Alek Aundra
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CH 171 - There's Another Player (Part 7)
🕑 Added 2024-06-08 18:50:01 +0000 UTCTap. Tap. Tap.
Lord Soren Ashbourne's shoes tapped loudly across the massive and empty hallway, which he was told was quite an impressive sight in its heyday. Today, however, it was but a cold, dark, dusty shell of its former glory, bearing the weight of neglect.
The once-polished basalt floors, carved directly from the Kobar mountainside, were now tarnished and cracked. Soaring arched windows lined one side of the hallway, their glass panes obscured by layers of grime or cracks. Many were missing altogether and letting the cool mountain air float through the hall.
Lord Soren Ashbourne shivered and tugged the black fur coat tighter over his body as an icy breeze passed him.
He gazed to the right, at the walls opposite the windows. Vandalized murals adorned the space, depicting scenes of past grandeur and conquest. However, the gold foil and precious stones that once added a splendid flourish to these murals had long since been peeled away and exchanged for coin, with only tiny speckles of glitter left behind. Even the grand ceiling was not untouched, its ornate moldings and intricate designs hidden beneath layers of spider webs.
But all will be restored to its former glory.
"BAWK!"
Lord Soren Ashbourne smiled at the three Shadowwing Whisperers, who held on with their long talons to his coat's shoulders. Each of them had a letter tightly wrapped around their left leg.
The birds bore a striking resemblance to him, and he felt a kinship to them.
Besides the similarly sickly appearance, they both possessed an air of regal dignity and resilience that refused to be extinguished by time.
However, unlike the three birds and several of the residents living within his estate, Lord Soren Ashbourne wasn't undead and was very much alive in the traditionally understood manner.
He pushed open the double doors into the grand dining room, and the doors creaked loudly as they swung open. Normally, a servant would have been expected to open them for someone of his great lineage and stature. Unfortunately, he lacked the finances to provide for such positions that were deemed as nothing more than status symbols.
A heavy stench of decay hit his nose as he entered the room. It smelled of rancid fruit, citrusy and sweet. However, Lord Soren wasn't concerned about it. He had grown quite accustomed to it over the past couple of months.
"BAWK!"
One of the Shadowwing Whisperers screeched out and flew ahead toward one corner of the room while the other two remained on his shoulders. Lord Soren Ashbourn followed after the flying bird while nodding in respect toward the three individuals seated far apart from one another at the long dining table.
The three people, who were gazing at the carved-in map of the two continents on the table and moving about the various pieces of portraited individuals, were about as different as night, day, and twilight.
"My great-great-great grand-son returns with much-anticipated news," a deep voice sounded from the largely built man seated at the table's head.
Lord Soren Ashbourne grew up on stories and legends of his great ancestor, Commander-in-Chief Lord Tobias Ashbourne, who not only amassed a great fortune out of the great mines of Kobar Mountain but also helped his King transform the tiny Kobar Kingdom into a sprawling Empire. His ability to identify the best mountains to excavate and predict the movements of his enemies was second to none. Like the unyielding strength of the night, he was always vigilant and prepared for battle.
However, his appearance differed drastically from the murals in the mansion's grand hallway. His skin had a sickly white, green, and bluish tint, reminiscent of mold growing on decaying flesh. As disturbing as this sight was, it was a drastic improvement from a month ago, when he had no skin at all and only moving bones and scraps of muscle to make up his body.
"Toby, you missed a 'great' in there again. He is your great-great-great-great grand-son," a woman with a deceptively youthful appearance corrected Lord Tobias Ashbourne.
Though she clearly wasn't in her twenties anymore, her looks were misleading. She appeared to be in her mid-thirties or perhaps early forties, but she was older than everyone else in the room combined—including loop years. Her almost silver-light blonde hair with highlights of gold flowed down to her shoulders, and unlike the dark attire of everyone else, she reclined in her chair in a sheer silk dress threaded with golden thread.
Always dressed in dazzling bright robes and chatting animatedly, she brought the vibrancy and spontaneity of the sunny day into the room, which was otherwise severely lacking in warmth.
Lord Soren tugged the coat tighter around himself, suddenly feeling unusually cold.
