Chapter 8: House Valemont

And the crowning jewel of this generation’s divine nepotism?

House Valemont.

Lucien had stared at the full-page, illuminated portrait of the Valemont family crest: a silver greatsword plunged through a blazing starlight constellation, ringed by seven golden halos.

"House Valemont," Lucien read aloud, his voice dripping with dry, acidic sarcasm. "The Sword of the Goddess. Guardians of the Celestial Gate. Lineage of the Astral Dawn. Blessed with the divine gift to manifest weapons of pure condensed celestial authority."

And the current heir of House Valemont was none other than Cassian Valemont.

The protagonist.

According to the Imperial archives, Cassian wasn’t merely the strongest young warrior in House Valemont.

He was officially recognized by the Imperial Magic Tower as the most terrifyingly gifted anomaly born across all seven houses in the last three centuries.

At age fifteen, during his awakening, his mana had violently shattered three high-grade measuring orbs, illuminated the capital’s central cathedral with seven days of perpetual aurora borealis, and manifested the rare, legendary authority: Astral Armament.

"He’s not just a high-tier noble," Lucien muttered, resting his chin on his palm and staring bleakly at the stained glass above. "He’s a genius of the century, federally protected, divinely sponsored, walking nuclear deterrent with hair gel and a brooding complex. He outranks me politically, socially, and if he sneezes too hard in my direction, the backdraft would probably launch my fragile, eight-vitality carcass into low orbit."

The disparity was so absurd it was almost comforting.

’Why would a divinely chosen demigod ever care about an unawakened second son of an earth-magic duchy?’

Lucien reasoned, flipping the heavy book shut with a satisfying thump.

He wouldn’t.

’He lives in a world of starlight swords, ancient prophecies, and continent-ending monstrosities. I live in a world of buttered pastries, tax spreadsheets, and afternoon naps. We are parallel lines. We don’t intersect each other’s life in any way. We don’t even belong in the same geometric plane.’

He had leaned back in his leather armchair, satisfied with this deduction.

And then, precisely at that moment of peace, the universe had decided to deliver its daily reminder that Lucien was living inside a cruel, sadistic narrative structure.

DING!

The sound had rung out with the sharp, mocking clarity of a casino slot machine hitting a jackpot.

[SYSTEM NOTICE]

[Environmental Analysis: Host is currently consuming irrelevant historical trivia instead of cultivating spiritual resonance.]

[Reminder:

• Days until Imperial Academy Awakening Ceremony: 7

• Current Soul Vessel Potential: [UNSTABLE]

• Fate Divergence Value: 0.04%

Notification: A wandering soul cannot remain invisible forever. The dead are patient. The living are not.]

Lucien had stared at the floating silver box, his left eyelid beginning to flutter with a violent tic.

"Irrelevant historical trivia?" he whispered, his voice rising in dangerous, quiet fury. "I am educating myself on the geopolitical infrastructure of the realm, you digital parasite! And what do you mean ’the dead are patient’?! Are you threatening me?! In my own family’s library?!"

The System offered no retort.

It simply blinked once, shifted its opacity, and displayed a small, cheerful hourglass that slowly dripped silver sand from the top chamber to the bottom.

Lucien had buried his face in his hands, groaning audibly.

"I hate you," he muttered into his palms.

"I hate you, I hate whatever algorithmic god compiled your source code, and I hate the fact that you don’t have an uninstall button in the settings menu."

Because deep down, beneath the comforting layers of denial and oxtail soup, Lucien knew the terrifying truth.

A System did not manifest inside the soul of a transmigrator simply to keep time.

A System was a narrative whip.

It was a cosmic cattle prod designed to herd a protagonist directly into the jaws of conflict, leveling curves, and escalating misery.

The moment that interface had appeared, his dream of becoming a harmless, plump, tax-collecting country lord had received a fatal spiritual puncture.

Sooner or later, this damned interface was going to hand him a quest.

And knowing the genre, that quest would not be ’Enjoy a lovely picnic by the lake with your sister.’

It would be something like: ’Harvest the femur of an ancient lich within forty-eight minutes or your kidneys will invert.’

"I need to know more," he had muttered to himself, grabbing another stack of treatises on soul theory, ancient ruins, and the catastrophic history of the First Necromancer War. "If I am going to be dragged into this meat grinder, I at least need to know which gears are the sharpest."

He had spent the remainder of day six and the entirety of day seven furiously consuming every piece of lore the library possessed.

He learned of Mortis Vael, the reviled progenitor of Necromancy who had lived eight hundred years ago, a figure universally depicted in imperial history books as a cackling, baby-eating monster who stitched corpses together for fun, though several ancient, uncensored academic commentaries noted with quiet confusion that Vael’s private research journals seemed exclusively obsessed with "the resonance of spiritual remnants" and "the boundary beyond the stars."

He learned of the Eclipsed Hand, a shadowy, multi-generational cult that had spent centuries operating in the underbelly of the empire, supposedly worshipping dark entities from the depths of the underworld.

And he learned about the Imperial Academy of Astraea.

The academy was the beating heart of the empire’s power structure.

Located on a massive, floating plateau suspended above the capital city of Sol-Aeterna by ancient levitation arrays, it was where every noble heir, military prodigy, and state-sponsored commoner talent was forged into a weapon.

It was also the primary setting for the first two hundred Chapters of The Astral Sovereign’s Dawn.

Which meant it was the most densely populated hazard zone on the entire continent.

"I am never going back there," Lucien had whispered with fierce, unshakable conviction as he closed the final history volume.

"I will feign a permanent limp, claim that the trauma of the catacombs has left me with an acute, incurable phobia of floating landmasses.