156. A Knight’s Fury
Chapter 156: A Knight's Fury
I must have dozed off. The deep exhaustion and the quiet darkness pulled me under into a shallow, dreamless sleep. Then the world exploded.
The door didn’t open. It burst.
A brutal *CRACK-THUD* shattered the calm. I was on my feet, Ki flaring, before my eyes fully opened, body coiled in a defensive crouch.
She filled the doorway, backlit by hall torchlight, a silhouette of polished steel and pure, incandescent rage.
Freya Mikaelson.
Her raven-black hair, usually tied back with severe precision, was loose and wild, framing a face of pale, flawless skin now flushed with fury. Her ruby-red lips were pressed into a bloodless line. Her glacier-blue eyes, usually cool and assessing, were blazing. They locked onto me like a targeting spell.
“You,” she hissed, the word a venomous dart.
She took one step into the room, and the air turned to ice. The cozy atmosphere of Room 2B was annihilated, replaced by a killing field’s tension.
“Freya,” I said, voice neutral, body ready. “You could’ve knocked. The door had a working handle. Until about two seconds ago.”
“Silence!” she spat, taking another step. Her hand was on her sword hilt, knuckles bone-white. “Do not treat this with your usual flippancy. Not after what you’ve done.”
I straightened slowly. “And what have I done? I just got back. Had a drink with your dad. Paid my tab. My schedule for high crimes is surprisingly clear.”
“The Stone!” The volume made the windowpane shiver. “The Philosopher’s Stone! You consumed it? You absorbed a relic of the Vermillion Empire!? Are you utterly mad, or just the most catastrophically selfish fool to ever walk this land?!”
So. The twins had talked. Neralia, probably, in a storm of tears and betrayal to her childhood friend.
I let out a slow breath. Denial was pointless. “It was that, or let a Tier Two beastkin hunter take it. The mission was ‘retrieve.’ I retrieved it. Permanently.”
“‘Retrieve’ does not mean ‘metabolize!’” she roared, closing the distance until I could see the faint freckles across her nose, the furious dilation of her pupils. “That Stone was a diplomatic artifact! A bargaining chip! The Duchess… my father… they had plans! Years of careful positioning, all hinging on bringing that relic back intact! Do you have any conception of what you’ve destroyed?”
“I have a pretty good idea,” I said, my own temper rising to meet hers. “I destroyed a political pawn. Forgive me if I’m not weeping. You know what I didn’t destroy? Your noble friends Lashley and Neralia, who would be decorative skeletons in Fort Defal right now if I’d tried to be a good little courier and run with a glowing rock while Menato turned my organs into soup.”
“You were tasked with its protection! Its return!” She was almost screaming, her composure in tatters. “That was the purpose! That was the entire point!”
“My purpose,” I said, my voice dropping to a low, flat tone, “is survival. The Duchess’s mission was to retrieve the Stone. My mission…” I tapped my temple, a gesture only I would understand, “…had different completion criteria. And I completed it.”
She stared, fury choked by confusion. “What ‘different criteria’? What are you talking about?”
I couldn’t tell her about the System. But I could tell her another truth. A fundamental one.
“The type of power I have,” I said, holding her gaze, “is not mana.”
That stopped her. Her blazing eyes narrowed.
“I have no mana. You’ve sensed it. The Iron Fangs sensed it. I’m a void in the spectrum. What I have… is something else. Call it Ki. Call it life force. It’s raw. It’s personal. And when I took the Stone’s energy, it didn’t sit inside me like a separate thing. It couldn’t. It had nothing to latch onto but my own energy. So it merged. It dissolved into my reserves. It’s not a ‘Stone’ inside me anymore, Freya. It’s just… more me.”
Her anger faltered, replaced by dawning, horrified comprehension. “You… integrated it? Fully?”
“Fully,” I confirmed. “There’s no artifact to retrieve. No energy to pry loose. It’s gone. What’s left is just a part of my own power now. A larger pool. A stronger flow. But it’s mine. There’s nothing left for the Empire or anyone to take.”
I took a step toward her, my own frustration boiling over. “I’m telling you this because…”
A pulse, familiar and intrusive, throbbed behind my eyes. The world didn’t freeze, but my perception of it sharpened, the colors bleaching slightly. Freya’s furious expression seemed to hang in the air.
