Volume 1 – 40. Bad First Impressions
A short while after Edric headed downstairs, the faint sound of the front door opening drifted up from below. It was followed by a brief exchange of voices, the creak of floorboards, and then the steady rhythm of footsteps climbing the staircase.
The moment the newcomers stepped into the living room, Lucien found himself staring at two familiar faces and two others who, for reasons he couldn't immediately place, seemed strangely familiar as well.
One of them was a Wolfkin man dressed in a mix of medium leather armor and chainmail. He stood about Lucien’s height but looked larger due to his broad, heavily built frame, a massive sword strapped across his back. Gray-furred ears poked through his hair, and a thick tail swayed lazily behind him. His amber eyes carried an open, disarming curiosity, paired with a relaxed smile that revealed faintly sharp canines. Patches of fur marked his forearms and calves, and even his hands ended in subtle claw-like nails, though his expression remained warm and unguarded as he glanced around the room.
Beside him stood a woman in dark clothing that contrasted sharply with her pale, porcelain skin. Silver hair framed a delicate face, and her light silver eyes gave the impression of emptiness at a glance, as if pupils were absent. Faint blue-black veins traced subtly beneath her neck and hands, adding to an otherworldly impression. She held a staff loosely at her side, posture quiet and slightly withdrawn, her gaze lowered to suggest restraint rather than fear. A faint sadness lingered in her expression as she stood calmly behind the group.
Lucien’s gaze lingered on them, his brows drawing together slightly.
These two... Aren't they the ones I saw fighting four Hollows at the same time yesterday in Temple Vigil?
The memory surfaced instantly. Lucien distinctly remembered a powerful fighter cutting through multiple Hollowed at once while someone remained close behind him. His gaze shifted toward the pale woman standing quietly near the back of the group.
She should be the one with him.
Before he could pursue the thought any further, a sharp voice cut through the room.
“What the…”
The noblewoman leading the group had finally taken in the full scene inside the living room.
Isolde.
Lucien noticed her still dressed in the same refined, expensive attire she seemed to always favored. The only difference is that she now had a staff rested lightly in her hand.
Her gaze swept across the room in a single, deliberate motion, passing over Edric before landing on Ava and Lucien. The moment it did, her expression froze, as if the situation itself had refused to make sense.
Ava simply responded with a bright, utterly unbothered smile and an easy wave of greeting. Beside her, Lucien simply slipped on his usual charming smile, unconcerned whether it looked sincere or not.
“...What is the meaning of this, Edric?”
Her voice emerged cold and sharp enough to slice straight through the room's previously relaxed atmosphere.
The disbelief vanished, replaced by naked disgust. She looked less like someone encountering unexpected guests and more like someone who had discovered something rotten sitting in the middle of the room. Turning toward Edric with a sharp movement, she fixed him with an incredulous stare.
"Why is there a demon-blooded creature and a mud-skinned long-eared thing here?" she demanded before he could even begin introducing anyone. Her eyes narrowed, and her lip curled ever so slightly. "Are you trying to get Seren assaulted?"
Edric visibly winced.
"Well, that's—"
While Edric seemed a bit overwhelmed, Ava was delighted.
“Come on now, lady, you know those stories aren't always true,” she said before Edric could respond further, sounding more entertained than offended. Leaning comfortably against the sofa, she crossed one leg over the other and rested an elbow on the armrest, smiling as if this were all a particularly amusing misunderstanding. “And just because this guy has blood-red eyes doesn't mean he's an Inferni, you know. Inferni have reddish skin too. This guy only has red eyes, which is rare, sure, but still perfectly possible.”
Isolde looked at Ava as though she had just said something profoundly foolish.
"Not always true?" she repeated, the disbelief in her voice quickly giving way to thinly veiled condescension. "I’ll concede that exceptions exist. But those ‘stories’ persist for a reason. People don’t record centuries of warnings without cause.”
