Chapter 77: Chapter 77: Carrying the Coffin in the Darkness of Night

“You’re not a lion. You’re a sniveling rat. Some burglar out there killed my mother, and yet here you are, standing and watching like a cowardly rat.

Are you even a man, Leonel Kingsbane? How can you do nothing while your wife lies inside that coffin?”

Adonis’s fearless gaze locked onto Leonel Kingsbane’s eyes as he spat those daring words, shocking everyone present.

“Oh, wait… I know,” he said, leaning closer. “That woman wasn’t your wife, was she? To you, she was nothing but a whore. Someone you treated however you pleased.”

The butler quickly stepped forward.

“Young Lord, please calm down.”

Adonis glared at the old man.

“Shut the hell up! Today I will get my answers from this man. I need to know if he is finally satisfied now that he has gotten rid of that annoying woman who foolishly waited for him late into the night.”

His voice grew colder.

“Tell me, Duke. Did that woman ever mean anything to you?”

The Duke still remained silent.

But the Duchess had finally heard enough.

​”How dare you!” Clementine shrieked, “You stand in this sacred house, and you dare lecture the Duke? That woman was a convenience, a shadow in the servant’s quarters who didn’t know her place. And it seems she passed that ignorance onto you!”

​

Adonis didn’t even blink. He didn’t look at her. His eyes remained locked on Leonel Kingsbane, searching for a trace of an emotion behind that mask of stone.

The violet chaotic aura around Adonis began to boil over on the surface.

​”I am not talking to you, woman. I am talking to the man who let her wither. I am talking to the man who watched her work until her fingers bled and then turned his back when the cold nights came.”

​He took another step closer to the Duke.

​”Look at me, Leonel!” Adonis roared, the draconic pressure finally snapping. “Look at the son of the woman you discarded! Was her life so cheap? Was her devotion so worthless that you can’t even find the breath to defend her name while your precious wife calls her a ’rot’ in the air?”

​Finally, the Duke moved.

​Leonel Kingsbane slowly shifted his gaze from the horizon to the boy standing in rage. His eyes weren’t filled with rage, or even guilt. They were hollow, weary, and frighteningly empty.

He looked like a man who had long ago buried his heart and was now just a suit of armor animated by habit.

​”Adelaide chose her path,” Leonel finally spoke, the voice was dry. “She knew the rules of this house. She knew the price of being… what she was.”

​”What she was? Hahahaha…. She was the only person in this entire cursed bloodline who had a shred of humanity. And you? You’re just a ghost in a high chair.”

​

Adonis reached out, his hand trembling not with fear, but with the sheer force of suppressed Ether. He pointed a finger directly at the Duke’s chest.

​”Today, I don’t see a Duke. I don’t see a father. I see a coward who hid behind his title while a mere ’burglar’ took the only thing that made this house worth entering. If you won’t seek justice for her, then get out of my way. Because I will burn the world down to find who did this, and if I find out your ’unnatural calm’ is because you held the door open for them…”

​”Then not even this estate will be enough to bury what’s left of you.”

The violet chaotic aura were now a living thing. It looked alive, as though ready to consume anything.

​The Duchess retreated behind the butler as her bravado fell completely.

Valentina stepped forward as her hand rested on the hilt of her blade, gazing at Duke’s throat like prey.

​The Duke didn’t looked afraid in the slightest. He simply stared at Adonis.

​”The funeral is at noon. After that, Adonis you are no longer a Kingsbane. Leave this house and never return.”

​Adonis turned his back on the man, walking toward the black coffin where Millia still knelt.

​”I stopped being a Kingsbane the moment her heart stopped beating. Now, I am just the consequence of your choices.”

​

While speaking, he smoothly hoisted the coffin onto his shoulder. There was not even a shred of struggle on his face.

​The muscles on his back stretched taut and strong, yet he showed no sign of pain. Everyone was shocked.

​”Where are you taking her, you insolent brat? The funeral is tomorrow,” Duchess Clementine spat.

​Adonis turned toward her. “As I said before, I will never bury her here, nor will I allow anyone else to bury her until I have found the culprit. And if I find out that those filthy killers have even a trace of a connection to this family, then mark my words…”

​He said each word with deliberate precision. “I. Will. Annihilate. Them. And their fourteen generations into the dust.”

​Having finished speaking, Adonis left resolutely. Not once did he glance back, even as the Duchess and concubines fumed with rage.

​Lucia watched everything with clenched fists. Finally, the thing she had feared all this time had happened. Adonis was now an enemy of the Kingsbane family. And that was what terrified her most.

​Millia stood up, glanced one last time at her mother, and then followed behind Adonis and Valentina as if she had made up her mind long ago.

​

Later at night, Adonis was still seen carrying the black coffin on his shoulder.

Millia and Valentina walked behind him with strange, occasionally exchanging nervous glances.

On the street, drunken people glanced by, then laughed as if they had seen a fool.

The sane people got scared and hurriedly ran off to their houses.

It was at that moment that a radiant figure made his entrance.

Cutting through the darkness of night arrived Commander Silva, wearing her usual white military outfit.

Adonis paused and looked at him with hollow eyes.

“Did they finally send you here to kill me?”

The commander calmly shook his head. “No, boy. Perhaps we should talk.”

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