Chapter 527. It Was Not a Thousand Soldiers, But the Property Damage Was Close

Chapter 527: 527. It Was Not a Thousand Soldiers, But the Property Damage Was Close

William walked over to her, genuinely bewildered.

"How?" he asked, gesturing to the empty pie tin. "How is there not a single crumb on you right now?"

"You just consumed three pounds of pastry."

Catherine accepted her small victory ribbon from the stunned organizer with the same poised grace she might have shown when accepting a royal commendation. She looked up at William, her expression unreadable.

"Eight years behind a desk teaches a person remarkable table discipline, William."

"That is not an answer, Catherine... That is a deflection."

"I simply applied my studies to somewhere more enjoyable," she said smoothly, tucking the ribbon into her sash.

"That," William sighed, shaking his head despite the smile tugging at his lips, "is absolutely not an answer."

"It’s the only one you’re getting."

Kaela was not a person who accepted defeat gracefully, especially not when that defeat had been delivered by a wooden ring and a piece of cheap rope.

Her pride was a living thing, volatile and easily provoked. After the ring toss incident, she had been walking with a visible pout, her jaw set in that particular way that warned everyone within a ten-foot radius to give her space.

"It was rigged anyway," she muttered for the fourth time, kicking at a stray cobblestone. "The center of gravity on those rings is completely off."

"It’s statistically impossible to—"

"Oh, please, Kaela, just admit you missed," Lia interrupted without looking up from her schedule, though there was a rare, teasing lilt to her voice.

"I didn’t miss! I overperformed!" Kaela snapped.

Her eyes immediately locked onto a new target three stalls down: the High Impact Strength Test.

It was one of those imposing contraptions, a towering wooden pillar topped with a brass bell that gleamed cruelly in the autumn sun. A massive iron mallet lay on a stand beside it, designed to be swung with enough force to send a weighted puck rocket up the track.

The crowd gathering around it was already cheering, but as Kaela approached, the noise died down into something more wary.

There was something in her gait—a coiled, dangerous energy that suggested this wouldn’t be a standard test of strength. It would be an execution.

"Kaela, don’t," William warned, stepping forward, his hand already hovering near his belt. "The last thing we need is more property damage."

"Relax, William," Kaela said, though her eyes were bright with a competitive fever.

She gripped the handle of the mallet. "I’m just going to prove that my trajectory was correct."

"I’m simply recalibrating."

She took a breath. Her stance widened, her boots grinding into the dirt.

’Focus,’ she told herself, her inner voice a low growl. ’Don’t just hit it... Drive through it.’

’Make the wood scream.’

She swung.

It wasn’t a normal swing. It was a full-body, magical, enhanced convulsion of pure kinetic force.

As she brought the mallet down, a faint golden aura the unmistakable signature of her Aurelius bloodline flared around her arms.

WHAM.

The sound was catastrophic. It wasn’t the satisfying thwack of a successful hit; it was the splintering shriek of stressed timber.

The mallet didn’t just strike the puck; it seemed to fuse with it for a split second before transferring an impossible amount of energy.

The puck didn’t roll up the tower. It launched.

With a sound like a crossbow bolt firing, THWIP CRACK the weighted puck shot clean off the top of the apparatus. It tore through the air with such velocity that it created a visible distortion in the wind.

It sailed directly over the booth owner’s head, missing his scalp by what felt like millimeters, and disappeared into the distance.

A second later: CRUNCH.

A distant sound of breaking branches and collapsing hedges echoed from behind the festival grounds.

Silence fell over the area. Absolute, suffocating silence.

The booth owner stood frozen, his hands still raised as if to adjust the bell, his mouth hanging open in a perfect ’O’ of terror.

He stared up at the empty metal track, then at the shattered remains of his mallet, then at the princess who had just turned his livelihood into shrapnel.

His eyes darted wildly, the whites showing as he processed the fact that he had nearly been decapitated by a carnival game.

William closed his eyes for a moment, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He could already feel the headache forming.

"I’ll pay for the repair," he said immediately, his voice carrying the weary resignation of a man who had accepted his fate as an eternal patron of Kaela’s destruction.

His hand moved toward his coin purse with practiced reflexes.

"I’ll pay for the repair," the booth owner said at the exact same moment.

His voice was high, strained, and cracking with the desperation of a man who had just performed a lightning-fast risk assessment.