As she spoke, her gaze shifted back to Lucien and lingered there. The look in her eyes was clinical, as though she were examining something unpleasant she had already reached a conclusion about.
“And human eyes don’t look like that,” she continued flatly. “The irises alone are enough to distinguish them. Demon-blooded creatures have always been unmistakably easy to identify.”
Lucien laughed softly.
The reaction seemed to irritate her more than any direct argument could have.
"Then what about my human blood?" he asked, tilting his head slightly. "Does that simply not count? Or is it one of those inconvenient details that gets ignored whenever it doesn't fit the conclusion you've already decided on?"
Truthfully, he could understand where some of the prejudice came from. The Inferni race was notorious throughout the continent for producing criminals, raiders, and worse. Countless people had legitimate reasons to fear them.
Understanding the origin of the prejudice, however, didn't mean he had to quietly accept being judged by it.
If every conversation with Isolde turned into this, working together would become exhausting. Purifying her later would be even harder.
“There is no need to ignore anything.”
Her reply came immediately, sharp enough to cut through the brief pause.
Isolde met his gaze head-on, unflinching.
"Many things can be judged from a single glance, and even more from a brief interaction. This is already our second meeting, and you've done an admirable job of confirming my first impression.”
Her tone carried absolute certainty, as if there were no room left for doubt.
That confidence made Lucien’s smile deepen slightly.
“Really?” he said lightly. “That’s impressive. Most people need at least a conversation before deciding they understand someone, but you managed it in under a minute. Should I applaud?”
Not a flicker of embarrassment crossed Isolde’s expression.
“I have a lot of experience,” she said simply.
Lucien studied her for a moment.
At first glance she seemed relatively young, but the more he observed her—her composed posture, the steady way she held herself, the unshaken authority in her voice—the more it suggested otherwise. She was likely older than she appeared, perhaps in her thirties or beyond, if experience could be read as clearly from a person as she claimed it could.
“Maybe you’re right,” he allowed with an easy shrug. “But experience isn't omniscience, you know.”
The smile on his face remained pleasant, though there was a sharper edge beneath it now.
“If the tenth noble steals from me, I don’t assume the eleventh is already reaching for my coin purse. If the tenth merchant cheats me, I don’t immediately conclude the next one is doing the same.”
He spread his hands lightly.
“It turns out people are individuals.”
“That is an absurd comparison.”
The dismissal came immediately.
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
Isolde's expression didn't change.
“If it were merely a matter of individual behavior, perhaps. But we are discussing a group with a documented history spanning centuries.” Her voice remained calm and composed, which only made it feel even colder. “Many people have paid the price for forgetting what Inferni blood is capable of. They suffered because someone decided feelings mattered more than caution.”
“And where exactly am I supposed to fit into that?” Lucien asked, his tone still light but now more pointed.
For the first time, Isolde tilted her head slightly.
“You've spent this entire conversation attempting to convince me not to trust my own judgment.”
Her gaze never left his.
“You've challenged every conclusion I've made while offering nothing in return except deflection and mockery.”
Then, unexpectedly, the corner of her mouth lifted.
“To be honest,” she said, “it's exactly what I expected.”
"...I mean, you decide you're right before the conversation even starts," he said, shaking his head slightly. "If I agreed with every word you said, you'd probably call me reasonable. The moment I disagree, suddenly I'm manipulative."
"Perhaps because disagreement isn't the issue."
"Then what is?"
"The issue is that people like you want special treatment."
Ava's eyebrows rose slightly, while Lucien simply looked puzzled.
"People like me?"
"Half-bloods and mixed bloodlines." Isolde folded her arms neatly across her chest. "People who insist everyone else ignore obvious realities because acknowledging them hurts their feelings. You demand to be judged as individuals while simultaneously expecting others to disregard the very traits that make you dangerous."
Lucien listened quietly.
Seren and Edric had both warned him that Isolde possessed a sharp tongue, but honestly, he still wasn't particularly offended.
