[The Conflict Begins: The Waxen Cold of Deception] Nothing changed in Ronan's posture; he remained leaning against the stone balustrade with an irritating, practiced indifference, as if the corpse he was about to create in a few minutes meant nothing to him. He turned fully toward Ryo, the moonlight falling upon his gaunt face, making him look like a morbid statue of wax.
"You killed Elena... didn't you?" Ronan asked, his tone carrying a strange, hollow boredom. "She was a fast girl, but she was a fool. As for you... you carry a sense of 'justice' in your eyes that makes me nauseous. Justice is the language invented by the weak to avoid being crushed."
Ryo did not utter a single word. Instead, he pushed his formal tuxedo jacket back and rested his hand on his concealed hilt. The veins in his neck bulged, and the aura of royal mana began to leak from his frame, causing the air around him to ripple with invisible vibrations.
Ronan exploded from his position. He didn't walk; he "slid" across the marble floor as if defying the very laws of gravity. He unsheathed a needle-thin blade, a long stiletto forged from abyssal black steel, and launched a straight thrust toward Ryo's heart.
Ryo reacted with the honed instincts of eight years of brutality. He drew his training sword (not the golden blade) and parried the strike. Trnnnnnn—! The sound of the collision was sharp, like the shattering of glass. Ryo felt a strange, concentrated force in Ronan's hand; it wasn't raw muscle, but a "piercing" power focused entirely at the tip of the needle. Ryo recoiled two steps, but Ronan did not allow him a second to breathe.
Ronan began a terrifying combat dance. He moved in a spiral, stabbing and vanishing, only to reappear from a blind spot. Ryo, despite his massive frame and superior strength, found it difficult to match this "noble," filthy style. Ronan did not fight like a soldier; he fought like a surgeon dissecting a cadaver.
"What is the matter?" Ronan mocked, grazing Ryo's cheek with the tip of his needle. "Did your master only teach you how to swing iron? Combat is the art of inflicting pain on others without ever being touched."
Ryo lunged in a violent counter-attack, attempting to use his reach to deliver a crushing kick to Ronan's midsection. But Ronan performed an acrobatic maneuver, spinning around Ryo in the air like a feather in a gale. As he descended, with a velocity that only my Red Eye could process from the rooftop, Ronan drove his black needle deep into Ryo's right flank.
Tchaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!
The blade transfixed the flesh and emerged from the other side. Ryo froze, a muffled gasp of agony escaping his lips. Blood erupted in a deluge, staining the crisp white shirt beneath his jacket a deep, visceral crimson.
Above on the dark rooftop, my heart constricted. I felt a sudden, searing heat in my chest, and my instincts, sharpened to protect this youth, exploded. My eye wasn't just glowing red anymore; a cold, blue flicker began to emanate from the depths of my gaze. This flicker only appeared when the "System" within me sensed a threat to my existence—or the existence of my disciple.
I prepared to leap, and my sword "Sin" shrieked in its scabbard, demanding blood. I would have erased Ronan from reality in seconds. But in that heartbeat, Ryo raised his head, heavy with pain, and looked directly toward my position in the darkness. His gaze was sharp, filled with a primal rejection and defiance. "Do not intervene, Master... this is my destiny." The words were written clearly in his golden eyes.
I stepped back, smothering the blue flicker, but my hand did not leave the hilt of my sword. I watched the hemorrhage staining the courtyard, and I watched Ronan, who was smiling with a sickly, ecstatic pleasure.
Ronan stood two paces away and began to wipe his blade with a silk handkerchief he produced from his pocket, a look of utter contempt filling his face. He truly believed he was speaking to the son of a failed noble family—a boy trying to play at being an assassin to escape his own boredom.
"Look at you... pathetic," Ronan said, tossing the blood-soaked silk onto Ryo's face. "I am disappointed. I thought you were a professional spy, but you're just a child playing dress-up in his father's clothes. Tell me, did you steal this sword from your family's vault to prove your bravery?"
Ronan laughed coldly and stepped forward to kick Ryo in his wounded shoulder. "You stain the honor of nobility with this weakness. I am certain your parents despise you. They must feel such shame that their lineage ends with a 'burden' like you. Any parents with a shred of dignity would be revolted by a son who trembles beneath the feet of his enemy."
In that moment, Ryo stopped breathing. The words Ronan cast out as a "general insult" to a "fake noble" fell upon Ryo like lightning bolts shattering the stones of history. Ronan knew nothing of King Arthur, nothing of the Queen who died of a broken heart, but in his ignorance, he stepped upon the only wound in Ryo's soul that would never heal.
A strange, absolute silence fell. We could no longer hear the music from the gala or the wind. Only the sound of Ryo's blood striking the marble.
Ryo began to rise. He didn't rise as a wounded human, but as an entity being reconstructed. The blood flowing from his flank began to evaporate from the sheer heat radiating from his body. His golden eyes lost their human luster, transforming into two orbs of pure, primordial light.
"You said... they despise me?" Ryo's voice emerged deep, charged with vibrations that caused the balcony glass to crack.
He reached slowly toward the chest hidden beneath his shredded jacket. And when he gripped the hilt, a golden-white brilliance erupted—a light Draka had not seen since the night of the Great Betrayal. He unsheathed the Blade of Dawn (The Lunar Blade).
