Chương 213: Dex Vs Sylvester

While the vast square below was boiling with the blood of mercenaries and reverberating with thunderous victory cries splitting the sky to celebrate the Lion's return, the main balcony was the stage for a drama of an entirely different kind. A drama more personal, more brutal, and bearing a terrifying intimacy befitting only the settling of deep family accounts.

Sylvester Williams, the man who had spent half his life weaving conspiracy threads in the darkness, who had planned every detail of this day with extreme precision, found himself suddenly stripped of everything. The secret army for which he had paid a vast fortune was crushed in the blink of an eye. The commanders upon whom he had staked his intimidation were killed in the worst manner.

And the political scheme he had built across years was exposed in the ugliest possible form before the Emperor's representative and his own people. The dream of absolute power that had always teased his imagination transformed into a choking nightmare coiling around his neck. Sylvester was gasping heavily, his breaths emerging broken and accompanied by a sharp whistling.

He was running like a madman through the corridors of the wide balcony, stumbling over the train of his ceremonial robe which now appeared as a shroud. His sole objective was to reach the secret passage hidden behind his phantom throne: the passage he had built in secret and paid with the builders' lives for its confidentiality, specifically for such catastrophic emergencies.

"I must flee, I must live, I'll go to the capital immediately..." he was muttering in broken words, his darting eyes spinning in their sockets searching for any lifeline. His mind was refusing with absolute finality to accept the reality of defeat.

"I'll denounce them to the Emperor! I'll tell him Marcus is plotting rebellion and secession from the Empire, yes, the Emperor will extend his support to me! I'll return with a larger army, I'll return and burn this city with everyone in it!" He finally reached the carved wooden wall behind the crimson velvet curtain covering the throne's rear. He extended his trembling hand to press the concealed button, and a nervous, disordered smile began to form on his pale, sweat-soaked face.

I've survived, he thought in the depths of his mind. But, before his fingers could touch the handle of the secret door, what had not been accounted for occurred. A towering wall of phosphorescent blue flames erupted before him, separating him entirely from his sole escape route.

This was no ordinary fire that rises and extinguishes, it was living fire, pulsing, terrifyingly dense, and burning with such intensity that the golden paint on the door melted instantly and ran down the marble floor like tears of molten metal. A heat wave lashed Sylvester's face with cruelty, causing him to stumble backward screaming from the pain and the shock, to trip and fall on his back in a humiliating manner, tearing his royal robe.

"Where to, Uncle? Have you tired of the party this quickly?" The voice came from behind him. It was not an angry or agitated voice, it was cold, unnaturally calm, and laden with an inescapable, heavy threat. A voice that seemed to come simultaneously from the depths of ice and fire. Sylvester turned with extreme slowness, crawling backward across the marble floor, his eyes wide with terror. He saw Dex emerging from between the shadows of the smoke-wrapped columns.

Dex was not running or surging toward him with emotion, he was walking with slow, steady, leisurely steps, as though strolling in the back garden of his home on a spring day. Every step Dex's black leather boot took left a burned and dissolved mark on the luxurious white marble, evidence of the immense mana boiling within his body. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

His two blue eyes no longer resembled those of ordinary humans, they radiated a blazing and frightening light, the light of the legendary phoenix bird that pierces souls, reads the sin rooted within them, and prepares to burn it to purify the world.

"The party has only just begun, and the music has not yet reached its peak. The main guest, indeed, the one who sent the invitations, simply cannot leave before the cake is cut, isn't that so?" Dex said with bitter sarcasm, a cold smile playing on his lips. Sylvester continued crawling like a terrified insect until his back struck the stone balustrade of the balcony with a hard collision. There was nowhere left to retreat.

He looked down furtively, and saw with his own eyes the massacre of his mercenary soldiers at the hands of his brother Marcus, and how the square had transformed into a lake of blood. He looked forward again, and saw inevitable death approaching him in the form of his nephew, whom he had believed he had rid himself of forever. In that moment, Sylvester's false pride shattered completely.

He transformed from the arrogant lord, the brilliant schemer who regarded people as chess pieces, into nothing more than a terrified rat cornered against a wall. In a final and desperate attempt to save face, or perhaps in a fit of primitive survival instinct, he drew a very small jewel-encrusted dagger he had concealed inside his silk belt. He directed the short blade toward Dex, his hands trembling violently as a palm frond in the path of a raging hurricane.

"Get back! Don't take another step toward me!" Sylvester screamed in a hoarse, broken voice, stripped of all dignity or authority.

"I, I am your uncle! I am of your blood and flesh! Dex, listen to me, please! Think rationally!" Sylvester began to rave, attempting to find justification for his crimes.

"I did all of this for the family! Marcus was sick! He was weak, too emotional toward the people, and he did not possess the necessary ruthlessness to govern in these difficult times! The family needed a strong leader like me! A leader who understands dirty politics and greases the wheels of power! I was the one protecting the Williams legacy from falling!" Dex stopped walking a few steps away from him. He tilted his head slightly, and laughed.

It was not a laugh of gloating, it was a short, dry, deep laugh, completely devoid of any amusement or pity. A laugh that made the blood literally freeze in Sylvester's already-cold veins.

"Protecting the family?" Dex repeated the words slowly, as though tasting their bitterness with profound contempt.

"Is poisoning your brother Marcus with doses of Beelzebub's Tear until his limbs were paralyzed, protecting the family? Is sending a squad of hired killers to butcher your nephew, the legitimate heir, in a savage forest to be eaten by beasts, protecting the family? Is selling the city's military secrets to the Shadow Organization and opening our fortified gates to foreign mercenaries to wreak havoc within, protecting the family?"

Dex took another step closer, and the flames erupted suddenly around both his fists with redoubled ferocity.

"Do not lie to yourself in your final moments, Sylvester. You did not do this for the family, and you never once thought of it. You did it for your insatiable greed. For this trivial crown you fabricated from the blood of innocents, and for sitting on a chair that rejects you and does not befit your meager stature." Dex raised his right hand upward.

The surrounding mana responded to his will immediately, the blue mana particles gathered from the air and condensed at a terrifying speed to form a long, solid, rippling blade of pure blue flame. He had summoned a sword of true fire, a sword that carries no physical weight yet cleaves souls, a sword that none but the true heirs of the phoenix can wield in this world. At the sight of the blazing sword, Sylvester collapsed entirely.

The dagger fell from his trembling hand, and he began to weep with audible sobbing, tears streaming down his pale, terror-disfigured face.

"Please, Dex..." Sylvester pleaded, placing his hands over his head in an instinctive attempt to protect himself.

"I will give you everything! I will abdicate the rule right now before everyone! I will go to voluntary exile on the most remote island in the south! I will enter a monastery and become a silent monk! Take my wealth, take the palace, just let me live! I beg you!" Dex looked at him with eyes that knew no mercy.

In that moment, every harsh memory flashed through his mind: the cold, deadly nights he had spent fighting death in Falus Forest; the silent pain and suppressed tears his father Marcus had endured, paralyzed and incapable of movement; the blood of the loyal guards and honorable knights whom Sylvester had murdered treacherously to pave his way to the throne.

"Mercy is granted as a divine gift to those who seek it with genuine sincerity and true remorse, not to those who seek it from fear of death and cowardice before consequences," said Dex in a voice as decisive as an executioner's blade, a voice admitting no retreat.

"Today, I will teach you a final lesson, to be carved into your soul forever. The true Williams family never bows to traitors and never forgives those who stab from behind and sell blood. Today, Uncle, you will die a thousand deaths in my hell before your blackened soul is permitted to touch the ground of the abyss itself."