The Laute Family was a great supporter of Saligia, having been in contact with them for many years.

So Rian Laute had a rather easy way to get in touch with them. An app that Saligia uses but that is impossible to download except through a link from them.

An app that I downloaded on my watch while I was waiting for Rian Laute to come to his room.

And the very app I made Alysia open.

~beep!

After a simple beep echoed through the room, the holographic screen in front of the watch suddenly changed.

A name appeared on the screen, followed by an anonymous female profile.

Not that there was much anonymity left because of the name.

“You’re not usually the one who calls, Mr. Laute. I assume you have a request?”

Syla Formida.

It was a familiar name, actually… a name I knew from the game.

She was someone who worked under Larry in the game.

She’d never had an extremely important position, she’d often been in the back of things, doing things in secret.

But now… for some reason, she was the direct contact with Rian Laute.

Did killing Larry put her in charge, maybe?

“Are you going to talk, is there a problem with communication?”

Ah, although…

The fact that this woman is more active in greed… explains a lot.

Being more aggressive, infiltrating even royal soldiers, their recent behaviors…

I sighed slightly, answering her question politely.

“No, Syla. There is no problem with communication.”

A deep silence suddenly fell over the room, a few seconds without a sound.

“Aiden… Tenebra?”

Oh?

Did she recognize my voice right away…?

“That’s right, nice to meet you.”

“Likewise… I didn’t expect to meet you like this, though, definitely. Especially… on Rian Laute’s own line.”

“He’s… not really in a position to talk at the moment, I’m afraid. I hope you’ll excuse the situation.”

I gestured Alysia to one of the buttons on the left side of the holographic screen. And… without hesitation, without any question, she pressed the button.

That photo with an anonymous woman’s face changed in an instant. It was replaced by a background like the one in the office I am in now, and in the center of this scene was a very beautiful woman with black hair and eyes of the same color.

But she was not the only one whose camera was turned on.

The camera that was going to show us was also turned on at the same time.

And the first thing that caught the eye was the image of Rian Laute in his chair with a spear around his neck with his eyes closed.

Then me, standing right behind him with all the caora around me.

Syla Formida’s eyes widened at what she saw. She was so shocked that… she quickly jumped to her feet, her entire focus on Rian Laute.

“This… is simply the beginning, Syla.”

I narrowed my eyes, placing my hands on either side of the chair.

“The beginning of the downfall of Saligia and everything connected to it.”

I raised my hand slightly, the one facing Adrian.

“This is the beginning of a time when you will tremble with fear at the very mention of the name Aiden Tenebra.”

Then I slowly lowered my hand.

“First, I will make you unable to move easily on this planet. The Laute Family will not be the last, one by one I will find all your supporters.”

A dense layer of mana surrounded Adrian. His emerald-green eyes sparkled to their fullest as he gripped his spear so tightly that if he pushed any harder, cracks would appear in the weapon’s handle.

“In everything that goes wrong, you will find a trace of me. Every time things go right, you will realize that you have only made mistakes. I will drag you… to a point where you won’t even regret messing with me.”

And Adrian swung his spear.

The spear easily sliced through Rian Laute’s neck.

It was quite easy as the man showed no difficulty and no resistance… but Adrian still did not hold back.

With his attack, his mana left his spear, reached the walls of the office and shook the entire manor.

“This is a declaration of war, Syla. So make sure you report the recording of this meeting to your superiors… or you will be caught completely off guard.”

The paintings hanging on the wall shattered as Rian’s head was thrown one way and his body another. Even the wall couldn’t hold for a while, it crackled under the pressure and the force of the attack… it almost collapsed in on itself.

That was the death of the ’legendary’ man called Rian Laute.

Quite a tragic death, to be honest, for a man like him…

Right now, under normal circumstances, he would be one hundred and thirty-two or one hundred and thirty-three years old.

If he hadn’t been so sick… he would have been a man who could easily pass three hundred years old.

He would have been much stronger, in that scenario.

It was quite sad that he met such a death.

It was almost unfair.

But also not for someone like him.

“Don’t shut down this line, because every time, I will remind you in your face what a failure you have been, where you failed, where you made your mistake… what more awaits you.”

I said one last thing as Alysia, realizing the end was near, reached for the hang-up button.

“See you soon, Syla… We’ll have a lot of fun next time we meet.”

And… the screen disappeared in front of me.

The darkness and silence of the room surrounded me again. And then… I let out a deep sigh.

I turned slowly toward Adrian, then toward the cracked wall. And finally… to the headless body of Rian Laute, the man known as the most powerful elf on the planet.

“It’s going to be a little rough from here on out. Are you ready, Adrian?”

Adrian twirled his spear around in his hand, cleaning the blood from his blade, and nodded, never once looking at the face of the grandfather he had killed with his own hands.