Apart from being the eldest person in the room, this woman was also the wealthiest—in this room and on the two continents. No one was even close to the coffers of Saga Duex. Her family oversaw the Great Duex bank, which minted every coin on the two continents. She held a monopoly like no other.
She was also one of the stingiest and shrewd people that Lord Soren Ashbourne knew.
I suppose she wouldn't be this wealthy if she weren't so uncharitable with her money, but it would be nice if she could space a few hundred gold Duex to improve the estate's condition. It'd benefit her, too, would it not, given how much time she spends here?
By the same token, Saga Duex was willing to go to great lengths if it meant an extra Duex coin. Even the now-gone Arcane Financial Solutions held no candle to her.
"The bird's news aside, Elrik Thornshroud is confirmed dead." Zuni Keita walked the table length and toppled a small piece with a portrait of the man in question.
Zuni Keita was the epitome of twilight. He was a serene and meditative presence, moving pieces with a calm deliberation. His shoulder-length dark hair framed his intense, piercing eyes, and he always wore a contemplative expression alongside his dark velvet coat.
He was also evidently the greenhorn of the three and appeared in great health into his early forties. In truth, he was about as alive as Lord Tobias and the Shadowwing Whisperers that Lord Soren attended to. However, unlike Lord Soren's great-great-great-great grandfather, Zuni's corpse had been in the dirt for merely a few days, so the level of decomposition and bringing him back from the dead wasn't quite the same ordeal.
"BAWK!"
The second of the Shadowwing Whisperers flew off Lord Soren's shoulder and to the beckoning hand in the corner of the room, to the fourth and most important individual in the room.
"No surprises there about Elrik's death," Saga Duex chuckled.
"Chase Daylan's wrath again?" Lord Tobias guessed.
"No," Zuni said. "It appears by dumb misfortune that he died. A mugging gone wrong. He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, is all."
Lord Tobias frowned at this and leaned toward the table. "Zuni, you are still young, so you might not know, but there's no such thing as dumb misfortune in this world."
Saga Duex nodded in agreement as she examined a portrait of a woman on another piece. "Once you've seen as many loops as us, everything and anything can be predicted. Misfortune and luck are no exception."
Zuni nodded. "I'll look further into the matter."
While the three were diverse in appearance and profoundly different in their time in this realm, they were all Awakened. Each one possessed eyes of gold and had the memory of prior loops that Lord Soren only knew about from overhearing their recounts.
Lord Soren Ashbourne, in contrast, was but a regular mortal man, aside from his family's prestigious legacy and his knack for currying favor with powerful individuals. And of all the good graces he'd weaseled his way into, the people in this room were by far the most influential.
From what he'd overheard, this group had successfully conquered half of the continent sixty-one times. If there was a winning team to be on, it was this. Of course, there was the caveat of the persistent loops, which appeared the moment that Adovoria Kingdon was conquered, but this small detail didn't seem to deter them. Rather, it was accounted for in their grand scheme.
"I hear that the Luminous Vault has been discovered, and a great number of people have gone to make a profit," Lord Tobias remarked, his voice echoing in the quiet room. His comment was directed at Saga Duex, as she knew the comings and goings of coin better than anyone else.
The Luminous Vault was a great cavern recently discovered within Adovoria. It was found to be full of mana crystals, sparking an unparalleled gold rush as fortune seekers and merchants selling shovels and tools flocked to the site.
Saga Duex reclined in her chair, a vision of ethereal beauty amidst the gloom and decay of her surroundings. Her silver and gold hair shimmered in the glow coming from the light stones on the chandelier above, and her eyes twinkled, seeming to enjoy some little inside joke as she spoke.
"Indeed, Chase Daylan's followers have flocked to the site," Saga Duex said. "It appears he has decided to revive his Paragons of Rahosm Temple in this round and is providing 'prophecies of fortune' for a price."
"Yes, there's that, but more unusual is how ready the merchants were to supply the needed excavation tools. It suggests a forge was ready to supply such an unusually high quantity." Lord Tobias' sunken eyes gazed toward Saga Duex. "It means there are enough blacksmiths currently in Adovoria ready to supply not only tools, but weaponry."
