Chapter 97: Chapter Ninety Seven
The courtyard failed before he reached its center.
Stone fissured beneath his step, fractures racing outward in thin, branching lines. The collapse was quiet—too quiet—like sothing yielding rather than breaking. Dust chased him in a low, trailing wake.
The air tightened around him.
Not pressure. Not quite.
More like space itself had been stretched thin—strained by the presence forcing its way through it.
They engaged anyway.
Five figures advanced as one, formation snapping into place with practiced precision. Their spacing was exact, their blades angled to intercept, to corral, to kill.
Anton didn’t slow.
The first strike ca from his blind side—soundless, perfectly tid.
He shifted a fraction.
Steel sliced empty air.
His hand rose, closing around the attacker’s arm mid-swing. There was no struggle, no contest of strength.
The limb collapsed in his grip.
Not bent—crushed.
Bone gave with a dull, internal crack. Anton dragged the man forward and drove him into the ground. The impact split the courtyard stone, a jagged crater forming beneath the body. By the ti dust lifted, the man was already slack.
The formation adjusted.
Too slow.
Anton stepped into it.
A blade carved toward his ribs. He didn’t evade. His fingers caught the flat mid-swing, halting it with abrupt finality. For a heartbeat, steel resisted—
Then it snapped.
The fracture rang sharp in the air.
The guard barely processed it before Anton’s other hand struck his chest.
A short motion.
Compact.
Deceptively light.
The kind that should have done nothing.
The man left the ground anyway.
Force detonated through his fra, launching him backward. He hit the courtyard hard enough to bounce once before going still, breath and life torn from him in the sa instant.
Another closed the gap—relentless, precise, exploiting the opening.
Anton t him head-on.
Their bodies collided.
The sound was wrong—dense, concussive, like striking reinforced steel rather than flesh.
Only one of them remained standing.
The guard’s structure caved inward on impact. Air burst from his lungs in a strangled gasp as sothing inside him gave way. He folded where he stood, eyes already losing focus before his body hit the ground.
Three.
Two tightened formation, adjusting spacing with disciplined urgency. Their blades rose in mirrored arcs, edges aligned to converge.
They moved well.
In sync.
For a fleeting instant, it almost looked like it might matter.
Anton stepped between them.
One hand intercepted a wrist mid-swing, locking it in place. The other drove forward.
A sharp, concussive impact cracked the air—
—and the man behind it folded instantly, his body collapsing around the point of contact. His weapon slipped from numb fingers, clattering against stone.
The last reacted on instinct.
A full-force downward strike—desperation and discipline fused into one final blow.
Anton tilted his head.
The blade missed by a hair.
His hand rose, closing around the man’s throat.
Lift.
No resistance followed.
No struggle.
Just the absence of both.
For a mont, Anton regarded him—green eyes steady, unhurried, as though observing a conclusion already reached.
Then he released.
The body dropped at his feet.
---
Silence followed.
Not earned.
Imposed.
Anton brushed a speck of dust from his sleeve, the gold thread catching faint light through the drifting haze. The ruby at his collar pulsed once—slow, deliberate.
Ahead, the clan leader’s residence stood untouched.
Waiting.
Anton stepped forward.
And left nothing behind him worth rembering.
...
A month of wandering had carried him here—far enough to settle one of the conditions he’d set upon becoming an SS-ranked adventurer.
Two nas.
Two deaths.
A concession offered to smooth negotiations with Catherine, the guild mistress. He had known her position, the constraints pressing in on her. Removing those obstacles had been... convenient.
This was one of them.
Gerrard Fitch.
An adventurer turned mogul.
Not rely accomplished—a first-tier saint.
Mid-stage.
To the untrained eye, that might have seed trivial.
It wasn’t.
The difference between early and mid-stage first-tier saints mirrored the gulf between a mortal and an S-ranked awakened. A categorical leap in power, density, control.
Gerrard Fitch was no minor figure.
He was a pillar in the Empire of Aurelia.
...
"What brings a saint to my abode?"
The voice carried, deep and asured.
"Your head on a platter."
Anton smiled politely as he spoke.
Six figures stood before him now—Gerrard at the forefront, five others fanned behind him in silent readiness.
Gerrard laughed, the sound broad and unguarded.
Then it stopped.
"Who sent you?"
"So you do know you have enemies."
Anton’s gaze drifted briefly across the manor’s architecture.
"With the way you built this place, I’d have thought otherwise."
"You don’t rise to my position without making enemies."
A pause.
"So I’ll ask again. Who sent you?"
Reviews
All reviews (0)