The Path of Ruin

'Damn it…'

When it was all over... Kael, near to collapsing from exhaustion, tried to keep his balance, doing his best to keep his eyes open.

The perfect performance...?

Pushing his limits?

He had done more than enough.

He hadn't slept for days. He had always used his ability in the most appropriate places, confusing his targets with the most perfect timing.

He hid in the dozens of people looking for him, trying not to be exposed or seen.

At one point, the scouts almost found him, and the fact that there was a Bearer among them was a big problem... but he managed to avoid being discovered by killing them at the last moment.

He administered the poisons gradually. First, he took away their sleep, to weaken them, then he prevented them from eating.

Little by little, step by step, he destroyed them.

Slowly dragging them to their deaths, unavoidably.

He created a situation in which even someone like himself could defeat a Pursuer, using the means at his disposal, mainly poisons.

And all this was... really exhausting.

The most exhausting days of his life.

"Huuuuu..."

He took a deep bre-

"Aah- AAAGGRRRHHHHH!"

'Huh?'

He paused, turned in the direction of the scream as his eyebrows rose slightly. Then he realized his mistake.

'Oh... there was one more left, right.'

He had forgotten, probably due to lack of sleep.

The Follower who was unaffected by any of his poisons, no matter what.

He, though, after realizing that Kael was looking in his direction, turned around...

and started to run in an instant. Frantically, even, gathering eon all over his body as if he had lost his mind.

"H- HELP ME, S- SOM- SOMEON-"

But the dagger stabbed into the back of his head took the life from his body before he could complete his sentence, before he could fully use his speed... causing him to collapse, lifeless.

Kael, meanwhile, sighed.

'With that, they all died...'

This time, it was over, really...

He let himself fall to the floor, closed his eyes, and stayed where he was for a while.

Ah, how tempting it was to rest right now... to sleep right where he was.

...

...

He opened his eyes, then sighed once again.

'I will be able to rest soon... it's not time yet.''

He pumped eon through his body faster and stronger than usual, to stay awake and for energy.

Slowly, he got up, and walked towards the carriages.

When he didn't find what he was looking for after entering the first one, he went into another, and then another...

Finally, he came across a carriage with nothing but a small, simple chest inside.

When he opened it, he found just what he expected.

Letters, lots of them.

'They just took them all, huh...'

Kael thought for a moment.

Should he take it all with him... or should he simply burn it in a corner, destroying it?

He kept thinking...

Finally, though, he simply rolled his eyes and carried the chest to the carriage with the plants he had used to prepare the poisons.

Not all the plants were used up, some of them were still there. So, once he placed the chest in among them, he was ready to leave.

He jumped on the horse and rode off in the direction of the palace, the main target of the group... which they could no longer reach.

*******

Ever since Hakon learned of the existence of the group sent by the Second Princess, he had been working on one thing.

Figuring out how to foil her plans.

They had no direct enmity with the Second Princess, actually. In fact... they had no connection with each other. General Loukan was not someone who cared much about the existence of the Second Princess.

However, the Feria Lockhend case was such a beneficial one for them that Hakon could do everything in his hands to make them don't lose that opportunity.

He paused, shuffling through some files in his office, and sighed deeply for a moment.

Kael's self-given mission was fresh in his mind, yes... but it would be surest to assume that he would fail.

After all, if he succeeded, it would be too easy. There would be very little to deal with for him, really.

And yet...

'He will most likely fail'

Kael was just a simple Follower.

Yes, an abnormal one with unnecessarily large eon reserves, maybe...

But still a Follower.

'She'll be there, probably.'

And she was the only reason why he thought Kael would fail.

It would be foolish for someone like her not to go on a mission like this.

And... this woman was a Pursuer.

A quite powerful one in combat, in fact...

Aside from every other Bearer or Follower the group had... she was a Pursuer.

'Impossible unless there's a miracle.'

So, thinking like that, his focus shifted back to the files.

They were simple files.

Files containing reports on the Second Princess.

He had been going through them, wondering what she had been doing officially lately, what kind of things she had been up to.

But then...

~knock! ~knock! ~knock!

