Chapter 208
Chapter 208: Stop Going On and On About It
Claudia's eyes narrowed slightly as she looked at Emperor Aubrey.
Her body tilted back a fraction, poised to flee.
But......
The instant her body shifted even the slightest—a force tore through the air, ripping open the space between them, the sharp impact of the strike making the air whoosh as it shook.
Even through her mask, she felt the fierce cutting wind slam into her face.
Claudia snapped her head back around.
There, embedded in the ground before her, was an entirely ordinary-looking spear—driven completely into the earth.
Half the spear's shaft was buried in the ground. Dozens of fissures had cracked open in the surrounding stone, spreading outward in every direction, as though a great fang had bitten down and locked onto the entire surface. The deepest cracks plunged several meters into the earth below.
The largest fissure of all twisted and jutted unevenly, running from the spear shaft all the way to the ground at Aubrey's feet.
This......just how great was that distance?
She hadn't even seen it happen clearly.
Had Aubrey......moved at all?
The Emperor slowly lifted his foot and walked to the wall of the Imperial Palace, where he reached out and took up another spear.
He held it behind his back with one hand as he did so, letting it rest casually at his rear.
His clouded eyes regarded Claudia in silence, yet within those eyes—like the gaze of a predator that had locked onto its prey—an overwhelming pressure erupted, making Claudia feel an even more terrifying force of oppression than before.
She was among the very finest of the Demon Hunters, and yet under the Emperor's gaze, every hair on her body stood on end, and cold sweat began to bead at the back of her neck.
"Don't move."
A helplessness—as though a massive beast had pinned her beneath its claws—pressed down on her. Her limbs began to tremble faintly, and the fear beneath her eyes slowly began to swell.
"I have no desire to see the filthy blood of a Demon Hunter spilled all over my floor."
"So. Don't move."
Claudia stared at Aubrey, her face drained of color, utterly silent.
In the end, she seemed to come to terms with some reality, and abruptly burst into laughter.
"Heh......hahahahaha."
That pressure that had been crushing down on her body—it was as though she had flung it aside all at once.
With an entirely unconcerned air, she looked toward Aubrey and said:
"Aubrey, if my blood is filthy, then......what does that make you?"
"Do you consider yourself so very noble?"
As she said this, Claudia reached up and lightly pressed her hand to the mask on her face, then tore it off in a single swift motion, revealing a young and striking face beneath.
Yet on that otherwise finely-featured visage, one half of her face was overlaid with a mysterious dark-red pattern that wound its way all the way back behind her ear.
One eye had turned a deep, intense crimson, as though a current of blood were flowing beneath its surface, the vessels around the eyeball gradually converging toward the center.
Claudia laughed, and pointed at the pattern-covered half of her face:
"Don't forget—this."
"Courtesy of you."
She refastened the mask, turned back around, and spoke to Viktor in a calm and measured voice:
"Apologies. I frightened you."
"It's fine."
Viktor shrugged, hands in his pockets.
He leaned against the wall, unbothered.
Claudia Storc—
In the Background Story, she was the sole surviving female of the Empire's Storc Family.
After Claudia became Empress, the entire family should by rights have risen to great heights and prosperity.
Yet this family met its end in a completely unexpected way—wiped out entirely.
Only Claudia herself remained, the sole surviving bloodline.
The reason for this was none other than the Empress herself.
After Claudia became Empress, she spent over a decade gathering evidence, then turned on her own family and exposed them.
Charges piled upon charges: colluding with foreign powers, amassing enormous wealth within the Empire, and more.
In the end, with Claudia the Empress's assistance, Aubrey swallowed the Storc Family whole.
Many Players speculated that the reason Claudia did this was because she loved Aubrey so deeply that she was willing to betray her own family for him.
In truth, however, the game had never once depicted any romantic interaction between this Empress who existed in name only and Aubrey.
Because even after Aubrey died, the Empress had never appeared.
When Players encountered her, it was at the Demon Hunter organization's headquarters.
She was 1 of the 7 highest-ranking cadres within the Demon Hunter organization.
If not for a later part of the story mentioning Claudia's identity as the Imperial Empress, no one would have ever known.
And at this moment, Viktor happened to be witnessing what could only be called a royal secret.
Naturally, he intended to enjoy the show to its fullest.
He also had Kavra to thank for providing him the lead that made this all possible.
Thanks to her, he had gotten to watch an excellent scene unfold.
After Claudia replaced her mask, her emotions settled somewhat.
"All right, Aubrey. What is your decision now."
"Will you kill me outright? Or keep me imprisoned as you have before."
The fierce and violent aura radiating from Aubrey gradually cooled into something cold and remote, like the bottom of a boundless abyss.
Yet that still-terrifying oppressive force carried with it a bone-piercing chill, as though it could freeze a person's very soul to splinters. His voice was utterly glacial:
"Claudia. You should know why."
"Of course I know. For that woman."
Claudia shrugged her shoulders. Beneath this cold, she seemed to have made her peace with death, not a trace of fear in her bearing.
"What's laughable is that you loved so deeply, and in the end you still ended up with nothing, Aubrey."
Whoosh!
The spear blazed as a streak of white light, tearing through the space between them, the sharp shock of it cutting through the air once more.
It drove deep into the ground nearby with a heavy thud.
The cracks left by that terrifying force were even more severe this time—the surrounding earth completely collapsed inward, and the massive Imperial Palace itself shuddered along with it.
