Chapter 19: Turning Point

House Dunamis.

Adonis stood at the center of their opulent hall-sized room.

There wasn’t a single member of the Dunamis family in that room whose sword pointed at his throat. If Fangfather Darius gave so much as a twitch of his eyebrow, they’d skin the Fifth Prince alive and turn his royal skin into a throw rug.

Adonis stood at the center with hands raised slightly.

"Sigh~ I pay you guys a visit, and this is how I’m treated?"

Adonis shook his head as his half-lidded blue eyes oozed lazy disappointment.

"Honestly, this is why no one likes you guys."

Across the swarmed room, seated on a crude wooden chair, sat Fangfather Darius. The ferocious, wolf-like scars across his face twitched. In his heavy, scarred grip was a jagged, golden-hilted curved sword. The terrifying look on the old warlord’s face made it abundantly clear: he’d decapitate this golden-haired bastard at the slightest inconvenience.

Darius wasn’t a patient man.

"How did you do it?"

Adonis shrugged innocently, tilting his head. "Do what?"

Veins bulged along the old warrior’s thick forearm.

"Do you think I’m stupid, boy?"

"Err, ask me that again when you’re not holding a sword."

At the very forefront of the crowd, Korgan pressed his blade harder against Adonis’s neck.

"Speak now. Before your head leaves your shoulders."

Adonis sighed again, rolling his shoulders casually despite the deadly proximity of fifty blades.

"That’s literally what I came here to do before everyone got their panties in a bunch. I have a deal to offer you. But to make it work, I suppose I have to explain how I ended up with the upper hand while you ended up with nothing."

The young man smiled softly.

"Swords down, THEN I’ll talk."

"Hrmm..."

Darius stared at the prince for three seconds then used a wave of his hand to order the nobles’ swords down.

Adonis raised a thumb, pointing casually over his shoulder toward the leather sacks resting near the entrance.

"Oh yeah, those are fake, too."

The Fangfather almost had an aneurysm hearing the bastard casually admit to swindling them twice over. Bloodlust surged viciously around Darius, making the stone floor beneath his boots crack, but he swallowed the urge to murder him... even if it felt like swallowing a handful of dry gravel.

"Explain..."

"Fine, fine."

Adonis paced slowly as if giving a lecture.

"First off, the Halcyon Auction House never had real golden fairy soil in their inventory to begin with. I knew the actual soil was hidden deep inside the cavern at Lake Ribra. So, I took Fourth Mother there on a date and used the opportunity to clear out the entire cave."

Darius’s eyes narrowed into slits.

"You stole it a day before I even arrived in Gilishon? How could you possibly know we were after it?"

Adonis gave a sharp wink. "That’s a secret."

From her father’s side, Prussia stepped forward. Her tressed black hair framed her intense, pretty face. Her voluptuous, dragon-hide-clad chest heaved as she crossed her arms.

"That makes zero sense! Baron Thale put the golden fairy soil up for auction himself, and it was personally appraised and authenticated by the Third Queen!"

Adonis dismissively waved a hand as a smug, insufferable smile spread across his handsome face.

"Ehh, Baron Thale doesn’t exist. I made him up. I paid a random homeless guy twenty silver coins to dress like a rich noble and submit the soil to the auction house. And as for the soil... it wasn’t real. I just crafted a forgery good enough to fool her."

Prussia took another step, her half-lidded blue eyes blazed with skepticism.

"Impossible. You’re a trash Copper-class Enchanter! I refuse to believe you have the skill or the mana to create a forgery capable of bypassing a Queen’s appraisal!"

Adonis didn’t bother correcting her.

He didn’t need to mention the [Gold-class Enchanter Experience Card] reward he got for taming Queen Minerva, which had temporarily shot his crafting mastery through the roof. Nor did he elaborate on the exact alchemy: using a microscopic portion of the real golden soil, some basic magic dust, and paper-thin shavings sliced from his rainbow-tier [Core of the Nereids].

Lucelia’s magic eye read material composition. Because his forged batch contained actual micro-particles of real fairy soil, it registered as "authentic" by chemical metrics... it was just heavily diluted. And to compensate for the lost magical potency? The shaved fragments of a mythic water-core masked the deficiency perfectly.

Prussia folded her arms tighter under her breasts.

"I can’t believe this. So... our meeting in the cave at Lake Ribra wasn’t a coincidence at all?"

Adonis nodded gently, looking quite unbothered.

"Yeah. But honestly, you were SO confident you’d win both the fairy soil and the dragon egg at the auction that it actually got me worried. So—"

The realization struck Prussia lightning.

Her eyes blew wide open. In a rush of burning fury, she lunged forward and grabbed Adonis by his high-collared jacket! She yanked him close to her tanned face, glaring murderously enough to melt hard rock.

"BASTARD! You sick bastard! You planted the idea to steal the soil and the egg in my head! You made me think I was the one who came up with the heist!"

Adonis didn’t flinch. He didn’t even blink at her murderous glare or the iron grip on his collar. In fact, if he had a gold coin for every time a terrifying, highly volatile woman had grabbed him by the throat this week, he’d be richer than the King.

