Chapter 569 - 565 – FALSE ACCUSATIONS AND THE TAVERN OF REVERSED TIME

The scorching midday sunlight streamed in through the gigantic glass walls of the penthouse unit on the fiftieth floor of the Silver Tower. The luxurious apartment dominated by marble décor and thick silk curtains felt extremely cool thanks to the temperature-regulating magic crystal arrays installed in every corner of the ceiling.

Sylvia stepped into the living room, flicking her black coat and allowing the fabric to float automatically toward the coat hanger. Although her [Cleansing] spell had worked with perfect efficiency eliminating every molecule of dust, blood scent, swamp mud, and even the fishy aroma of monsters without leaving a single particle on her skin or clothing something still felt incomplete in her mind.

For Sylvia, cleansing magic was merely technical convenience. However, the ritual of bathing using physically flowing warm water possessed a psychological value that no spell could replace. The sensation of warm steam caressing the skin, the fragrance of aromatherapy soap, and the silence while soaking were the best ways for her to truly release the residual killing intent after hunting in the wild jungle.

"Magic may cut time short, but bathing remains unmatched," Sylvia murmured softly while walking toward the main bathroom.

The bathroom in this penthouse was designed to resemble a private hot spring. A large circular white marble bathtub sat in the center of the room, surrounded by carved stone pillars. Sylvia turned the bronze faucet, letting warm water infused with rose-crystal extract and calming spices flow. Fragrant steam began to rise thickly, filling the room and creating a perfect atmosphere of relaxation.

After removing her maroon dress, Sylvia stepped into the marble tub, allowing her body to sink to chest level. She closed her heterochromatic eyes for a moment, enjoying the warmth that seeped into the pores of her skin.

Nearly half an hour passed in that tranquility before Sylvia finally rose and dried her body. She walked toward the gigantic wardrobe beside the bedroom. This time, Sylvia did not choose complicated dancing attire or a stiff evening gown like when she first explored the city. She desired absolute comfort.

Sylvia put on a plain white cotton tank top that fitted snugly against her upper body, paired with black denim shorts that revealed her pair of long, flawless legs. Her still half-damp black hair was simply tied into a loose ponytail at the back of her head. No jewelry, no protective armor, not even a magic robe.

In a world where every fighter competed to cover their bodies with magical iron armor in order to survive, Sylvia’s overly casual appearance actually became a symbol of absolute supremacy. She needed no armor, because not a single weapon on this continent possessed the authority to pierce her skin.

"Now it’s your turn, both of you," Sylvia called while stepping out of the bathroom, looking toward the living room.

Sol, the sapphire-eyed golden cat that was the disguised form of a golden dragon, immediately meowed happily. As an entity affiliated with pure light and life elements, Sol greatly enjoyed the concept of soaking in hot water. Without needing to be told twice, the small cat ran fast and leapt into the marble bathtub still filled with warm water, swimming in circles in an adorable manner while releasing satisfied purring sounds that echoed.

However, not all of her familiars were that cooperative.

In the corner of the living room, a shadow beneath the dining table suddenly trembled thickly. Noir, the black cat that was the disguised form of a black dragon, pressed its body flat against the floor. It tried to fully merge with the darkness under the table. For a creature woven from darkness and death, warm rose-scented water was a threat to its dignity.

"Don’t even try hiding in the shadow under that table, Noir. I know you helped tear apart five giant muddy boars this morning. You have to bathe!" Sylvia ordered firmly while planting her hands on her hips.

Noir’s purple eyes blinked within the darkness, staring at its master with an extremely exaggerated pleading look. The black cat slowly retreated behind the table legs, hoping Sylvia would forget.

"There is no compromise on cleanliness." Sylvia raised her right hand slightly.

An invisible wave of telekinesis immediately reached under the table, gently yet firmly pinching the nape of Noir’s neck, then lifting the frantically struggling black cat into the air, carrying it through the corridor toward the bathroom.

