him would cost her anything tangible. It was not like she would lose a limb over it.
System Theta remained quiet for a moment, then very carefully chose not to say what it was thinking, which was that falling for Elias probably involved losses much greater than flesh.
The next morning, Elias left the dorm and headed toward the cafeteria. He had class later, so breakfast would put him on a perfect schedule. Everything about the morning felt ordinary until he reached the familiar tree-lined path and noticed two women standing there.
His steps slowed.
Something was wrong.
They were too old to be students, too sharp to be faculty, and too controlled to be harmless. They gave off the kind of presence that had nothing to do with academia and everything to do with being paid to make problems disappear.
Elias searched his memory.
Was there a kidnapping sequence in the original plot?
He did not think so.
Even if there had been, wasn’t this far too early for it? His progress with the targets had barely advanced. Plans like that normally came later, when the women who loved him had started doing increasingly ugly things to secure him for themselves. That was how melodramatic trash fiction worked.
System Theta sounded uneasy. [This is still on campus. They wouldn’t dare abduct you here, would they?]
Elias’s expression barely changed. Not openly. But there are other ways. They could restrain me, pressure me, and make it look like I agreed to leave with them.
He had no interest in stepping into whatever this was. It was not in his plans, and he disliked variables he had not chosen.
So he turned around as naturally as breathing and prepared to go back the way he came.
The women immediately started running toward him.
Running was pointless now. He gave up on retreat at once and remained where he was, watching them close the distance with calm attention.
"Who sent you?" he asked.
Both women seemed faintly surprised by how composed he was, though neither let it show in her face. One of them answered, "You’ll know when you get there."
"All right." Elias lifted his chin slightly, pale and elegant and unhurried. "Lead the way."
The women exchanged a glance.
His response had clearly not been what they expected, but perhaps that only confirmed whatever conclusion their employer had already drawn about him. A man invited under circumstances like these was never ordinary.
The three of them moved in silence.
Outwardly, Elias looked perfectly calm. Inwardly, System Theta had become a nest of frantic noise.
[Where are they taking you? What if this is dangerous? Shouldn’t you call Liora, Serena, Giselle, someone? They can come get you, they can intervene, this could be bad, what if...]
Elias felt his head begin to ache. Are you trying to become a collection of frequently asked questions? Quiet down and relax.
System Theta reluctantly fell silent, though the anxiety pouring off it remained obvious.
Elias added, I’ve dealt with much worse than this. Compared to some of the situations I’ve been in, this is routine.
If Echo had still been around, it would not have been remotely shocked. This kind of thing had happened more than once. The moment Elias seriously engaged with a target, that woman’s storyline usually began unraveling in directions the original plot had never accounted for. Unexpected incidents stopped being surprising after a while.
Then, halfway to the car, Elias suddenly stopped walking.
"Oh, right," he said. "One of you go buy me breakfast."
The tone was so matter-of-fact that even the women failed to question it. The idea that he might casually order other people around seemed, for some reason, to strike everyone present as oddly natural.
One of them replied, "Our lady has already prepared breakfast for you. She’s waiting."
Elias smiled. "That considerate?"
Then he added, with immediate satisfaction, "In that case, move faster. I’m starving."
By the time he got into the car, he already had a good idea of who had summoned him.
That suspicion hardened into certainty when the vehicle finally stopped in front of an imposing estate built in an old-world style, the sort of place that looked less like a residence and more like a private stronghold meant to outlast governments.
Elias glanced out the window and sighed inwardly.
"So it’s Giselle’s mother."
Two guards at the entrance gave the vehicle a quick inspection and waved it through.
Elias studied the grounds with total composure, then thought to himself with perfect seriousness, We’re moving to the meet-the-parents phase awfully fast.
System Theta, still not enjoying any of this, asked, [You’re not nervous?]
Elias smiled. Why would I be? It’s just a perfectly ordinary future mother-in-law.
Then, after a beat, he added in memory, I once met a demon-empress mother-in-law. That situation was much worse.
True, the eventual outcome of that particular encounter had involved him nearly ending up as a human furnace for cultivation purposes, but it had at least produced the memorable spectacle of a highly educational mother-daughter conflict.
At that thought, Elias’s expression sharpened a little.
This time, he needed to be careful.
He absolutely could not go around shedding charm indiscriminately. If he accidentally seduced Giselle’s mother too, that would create a disaster too annoying to untangle. The trouble would not even be the family implications. The real issue was that a woman with power and age like hers would have methods. If she took an interest in him, he could very easily stop being a strategist and become a fuck toy.
And fuck toys did not complete system objectives.
The demon-empress from that previous world had been a target, which meant seduction had been unavoidable. This was different. Here, distance was the smarter play.
Once the car came to a full stop, Elias stepped out. Two male attendants approached at once, both dressed in tailored servant uniforms trimmed with delicate lace. Their smiles were soft, and their voices softer.
"This way, please."
Elias flicked a glance over the details of their clothing.
Interesting. Giselle’s mother clearly had... tastes.
He smiled back, pleasant and harmless. "Lead on."
Since he did not yet know how much Victoria Frost understood about him, he kept the same persona he used in front of Giselle. Bright, compliant, easy to read. That was safest for now.
The moment he entered the building, his eyes almost hurt from the sheer concentration of wealth inside.
The place was full of historical pieces. Not reproductions. Not decorative imitations. Actual artifacts, some of which Elias recognized from textbooks and museum catalogues. If they were displayed here openly, authenticity was almost guaranteed.
His eyelid twitched.
From that point on, he started walking far more carefully, suddenly aware of every inch of his body. If he brushed against the wrong thing and shattered it, selling himself by the pound probably still would not cover the cost.
Wonderful.
Yet another rich woman who deserved to be hung from a streetlamp.
At last, under the attendants’ guidance, he arrived before a heavy redwood door polished to a dark, almost liquid shine.
The two attendants bowed.
"Sir, please."
Then they retreated, leaving Elias alone in front of it.
For a brief instant, staring at that door, he felt a pressure that reminded him of facing a final boss chamber at the end of a route.
He smiled anyway and pushed it open.
A woman stood by the window.
She wore a fitted silk dress that clung to her body with immaculate precision, every line of it tailored close enough to make clear it had not been designed to flatter an ordinary figure but to submit itself to hers. From where Elias stood, he first saw the elegant rise of her hips and the narrow line of her waist, the proportions so perfect they felt almost insulting.
Then she turned.
At last he saw her face.
The resemblance to Giselle was unmistakable, but time had refined it instead of softening it. Hers was the same beauty grown into maturity, made colder, more expensive, more complete. Her curves completed the silhouette Elias had already noticed from behind, yet the effect was not vulgar or overtly sensual. It was regal. Distant. She looked like the kind of woman an empire might have raised from birth to inherit a throne.
This was Giselle Frost’s mother.
Victoria Frost.
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