The blue box appeared, stark and commanding in the center of my vision.
***---***
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
MISSION 4 TITLE UNLOCKED
**MISSION 4: THE IMPERIAL ENVOY**
PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: [UNKNOWN]
COMPLETION CONDITION: [UNKNOWN]
REWARDS: [UNKNOWN]
FULL MISSION PARAMETERS WILL BE REVEALED UPON OFFICIAL COMMENCEMENT.
ESTIMATED COMMENCEMENT WINDOW: 96 - 128
***---***
I stared at the text, a fresh wave of annoyed exhaustion washing over me. Of course. Just as I was about to tell Freya I was done, that I wanted nothing more to do with this kingdom’s scheming, the System dropped this. Vague, ominous, and tying me directly to the very crisis I wanted to walk away from. The Imperial Envoy. It wasn’t a possibility anymore; it was my next mandatory assignment.
“Kaizen?” Freya’s voice cut through my focus. She was staring at me, her fury momentarily sidetracked by my sudden, distant expression. “What is it? What are you looking at?”
I blinked, the notification fading to a peripheral ghost, the Mission 4 title now a permanent, nagging entry in my mental ledger. “Nothing,” I muttered, the lie automatic. “Just… a headache.”
But the gears were turning. I couldn’t run. The System wouldn’t let me. If Mission 4 was about the Envoy, then my path was set. I was in it, whether I liked it or not.
The urge to just say screw it all and vanish into the wilds warred with the cold, logical understanding that the System would find me. Or kill me for refusing.
I let out a long, defeated sigh, the fight draining out of me. “When is the Imperial Envoy expected to arrive?”
The question, so direct and resigned, caught her off guard. The last remnants of her shouting anger dissipated, replaced by wary confusion. “Why? What does that matter to you now?”
“Just tell me.”
She studied my face, looking for the trap, the joke. She found only a grim, tired seriousness. “The last intelligence from the capital suggested their delegation crossed the northern border three days ago. Traveling with a full imperial retinue… they could be here in as little as four days. A week at most.”
Four to seven days. It lined up perfectly with the System’s window. 96 to 128 hours.
“Perfect,” I said, the word dripping with bitter irony. I ran a hand through my hair, looking at the wreckage of my door, then back at her. “So. The Empire is coming for a Stone that doesn’t exist anymore, in a man they’ve probably never heard of, in a city they might want to burn on general principle. And I’m supposed to stay in this room and wait for it.”
“It is the only way to control the narrative,” she said, her voice returning to its more familiar, clipped knight-captain tone, though it was laced with a new uncertainty. “If what you say is true… if the energy is truly inseparable… that changes things. It makes you not a thief, but…”
“But what?” I prompted when she trailed off.
“A phenomenon,” she said softly, the word hanging in the air between us. “An anomaly. Something to be studied, contained, or… utilized.”
Utilized. The word the Duchess had used. The word the System Administrator used. It seemed everyone saw me as a tool with weird properties.
The Harem System icon glowed faintly. I didn’t need to look to know her percentage had taken a hit. The confrontation, the revelation, the sheer unavoidable mess of it all.
“Fine,” I said, surrendering to the inevitable. “I’ll be a good ghost. I’ll stay here. But you need to tell your father… and the Duchess… what I told you. There’s no Stone. There’s just me. And if the Envoy wants it, he’s going to be very disappointed. And possibly very angry.”
She nodded, once. The knight was back in full control, compartmentalizing the personal fury. “I will inform them. Their strategies will need to adjust.” She turned to leave, her boot crunching on splinters. In the ruined doorway, she paused, half-turning back. Her profile was sharp against the hall light, her black hair like a shadow against her pale skin.
“This energy of yours,” she said, not looking at me. “This ‘Ki.’ You’re certain it’s… stable? That the Empire’s taint is truly gone from it?”
I reached inward, feeling the warm, steady flow of power in my core. It felt clean. Strong. Whole. It felt like mine.
“It’s stable,” I said. “And it’s not tainted. It’s just power.”
She gave another short, sharp nod. “See that it stays that way.”
And then she was gone, her footsteps fading down the hall, leaving me alone with the shattered door, the Mission 4 title burning in my mind, and the cold certainty that my vacation from destiny was well and truly over.
The Imperial Envoy was coming.
And, thanks to the System, I had a front-row seat.