Chapter 39: A Master - 3
"I have finally found you."
The voice, low and resonant, spoke from directly behind me. My blood ran cold. It wasn’t Lord Sapphire. It wasn’t the butler. And it wasn’t any of the men from the line of aspiring instructors. I froze, every muscle in my body tensing, my heart hammering against my ribs. The S-tier artifact notification, which had just been a persistent notification at the edge of my vision, now pulsed with new words in an almost panicked intensity, as if the system itself was reacting to the presence behind me.
[ ALERT! S-TIER ARTIFACT PROXIMITY SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED ]
Lord Sapphire, who had been about to re-enter the manor, also froze. He slowly turned, his expression shifting from a polite dismissal to a cold, assessing scrutiny. His gaze swept over the cloaked figure standing a few paces behind me.
"Who may you be?" Lord Sapphire’s voice was calm, but filled with an undeniable edge of authority, a subtle warning.
The cloaked figure chuckled, a low, dry sound that held no humor. "That’s rich," the voice replied, "coming from an unranked."
My mind reeled. Unranked? Lord Sapphire? The head of one of Ostina’s most ancient and respected noble houses? The man who casually wielded a C-tier sword technique and commanded a hidden armory? How could he be ’unranked’? The term itself was unfamiliar, not something I recalled from the novel’s descriptions of power structures. It implied a system of hierarchy, of power, that I was completely unaware of. What did it mean? And who was this man, so bold as to insult a high noble to his face?
The cloaked figure then reached up, his gloved hand moving with deliberate slowness, and pulled back his hood.
He was a middle-aged man, with sharp, almost hawkish features. His face was weathered, lined with experience, and his dark hair was streaked ever well. But it was his left eye that truly captured my attention. It glowed. A faint, ethereal blue light emanated from his left eye, pulsing with a subtle, internal energy. It was unnatural, otherworldly.