Meoooww! Noir protested loudly, its four small legs paddling through empty air as though trying to swim backward.

"Hold your breath, shadow dragon," Sylvia laughed cheerfully without mercy, dropping Noir right into the bathtub beside Sol.

SPLASH!

Warm water sprayed everywhere. Noir floundered in panic for several seconds before finally resigning itself to its fate. The black cat sat silently in the corner of the tub with a very human-like sulky expression, allowing Sylvia to massage and scrub its pitch-black fur using mint-leaf-scented aromatherapy shampoo. Meanwhile, Sol innocently kept splashing water with its golden tail toward Noir’s face, triggering an adorable little quarrel between the two familiars.

After the noisy bathing session finished, Sylvia brought both cats out of the bathroom. She did not even need to take a towel.

Sol leapt onto the marble table, stretched out all four legs, then radiated a wave of extremely soft warm light element from within its body. In less than three seconds, its entire golden fur dried perfectly, becoming fluffy, smooth, and fragrant once more.

On the other side, Noir merely shook its body once. Darkness magic enveloped its body for a brief moment, absorbing every water particle clinging to its fur and discarding the liquid into the shadow dimension. Its black fur immediately returned to neatness and shine.

"Good. Since we are all fragrant and the credit balance on my card has increased by eighteen million, let’s go find lunch," Sylvia said cheerfully while putting on casual sandals.

Both cats meowed in agreement. Sol leapt up and took its favorite position on Sylvia’s right shoulder, while Noir crawled down and merged once more with the shadow beneath the girl’s feet.

Sylvia stepped out of the Silver Tower lobby. The secondary-district streets that afternoon appeared quite busy with the coming and going of merchants and hunters. Because the distance from her apartment to her regular tavern only took five minutes of walking through the stone shopping alley, Sylvia walked leisurely while enjoying the midday breeze.

Her appearance wearing only a tight tank top and denim shorts inevitably attracted the gazes of adventurers and mercenaries along the street. Some of them stared with fascinated looks, while others stared with wild eyes full of hidden intentions. However, every time a rough man tried to approach or whistle provocatively, they suddenly stopped their steps with violently trembling bodies. The cold stare from a pair of purple eyes peeking from within the shadow at Sylvia’s feet made their survival instincts scream, forcing them to turn away and leave in deep fear.

Yet Sylvia’s initially relaxed mood full of anticipation for once again tasting the roasted Mutated Armored Boar thigh meat with black-wood spices was completely shattered the moment she turned into the intersection alley where the tavern stood.

The savory aroma of roasted meat that should have been rising high was now replaced by the smell of burnt wood and pungent stone dust. The stone street in front of the tavern was filled with a crowd of district residents standing at a distance with fearful expressions. Not a single citizen dared approach or speak.

At the end of the alley, the Black Wood Roasted Meat Tavern that had stood neatly the previous night was now in a state of complete ruin.

Its worn wooden signboard had been broken into two pieces on the ground. The protective canopy at the front was shattered into pieces, the thick wooden tables where Sylvia had eaten the night before had been smashed into fragments, and the gigantic iron grill had toppled sideways, spilling charcoal and still-burning embers onto the stone street.

In the middle of the ruined building debris, the elderly tavern owner sat weakly on the muddy ground. His dull leather apron was torn in several places, his hands clutched his bruised chest, while fresh blood slowly flowed from a torn wound on his temple.

Surrounding the helpless old man stood five sturdy men wearing iron-plated leather armor. On the chest of their armor was engraved the emblem of an iron wolf head, the official emblem of the law-enforcement troops and personal guards belonging to the Mayor of Black Lotus City.

"You stubborn old geezer!" barked one of the soldiers who appeared to be the squad captain, stomping his foot to smash the remaining wooden chair nearby into pieces. "How many times do we have to tell you, huh?! Where is your son, that bastard hunter?!"