So, I took my eyes off him and turned them to Alysia.

She was standing where she was, her eyes never leaving the body of her grandfather.

Her lips were slightly curled up and her eyes… although they were so black that I could almost not see the pupils, they looked quite vibrant.

“Alysia.”

She paused after my words, her eyes turning toward me.

This time, she was like her previous self.

Cold, calmer.

There was no trace of the frightened, nervous expression she wore in front of Rian Laute.

“Your desire was to see this mansion destroyed, to see it burn… wasn’t it?”

I moved slightly closer to her, then reached for my mana… and, suddenly, a deep blue accompanied the purple that swirled around the room.

Blue flames surrounded us, and then spread to the walls. The furniture, the table, the paintings on the walls… everything.

“Since you helped me… let’s fulfill this wish. You deserve it.”

Her expression never changed. Only… her lips, already curled upward, became even more so.

“Stay close to me, don’t get killed by a random person.”

With a quick nod, she moved closer to me, and… all the silence in the room was broken at that very moment.

The door to the office was suddenly thrown wide open, and a panting figure entered… a woman.

She had short black hair. They barely touched her shoulders. Her brown eyes, though rather ordinary looking, were wide and wide.

She paused when she saw us, three pairs of eyes staring at her. But the pause didn’t last long. Because… slowly, he noticed another detail in the room.

As her eyes widened again and again, she saw the headless body lying on the floor next to her desk.

She stiffened in an instant, not moving a muscle.

“Ah, A-18…”

The voice echoing in the room… surprisingly belonged to Alysia.

With a big smile on her face, she moved slightly closer to this woman, her eyes were completely on her… as if she didn’t care about anything else around her.

“What happened…? Couldn’t you protect your master? Did you just fail in your greatest mission?”

She looked at me out of the corner of her eye as she walked, it was a very brief glance.

And yet… it had a lot of meaning.

She was asking for permission, practically.

She was begging me to let her continue.

And I… gave her that permission.

Alysia Laute was an important person. Even though she couldn’t be on the player’s side in the game in any scenario… it was different in real life, after all.

So I didn’t really care what she did, as long as she was on my side. To take a little revenge for all those years of suffering she lived through… it’s not something I’m not going to let her do.

“You were my grandfather’s favorite, you worked for him as long as I can remember… You did everything he told you to do, the only purpose of your life was to be an obedient dog that followed his orders… And that’s why you did all the bad things you could to me since I was a child, because you knew he didn’t like me…”

She paused as she finally reached her, leaning down as she gently threw her hands behind her back. She looked at A-18’s fallen face as she smiled coldly.

“How does it feel to see the body of your beloved master? To see the manor you spent your life in, the one you swore to protect, burn… To see that weak girl you never saw as a threat, the one you tormented… standing before you?”

She leaned in close, whispering in her ear.

After that… everything happened very quickly.

First, the image of the woman whose name, or code name, was A-18 blurred slightly. Her eyes were focused on Alysia with such hatred that it was clear she saw nothing else. Even her mind was so confused that the only thing she could think of… was probably to kill the girl in front of her without a care in the world.

Alysia didn’t even move.

Maybe she couldn’t even see what was happening. Maybe… she simply knew it would be okay. Who knows?

Adrian moved first, got between Alysia and the woman, and spread his mana around. The mana he emitted moved at his will, creating an effect on her as if she were moving through water, while his spear advanced toward her, unaffected by the mana.

But she was not too weak to catch this tiny movement.

Her eyes quickly stopped on Adrian, she positioned herself to defend herself, and maybe she would succeed…

But what she didn’t count on was that I was in this room too.

The blue flames that enveloped the walls rushed at her, circling around Adrian and attacking her, almost protecting him.

She didn’t care about the flames. She tried to reach for Adrian as her skin burned, as her hair caught fire, as she… seemed to melt.

She even threw her life away to accomplish her last goal.

And yet… her darkened mind and vision were what doomed her.

In the flames, thorns suddenly rose from the thin layer of ice that ran from my feet to just below her.

They pierced her shoulders, her knees, her stomach. While the flames burned her to a crisp, Ice Spikes held her in place.

She couldn’t even move… yet she didn’t seem to be in pain.

Her eyes were filled with so much hatred that she literally let everything go.

But Alysia did nothing but enjoy this hatred.

She moved slightly to Adrian’s side, narrowing her eyes.

“I hate you, A-18.”

She put her hand on Adrian’s arm that held his spear, moving it slowly, as if she was using Adrian as a tool.

“So… I hope you suffer even after you die.”

Adrian… went along with it, without question.

His spear reached her neck, just as he had done with his grandfather.

As the woman called A-18’s head fell to the ground, Ice Spikes piercing her body slowly melted away, causing her body to fall to the ground with a loud thud.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep