Chapter 46: Where is He?

"I was outmaneuvered," Lucien muttered aloud, his fingers digging into the plush velvet of his trousers. "By a twenty-year-old guy who doesn’t even know how to hold a fork without looking like he’s about to lead a cavalry charge."

The carriage jolted to a halt outside the Everhart villa.

Before Lucien could even begin the slow process of extracting his miserable limbs from the vehicle, the double oak doors of the manor house flew open with force.

BOOM.

Caelan Everhart charged down the marble front steps like an enraged bison whose tail had been plugged directly into an electrical transformer.

His leather doublet was unbuttoned, his jaw was clenched hard enough to turn his facial tendons into steel cables, and violent arcs of yellow plasma were crackling across his knuckles with the sound of a frying pan exploding.

"WHERE IS HE?!" Caelan roared, the sound vibrating the ornamental brass fittings on the carriage lamps. "WHERE IS THE ASTRAL BASTARD?! EDWIN! BRING MY SEVEN-FOOT CLAYMORE! THE ONE WITH THE VOLCANIC CORE!"

Behind Caelan, Elara glided down the steps with terrifying silence. She was wearing her formal academic robe of white ermine, but the temperature within thirty feet of her slippers was dropping so rapidly that the manicured boxwood hedges along the driveway were spontaneously turning white with jagged frost needles.

"Caelan speaks the truth," Elara said, her voice dropping into that chilling, flat monotone that indicated she was actively calculating how many seconds it would take to freeze someone’s cardiovascular system solid. "House Valemont has overstepped. An S-Rank Awakener attempting to forcibly requisition an Everhart heir under the guise of party sponsorship is an act of political aggression. I have already drafted the formal challenge. I will freeze the water supply to the High Spire of Valemont, and Caelan can ignite their stable yards."

"YES! WE BURN THE HORSES!" Caelan bellowed, raising both fists to the sky, lightning leaping between his thumbs. "NO ONE BLACKMAILS MY LITTLE BROTHER!"

Lucien climbed out of the carriage.

He stood on the driveway gravel, his down-lined coat flapping pathetically in the frigid draft created by his two maniacal siblings.

He took a slow breath, pinched the bridge of his nose until his vision blurred, and looked at them with eyes so dead and devoid of human hope, that both Caelan and Elara stopped dead in their tracks.

"Cease," Lucien said.

It was not a yell.

It was a flat, exhausted whisper, but it carried the chilling authority of a middle-aged office manager who had just discovered that someone had microwaved fish in the conference room.

Caelan blinked, his lightning sputtering out with a confused fizz. "Lucien? What do you mean, cease?! The rumors from the Grand Spire are already sweeping the upper campus! They say Valemont drew his starlight blade on you! They say he cornered you against the cracked orb and forced you to sign a blood-contract!"

"He did not force me," Lucien lied, his face an impenetrable mask of pure, bureaucratic apathy.

Elara stepped forward, her pale blue eyes narrowing like razor blades. "Brother. Do not lie to protect that celestial parasite. You have zero mana. You have the physical fortitude of an overcooked leek. Why would you willingly register for the #1 combat squad in the empire?!"

"Because," Lucien said, looking his terrifying younger sister dead in the eye, "I am lazy."

Silence descended upon the driveway.

A single snowflake, generated by Elara’s residual aura, drifted down and melted on Caelan’s warm bicep.

Caelan’s jaw dropped. "You’re... what?"

"I am lazy," Lucien repeated, enunciating every syllable with clinical, deadpan precision. "Think about it, Elara. Use that terrifying, frosty prefrontal cortex of yours. What happens if I remain unassigned? What happens if I register for the auxiliary civilian tracks? Forty different minor noble factions will spend the entire semester knocking on my door, offering me tea, begging for my necrotic utility, and trying to marry me to their second-cousins to secure my class for their family guilds."

Lucien waved a limp, dismissive hand toward the sky.

