Chapter 69

Chapter 69

“So a duel to the death between father and son? What a fitting end for the Agrece clan.” Cassis didn’t bother to conceal his mirth as his feet walked on the carpet-like puddle of blood that had collected in front of his target. It was clear that he was neither too late nor too early for exacting his revenge since Lante was still stubbornly clinging on to life.

“It’s been almost three years since we last met.” Cassis’ deep voice cut through the silence in a disconcerting manner.

Propped up against the wall and surrounded by his own blood, Lante stared at the younger man with blatant hatred in his eyes. “How... How are you here?”

Blood gushed out of his mouth as soon as he spoke, but the young Pedelian just watched him without a shred of pity.

“How I came to be here? That is what you’re most curious about?” the Blue Heir asked.

Lante’s gaze soon fell on the small pool of blood that had formed beneath Cassis’ sword. There was a deep crimson stream visibly trailing down its side and emptying drip by drip at its tip. He could only imagine just how many Agreces had been slain by that very sword. Then it dawned on him what the cause of all the racket he had heard up until that moment must have been.

Lante finally raised his eyes toward Cassis’ ferocious golden glare. “Then... you must be the real thing. You definitely aren’t some puppet. So that b*tch Roxana tricked me.”

It was clear that the real Cassis Pedelian hadn’t been murdered three years ago. His own daughter had duped him even then. He couldn’t fathom how she had managed to pull one over on him, but he was certain she must have used some sort of enchantment on him and all the other witnesses that fateful night. Alas, it was too late to regret his blunder. The fire that had started somewhere far off in the mansion had already ravaged a great portion of the Agrece clan’s main estate.

“You know, Lante, you probably weren’t aware of this, but I’ve been keeping an eye on you all this time.” Cassis’ voice sounded almost eerie as it fell on the older man’s ears. “There were a number of chances for you to redeem yourself, but you never took a single one. In fact, you only managed to become more evil.”

Cassis looked down on him as if the Blue Heir were sitting in his throne of judgment. Then as if he had made a critical decision, he made an abrupt declaration. “Had I detected even the slightest possibility that there was good in you, I may have hesitated.”

As Cassis continued to speak, Lante’s mind was busy scheming against the intruder who had come to take his life. After fighting off Deon, he had neared the end of his rope, but he wasn’t completely defeated yet.

Damn that Sierra. If she had just done as I asked, I could’ve escaped. For his wife to leave him in the enemy’s clutches like that was a betrayal deserving of getting torn limb from limb. Either way, he couldn’t nor wouldn’t allow himself to be slaughtered so helplessly by an upstart Pedelian.

“In a way, I’m actually glad that you’re so inherently evil. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t be able to deal with you without an ounce of remorse.”

Cassis took one final step toward Lante, but the Agrece drew the broken dagger still in his possession with lightning speed and aimed it at the Blue Heir’s heart.

Clang!

Unfortunately for him, the young man made embarrassingly short work of his feeble attack. Not one to give up easily, Lante next grabbed a few shards of the broken glass surrounding him. Despite cutting his hand in the process, he hurled them at his adversary while shuffling up from the ground in order to make a run for it.

Cassis effortlessly blocked the glass pieces flying at him with his cloak, then drove his sword through Lante’s leg.

“Aaaagh!”

“Well, that was rather pointless,” the Blue Heir said.

Lante thrashed about madly and wailed in agony as he couldn’t manage to budge the sword that had gone through his leg and was pinning him to the floor.

“So, Lante, would you like to know what I’m going to do to you now?” Cassis’ handsome features were overshadowed with a grim expression, while his smile appeared as sharp as a crescent moon. Without warning, he stomped on the writhing Agrece who was still attempting to wriggle free. “For all the evil you committed and all the evil acts you never once seemed to regret, killing you just once would be too kind.”

Such a threat would have troubled most, but despite his physical agony, Lante merely cast a venomous gaze at the young Pedelian. Then he suddenly recalled what Roxana had told him in the judgment room.

“Do you know what I thought about whenever I had to see your putrid face? What would be the best way to kill you that would ensure you experience the maximum amount of shame and despair? Is there a way to make you suffer a fate worse than death?”

