Chapter 518: The Heir Apparent

I growled and groaned and grunted into the snow.

Pain was all that greeted me as I came to my senses. My vision was swimming, and I had broken at least half a dozen bones. At. Least.

I tried rolling over, managed halfway, then gave up, sobbing.

My seniors just laughed at me.

"Boy, you’re stupid!" Vereshia guffawed as she descended from the sky. If she had wings, my disoriented mind would’ve mistaken her for an angel.

She didn’t have wings, though. And most religions would consider an angel that throws people out of a jet to be a demon.

She floated down a few steps away from me, casual in her demeanor, both hands in her pockets and a very amused grin on her face.

Aarav touched the ground right beside her, landing on a patch of snow so softly he didn’t even leave a footprint there.

As opposed to me, who was currently lying in a crater I had personally carved out of the snowdrift.

"I told you to push against the gravity, not nose-dive into the mountain," Aarav said. He had the decency to hold back his laughter.

Vereshia did not.

She doubled over, pressed one hand against her stomach, and shamelessly began to laugh harder as if she wasn’t the one responsible for my misery.

"We were going to catch you right before you hit the ground, but I stopped when I saw you managed to use telekinesis. But then you used that telekinesis to grab your... headband. Why did you grab your headband instead of at least pushing against the ground?" Aarav asked, taking a small sip from a fresh cup of coffee he had somehow managed to keep entirely spill-free during a ten-thousand-foot drop.

Where did he even get that? Did he have a spatial storage Card just for warm beverages?

"Because," I mumbled, half of my face still buried in the snow, "my hair was in danger."

Vereshia started laughing even harder. So hard that her face was turning red now and she was having trouble breathing.

"D-Don’t... laugh, you damn lunatic!" I wheezed, spit and blood leaking out the side of my mouth and staining the white underneath. "I could’ve died!"

"You’re an A-ranker," Vereshia gasped out, wiping a small tear from the corner of her crimson eyes but still not reigning in her chuckles. "Your physical durability alone was enough to survive the fall. But, yeah, I admit that watching you prioritize your hair over your spine was hilarious!"

"Come on, Shia, let’s help him up," Aarav called out before I could start cursing her and her past seven generations. He was looking to the side.

There, far in the distance, beyond the snowy white shore and across the ice-choked waters, the silhouettes of large ironclad warships were cutting through the heavy coastal fog like looming leviathan shadows.

The fleet had arrived just on time.

•••

"Why didn’t the jet just land? What’s the point of dramatically jumping out of it when we could’ve just landed on the shore?"

"Oh, deployment jets never land unless you’re going undercover. It’s protocol."

"Why?" I asked Vereshia, scowling.

"Many reasons. For instance, aircraft are vulnerable during landings. And outside of a Safe-Zone, you should expect Spirit Beasts everywhere."

As if to emphasize her words, a gut-wrenchingly loud roar boomed from somewhere behind us. It sounded like an oversized trumpet being blown.

In fact, it was so loud and yet high-pitched at the same time that the ground under us was trembling.

"See? Case in point," Vereshia said dryly, tucking a stray strand of silver hair behind her ear. "Land a jet here, and monsters would swarm it before you could exit. It’ll be a terrible waste of a perfectly good military aircraft."

While she was educating me, the roar came again, much louder this time. My eardrums felt like they would burst.

We were trotting across the snowy shore toward where three of the largest ships of the fleet had docked near a natural ice pier.

Before we could reach the edge of the ice sheet, however, the snow far behind us exploded in a fountain of ice and rock.

I glanced over my shoulder, peering into the haze to see something that looked like a cross between a mammoth and a glacier emerging out of the ground.

It was a massive, six-legged beast covered in ice-spikes instead of fur. And it started lumbering in our direction before it even spotted us.

Each time its ginormous, trunk-sized limbs slammed into the permafrost, the ground shook as if hit by an earthquake.

At last, the beast’s frosty blue eyes locked onto us and it picked up speed, roaring again.

"That’s a Glacier Behemoth," Vereshia told me, though she wasn’t even looking back. Completely unbothered by what I assumed was at least a Greater Spirit Beast on our tail, she kept facing forward and kept walking like we were in a park. "They usually spend their time sleeping in freezing environments, but their ears are very sensitive. So loud noises easily wake them up, and they don’t like that. Because they sleep in herds, once one of them wakes up and starts hollering, the rest of them wake up too."

Right on cue, two more deafening, trumpet-like roars thundered from the snowy hills behind the first one, shaking loose small avalanches along the cliffs.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah!" I shouted over the chorus of some very cranky ice monsters. "That’s all very informational. Now can we please do something about those beasts?"

Beside me, Aarav sighed. He took one last sip of his coffee, threw the paper cup away, and then manifested a gleaming red spear into his hand. "Go ahead, you two. I’ll cover the rear."

With that, he turned on his heel and disappeared.

I was impressed by the guy’s speed.

But I wasn’t the only one impressed by another’s skills.

"Your innate ability is formidable."

Vereshia was gazing at me with an appraising look.

Well, more specifically, she was gazing at my Origin Card that was floating before my chest. After she finally dismissed her debuffs, I summoned it and started mending my body.