"The Astra Party is the apex predator of this institution. Cassian Valemont is an impenetrable, starlight-radiating fortress of self-righteous violence. By standing in his rear-guard, I am completely untouchable by the lesser vultures. No one will dare challenge me. No one will dare draft me for administrative labor. Cassian has already formally agreed to provide me with an ergonomically padded folding chair and hot spiced cider for all field deployments."

Elara stared at him.

The frost coating her eyelashes slowly evaporated into thin air as her analytical mind processed the logic. "...An ergonomically padded folding chair?"

"With extra lumbar support," Lucien confirmed solemnly. "And I also get exemption from morning vanguard drills. Caelan, you cannot make me do pushups if the S-Rank Vanguard Commander has explicitly declared my physical body to be a non-combat strategic asset."

Caelan looked down at his calloused fists, thoroughly horrified by this revelation. "You... you signed with the strongest warrior in our generation... just to avoid jogging?!"

"I would sign a pact with the Lord of the Underworld himself if it meant I could sleep until ten in the morning, Caelan," Lucien said, brushing past his older brother and marching toward the front doors. "There is no grudge or feud. There is only an administrative arrangement between an ambitious paladin who wants to hit dragons with starlight, and an intelligent invalid who wishes to sit in the shade and observe the stupidity of youth."

Elara crossed her arms, watching his retreating back with a mixture of skepticism and faint, grudging respect. "And if he attempts to force you onto the front lines?"

Lucien paused on the marble threshold, looking back over his shoulder with a cold, terrifying smirk that would have given a veteran inquisitor pause.

"If Cassian Valemont attempts to force me onto the front lines, Elara... I will simply faint directly onto his boots. An S-Rank Vanguard carrying an unconscious Duke’s son through a high-tier dungeon is terrible for party mobility. He will learn his place very quickly."

Without waiting for another response, Lucien stepped inside the villa, slammed the heavy oak doors shut, and retreated directly to his bedchamber to spend the next twenty-four hours mentally preparing for the seventh circle of hell.

The appointed hour arrived with the punctuality of a guillotine blade dropping on a scheduled execution.

Saturday afternoon was crisp, clear, and offensively bright.

The twin suns of the Solaris Empire illuminated the floating plateau of Astraea with dazzling, golden perfection, turning the white marble colonnades into blinding mirrors of aristocratic wealth.

Lucien stood at the base of the colossal, soaring staircase that led up to the High Spire of Valemont.

He was dressed in the standard navy-blue civilian uniform, over which he had stubbornly draped his heavy charcoal-wool coat, refusing to wear a single piece of leather arming gear or vanguard hardware.

In his left hand, he carried a small, velvet-lined satchel containing two books on agricultural irrigation, a thermos of chamomile tea, three tins of mint drops, and four spare handkerchiefs.

He looked up at the High Spire.

It was an architectural monument to the concept of having far too much money and zero aesthetic humility.

The three-hundred-foot tower had been carved from a single, unbroken vein of sky-silver granite, polished until it reflected the drifting clouds like a jagged shard of mirror.

Massive runic banners bearing the blazing sword-and-constellation crest of House Valemont fluttered from the parapets, woven from spun gold and enchanted silk that hummed softly with defensive ward-mana.

It was glorious. It was majestic. It was the ancestral seat of the empire’s guardian lineage.

Lucien stared at the grand, gleaming brass double doors at the summit of the stairs.

Then, slowly, with calculated precision, Lucien raised his right hand, extended his middle finger toward the sky-silver granite, and held it there for five uninterrupted seconds.

"May your foundations rot," Lucien whispered with venomous, poetic sincerity. "May your pipes freeze on every winter, your starlight runes develop a persistent, high-frequency hum that keeps your heirs awake until they go mad from auditory deprivation."

He lowered his hand, smoothed down his charcoal lapels, and began climbing up the ninety-nine steps.

By step forty-five, his three points of Strength were actively filing an official union grievance against his cardiovascular system.

By step seventy, his lungs were wheezing like a pair of punctured bagpipes.