Although he managed to grimace through the pain, the blood inside his mouth that he had been biting back began to seep through his tattered lips. It occurred to him that his current plight must have been what his daughter had alluded to.

“I even thought watching you get eaten alive by my butterflies might be amusing, but... I imagine the thing you could not and would not ever accept happening to you, and what you fear more than anything else in this world is probably something far more entertaining to inflict on you.”

Having the Agreces destroyed by none other than their worst enemies, the Pedelians, and for their mongrel heir Cassis to be the one to kill him was likely exactly what Roxana had had in mind. That being the case, even he had to concede that his traitorous daughter had him pegged. As she had guessed, for him to die at the hands of Roussel Pedelian’s son was truly something he could never accept. Not even in death.

Lante spat a gob of bloody phlegm at Cassis while glaring at him even more fiercely. “Kegh! You... rotten little scum. I’d rather kill myself than die by the hand of a Pedelian rat!”

As he hollered his final words, the former head Agrece tore open the fatal wound on his own chest. However, instead of meeting the void of death, his eyes reopened to see Cassis’ face once again. Lante felt his hair stand on end as his eyes met the young man’s icy, unwavering gaze.

“What’s going on here?!”

“I told you it was pointless,” Cassis said.

The elder Agrece looked down to see the wound in his chest was completely healed, but he was certain he had torn his chest open only a moment ago.

Cassis sneered before continuing in a sarcastic tone. “I doubt it was pride that made you try to take your own life just now. So what was it? Fear?”

Lante felt a cold sweat forming on his back. Even if his pride wouldn’t allow him to admit it aloud, the Pedelian had hit the nail on the mark. He could see as plain as day that Cassis had no thoughts of granting him an easy death, just as he himself had never once granted one to so many Pedelian captives. It was a given that he would not escape with his life that night, so rather than endure more pain or humiliation, taking his own life had proven to be the only answer. That had been the painful deduction he had reached.

“So now you know that I can keep you alive forever…” Cassis started.

It was the most chilling and horrific pronouncement he could have imagined.

“… you also know that the opposite holds true as well. I can kill you as many times as I wish.”

In all his years, a more dreadful prospect had never once occurred to Lante.

No, that simply cannot be.

No words known to man could convey just how much hatred and fear was flooding his heart in that moment. Lante found himself trembling before the young Pedelian standing over him as if his very soul was a pure, noble morning light. He had lived his entire life as an apex predator, so the role of being prey felt unsettling. But in that moment, he could not deny that he was no better than a cornered rat.

Cassis suddenly extended his hand toward Lante as what he had to do had already been decided long ago. Between the night he had left the Agrece compound three years ago up until he had tracked the deposed clan leader up from the dungeon, his failure to exact his revenge had finally taken a turn in his favor.

Fwoosh.

The candles on the wall flickered all at once as a breeze suddenly blew through the hall from an unknown source.

“It seems this is the end for you, Lante.” Half cast in shadow, Cassis practically resembled the grim reaper, and the task he had at hand was equally grim. “Tonight I shall put an end to your rotten, dirty life.”

Unable to utter so much as a scream, Lante Agrece disintegrated out of existence.

* * *

Having completed his mission, Cassis turned to make his way out of the Black Agrece clan’s mansion.

“Have all our forces retreat.”

“Yes, sir.” Isidore put his leader’s orders into action without a moment lost.

Having achieved his goal, there was no reason to linger in the Agrece’s territory. The building he had just left was already entirely engulfed in flames, but the main grounds outside were still noisy from the ongoing battle. From the corner of his eye Cassis caught sight of one of Roxana’s crimson butterflies. He immediately turned to go in the same direction it was flying away in.

“Isidore, you go on ahead as well.”

“Sir? But then where are y—?”

Although his trusted companion hardly ever questioned him, the brown-haired man was noticeably confused by his leader cutting him off midsentence to walk away in the opposite direction of his troops.

Cassis kept his eyes fixed on the crimson creature since it would likely lead him to the very person he needed to find before that night was over.