Chapter 76: Jacob
Thank you [Everything_bagel] for your gift - Massage Chair
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More than ten thousand kilometers from the city where Erik lived, the landscape had changed completely.
There were no safe zones wrapped in translucent barriers, no green forests, no architecture blended with magic. There was only a primitive expanse of white ice stretching to the end of the horizon.
At the center of that frozen world stood a colossal ice wall cutting across the land. No one standing on the ground could see either end of it. The wall ran more than two thousand kilometers. At its greatest stretches it rose hundreds of meters. Its dark-blue ice reflected a cold light, and inside it countless ancient magic lines ran deep like veins.
Beyond the wall, another ten thousand kilometers on, a gigantic city appeared.
Concrete, steel, high towers, and roads wide enough for dozens of military vehicles to run side by side. There were not many trees. Even the light was cold. The whole city looked like a war machine cast from metal.
At the center stood a tower-shaped building. The highest floor held a chamber so lavish it clashed with the roughness outside. Rare pelts covered the floor. Wine filled the glass cabinets. A magic bath sat behind a great pane of glass that looked out over the city.
On the sofa in the middle, a middle-aged man was holding a woman.
Jacob had neatly combed golden-brown hair. His body was not fat the way the men in Erik’s city were, but it still carried the look of someone long spoiled. The woman in his arms was nothing like a Succubus: no horns, no tail, no distinctive aura.
She was a human woman named Emily.
Emily was leaning against Jacob’s chest, a glass of wine in one hand, when suddenly—
CRACK.
Jacob went rigid.
Emily had not even set the glass down before his body seized. A mouthful of dark-red blood sprayed straight onto the carpet.
"Jacob!" Emily’s face changed. She threw the glass aside and caught him. "What’s happening?"
Jacob did not answer. Both hands clenched his chest. The pain was not coming from his heart. It was coming from deeper than that.
The soul.
A bond that had lived in his body for decades was being torn apart. Not from his side. From the other end.
"No..."
Jacob’s pupils contracted. He felt the Contract thread vanishing with perfect clarity. Along with it, a portion of the power in his body began to be pulled away. It was not like cultivation fading on its own. It was as if an invisible hand had followed the causal line between the two of them and reclaimed, piece by piece, energy that had sat in him so long Jacob had taken it as his own.
His face twisted.
"That bitch..."
"Jacob?" Emily grew more panicked.
"That trash Succubus..." Blood ran from the corner of his mouth again. "Meira. She broke the Contract with me."
Emily’s eyes flew wide. She understood. First-generation Contracts were far harsher than the current system. "Impossible. Does she not need her life? Breaking that Contract on her own would collapse her foundation. Her rank would drop at least one major realm. The life backlash could even take more than half her remaining years."
Jacob knew that, of course. Because he knew it, he understood even less. If Meira had simply broken the Contract, she should have been the one to take the main backlash. He should only have lost the related blessings.
Right now, though, the power in Jacob’s body was being drawn out in plain sight. Not enough to kill him. Enough to make him cough blood from the pain.
"That’s wrong." Jacob drew a deep breath. His eyes grew colder by the second. "She didn’t break it herself."
Emily frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Something else... another Contract, or another kind of power, has replaced mine." Jacob ground his teeth. "It’s stronger. Strong enough to block the backlash that should have killed Meira, and strong enough to follow the causality back to me."
Emily said nothing. This sat entirely outside her knowledge.
"What kind of Contract?"
"I don’t know." Jacob’s voice was ice.
That ignorance only made the rage worse. He did not love Meira. He never had. He had even felt that keeping a bond with a Succubus was a contamination he had endured only for the larger picture.
But the Contract was supposed to be broken by him.
Not by Meira.
A Succubus throwing him away first? The thought alone was enough to warp his face.
BANG.
His fist smashed the table. The precious wood split at once.
"She dares." Jacob spoke through his teeth. "A Succubus dares to break a Contract with me on her own."
Emily hesitated. "But if the two of you never—"
Jacob snapped around. The look in his eyes shut her mouth.
"This has nothing to do with feeling." His voice was cold. "This is order. A Succubus can be discarded by a man. A Succubus has no right to discard a man herself."
Emily did not answer.
Jacob stood. His face was still white from the backlash, but anger had already drowned the pain. "The Succubi in that region have probably started forgetting what they are."
"What are you going to do?" Emily asked.
Jacob walked to the glass. Outside lay the enormous concrete city, military vehicles as small as ants below.
"Prepare the army."
Emily’s eyes widened. "The army? Just because of Meira?"
"No." Jacob shook his head. "This is no longer about Meira."
He turned. "If a Succubus can break a first-generation Contract on her own and still live, if that news spreads, what will the others think?"
Emily understood at once.
That was what Jacob truly feared. Not losing Meira. The precedent.
Jacob wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. "I want to see with my own eyes what those pieces of trash are doing."
He looked far beyond the glass, as if his gaze could cut through more than twenty thousand kilometers.
"And who gave Meira the guts to trample my dignity."
Two days passed. The city where Erik lived quickly returned to its ordinary rhythm, but the five-colored sea of clouds from that day had become the largest topic on every forum.
No one knew exactly what had happened. Some said an Emperor-rank expert had appeared. Some said an ancient ruin had awakened. Some even claimed the Goddess of Desire had granted a miracle.
Meira offered no explanation. Elowen stayed silent as well. Erik had even less intention of talking about a God-tier talent.
Over the next two days, Nivoria’s condition gradually stabilized.
She was still wary of Erik, but at least she no longer bit him every time he came close. Carmilla was slowly adapting to the power she had just recovered, and Laviana sent over a few more rough drafts for The Angel Succubus.
Everything was moving forward.
There was only one thing Erik did not know at all.
Meira was preparing a surprise for him.
...
On the evening of the second day, the car carrying Erik left the crowded part of the city. After more than an hour on roads that grew emptier and emptier, it finally stopped before a wide hill set apart from any residential area.
There were almost no houses here. Slopes of grass stretched under the moonlight. A few tall stands of trees scattered along the hillside. A small stone path wound around and climbed to the highest point.
A wooden villa stood there.
It was not large, and it did not carry the luxury of the properties Erik had seen Meira own. Every pillar, though, had been set with real care. The sloped roof was covered in dark wood. Warm yellow light spilled through the windows and made the whole house look like a retreat cut loose from the outside world.
The moment Erik stepped out of the car, he realized Sarna had no intention of following.
The female guard only said Meira was waiting for him inside, then shut the door and drove away. Erik watched the car vanish behind the path that circled the hill, his face growing more puzzled by the second.
This mysterious?
He turned and walked toward the villa.
The door was unlocked. There were no servants inside either, only yellow light, a faint smell of wood, and wind moving through the trees beyond the windows.
Erik crossed the living room and quickly saw an open glass door. Behind it lay a wide balcony facing the dark hills in the distance.
Meira was sitting there alone.
Her back was to him. Long golden hair drifted across her shoulders in the night wind. Erik stepped outside and called:
"Meira?"
Her shoulders stiffened slightly.
Meira turned her head, and Erik stopped for a second without meaning to.
Today she was nothing like usual.
Meira was not wearing the bold clothes she still liked when she was with him. She had on only a white dress that reached her ankles, fitted lightly at the waist, then opening as it fell. Both shoulders were bare. Almost no jewelry. Even her golden hair was simply tied behind her.
That simplicity made Erik look at her a few seconds longer.
Right now Meira did not look like the Elemental Lord who had silenced a whole square. She did not look like the mistress of a hospital and four commercial centers. She looked even less like the mature Succubus who usually burrowed into his arms to act spoiled.
She only looked like a woman who had spent a great deal of time deciding what to wear before meeting the person she loved.
Her cheeks were faintly red. Both hands on her knees were unconsciously clenched together.
Erik walked over and pulled out the chair beside her.
"What did you call me all the way out here for?"
Meira did not let him sit. She stood first, drew a deep breath, and said:
"I have something I want to tell you."
Erik laughed when he heard that.
"What a coincidence. I have something I want to tell you too."
Meira’s green eyes flickered. She looked at him for a few seconds as if she wanted to ask something, then swallowed it and stepped in front of him.
The distance between them was less than a meter.
Night wind slid across the balcony and stirred the white skirt around her legs. Meira set one hand on her chest. Her fingers tightened a little, as if she were trying to force the heart beating too fast inside to calm down.
"Erik."
"Hm?"
"Before I met you, I used to think my life would probably stay like that forever."
Erik did not interrupt.
Meira looked down at her own hands. A very faint smile appeared at the corner of her mouth.
"I once had a Contract, even if it wasn’t something I chose. I have a child. I have a great deal of money. I have status. I can even make a great many people call me Elemental Lord."
She paused, then shook her head.
"But I never felt that any of those things were a family."