The old man coughed, wiping the blood from his lips with a trembling hand. "M-Master... my son is currently outside the border walls... he has not yet returned from hunting..."

"Don’t lie!" the captain cut in with a thundering voice, stepping closer and grabbing the old man’s collar until the elderly body was lifted slightly. "Your son has been officially accused of hiding Rank 6 rare hunting results from the Mayor’s tax reports! He fled from the obligation to surrender materials to the Mayor’s palace! Because your son ran away and hid like a rat, then you as his parent must take responsibility by paying a compensation fine five times over!"

"But Master..." the old man’s voice trembled violently, tears welling in his wrinkled eyes. "My son never hid any hunting results... that tax accusation was fabricated by the inspection officers! And I don’t have that much money... all my savings have already been spent buying fresh meat supplies this morning..."

"If you don’t have money, then this garbage dump must be leveled to the ground!" the captain shouted without mercy. He threw the old man’s body roughly onto the ground, then raised his heavy iron sword sheath high into the air. "And we will drag you to the Mayor’s underground prison until your son surrenders himself!"

The iron sword sheath was swung downward at high speed, aiming for the old man’s head.

TAP.

An extremely light footstep struck the stone street. The sound of the step was very soft, yet strangely the echo of that step managed to pierce through the captain’s coarse shouting and cut the tension in the air.

The captain’s iron sword sheath stopped hanging a few centimeters in the air. He furrowed his brow and turned toward the source of the sound with a gaze full of anger that immediately changed into a contemptuous sneer upon seeing who had arrived.

A young black-haired girl with her hair tied carelessly, wearing only a plain white tank top and denim shorts, walked casually through the fearful crowd of residents.

"Oh my, oh my. What kind of scene is this in broad daylight?" the captain mocked, lowering his sword sheath and laughing roughly together with his four subordinates. "Which orphanage or brothel lost one of its girls? Hey, little Miss, this is not a place to show off those smooth legs. Get out of here before we decide to confiscate your body as additional tax payment for the Mayor!"

The anxiety, laughter, and filthy words of the soldiers suddenly stopped instantly.

Sylvia’s pair of eyes that usually looked relaxed and lazy, in an instant transformed into the bottom of an eternal forbidden hell. She did not utter a single word. She did not even raise a finger or draw a weapon. Sylvia merely exhaled a short breath, then loosened the tight lock on the pure mana within her soul core releasing no more than one-thousandth of a percent of the fluctuation of her existence’s aura.

WHUUSSSSHHH!!!

Space and time inside the narrow alley seemed to stop ticking. The air around them suddenly became extremely thick, dense, and heavy like molten hot mercury. The bright midday sunlight instantly dimmed, refracted by the massive gravitational distortion created spontaneously from Sylvia’s emotional overflow.

The gravitational impact and spiritual pressure concentrated absolutely precisely at the point where the five Mayor’s soldiers stood.

CRAAACK! THUD!

The sound of cracking street stone and heavy impacts collided simultaneously. The five iron-armored soldiers collapsed at the same time. Their knees slammed into the stone floor so hard that the stones beneath them shattered into dust. They were forced to kneel in a drastically bowed position, unable to lift their heads or stretch their necks even a single millimeter.

Air was forced out of their lungs brutally. The faces of the five soldiers turned blue-purple within seconds due to sudden asphyxia. The blood vessels in their eyes and necks tensed severely, while fresh blood began dripping from their noses and ears due to external pressure that exceeded the physical endurance limits of ordinary humans.

Their existence instincts screamed in extreme panic they had never felt in their entire lives. Pure fear, an ancient terror usually felt by prey before a peak predator smashed their sanity into pieces.

T-This aura pressure... this is not merely a Rank 6 Mage! the captain screamed in the hysteria of his silent soul, his eyes bulging with horror as he felt a weight capable of crushing his internal organs merely through presence. This... this is the Mana fluctuation of a Rank 7 Mage... or even Rank 8?! A natural-disaster-level Mage!

