Chapter 22: Swatting Mosquitoes

Lucien thought as he stared at Damien in silence.

Rowan was trembling so violently that Lucien’s coat was vibrating.

"Lucien..." Rowan squeaked, his voice muffled by Lucien’s wool fabric. "He wants to fight the Hero. He wants to pick a fight with the man who can summon starlight artillery. We’re going to be vaporized. Our ashes will be swept into the storm drains!"

Lucien looked at Damian Crowe’s outstretched, white-gloved hand.

Then he looked at Damian’s smug, arrogant face.

Then he looked at the two muscle-bound goons who looked like they had failed basic addition four consecutive times.

"Lord Crowe," Lucien began, his voice soft, calm, and exquisitely polite.

"Yes! Speak your agreement!" Damian smirked.

"No."

Damian’s smirk froze.

The gloved hand remained suspended mid-air. "...What?"

"I said no," Lucien repeated, enunciating each consonant with crystalline clarity. "Furthermore, I must respectfully decline your invitation to participate in what is, without a doubt, the most aggressively suicidal, idiotic political scheme I have ever heard in either of my two lifetimes."

Damian’s jaw dropped. "Suicidal?! Idiotic?!"

"You are an A-Rank duelist with a rapier," Lucien explained rationally, ticking the points off on his fingers.

"Cassian Valemont is an S-Rank Astral Vanguard whose manifested starlight weapons can cleave through mountain granite. If you challenge him to an honor duel, he will not just defeat you; he will disassemble your pride, your ancestral weapon, and your family’s social standing before the first bell finishes ringing. If I ally with you, the only thing we will achieve is sharing adjacent beds in the Magic Tower’s trauma ward while your uncle writes an apology letter to the Duke."

Lucien offered a crisp, formal bow. "Therefore, I must politely suggest that you take your crimson flame arts, take your white gloves, and jump into the nearest decorative lake. Good day, Lord Crowe."

Lucien grabbed Rowan by the scruff of his neck, spun on his heel, and prepared to march back toward the main boulevard.

"YOU DARE?!"

A feral, screeching roar shattered the tranquility of the courtyard.

Lucien didn’t even have time to take a full stride before the air behind him violently warped.

CRACK-BOOM!

A scorching, blistering wave of heat detonated across the flagstones.

Damian Crowe had not merely drawn his rapier; he had unleashed the full, unhinged fury of his [Crimson Flame Art: Piercing Flare].

The blade, which was forged of heat-treated volcanic silver, ignited with a roaring, churning spiral of bright red fire, crackling with enough thermal mana to melt iron armor.

Damian’s face was completely contorted in humiliated, psychopathic rage, his eyes bloodshot, his body launching forward with the blinding, explosive speed of a dedicated second-year duelist.

"NO UNAWAKENED CRIPPLE MOCKS HOUSE CROWE!" Damian screamed, his rapier thrusting forward in a lethal, blinding straight line aimed directly between Lucien’s shoulder blades. "IF YOU WILL NOT BE MY TOOL, YOU WILL BE TURNED TO A PILE OF ASH!"

"LUCIEEEEEEN!" Rowan shrieked, his voice hitting a frequency that shattered three nearby stained-glass lanterns, the boy reflexively throwing his arms over his head and collapsing to the ground in terror.

’He’s actually attacking,’ Lucien’s brain registered in cold, clinical disbelief.

’In the middle of the administrative ward! With an ignited combat spell! Over a polite rejection! This guy isn’t just an arrogant noble; he’s an active public safety hazard!’

There was no time to run.

With an eight-point Agility score, Lucien couldn’t possibly dodge a thrust moving at the speed of an ignited flame art.

In that single fraction of a second, as the blistering heat of the crimson flame scorched the back of his wool coat, Lucien felt something deep within the marrow of his bones violently shift.

It wasn’t mana.

It wasn’t the golden, warm light of the sun goddess.

It was a cold, heavy weight, dense as lead, and unyielding as ancient bedrock, that surged up from the soles of his feet, through his spine, and straight into his right arm.

DING!

A high-speed, transparent alert flickered at the edge of his vision:

[INVOLUNTARY STRIKE RESPONSE: PHYSICAL LATTICE STABILIZING...]

[ERROR: TRAIT [???] LEAKAGE DETECTED.]

[CONVERTING SPIRITUAL DENSITY (27) INTO KINETIC MASS...]

Lucien didn’t think.

His modern, civilized consciousness completely surrendered to the primal, biomechanical instinct of a body that had just been infused with the soul-density of an abnormal transmigrator.

He didn’t draw a weapon.

He didn’t dodge.

He pivoted on his left heel, spun his upper body around, and swung his open right palm in a flat, horizontal backhand arc.

It was not a martial arts technique.

It was the exact motion one uses to swat an exceptionally annoying mosquito out of the air.

WHAM!

The impact did not sound like flesh striking metal.

It sounded like an imperial siege engine firing a six-hundred-pound granite boulder directly into the side of a hollow iron church bell.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

The roaring crimson flame enveloping Damian’s rapier didn’t just extinguish; the thermal energy was shattered into harmless red sparks by the ungodly kinetic displacement of Lucien’s hand.

The heat-treated volcanic silver blade, enchanted with three layers of high-grade durability runes, shattered into seventeen jagged, glowing shards that pinged off the stone walls like shrapnel.

And Lucien’s open hand didn’t stop.

The backhand continued through its natural arc, catching Damian Crowe squarely across the left side of his jaw.

CRACK!!

The sound of the Marquis heir’s jaw dislocating was loud enough to echo off the willow trees.

Damian Crowe’s eyes instantly rolled into the back of his skull.

His body didn’t merely fall; he was launched horizontally across the courtyard like a sack of wet flour fired from a catapult, clearing the rim of the stone fountain, sailing through fifteen feet of empty air, and slamming violently into the dry basin with a thunderous CRASH that cracked the ancient marble in twain.

He lay there in the rubble, his feathered cavalier hat crushed beneath his shoulder, his limbs twitching once, twice, before settling into the deep, peaceful stillness of unconsciousness.

A cloud of white marble dust drifted softly through the air.