"Except there has been no indication that the tools were produced in Adovoria," Saga Duex countered, still smiling. "Merchants being merchants, it appears that they were able to source tools from other regions across the continent."
"Hmmm." Lord Tobias frowned, likely still wondering where the tools were sourced if not created in Adovoria, but decided to move on to other matters. "Now, what of some of the newest Awakened?" he asked, turning to Zuni.
Zuni tucked his hair behind his ears and pointed to two portraits on the table. "This one ought to have been awakened sometime in the last five or eight rounds. And this girl should have awakened just now as well."
His finger merely extended out toward the portrait of a black-haired young man, but as for the latter, he picked it up rather gingerly. It was a portrait of a lady with striking dark, curly hair framing her face, warm-toned skin, and full lips.
"What? The idiot and the pushover?" Saga Duex's laughter rang out like chimes. "And Zuni, you have evidently spent an extra hour drawing that young lady's portrait based on my description to you. It's incomparable to the likes of even Princess Sedna Ozeryn, who I have told you already is quite lovely at this point in time."
"I do not see either of these Awakeners as laughing matters," Lord Tobias curtly stated. "Saga, given your much more vast experience, I am amazed that you discount them so easily."
"Oh dear Toby, it's not a matter of discounting, but have you seen either of them in the earlier rounds? Or heard of them?" Saga Duex replied, to which Lord Tobias had no answer. "Some Awakeners are simply beyond hopeless. They only appeared on our radar because of Chase Daylan's movements. That said, it's not that I have ignored them. It's simply that there's nothing of note to report."
"BAWK!"
The third of the Shadowwing Whisperers flew off Lord Soren's shoulder.
"Your Eminence, does the latest letter from Adovoria say anything interesting? Or is Grandov still away on his secret mission?" Saga Duex inquired, changing the subject and turning to the figure sitting in the corner of the room.
However, the figure in the shadows did not respond and instead took their time reading the last of the three letters.
"Away on his secret mission, no doubt: that's what all those damned letters have said the last few weeks." Lord Tobias grumbled. "It's good to get additional news about the happenings in Adovoria from that vermin Edwin Kert, but we ought to investigate what this secret mission Grandov has been on is. It's out of line from anything he's done before."
"Agreed. He's been gone for so long, I took it upon myself and had some people look into what he's been engaging in exactly," Zuni interjected. "Except, they reported that he's dead."
A silence filled the room.
"Well, we know that can't be true," Lord Tobias said, crossing his arms across his large frame.
"Indeed. The loop would end if he died." Saga Duex smiled. "At the very most, he might be in a vegetative state, which I think none of us would find too displeasing either—there's actually a lovely man in Adovoria that could put him in a lengthy coma if we ever wished."
"He'd just quit and force a restart," Zuni stated.
"Ah. Yes. True." Saga Duex shrugged. "He is such a persistent one to see each loop to the end that I sometimes forget that bit."
"Perhaps there is some truth to what Zuni heard," a low voice came from the dark corner.
"What, did the latest letter confirm Grandov's death?" Zuni asked with apparent shock. He evidently couldn't believe the very report he'd delivered either.
"No." The last letter was flung onto a pile with the other letters. "It states that he's still away on his secret mission. But, given how unusual these past few rounds have been, perhaps the Game has changed."
"The Game has changed?" Saga Duex smiled brightly, adjusting one of her pearl earrings.
"Yes, the Game has changed, and it's very possible that there's another Player."
// Author's Note:
Heh heh heh. Let the real Game begin.
ʕ •̀ω•́ ʔ✧
Comments
Gopard
Thanks for the chapter! So here we have the true villains then... Well I wonder just how many times you four will end up getting fucked up by the Frey family in the end? Surely even in some loops where Luca could "win" he'd probably reset to archieve the perfect victory? Though that again would be dangerous as well! At the end it will come down to confirming information about the other side without tipping your hand too much in any "early resets" or ofc Luca finds a way to somehow safely harness the power of the wobbly pebbles... Or something equally stupidly powerful then it doesn't matter too much if they know impossible power beats informative after all!
