yournovel Chapter 155 : Chapter 155
Chapter 155 : Chapter 155
Chapter 155. Cousin-Uncle
A thousand miles away, in the royal capital.
Life at Saint Arcadia Academy was far from peaceful as well. Of course, there was no smell of blood here, only another kind of eerie atmosphere, the sort that made one’s skin crawl.
Ashley West felt as though she had been living in a dream these past few days.
Just last week, she had still been an insignificant nobody who had only recently enrolled. As the daughter of a declining noble house, her survival strategy at this academy, where everyone was either rich or powerful, was to keep close to the walls and do her best to shrink herself into thin air.
After all, it was not as if Monica, the daughter of a marquis, had only started disliking her yesterday. Whenever the two of them crossed paths in the corridor, it would be a miracle if Ashley did not get hit with at least a few barbed remarks.
That morning, Ashley had gone out as usual, clutching her textbooks and edging toward the classroom with her head lowered and her body pressed to the wall.
At the corner, enemies met on a narrow road.
Monica was coming straight toward her with that whole pack of followers in tow.
Ashley’s heart skipped a beat. Instinctively, she hugged her book bag tighter and braced herself to be scolded again, or at the very least shoved in the shoulder. In her heart, she kept chanting: Don’t mind me, don’t mind me, I am a mushroom.
And yet—
When they were still three meters apart, Monica, who normally walked around with her nose in the air, suddenly came to a screeching halt. The face painted with expensive powder turned deathly pale, as if she had just swallowed a live toad whole.
Then, under Ashley’s horrified gaze, Monica actually took a step back, pressed herself flat against the opposite wall, and forcibly opened up a path wide enough for two carriages to drive through side by side.
“G-good morning, Miss West.”
Monica’s voice trembled like a quail caught in a gale. She even forced out a smile uglier than tears. “After you, please. After you.”
Ashley: ???
She seriously suspected that she had eaten something bad the night before and was hallucinating. Or maybe Monica had gotten her head caught in a door?
She crept past in a state of terror, her entire back feeling cold. Even after she had gone well beyond them, she could still sense the atmosphere of Monica’s group exhaling in relief, as if they had just sent off a plague god.
And that was only the beginning. Strange incidents kept piling up one after another throughout the day.
When she went to the dining hall for food, the serving woman, whose hand usually shook as though she were in the late stages of Parkinson’s, gave her two heaping scoops of braised pork that day. She even picked out the very best piece, the one with the perfect balance of lean and fat, and put it in Ashley’s bowl.
When she went to the library to borrow books, that old librarian who usually looked down on everyone as though his eyes were fixed to the top of his head actually smiled at her for once, and even took the initiative to help her find the out-of-print 《Introductory Magitech Structures》.
What was even more ridiculous was that several upperclassmen who normally would not even spare her a glance had suddenly come over to strike up conversations with her, hinting in roundabout ways that “we could be considered distant relatives too.”
Relatives? Who in the world is related to you people? My family is so poor even the mice have started moving out!
This feeling of suddenly being treated gently by the entire world did not make Ashley feel pleased in the slightest. It only filled her with dread. It was like a little white rabbit being dropped into the middle of a pack of starving wolves, only for the wolves not to eat it and instead start feeding it carrots.
It was terrifying.
At dinnertime, in a corner of the dining hall.
Ashley poked at the braised pork on her plate while furtively glancing all around like a thief, afraid that someone else might suddenly rush over and bow to her.
“Honestly, could you stop looking like you just stole a sweet potato?”
Emily, sitting across from her, rolled her eyes. The girl had inherited every one of the strengths of her lawyer father, Cicero—she was clever, nosy, and possessed that unmistakable love of watching chaos unfold.
“Emily, am I about to die?” Ashley was practically on the verge of tears. “Is this what they call end-of-life care?”
“Pfft—cough, cough, cough!”
Emily nearly sprayed out the pumpkin soup in her mouth. From the pocket of her school uniform, which was just a little too big for her, she pulled out a neatly folded briefing and slapped it down onto the table.
“See for yourself,” Emily said in a low voice, her large eyes glittering with excitement. “That uncle of yours out of nowhere has done something huge.”
“Uncle? What uncle? I have an uncle?”
“Professor Logaris, obviously!”
Emily jabbed the paper with a look of utter exasperation. “Read carefully. The great purge of Whiteport! Logaris West wiped out the entire Tarassa family! The reason was revenge for the family!”
Ashley felt as though something exploded inside her head.
Professor Logaris? That cold-faced man who had stood outside her window like a creep on the night she enrolled and handed her a protective charm?
“He is... my uncle?” she asked, stammering.
“To be exact, he should be your cousin-uncle.” Emily counted the generations on her fingers. “According to my father’s intelligence network—the Court of Equilibrium, girl—Logaris is the son of your grandfather’s younger sister. In other words, he is the son of your grandaunt Elvira.”
“Monica and the others probably don’t know that Logaris is your uncle, but they definitely know your surname is West, and that alone is enough. Especially now that Whiteport has caused such an uproar.”
Ashley’s mouth fell open, and the fork in her hand clattered onto her plate.
...
At the Whiteport Governor’s Office, in the temporary operations conference room.
The long table that had originally been used for banquets was now covered by a gigantic military map. Sylvia held a red pen in her hand and had drawn seven or eight circles across it. Every circle represented one of the Tarassa family’s remaining entrenched points in the territory.
Most of those places were mine outposts, private castles, or secret warehouses used to stockpile smuggled goods. The Tarassa family itself might already be buried together in that pit in the square, but those private soldiers and household retainers who drew fixed wages were still stubbornly resisting.
Mainly because they refused to believe what had happened.
Those people believed that, changed or not, Whiteport was still Whiteport. As long as they stayed inside their strongholds and did not come out, relying on their high walls and deep moats, the new lord would sooner or later have to negotiate with them. Some of them were even dreaming of carving out little kingdoms for themselves.
“Akash.” Sylvia called to the captain of her personal guard. “I do not like negotiations. They waste too many words.”
Standing off to the side, Akash snapped to attention and gave a crisp salute.
“Understood, Your Highness.” Akash looked at the red circles on the map as though he were staring at a platter of freshly roasted meat. “Give me three days, and I will make sure they do not even have a place left to buy regret.”
“No need for three days.” Sylvia pulled a black-and-gold card from the small pouch she always carried with her. It was a funding card specially approved by the Northern Territory Treasury. “One day. I am only giving you one day.”
She raised a single finger.
“And inform the soldiers below that this counts as live-combat training. For every enemy they kill, they will receive one Gold Coin as a reward. Of all seized supplies, thirty percent will be distributed among the unit as bonus shares.”
“I guarantee the mission will be completed!” Akash straightened even further on the spot. “If it takes more than one day, I will go scrub toilets for a month myself!”