What terrifying power.
And this was nothing more than a casual, offhanded strike from Aubrey.
Such was Claudia's assessment.
But......
"Impotent fury."
"You only needed to angle it slightly, and it would have pierced straight through my body."
"But I don't believe this is you going soft."
Claudia looked at the cold, severe Aubrey before her, and laughed faintly:
"You have never loved me. Never, not once."
The words fell. Claudia strained to wrench the spear embedded in the ground free.
She gripped it tightly, and with a look of open provocation, turned her gaze back to Aubrey.
Then the spear spun in her hand, leveled toward her own body.
Shk—
That silver cold-iron drove through Claudia's flesh.
A shocking rush of vivid red blood surged out, spreading across the entire floor.
Threading through the blood were what appeared to be faint traces of black—uncannily strange.
But both Viktor and Aubrey simply watched Claudia's act of self-harm in silence. Neither moved to stop her.
They stood there, watching as Claudia killed herself.
At last, Claudia's body lay against the ground.
That body and the blood began to gradually merge, intertwining, until they seemed to become one.
The vivid red blood slowly congealed, trickled into the cracks in the floor, and dispersed.
"She's gone."
Aubrey looked at the blood stains that had already vanished before him, and said calmly.
Yet his voice seemed to have aged considerably more.
"It appears Your Majesty is not in a good mood."
"Would you like to talk?"
Aubrey glanced at Viktor, then turned and walked into the corridor of the Imperial Palace.
Viktor followed close behind him, listening quietly as Aubrey's voice echoed out once more:
"Claudia Storc. My 1st wife. That was before I had yet ascended the throne......"
It was a politically necessary Arranged Marriage. At the time, the Storc Family had not yet fallen—it was a family of long-standing and illustrious noble prestige.
The former Emperor had arranged this marriage for Aubrey, commanding him to wed Claudia.
Only by doing so could he inherit the throne.
After Aubrey ascended, Claudia bore him 2 sons in succession.
They were the First Prince, Aubeny, and the Second Prince, Owaise.
For a time, Aubrey lived quite comfortably as Emperor.
Eating, sleeping, training, and annexing.
But this settled existence continued undisturbed until the day the Kant Kingdom came bearing goodwill.
The Grand Duke of the Kant Kingdom came before Aubrey, seeking to offer his own daughter to the Emperor—as an Arranged Marriage.
And the moment he laid eyes on her, Aubrey froze.
For only one reason......
"She. Was my one true love."
Even though Aubrey was so powerful he had slain a dragon alone at 17.
At that time, however, he was not yet powerful enough to do as he pleased in all things.
During a war, he had encountered that girl from a neighboring country.
The 2 of them had fallen in love.
He had never felt so drawn to another person.
But he was the Empire's heir. He could not choose his own marriage.
Let alone when the other person belonged to a different nation entirely.
And so, he had let that love of his youth slip away.
Until 15 years later.
Aubrey, now in his 30s, encountered her once more—within his own country.
She was the Grand Duke of the Kant Kingdom's daughter. She had spent her entire life unwed, waiting for him alone.
And this time, Aubrey—now the Emperor—had the power to decide for himself.
That year, Aubrey truly came to know what love tasted like.
Until......
"I saw it with my own eyes. It was Claudia who killed her."
"When I reached out my hands, wanting to hold her, all I could cradle from her blood-soaked embrace was the child bathed in that sea of blood."
In this moment, Viktor heard it.
In Aubrey's voice—a grief long unspoken.
"Auréliane. She was born in the most absurd and wretched of ways—from within her mother's corpse."
***
Claudia fled the Imperial Palace, escaping beyond the Royal Capital's walls.
Her body was trembling all over, and blood seeped steadily from the wound at her chest.
At the last moment, she had used a Demon Hunter's blood secret technique—at the cost of self-inflicted harm—to make her escape.
Aubrey had grown stronger.
But Claudia was not surprised.
From the very moment she first came to know Aubrey, he had been growing stronger without limit, as if he had no ceiling.
She slumped to the ground in the grass, drew a bottle of pale-red potion from her waist, and drank it slowly.
The bottle fell away. She breathed in shallow, faint breaths, quietly feeling a warm current spread through her body from within.
Life was slowly returning.
Yet the recovery was still far too slow.
In her hazy, drifting state, she heard the sound of wings beating through the air.
Claudia snapped back to alertness at once, pressing her hands against the ground, trying to push herself upright.
When the beating of wings gradually stilled, she finally made out the shape in the darkness.
At once, she let out a breath of relief:
"Just a crow."
That black shape stood in the grass, carefully preening its feathers, utterly unafraid of humans.
Claudia paid the crow no mind. She leaned against a stone in exhaustion, tilted her head back, and gazed up at the star-filled sky.
Wait—a crow?
Zzzzt—
All of a sudden, a crackling static-like noise began to ring in Claudia's ears, the shrieking frequency so high it felt as though her eardrums were being overwhelmed.
The starlight was swallowed in an instant, and the world around her became incomparably dark.
Claudia's body seized completely.
What was happening......?
Before she could react, a mocking, tittering voice began to drift out from the darkness.
Carrying boundless derision, as though it were dragging her straight down into an abyss:
"Don't be in such a rush to leave."
"Someone told me to come fetch you. How about you cooperate a little?"