Chapter 26: Unexpected Meeting (2)

Chapter 26: Chapter 26: Unexpected Meeting (2)

Very soon, whispers of disgust and unease rippled across the grand lobby of The Starlight Pavilion.

?"Agh, disgusting!"

?"Who is this beggar?"

?"He smells like shit!"

?Several young aristocrats in pristine silk robes took a step back, pinching their noses with silk handkerchiefs as if the ragged boy standing on the marble floor carried a deadly plague.

?Behind the polished reception counter, the innkeeper’s face also twisted with revulsion as he motioned for the armed guards to throw the beggar out into the street.

?"Wait," Cardigan muttered under his breath, extending a gauntleted arm to halt Clara, Zane, and Marcus by the entrance.

?His eyes locked onto the pitch-black book clutched against the ragged boy’s bleeding chest.

?"Do not go near him. The mana leaking from that Grimoire is foul. It feels like condensed resentment."

?Aegon barely heard his cousin’s warning. His mind was spinning as he stared at Veera’s tattered clothes, the dried blood matting his ash-covered hair, and the hollow abyss behind his crimson eyes.

?Aegon realized a terrifying fact, and his stomach dropped.

?"Oracle City must have already fallen. The timeline moved faster than I calculated. His entire family has already been slaughtered before his eyes, and he has paid the price to unseal the first page of the Forbidden Grimoire."

?In the original story, this exact evening at the inn was a turning point where Veera was mocked and beaten by a group of arrogant noble applicants, cementing his belief that every noble in the Beliath Empire deserved to be butchered to the last child.

?Aegon knew better than anyone what happened to the bystanders who stood around sneering during Veera’s darkest hour; within five years, not a single noble house present in this lobby would survive his wrath.

?If Aegon wanted to keep his own family off Veera’s future kill list, he couldn’t afford to be lumped together with those arrogant aristocrats surrounding them. He needed to plant a seed of goodwill right now, before Veera’s heart turned completely to stone.

?Taking a steady breath, Aegon set his leather trunk down and stepped past Cardigan’s outstretched arm.

?"Aegon, what are you doing? Get back here!" Cardigan hissed in alarm, while the others stared at him as if he had lost his mind.

?Ignoring the murmurs of the crowd, Aegon walked calmly across the silent marble floor until he stopped three paces in front of the battered protagonist.

?Up close, the foul stench of dried blood and charred wood clinging to Veera’s skin felt alive. The boy was trembling slightly, not from fear, but from the raw agony of the nasty wound tearing across his collarbone.

?Aegon reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small porcelain vial of high-grade healing salve alongside a clean white handkerchief. He held them out with a calm, non-threatening expression, making sure his hands stayed far away from the training sword at his waist.

?"You’re here for tomorrow’s entrance examination, aren’t you? If you go into the practical test with an open wound like that, the examiners won’t even let you step onto the stage. Take this salve. Consider it a gesture of respect from one applicant to another. My name is Aegon."

?The lobby: "..."

?All the young nobles stared in disbelief as a silver-haired boy wearing the prestigious crest of House Noiré offered expensive medicine to a filthy street rat.

?"What in the hell! Why is he talking with that disgusting piece of meat?!"

?"Isn’t that crest from the nobility? So why would he approach a low-class, filthy rat?"

?"Haha, he must have gone mad. We should stay away from him as well."

?For a long moment, Veera did not move.

?Then, slowly, the ragged boy raised his chin. His bloodshot crimson eyes slid from the porcelain vial in Aegon’s palm up to the silver-dyed hair framing Aegon’s face, and finally settled on the intricate silver-and-blue emblem stitched onto his collar.

?No warmth surfaced in Veera’s gaze. There was no gratitude, no surprise, and not a single shred of human vulnerability. There was only a bottomless, freezing void that made the temperature between them plummet.

?Smack.

?With a sudden, vicious swipe of his bruised hand, Veera knocked the porcelain vial out of Aegon’s palm.

?The bottle shattered against the marble floor, splattering pale green ointment across Aegon’s polished boots.

?"Keep your filthy charity to yourself, noble. Do you think tossing a scrap of medicine at my feet makes you any different from the rest of the pigs in this room?" Veera growled in a deep voice.

?Aegon’s fingers twitched slightly, though he kept his expression composed.

?"I have no intention of looking down on you, Veera. I only meant to help."

?At the mention of his name, Veera’s eyes narrowed into lethal slits. The pitch-black Grimoire against his chest pulsed once, releasing a suffocating wave of dark miasma that cracked the marble tile beneath his torn boots.

?"I didn’t tell you my name," Veera whispered, stepping forward until his bloodstained face was mere inches from Aegon’s.

?The amount of malice radiating from his small frame was enough to make a grown knight choke.

?"I don’t know who you are or how you know me, and I don’t care. Look at me closely, silver-haired rat. Remember these eyes. Whether you wear a mask of fake kindness or sneer behind silk robes, all of you highborn parasites bleed the same color. If you ever step in front of me again with that disgusting pity on your face, I will tear your throat out before I kill the rest of your family."

?Then, without waiting for a reply, Veera shoved past Aegon, tossed a blood-soaked pouch of gold coins onto the reception desk, snatched a room key from the terrified innkeeper’s frozen hand, and disappeared up the grand staircase.

?Aegon stood motionless in the center of the lobby, staring down at the shattered porcelain by his boots.

?"So, it didn’t go quite as I expected, huh? Seems like I am too late for this approach." he said himself, chuckling bitterly.