On this continent, a Rank 7 Mage was an existence capable of leveling an entire province alone. They were the law itself. They stood above the kingdom’s hierarchy, unbound by a mayor’s rules, and possessed absolute authority to slaughter an entire troop of soldiers without anyone daring to demand accountability. Offending an entity of this level was the same as inviting total annihilation for the entire clan and Black Lotus City!

Sylvia stepped forward slowly. Her casual sandals tapped the stone floor right in front of the captain’s face, which now trembled violently atop the dust, dripping blood from his nose onto the ground.

Looking at the five soldiers kneeling with trembling bodies like earthworms before her, Sylvia regarded them with eyes full of absolute contempt. In her heart, she truly scorned how fragile the physical and mental endurance of these local guards was.

If I had not restrained my existence’s aura to the absolute lowest limit, Sylvia thought coldly without expression, the mana pressure I just released would have been enough to explode their hearts and crush their entire skeletal frames into bloody paste. Truly a bunch of disgusting, self-unaware trash.

Although her anger boiled upon seeing the tavern-owning grandfather abused and arbitrarily accused using false tax reasons, Sylvia still maintained her rationality. Killing these five worms in the middle of the alley would only get her casual clothes splattered with blood, which would inconvenience her lunch hour.

Sylvia bent her body slightly, staring down at the soldier captain from above.

"Listen carefully, insects," Sylvia’s voice flowed extremely soft and calm, yet for the five soldiers under the pressure of her soul, that voice echoed like the thunder of a destructive lightning bolt ready to claim their lives at any moment. "Go back to your master’s palace. Deliver this message completely to that stupid mayor of yours..."

Sylvia paused for a moment, her eyes narrowing sharply. "The matter of the false tax accusation against this grandfather’s son ends today. If I see even a single uniformed dog belonging to the Mayor dare step into this alley again, or try to disturb this meat tavern... I will personally go to his residence, pull out his entire spine, and hang his body above the city’s main gate. Is my statement clear enough for your dull brains?"

The captain was unable to produce any sound from his tightly locked throat. In desperation to survive, he nodded his head extremely hard and rapidly, slamming his forehead against the stone floor repeatedly until it bled as a sign of absolute obedience.

Sylvia snorted coldly, then withdrew the entire overflow of her mana-aura pressure in the blink of an eye.

HUUUPHH!

The invisible weight that had choked the alley disappeared suddenly. The five soldiers immediately collapsed to the ground, gasping greedily to suck air into their lungs like fish thrown back into water. Without daring to lift their faces or glance at Sylvia again, they crawled to their feet with severely trembling knees, then fled in panic from the alley like terrified dogs, even leaving behind their weapons and sword sheaths scattered on the ground.

The crowd of residents in the distance remained frozen in total silence, staring at the girl in the white tank top with a mixture of unspeakable awe and horror.

Sylvia turned around and walked closer to the tavern-owning grandfather who still sat weakly atop the building debris.

"Sol," Sylvia called with a tone of voice that instantly became soft and friendly.

From atop her shoulder, the small golden cat leapt down gracefully, landing on the stone beside the grandfather. Sol meowed softly, opened its tiny mouth, and released a golden light sphere that radiated the aroma of pure warmth. The light sphere floated and absorbed into the grandfather’s chest.

In a matter of seconds, high-level magical miracles occurred. Sol’s Light and Life magic rapidly seeped into the grandfather’s blood circulation. The torn wound on his temple closed without leaving a scar, the bruises on his chest faded instantly, and the pain in his cracked ribs disappeared without a trace. Even the chronic aches the old man suffered from working in front of the grill for decades evaporated, making his body feel fresh and full of energy.

"Y-Young Lady... Y-You..." The grandfather touched his temple and chest with trembling hands, looking alternately at Sol and Sylvia with teary eyes. "This sacred creature has healed me..."