"I had to make you think it was your idea. If I suggested it, your Dunamis pride would’ve made you reject it on the spot. By making you think you masterminded it, we worked together. I got to track your every move, and more importantly... I got to use your resources."

Prussia’s face darkened like a stormy cloud.

"Like my dragon teleporter..."

Adonis gave her another gentle, approving nod.

"Exactly. When I visited the Halcyon Auction House earlier, I got the security layout from Gertrude and secretly planted your dragon teleporter inside the main vault. If I wanted to swap the egg, I needed direct access. But at the time, I didn’t even know what the Immortal Dragon Egg looked like. If I waited until the exhibition on day three, security would be far too tight for a swap. So, I teleported into the vault early, studied the real egg, and..."

"And then you lied to my face!"

Prussia yanked him even closer.

Their noses were almost touching. Maybe he’d feel in danger if her voluminous breasts weren’t sensationally squished against his chest right now.

"You told me you didn’t see anything inside the vault! You did that so you’d have an excuse to keep my teleporter... and buy enough time to forge a fake dragon egg!"

Many of the elders gasped. How could a member of the royal family be so utterly, masterfully despicable?

Prussia slowly, numbly let go of his collar, taking a step back as if staring at a monster wrapped in a prince’s skin.

Adonis casually straightened his lapels.

"Thanks to Gertrude, I knew the auction items underwent their final official appraisal on the night of day two. So, I waited until after the Third Queen finished her inspection, teleported back into the vault, swapped the real dragon egg for my decoy, and the next day... I put my fake golden soil up for bid."

"..."

Unbelievable silence.

The entire Dunamis family was at a loss for words. To scheme on this level... to play the auction house, the Third Queen, and the First Fang like cheap fiddles? It didn’t even sound real.

Darius slowly loosened his death-grip on his sword. The feral warlord sighed in disbelief as he shook his scarred head. The trash son of Aldrius Falsbane, a boy the entire nation wrote off as an empty, useless pretty boy, had single-handedly swindled the most dangerous war-house in the alliance.

’I lost to Aldrius’s seed... that spineless cuck...’

Darius cleared his throat.

"You have a close relationship with the Fourth Queen... yes?"

Adonis nodded once, keeping his mouth firmly shut. He was immensely relieved Darius hadn’t spoken Minerva’s name out loud; Adonis honestly wasn’t sure how he’d react if the old man disrespectfully uttered her name. He’d never forgive Darius for touching her face the way he did.

Darius tilted his head slightly.

"From everything I’ve gathered... if even a tiny mistake happened, or if this swap leaked out, Queen Minerva could be executed for treason. Which makes me wonder... how conveniently she was removed as inventory manager right before the swap took place?"

Adonis sighed dramatically.

"Eissh... you caught me. Yeah, I had a hand in that too. I got the palace maids to spread rumors that Fourth Mother was doing forbidden witch magic. I used the foreign nobles’ deep prejudice against witches to get her stripped of her manager duty so she’d be safe from the fallout."

Darius’s scarred lip twitched upward into a grin.

"But that’s not all, is it? You knew the job would naturally fall to either the First or Third Queen. That was your plan all along. You’re standing in my room, telling us all this, because you want us to inform Falsbane that we bought a forgery. You want Esmarie and Lucelia ruined."

Darius leaned forward to really look at the Fifth Prince.

"What I don’t get... is why you outed yourself to us?"

Adonis raised one finger, flings a charming wink.

"Because... I came here to negotiate."

WHOOSH.

All the warmth and sound in the room suddenly drowned out.

The horrifying atmosphere radiated directly from Darius.

The old warrior gripped his jagged sword so hard the leather wrapping groaned. His seethed with so much murder that even standing near him felt like jumping into a meat grinder. He looked ready to slice Adonis into so many pieces he could fit inside a tiny jewelry box.

Darius took heavy steps toward Adonis.

As he moved, Prussia, Korgan, and every hardened elder that surrounded the prince instinctively backed away with extreme caution. Darius was a Gold-class swordsman. With one swing of his blade, he could cleave an entire mountain range in half.

Any brutal fate they could think of for Adonis was a mercy.

Darius was a giant of a swordsman.

Tall, slender and perfectly muscular.

He stared down at the prince like an ant.

"Dunamis does NOT negotiate."

Adonis didn’t back down.

He smoothly slotted both hands into the pockets of his tight white pants, looking up into the face of death itself.

"You will this time, considering I just made 150,000 gold coins by auctioning fake fairy soil to you... and also made you waste another 201,000 gold coins on a fake dragon egg."

Adonis leaned in just a bit and laughed.

"Imagine if the other bloodthirsty noble houses on the Circle of Fangs find out about this? What will that do to the terrifying reputation of House Dunamis? The great First Fang... utterly crushed and outsmarted by a trash prince."

Darius stared down at him.

The coldness in the boy’s eyes, the total lack of fear, that unshakeable, arrogant smile...

A cold sweat slithered down the back of Darius’s neck.

Was this really Aldrius’s seed?

The ferocious wolf of the Marsofian Union sighed with a softness uncharacteristic of a ruthless warlord.

"Fine. What do you want?"

Adonis rubbed his chin innocently, tapping his lip like he’s thinking over a dinner menu.

"Well, first... your daughter."

"EH?"