He paused at the knocks on his door. They were quite... harsh.

His eyebrows rose slightly as his eyes narrowed.

He hardly had anyone to visit him at this hour.

"Come in."

The door opened rather quickly, completely devoid of respect or anything like it.

But with what he saw, Hakon hardly worried about it. Instead... he simply stared at the door in surprise.

It was Kael, the one who had come.

His face was literally dripping with sleep... yet his brown eyes looked so determined that he was ignoring the sleep. There were tiny traces of blood on his clothes as if they had been splattered on him instead of belonging to him.

But, most importantly... there was a tiny chest he was carrying in his arms.

Kael went in, putting the chest on the desk. Then he went back, closed the door of the office, and went back to the desk.

His eyes were completely on Hakon.

"I did it."

Hakon did not answer him. His hands reached for the chest that had been practically thrown on his desk, and he opened it without haste.

What he saw... was that it was full of letters.

"Oh..."

He opened a random letter, checking its contents.

They... were not fake or anything like that.

He closed the chest just as slowly as he had opened it, without haste. He pushed it to the corner of the table, creating a space where he could see Kael.

Then, involuntarily, his lips curled upwards.

"Well... done. Well done, really."

He was quite sincere about it.

Because he didn't really expect Kael to come back successful.

He was aware of the way he had thought about his decision, that's why he wanted to give him a chance... but he honestly didn't think he could do it.

"What happened to the group? They must not be happy that you took this chest away from them."

Kael tilted his head slightly to the side at the question.

"They must not be happy...?"

Hakon, meanwhile, couldn't understand why he was reacting this way to his question.

'Is the lack of sleep clouding his mind?'

"I killed them all, there is no one who can or cannot be happy..."

"..."

"...?"

"Killed?"

"Killed."

"All of them...?"

"All of them."

A deep silence fell over the room after this exchange of words.

"Wasn't there... a Pursuer woman among them?"

Kael fixed his eyes on the ceiling for a brief moment, then his eyes opened slightly wider.

"Oh, yes... there was. I killed her too. Her death satisfied my curse quite well, in fact."

He paused, suddenly, as if something had occurred to him. A worried expression appeared on his face.

"I'm not exactly sure who she was, but..."

He hadn't dwelled on it much until now, his purpose and focus being his mission.

But... there was a very good chance that the woman was the Second Princess herself.

And he had killed her.

"Killing a member of the royal family... wouldn't be a problem, right?"

Hakon, unable to shake off his surprise, didn't answer him, as if he hadn't even heard the question.

And that worried Kael. Very much so.

"Hey, Hakon...?"

The man's dark eyes suddenly shifted to him, then paused.

"Ah, no... she's not the Second Princess. Even though she was quite close to her... she's not."

Kael felt relief at what he heard.

The last thing he wanted was... to be the murderer of someone with the Emperor's blood.

He didn't want to get into this much trouble, he truly didn't.

Still...

'Someone pretty close to her, huh...'

It was... something that could get him in trouble, probably.

At least if it is revealed that he was the one who killed her.

"Kael..."

When he heard Hakon calling his name, he came to himself quickly, shoving his thoughts aside.

Hakon... didn't even look at him, though.

His eyes were on the chest.

"You... can go. To your room, I mean. Rest, you look much too sleepy. Let's... talk about this in more detail tomorrow, okay?"

He waited a short while after his words, then quickly added.

"And... don't worry. You did a good job. Extremely so... So much so that I certainly didn't expect this from you. Not at all."

Kael... couldn't have been happier to hear that.

Nodding quickly, he bowed, trying to keep his lips as flat as possible, so as not to show his happiness.

"Understood... and thank you for letting me rest."

Slowly, he turned around. Realizing that if he tried to resist any longer he would collapse from lack of sleep, though, he quickly made his way to his room.

When Kael closed the door... Hakon was silent in his office for a very long time.

He leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling.

Then... he couldn't stop his lips from curling upwards.

He could only think of one thing, the whole time.

It wasn't even a thought, really.

It was... a reaction.

And this reaction was... quite simple.

"Wow."

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