He had clearly decided, in the span of three seconds, that letting the Princess Kaela Aurelius keep trying for free or perhaps even letting her walk away angry was considerably cheaper than the alternative of explaining to the Royal Guard why his stall had been turned into kindling.

While the others charged forward into the next spectacle, Ellie and Clara trailed behind like two satellites orbiting a chaotic sun.

For the most part, Ellie seemed transformed; she laughed freely at every new disaster unfolding ahead: Kaela’s property damage, Lia’s rigid scheduling, Catherine’s terrifying pie-eating prowess, and the sound was bright, almost childlike.

Yet, beneath that veneer of newfound joy, the cracks were visible to anyone paying attention.

More than once, mid-step or mid-laugh, Ellie would falter. A subtle hitch in her gait, a momentary loss of rhythm.

Her hand would drift instinctively toward the small of her back, fingers pressing against the fabric of her tunic as if trying to anchor herself against a wave of pain she couldn’t name.

Her expression would flicker a flash of raw, sharp agony crossing her features before she would swallow it down, forcing her lips back into a smile.

Clara, however, was observing. She was silent, her steps measured and light, but her eyes never truly left Ellie.

Without being asked, without a single word of interrogation or prying concern, Clara would simply produce her water flask. Each time Ellie faltered, each time that phantom pain seemed to ripple through her spine, the flask would appear.

Clara would simply extend it, offering it with a calm, steady hand.

No question.

No, ’Are you okay?’

No, ’What’s wrong?’

Just the silent offering of comfort.

Ellie would accept it each time with a grateful, slightly puzzled glance, her eyes widening as if she hadn’t realized how often the pattern was repeating until the cool metal was already pressing against her palm.

A small, unspoken understanding was forming between them, a bridge built of silent kindness in the wake of unspoken pain.

As the festival’s golden lanterns began to flicker out and the raucous laughter of the students faded into the evening mist, the Academy settled into its usual nocturnal hush.

Most students had retreated to their dormitories to nurse food comas or recount the day’s absurdities.

William, however, felt the familiar pull of responsibility. His mind was still churning with the day’s events, the suspicious stiffness in Ellie’s posture, and the unsettling precision of Catherine, and the raw power Kaela had unleashed, but there was also the practical necessity of maintenance.

He made his way toward Grock’s workshop, a satellite forge tucked away on the quieter edge of the Academy grounds. Unlike the roaring, city-sized furnaces of the dwarf’s main shop, this was a place of intimate craftsmanship, smelling deeply of coal smoke, oiled leather, and heated steel.

Before William could even set his travel bag down, the gruff voice of the dwarf cut through the rhythmic tink tink tink of a hammer against an anvil.

"Finally," Grock grunted, not even bothering to look up from the whetstone he was working.

He wiped his soot-stained hands on a leather apron and gestured toward the weapon strapped to William’s hip. "I half expected you to forget entirely and show up here only after something caught fire."

William offered a tired smile as he unbuckled the scabbard. "I remembered this time, Grock... I promise."

The dwarf grunted something noncommittal as he took Aetherion from him. The moment the legendary blade left William’s side, Grock’s entire demeanor shifted.

His rough fingers became surprisingly gentle as he turned the steel over under the warm glow of the forge light, examining the edge, the balance, and the way the mana seemed to hum faintly within the metal.

"A thousand soldiers," Grock said suddenly, his voice dropping into a rough murmur.

He didn’t look up; he seemed to be talking to the blade itself. "I heard that number four separate times today alone."

William felt a muscle twitch in his jaw. "It was not a thousand."

Grock finally looked up, one bushy eyebrow arched in challenge. "Oh? Then enlighten me, oh mighty slayer."

"How many, actually?"

William exhaled sharply, the memory of the day’s violence flashing through his mind: the spray of blood on cobblestones, the wet sound of steel parting flesh, and the desperate gasps of dying men. "Somewhere around sixty or seventy."

The workshop fell silent. The only sound was the distant crackle of the forge’s embers. Grock made a low, thoughtful sound, a rumbling vibration in his chest that gave nothing away.

He turned his attention back to the blade, running a thumb along the fuller.

"Hm." Grock’s expression remained impassive, but there was a new weight to his silence. "Seventy’s still a great deal, William."

"For one man."