I refrained from touching my blood vessels and nervous system directly. One wrong twitch and I’d give myself an aneurysm. So to cure the internal bleeding, I consumed two vials of some high-grade healing potions.

But the broken bones, shattered joints, unnaturally bent limbs, torn muscles, and bruised tissue — those I reset manually.

As the last of my injuries — a mangled right wrist — snapped back into alignment, Vereshia spoke again.

There was a hint of approval there in her tone. "People put too much value in Soul Ranks. If someone’s innate ability is good, they can for sure punch above their weight. You’re a good example of that. If you can master bio-manipulation, I can only imagine the things you’d be able to do. And, from what I have seen, you have a gift for learning things quickly. There are not many people who can claim they learned to move their Spiritual Pressure within days of ascending to A-rank."

I flexed my fingers, wincing slightly as the ache in my wrist faded. Then I made a face at her. "Is that your way of apologizing for trying to murder me?"

"You jest too much," she replied without breaking her stride, though the smirk on her face was undeniably satisfactory. "I was just teaching."

"Teaching what? Aarav taught me what to do!"

"Oh, no. I meant, teaching you a lesson in humility."

I wondered if I could find a way to throw her off the ship into the ocean later.

But before I could brainstorm some ideas, a brilliant red light flashed behind us, lighting up the entire night sky.

The next second, the earth shook.

—-BOOOOOOM!

A wave of heat washed over my back, melting the frost coating my shoulders and sending a cloud of steam rolling across the shoreline.

I turned around.

Aarav was standing in the middle of the snowfield, his red spear buried several feet into the ground.

Around him, three enormous Glacier Behemoths were charging.

Or, more accurately, they had been charging.

One of them was already lying dead in the snow. A massive hole had been blasted through its skull, painting the ground with the beast’s dark blood.

I was sure its other two kin would soon meet the same fate.

But what drew my attention was Aarav’s spear.

That spear was really strange.

Its shaft was dark red, almost black, with faintly glowing lines running along its length. The blade was long and narrow, shaped more like a lance than a conventional spear.

Just looking at it directly gave me a headache.

There was something really weird about it.

Well, whatever it was, the remaining two Glacier Behemoths didn’t care about the metaphysics of his spear.

They just bellowed and lunged, whipping their ice-spiked trunks wildly, intending to flatten the second-year Ace.

I turned back around.

Aarav got this.

Besides, we had reached the docked vessels.

The large warships had lowered their ramps, and several men and women had disembarked to greet us on the shore.

It was easy to distinguish between my family’s army and Vereshia’s crew by the color of their armor.

The ones clad in silver and red were rushing to receive the lady, and those wearing gold were coming for me.

Among them, walking at the very front, was a tall man in his... thirties, I think?

He had a long vermilion cloak wrapped around his broad shoulders, and there was an air of authority around him that suggested he was a man of no ordinary status.

Which was true. Because I recognized him immediately.

It was General Marcus, one of my father’s most trusted advisors and a brilliant commander. I had been hearing about him ever since I was a kid, though rarely had I met him face to face.

His face was stern, marred by a vicious scar starting from his forehead, running down his left eye, and ending at his cheek.

The moment he spotted me, his sharp gaze softened, and he halted a few steps away to give me a polite bow.

"Young Lord Samael," Marcus greeted. "It is good to see you well. Your journey was without incident, I trust?"

His voice was so deep it easily carried over the sound of the crashing waves behind him and the din of distant explosions from Aarav’s fight behind me.

However, the thing that startled me was what he had just referred to me as.

Young Lord.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. ’Samael, you’re a Duke’s son. You get called "Young Lord" or "Lord Samael" literally every single day.’

And you’d be right. Except for one small detail.

In aristocratic culture, it’s fine for everyone else to do it — fellow nobles and peasants alike (if those peasants are even allowed to address you at all, of course.)

But members of a noble family must always address their scions as ’Masters’ and ’Mistresses.’ And even when servants call you ’lord’ or ’lady,’ they’ll put ’my’ before it.

Unless they’re addressing the immediate heir to the family’s main lineage. Then, and only then, do they use ’Young Lord/Lady,’ or simply ’Lord/Lady.’

I admit I was a little slow.

It should’ve dawned on me what was going on when I noticed whom General Marcus was accompanied by.

Behind him, I could see several men. But there were also several women.

Those women were donning full sets of golden armor.

Instead of vermilion, their cloaks were white as the snow around us — a color that not even the knights in my family were allowed to wear — indicating a higher rank.

Most of their faces were concealed by a silky black balaclava, leaving only their eyes visible. And more importantly, they were kneeling.

Kneeling in front of me.

Those women belonged to a specialized all-female order of elite knights sworn to protect the Theosbane bloodline.

They only served the Duke and the family’s heir, and no one else. Not even the Elders.

For them to kneel before me...

"...Huh?" I made an unintelligible sound.

General Marcus, seeing the confusion etching itself onto my face, quickly explained, "Young Lord, the Elders have come to a unanimous decision."

Wait... no, no, no. This wasn’t possible. My father would have never agreed to this.

Did the Elders...

As if following my line of thought, the tall man facing me kept speaking. "The Council of Elders have deemed Young Mistress Thalia to be unfit for her duties. By their will and their wish, you have now been officially named the sole Heir Apparent to the House of Theosbane."