Chapter 59: Taste of Victory

The sound was like a pane of thick glass shattering.

The high-tier invisibility spell, overloaded by the sudden, violent injection of the Archduke’s destructive mana, violently imploded.

The space shattered, revealing a man dressed entirely in dark, mana-absorbing leather, standing with a jagged, glowing magical array etched into the palm of his hand.

He had been reaching out, preparing to cast a sleep spell on a group of children laughing near the lantern cart.

The man’s eyes widened in absolute, paralyzing horror as he looked at the ’mercenary’ who had just shattered his master-tier illusion with a single strike.

He didn’t get a chance to scream.

Kaelus’s hand shot out, grabbing the man by the throat.

He didn’t choke him, but channeled his freezing magic directly into the man’s vocal cords, freezing them solid in an instant.

The man’s mouth opened in a silent, agonizing scream.

Before the crowd could even process that a man had suddenly appeared out of thin air, Lucas and Boris were there.

The two massive knights moved with terrifying synchronisation, grabbing the frozen abductor by the arms, dragging him backward into the dark shadows of the alleyway, completely out of sight of the bustling market.

It took less than three seconds.

The crowd continued to laugh, the music continued to play, entirely unaware that a predator had just been violently excised from their midst.

Kaelus stepped back, casually slipping his dagger back into his sleeve.

He turned around, offering a hand to Seraphina.

"Come along," Kaelus said smoothly, his voice returning to its normal, calm register. "We will buy you a new dragon."

"Really? Yay!" Seraphina took his hand, her heart pounding with adrenaline.

She looked into the dark alleyway, where Lucas and Boris were currently dragging the abductor toward Julian’s waiting guards.

The three spectral dogs were barking silently, happily jumping around the knights’ legs, their ghostly forms beginning to fade into golden dust as their purpose was fulfilled.

She squeezed Kaelus’s hand twice.

Not a signal, just a ’thank you.’

Kaelus squeezed back once.

A ’you did well.’

As they walked back into the bright, chaotic lights of the Night Market, the Reaper of the North and his tiny, sticky-faced Supreme Archmage continued their stroll, looking for all the world like a perfectly normal father and daughter enjoying the festival, ready to tear down the rest of the criminal empire before bedtime.

.

.

.

The transition from a high-stakes, covert tactical strike back into the chaotic, vibrant normalcy of the Night Market was jarring, to say the least.

One moment, the air had been thick with the suffocating, ozone-laced tension of Duke Kaelus von Nacht’s killing intent, and the next, they were simply a tall, rugged mercenary and his sticky-faced daughter, swallowed whole by a sea of laughing commoners, wandering minstrels, and the overwhelming scent of roasted meats and caramelized sugar.

Seraphina’s small hand was swallowed completely by Kaelus’s massive, calloused palm.

She squeezed it once, a tight, firm grip, anchoring herself to the physical reality of his presence.

The adrenaline of the hunt was slowly draining from her six-year-old body, replaced by the heavy, crashing wave of the sugar rush and the profound, lingering exhaustion of her recent coma.

"We did it, Papa," Seraphina whispered, her voice barely audible over the chaotic thrum of hand drums and the shouting of a nearby fire-juggler. She looked up at him, her dark eyes shining with a mixture of childish pride and adult relief. "We caught the bad man. Now the other kids are safe. Right?"

Kaelus did not look down at her, but the rigid, lethal tension in his broad shoulders seemed to have softened by a fraction.

His violet eyes continued to sweep the crowd, his gaze piercing through the sea of moving bodies, analyzing every shadow, every sudden movement, every hand that dipped too close to a cloak.

"The immediate threat has been neutralized, yes," Kaelus murmured, his voice a low, steady rumble that vibrated pleasantly through the air between them. "Lucas and Boris will extract the prisoner to Julian’s holding cells. The Marquess’s interrogators will strip the man’s mind of every name, every location, and every contact associated with this ring. The operation was a success, Seraphina. Your... intuition... proved flawless."

He used the word ’intuition’ to mask the reality of her Supreme Dark Core from any eavesdropping spies, but the pride in his tone was unmistakable.

He was proud of her.

The Reaper of the North, a man who graded his elite knights on a curve of absolute perfection, was openly praising her contribution to a military strike.

Seraphina beamed, taking another massive, crunching bite of her newly acquired, replacement sugar dragon.

It tasted like victory.

It tasted like safety.

Behind them, hidden by the bustling crowds and the thick, canvas walls of the merchant stalls, the dark cobblestone alleyway was a scene of brutal, efficient silence.

Sir Lucas and Sir Boris, stripped of their shining armor but possessing the terrifying, mountain-like physiques of veteran warmongers, had the invisible abductor pinned to the damp stone wall.

The man, clad entirely in mana-absorbing black leather, was convulsing weakly.

His vocal cords, frozen solid by Kaelus’s precision strike of ice magic, rendered him incapable of casting verbal spells or screaming for reinforcements.

His eyes were wide, bulging with the absolute, pants-wetting terror of a predator that had suddenly realized it had stepped into a dragon’s den.

Marquess Julian Myer stepped out from the deeper shadows of the alley, accompanied by four of his elite, plainclothes estate guards.

The flawless, golden-eyed noble looked down at the freezing, gagging abductor.

The gentle, compassionate smile that usually graced the Marquess’s face was absent.

In its place was a look of cold, aristocratic fury, the wrath of a ruler looking at the vermin that had been stealing his people.

"Bind him in anti-magic iron," Julian commanded his guards, his velvet voice turning into a whip crack of authority. "Gag him with salt-soaked linen to prevent any blood-magic casting. Transport him to the deepest sub-level of the estate dungeons.