He didn't think he deserved special treatment because he was half-Inferni. If anything, being half-Inferni usually seemed more likely to earn him suspicion than sympathy. Even if there was anything "special" about the way people treated him, it generally leaned in the negative direction.
As Isolde continued speaking, he found himself becoming more curious than upset.
Just what happened to make her this biased against Inferni?
And, judging from her earlier comments, dark elves as well.
The attitude reminded him a little too much of the stereotypical nobles he'd encountered in fiction—people who reached their conclusions first and looked for evidence afterward.
"You may possess human blood," Isolde continued, her voice calm but firm, "but that doesn't erase where the other half came from. No amount of charm, wit, or self-pity changes that. Every half-blood is evidence of someone making a catastrophic mistake."
Lucien’s smile faltered slightly.
For the briefest moment, something flickered through his mind—an image of a woman with faintly reddish skin, frail and bedridden, yet still managing a soft smile despite everything.
The silence seemed to encourage Isolde, and when she spoke again, a faint note of contempt had crept into her voice.
"In cases like yours, it usually begins with a weak-willed man becoming infatuated with a demon whore, or a foolish woman convincing herself she can tame a monster simply because it smiled at her. The fact that half-bloods exist at all is proof that someone valued their own desires more than the consequences that followed."
Lucien’s smile faded completely.
He didn’t speak, just looked at her for a long moment.
…She was getting on his nerves.
That was the conclusion he eventually reached.
After all, she had just insulted his mother without knowing the first thing about her.
As he opened his mouth to respond, the Wolfkin suddenly cleared his throat.
"Hey, don't you think that's a bit much?"
His ears twitched uneasily, and he glanced between Isolde and Lucien with visible discomfort.
Beside him, the half-dwarf gave a small nod.
"I'm a half-race too."
The quiet woman in dark robes, who had remained silent throughout the entire exchange, finally lifted her head. Her silver eyes settled on Isolde.
“You should apologize,” she said softly.
After a brief pause, she added, “To the half-Inferni as well.”
Before Isolde could respond, another voice followed immediately after.
“Agreed.”
Seren’s tone was firm enough that several heads turned toward her.
For the first time since the argument began, Isolde looked genuinely caught off guard.
“S-Seren?”
"I've known him for nearly a decade," Seren said, meeting her gaze steadily. There was no anger in her voice, but neither was there any hesitation. "He's not the kind of person you're making him out to be. I don't like hearing someone speak about him that way."
“That’s…”
A flicker of something unsettled crossed Isolde’s expression.
Regret—or perhaps embarrassment—briefly flickered across her face. Whatever it was, it vanished almost as quickly as it appeared, buried beneath the composed mask she swiftly reassembled. After a short silence, her gaze shifted toward the half-dwarf.
"My apologies," she said. "I wasn't referring to every mixed bloodline."
The apology came readily enough, and for a moment her tone softened. But when her eyes returned to Lucien, that brief concession disappeared. Her expression tightened once more, the earlier firmness settling back into place.
“...B-But, Seren, I won’t apologize to him.” Her voice faltered slightly. “I don’t see what you see, and... I-I can’t simply forget what they did to my family.”
The room grew quiet.
Seren seemed to catch the hesitation beneath those words. Her shoulders relaxed a little, and after studying her friend for a moment, she let out a small breath.
“I understand,” she said quietly. “Just try to restrain yourself as much as possible with him. You can see for yourself how he is different from most Inferni.”
Isolde lowered her gaze for a brief moment.
“...Thank you.”
It wasn't an agreement, nor was it forgiveness, but it was enough for the tension in the room to ease slightly. Both women seemed to recognize that pressing it any further would accomplish nothing.
With that, Isolde finally let the matter drop and turned toward Edric instead.
"Edric, would you kindly explain why he's here?" she asked, making a small gesture toward Lucien before briefly flicking her gaze toward the laidback Ava. A faint frown touched her brow as she added, "And the elf as well."
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
"Do they have something to do with the matter you mentioned yesterday?"