Chapter 296: David’s Greatest Shame
Chapter 296: David’s Greatest Shame
In the second week of the fifth month, in the year four hundred and eighty-six of the modern era, Ron was on his way to visit one of the wealthiest families in the Kingdom of Burning Ice: the Darkwall family.
The moment he had presented the green fairy wine—made with third-stage beast blood—to the various banks of that region, a huge commotion had swept through the noble halls.
The reason was quite simple: producing this type of wine was extraordinarily difficult, even with the recipe in hand.
Most attempts ended in failure, and the higher the level of the beast whose blood was being used, the greater the chances that the wine would turn out spoiled.
Because of this, wines made with the blood of third-stage beasts or higher were an absurd rarity—even rarer than the sheer difficulty of killing beasts of that level would suggest.
Only the wealthy central empires could produce such wines in decent quantities, and even they struggled to brew anything from fourth-stage beasts.
Ron had not only introduced a variation of an already highly prized wine, but he had also brought an impressive quantity of it, promising at least a few hundred bottles per year along with thousands of bottles of the second-stage variant.
As a born merchant, he had wasted no time in promising even more, dangling the tantalizing possibility of securing bottles of fourth-stage wine in the near future.
Just as on Earth, in the eyes of the bank investors of Estrias, whoever spoke best and promised the most was the winner.
In this case, Ron had emerged as the biggest winner of all, securing over forty million in loans for his initial capital after handing over nearly all of his reserves of green fairy wine to the banks.
With that initial capital in hand, he could not only invest in his chamber of commerce but also in Goldenveil itself—a prospect that filled him with excitement.
At that very moment, he was distributing what little wine he had left among a handful of clients whose loyalty he had already won, his lips curving into a gentle, satisfied smile.
The Darkwall family was the only name left on his list, and by now he would already be there closing deals if one of his carriage’s wheels hadn’t broken halfway there.
At first, the delay had irritated him. Now, however, he could only feel a deep sense of relief washing over him.
The reason for this relief?
The instant his carriage approached the base of the obsidian-black walls of Darkwall, capital of the county bearing the same name, his eyes widened in shock.
His heart leapt into his throat, and a deep terror seized his features, draining all color from his face in a single stroke.
The reason? The overwhelming mana of a fifth-stage mage had descended upon Darkwall like a silent storm, pressing down on the city with the weight of an invisible mountain.
"Employer... this expert is far too powerful, and he’s brimming with murderous intent. A battle is about to erupt at any moment—we have to retreat!" The most powerful warrior in Ron’s escort, at the peak of the third stage, declared urgently, his hand clamping tight around the hilt of his sword.
"I know, damn it!" Ron snarled, peering out the carriage window before shouting at the coachman to rein in the agitated beasts and wheel the carriage around at once.
He could do business with other families in the future.
It wasn’t worth dying for the Darkwall family.
As Ron fled in a hurry, back at the mansion, David Darkwall, casually seated at his table taking a sip of coffee, felt his entire body shake violently.
The cup slipped from his fingers and shattered against the marble floor, hot coffee spreading in dark, steaming pools.
His eyes widened, and he dashed out of the mansion, sword firmly gripped in hand.
He tried to unleash his fourth-stage aura; he tried to resist that crushing pressure. But in a single instant, the very air itself seemed to turn to lead.
His knees buckled before he could muster any reaction, and his body was slammed against the ground as if it weighed several tons, cracking the polished stones beneath him.
"Father, what’s happening?!" David’s children also rushed out of the mansion—about ten in all: six men and four women.
"M-Miss Amelia?" One of the daughters stammered, her trembling, feeble gaze lifted toward the skies.
Up above, there was a woman.
Her flowing golden hair rippled in the wind, and her blue eyes, filled with an incomparable coldness, shone in the diffuse light of the sky.
Coiled around her, a dragon-like beast made entirely of water undulated with majestic grace, serving as her ethereal seat. Droplets of mist trailed from its serpentine body, glinting like tiny crystals.
To the observers on the ground, she appeared to float freely through the air, as if perched upon the void itself.
She was at the fifth stage. A fifth-stage mage.
"David Darkwall... You pig... you faggot!" Amelia growled, her voice vibrating with an ancient rage. "I still remember the day you tried to suppress my power to force the consummation of our marriage.
Wasn’t breaking that array and ripping your balls off with my own hands enough for you to get the message?
You’re lucky I didn’t tear your dick off too, and even luckier that I decided to extract some of the seed from that withered, filthy sack to conceive Ethan!"
David Darkwall’s face, previously full of defiance, suddenly darkened, his gaze sweeping over the other Lords who had emerged from the mansion—allies and vassals who had been attending a meeting with him.
That was his greatest shame: never having been able to take Amelia’s purity, despite the marriage his father had carefully arranged.
Not only had he failed to take her virginity, but he’d also had his own testicles ripped off by her bare hands.
The Lords around him exchanged shocked glances as they began to connect the dots.
David was known as a true stud, with five wives whom he had impregnated repeatedly in a short span of time, siring fifteen children in total. Three had died; two were in religious service.
Everyone assumed he would continue to have children, and David himself had publicly declared his interest in doing so.
But, strangely, after Ethan’s birth, he had stopped fathering children altogether.
That explained everything!
He, who had been at the third stage at the time, had tried to rape Amelia, a fourth-stage mage, and she had castrated him as punishment!
"Tell me, you filthy pig, what gave you the nerve to touch my baby?" Amelia’s voice echoed through the skies like that of a goddess of death, drawing gasps of panic from everyone below.
Where was the Darkwall family ancestor?
He needed to show up immediately to stop that woman!
[Amelia’s art will be revealed when she meets Ethan.]