The moment the steel emerged, the moonlight in the sky seemed to bend toward the courtyard, as if the stars themselves were swearing fealty to the sword's master. The white edges of the blade glowed with a breath-stealing cold, while the heart of the steel shone with an ancient, royal gold.
Ryo looked at Ronan, whose confident smirk vanished, replaced by a dread that defied logic. Ronan did not understand what he was facing, but he suddenly felt that the person standing before him was not a "fake noble," but Death itself, crowned in light.
"You made one mistake, Ronan..." Ryo said as he raised his Lunar Blade, the earth trembling beneath his feet. "You dared to speak of them with your filthy tongue... and now, I will tear that tongue out before I send your soul to hell."
The royal aura ignited around Ryo, and his silver hair transformed into raging silver flames. In that moment, Ronan realized the "Gala" was over, and the "Massacre" had only just begun.
[Aura Explosion: The Gilded Dance of Death] The rear courtyard was no longer a place for parties; it had become an execution ground. The Lunar Blade in Ryo's hand was not a weapon; it was a piece of the heavens fallen to purge the earth.
Ronan, who had been smiling minutes ago, regained his balance. He wasn't the Fourth Seat for nothing. He inhaled the night air sharply, and a toxic, black mana exploded from his body, transforming his needle-thin blade into a whip of darkness.
"So... you were hiding your fangs, mongrel?" Ronan screamed, lunging with a speed that surpassed lightning.
The blades collided. BOOOOOOOOM! The shockwave shattered the windows of the luxury carriages below, and the marble balcony shook as if struck by an earthquake. Ronan still possessed the advantage of experience; his movements were impossibly fluid, stabbing at Ryo's joints, using his black "needle" to shred Ryo's defenses. Ryo took the hits—wounds began to multiply across his body—but he did not waver. He didn't flinch. He didn't utter a single cry of pain. He simply moved forward with a coldness that inspired terror, as if his body no longer possessed human nerves.
"Why won't you fall?!" Ronan screamed frantically, driving his blade into Ryo's shoulder for the second time.
Ryo did not retreat; instead, he gripped Ronan's blade with his bare hand, ignoring the steel lacerating his palm. He looked at Ronan with golden eyes radiating a terrifying royal light. "Because you fight to live... and I fight to erase you."
Ryo began to concentrate every ounce of his energy into the Lunar Blade. The sword began to vibrate, and the gold within it glowed with a brilliant white flash that blinded Ronan. This was the peak of Ryo's power—a strike that drained his entire life force.
Through my Red Eye, I saw the energy flow; he was burning his very cells to feed the blade. It was a suicidal moment, but it was the only way to shatter Ronan's speed.
Ryo moved. No one saw him. He was merely a golden streak that clove the darkness of the night. Ronan tried to defend, crossing his black blade and summoning every magical shield he possessed. But the Blade of Dawn had transcended the limits of matter.
Shsssssssssst!
Ryo passed behind Ronan. Absolute silence reigned for a single second. Everything stopped. Then, with agonizing slowness, Ronan's black blade began to disintegrate like dust. In the next heartbeat, a fine red line appeared around Ronan's neck.
The head separated from the body and fell to the marble floor with a dull thud, followed by Ronan's frame, which collapsed like a mountain of shattered porcelain. Ryo stood in the center of the courtyard, blood covering half his face, the wounds in his side and shoulder bleeding profusely, but his stance was as monolithic as a mountain. He didn't flinch.
Ryo raised his head and looked at me on the dark roof. The look carried a single message: "It is finished, Master. The mission is complete." I smiled at him from behind my mask—a smile of pride that no one else would ever witness. I descended from the roof with a ghost's grace and walked through the wreckage of the carriages until I reached the corpse.
I knelt over Ronan. His face, even in death, carried expressions of terror and confusion. I extended my long fingers, my Red Eye glowing with a dark satisfaction.
"What are you going to do now?" whispered Nero, who had descended behind me, trembling.
I didn't answer. I drove my nail into Ronan's left eye socket, and with a surgical movement, I plucked it out. The eye was still warm. I forced Ronan's mouth open and shoved the eye deep into his throat, then slammed his jaw shut so the corpse appeared to be "eating" its own sight.
"The fire has begun, Nero..." I said coldly. "Tomorrow, when Baron sees this corpse, he will know that 'Dan' didn't just stop at Elena; he has now slaughtered Ronan. This will force Baron to move himself."
Suddenly, before we could take a single step, the air around us vibrated. Hahahaha!
A terrifying, deep laugh, overflowing with a madness my heart knew all too well. A laugh that froze Nero's blood and caused Ryo to draw his sword once more despite his exhaustion. I turned slowly and raised my gaze to the highest point of the courtyard.
There, with the full moon behind him drawing a silver halo, he stood. A man with a massive, muscular frame, wearing crisp white clothing that contrasted sharply with the darkness of the night. His hair billowed in the wind, and his eyes gleamed with a demonic brilliance I had never seen before.
It was Dan.
He was looking at me, at the corpse I had just desecrated, and the grin on his face was terrifyingly wide.
"You are truly entertaining... you 'Ghost' of Ryumin," Dan said in a voice filled with intoxication. He leaped from the heights, landing with the lightness of a feather before us, the ground beneath his feet cracking from the sheer weight of his presence. "I like your style—using my name like that. You've made this boring Draka night... pulse with the life of death."
My Red Eye flared to its absolute limit, and I rested my hand on the hilt of "Sin." The clash I had both feared and craved... had begun.