56 An Unrefusable Invitation (1/2)
The mood had subtly changed in the Evergreen estate after Reed's little incident, to say the least. Murmurs floated around in hushed tones that the new master was insane and that he muttered strange curses in his sleep. That he was suicidal and that his incident had been a desperate cry for help. That he was an idiot of the highest degree…
Arcano sighed deeply. He knew now that he'd have to keep himself on high alert around his master, for the young man's sake and his own. Only the Devil himself knew what'd happen to him if word ever reached Lady Violett of what had occurred yesterday. He had not failed a single mission that the Kingscrown family had ever assigned to him since the day he joined the prestigious order of the royal guards.
Assassinations. Interrogations. Espionage. Sabotage. Suicide missions. The assignment did not matter to him; he'd completed everything without issue. Nothing was off-limits. At one point, he'd even diligently served as a nanny for the royal family.
He singlehandedly raised the legendary Winter Princess — Violett Kingscrown — himself from the day she had been born almost a hundred years ago. It proved to have been the hardest assignment he'd ever been given in his life. Figuring out how to best raise a princess into a proper lady had been beyond his realm of expertise back in the day.
Learning how to put on her diapers, bathing her, feeding her, calming her down, putting her to sleep, teaching her… the trials and tribulations never ended for him. For nineteen brutal years as her guardian, mentor, and protector, he'd been forced to push himself to limit to fulfill his assignment.
Time passed. Arcano had watched his baby girl grow into a proper lady under his careful guidance and supervision. His duty as her guardian ended many moons ago when she'd left to become a fledgling contender. And with that, he'd finished what he considered to have been the most difficult assignment he'd ever been given in his career.
…Or so he had thought. He knew now that'd he had been wrong. God had sent him an even greater tribulation this time, presumably as punishment for his hubris in thinking that he'd experienced the worst. A living bomb, several orders more destructive than him, that possessed an unstable fuse.
And to top it off, the bomb had somehow garnered the interest, or god forbid — the romantic affection — of the prodigal lady of the North.
…Is there an escape from this madness? Am I dreaming — living a false life in a realistic nightmare? What have I done to deserve this, Goddess? Please answer my question, I beg of you…
”Arcano, I've gotta be brutally honest. These techniques are the sort of half-assed parlor tricks that I'd expect a weakling would use. Do you have something... stronger in your deck, or is this all you've got?”
What he felt… was dread. The kind that permeated into your bones and kept you awake at night.
Half-assed parlor tricks, his self-created techniques. The same skills he'd used over his career to inspire dread across the continent as one of the North's greatest bogeymen. He'd killed conquerors who could level cities and hide in spatial cracks the width of a thread of hair. The craftiest, most ingenious criminals of their generations who had once ruled the Underground with an iron fist.
And yet… the boy had mastered all his techniques under a day. Arcano had spent several lifetimes refining his skills to the limit, or so he'd thought.
”Hmmm, maybe it'd work better if I did this instead…”
A single flower petal made of Anima floated aimlessly in the wind until it landed on a tree. As soon as it touched the trunk of the tree, it burst into infernal flames and quickly turned it into ash.
One of his techniques, The Sunflower's Kiss, an assassination technique used to covertly eliminate targets. Only it'd been improved. The boy's flower petals were truly superb, to the point that he had to admit that he'd improved upon his own damned technique.
Whereas his flower petals might have very minor Anima fluctuations that could give away his attack, the boy's had none. Had he not seen it for himself, he would have not believed it.
It'd had taken years for Violett to have mastered his techniques, which he had considered miraculous. For her to have comprehended his life's work in less than a decade was shocking. He had thought of her as a once-in-a-generation genius when it came to Anima manipulation.
But this… this was unnatural beyond all reason. A day.
”Well, it's still a pretty nice technique, even if it's a trick. I might be able to use this if I modify it some later…”
What had Violett brought home? And what would this mean for the North— no, the entire world?
Reed lazily yawned and said, ”Hey, Arcano, you alright? You don't look too hot right now, you know. Haven't been sleeping well or something?”
Arcano bitterly smiled and said, ”Something like that, Lord Reed. You need not worry, though. I'll be fine. In any case, I have—” A sudden shift in the air alerted the old butler, but the fluctuations he felt soon after assuaged his fears.
Instead, he sighed. He'd have to deal with two of them today…