The young man's thoughts became clear, and he soon entered dreamland.
This time, he dreamed of his past self, seeing "whip shadows," "electric batons," and "poisonous insects"...
His hands and feet unconsciously curled up.
Without being whipped, one wouldn't know how painful a water-soaked whip could be.
Without experiencing electric shock, one wouldn't understand what five hundred thousand volts meant.
Without being bitten by poisonous insects, one couldn't comprehend the agony of convulsing from poison with organs writhing inside.
From age three, when Roy first had memories, this was the daily training routine he had to endure.
It was Silva who led young him and threw him into this endless hell, calling it beautifully, "This is laying the foundation for him to become a qualified assassin in the future."
It was also when he later realized Roy's limited talent that he gradually shifted focus to Illumi, Milluki, and future unborn children.
Roy didn't want to say anything about this, much less judge it, because this was the Zoldyck destiny—a process every child born into the Zoldyck family had to endure. There was nothing worth discussing.
But being born human, Roy always felt he had the right to choose his own life.
'First, breaking free from control is the first step!'
"Roar!" At dawn's break, Mike's howl arrived as expected.
Roy opened his eyes again, returning once more to the familiar bedroom.
Today, he lay in bed an extra minute, carefully savoring last night's experience—that bowl of wild boar meat carefully prepared by Kie had tasted quite good.
So for today's lunch, Roy instructed Gotoh to add an extra serving of bacon.
After eating and drinking his fill, he took Yukigakure with him.
The morning's electric shock training had ended; the afternoon was his personal training time.
Roy deliberately changed into comfortable training clothes and strolled through the castle's quiet corridors. Through the windows, he could vaguely see a woman with half her face covered by electronic devices in the garden outside, leisurely having afternoon tea with a small child.
The child was very pale and fat, with arms and legs stacked like rolls of dough.
He wore a small flower hat on his head and a Lolita-style dress, with white knee-high socks and round-toed leather shoes, making people mistake him for a girl.
In reality, this was just a product deliberately styled to satisfy the woman's special fetishes.
Roy had nearly suffered the same treatment as a child, but he had violently torn everything apart and destroyed it.
As a result, the woman still looked at him with displeasure, which suited Roy just fine—it gave him peace.
"Young Master Milluki, you can't eat that!"
The chubby child caught a butterfly and stuffed it into his mouth, startling the butler following behind him.
Unfortunately, he was too late—half the butterfly went in, and to retrieve it now, one would have to look for it in excrement.
"Crunch~ crunch..." Milluki chewed with relish, his mouth rimmed with powder.
At some moment, he seemed to finally notice a gaze watching him from the corridor beside the garden. He struggled to lift his fat head and look over, seemingly thinking—
Who is this?
"That is your elder brother, Young Master Roy..."
The butler gave Milluki the answer. He also noticed Roy by the window and placed his right hand over his chest in a bow.
Roy said nothing and didn't disturb what little happy time Milluki had left. His gaze only lingered on him for a moment before he turned and walked toward the training room.
As for the woman, since she pretended not to see him, why should he rush forward to seek attention?
After all, he was nothing more than a 'failed product' in her eyes.
Roy smiled self-deprecatingly, touched Yukigakure, and pushed open the training room door.
The pure white katana seemed to hate getting stained with filth.
Held in Roy's palm and drawn with a metallic ring, it immediately flashed with a ghostly blue cold light, dispersing dust floating in the sunlight.
"Creak~" The training room door closed heavily.
The young man adjusted his breathing, gently caressed Yukigakure, and began to "dance."
"Sun Breathing - Dance," "Sun Breathing - Clear Blue Sky," "Sun Breathing - Raging Sun," "Sun Breathing - Fake Rainbow"...
[Constitution +0.05...+0.05...+0.05...+0.05...]
At a certain moment, blade light flashed—
Yukigakure left Roy's right hand, shooting out like lightning. An electronic eye in the wall corner "whined" and immediately met its end.
Along with it, the television in the master bedroom on the second floor simultaneously began emitting massive amounts of static.
"Crackle..."
Static lines flashed one after another...
The man swirling a glass of red wine, who had been resting against the tiger-skin sofa, saw this and smiled, the corners of his mouth curving upward.
He made no movement, showed no anger, and didn't have the "wounded" Tsubone turn off the television. Instead, he waved his hand, signaling her to fetch a sword from the warehouse.
Standing up, he firmly grasped the slightly curved katana.
His aura changed accordingly, becoming domineering and tyrannical, like a fierce beast about to tear everything apart!
Terrifyingly imposing!
Beside him, Tsubone tactfully retreated two steps toward the wall, giving the man enough space.
Her expression seemed calm, but her feelings were complex, because Tsubone keenly discovered that recently the family head seemed to be paying excessive attention to a certain someone.
'When did it start?'
It seemed to begin when that person on the television suddenly started performing that strange "dance."
"Whoosh~" A blade wind carrying fierce cold light flashed past Tsubone's eyes, pulling her thoughts back to reality.
Silva moved!
He held the sword with both hands, imitating Roy's dance. The blade in his hands seemed to come alive—chopping, lifting, thrusting, slashing, combined with the Shadow Step under his feet.
For a moment, the bedroom was filled with ghostly phantoms of flying blade light and sword shadows.
Until the final strike—
"Sun Breathing - Sun Halo Dragon Head Dance" brought forth a sharp sword cry!
Only then did Silva suddenly stop, sheathing his sword and standing, exhaling a long breath.
"Heh heh heh..." Suppressed, low laughter echoed from the man's mouth.
Silva narrowed his eyes, confirming one thing—
"This isn't dance, but martial arts."
Tsubone's pupils contracted! Silva's words immediately made her think of someone...
That was an old man with a topknot who liked playing volleyball.
As humanity's strongest and a martial arts master, he had interpreted the meaning of martial arts with ten thousand grateful punches daily.
That was the true meaning condensed in humanity's pursuit of self-transcendence... the breadth of mind that observed heaven and earth, embracing all of nature... the release that revered life and looked beyond life and death...
Now, in this small bedroom, in this castle that had been passed down for nearly a thousand years, traces of it had appeared!
Truly incredible...
"Take this down and maintain it well." After finishing the dance, Silva tossed the sword over.
Tsubone mechanically caught it, seemingly still not recovered from the earlier display of blade light and sword shadows.
Dazedly, she turned her gaze to the television...
Where was the young man's heroic figure in the static screen?
Only that phrase echoed continuously in her mind:
"Aren't you a dog too?"