"Don’t move around too much yet, Grandfather," Sylvia smiled kindly, patting the old man’s shoulder. "I came here with an empty stomach for lunch, not to see my regular place turned into rubble."

Sylvia stood upright again, turning her body to face the ruins of the Black Wood Roasted Meat Tavern. The broken signboard, the tables shattered into wooden fragments, the toppled iron grill, and the charcoal scattered everywhere waited to be dealt with.

Sylvia stretched her right hand forward, allowing her fingers to spread gently in the air. Her eyes glittered with a transparent silver light as she called upon one of the most absolute magic domains she possessed: the Authority of Space and Time Manipulation.

Snap.

Sylvia snapped her fingers casually.

In that instant, a transparent circular ripple wave radiated outward from her fingertip, enveloping the entire tavern area within a ten-meter radius. For the dozens of residents watching from afar, the next scene felt like an illusion or a crazy dream that defied all natural laws.

Time within the tavern area was rewound in isolation.

The shattered wooden fragments floated upward from the ground, merging back together with perfect precision to form thick wooden tables that were intact without cracks. The broken wooden signboard flew back to its position above the door, connecting neatly as though it had just finished being carved. The gigantic iron grill that had toppled sideways lifted into the air, straightened its dented body, and landed firmly back in its original place.

The scattered black charcoal pieces flew back into the grill container; even the embers that had previously extinguished suddenly reignited, dimming and crackling with the proper heat. The savory residual smoke from the previous night’s roasting that had disappeared was even sucked back, creating a warm and ready-to-use tavern atmosphere.

In less than four seconds, the Black Wood Roasted Meat Tavern stood whole once more, clean and sturdy, exactly as it had been when Sylvia first visited it the previous night.

All the residents who witnessed the event dropped their jaws. Destroying a building was easy for a magic fighter, yet reversing time upon inanimate objects until they returned to their original form was a level of magic that stood in the realm of mythology of the gods.

The grandfather stared at his restored tavern with widely bulging eyes. Tears of emotion flowed freely, wetting his wrinkled cheeks. He immediately dropped to his knees on the ground, intending to prostrate before Sylvia to express the highest gratitude and respect.

However, before the elderly knees could touch the ground, a soft wind push created by Sylvia held his body, forcing the grandfather to stand upright once more.

"No need to go as far as prostrating, Grandfather," Sylvia chuckled casually. She walked toward one of the thick wooden tables that had just been restored, pulled out a chair, and sat while crossing her long legs elegantly. "I am not a hero or a city protector. I am merely a customer who happens to greatly enjoy the roasted-meat dishes you prepare."

Noir crawled out from the table’s shadow, leapt up, and sat on the wooden chair beside Sylvia. Meanwhile Sol leapt from Sylvia’s shoulder onto the table, meowing with full enthusiasm demanding its portion.

Sylvia propped her chin with one hand, giving a sweet and warm smile to the tavern-owning grandfather who still stood stunned.

"So," Sylvia said cheerfully, lightly tapping the surface of the wooden table. "Please prepare Mutated Armored Boar thigh meat roasted with black-wood spices just like last night. Make the largest portion for me, and add double portions for these two cats. They just finished bathing and need a lot of protein intake. Don’t worry about the payment; the credit balance on my card is extremely abundant today."

Hearing that casual request full of warmth, the grandfather wiped his tears with his leather apron. His elderly face blossomed into the happiest and most relieved smile he had possessed in many years.

"Ready, Young Miss! Ready!" the old man exclaimed with a voice full of blazing spirit. "The largest portion, the freshest meat cuts, and the best seasoning! I will roast them right now for you and these two special cats!"

The tavern-owning grandfather turned quickly, walking joyfully toward his back kitchen. Not long afterward, the delicious sizzling sound of mutant meat fat meeting the hot iron grill once again echoed through the alley, spreading the fragrant savory aroma of black-wood spices that pampered the appetite, restoring warmth and peace to the place.