Chapter : 1265

Lloyd, who had remained a still, calm point in the heart of the cataclysm he had just unleashed, simply looked at the terrified man and his equally terrified spirit.

"A Hellfire Crow," he commented, his voice a quiet, academic thing, the tone of a collector admiring a new, and slightly disappointing, specimen. "An interesting, if somewhat common, abyssal variant. Prone to arrogance. A distinct lack of tactical discipline. And a rather glaring conceptual weakness against… well, against actual fire."

He then looked at Franz, a flicker of what might have been genuine, professional pity in his eyes. "You really should have done your homework," he chided gently. "If you had, you would have known that bringing a creature of shadow-flame to a duel with a master of annihilation-fire is not just a tactical error. It is a form of suicide."

Franz, his mind finally, belatedly, rebooting from its state of pure, system-shocking terror, found his voice. It was not the smooth, purring instrument of a confident demagogue. It was the high, thin, and cracking shriek of a man who has just seen the face of his own, personal, and very fiery, god of death.

"What… what are you?" he stammered.

Lloyd simply smiled. It was not a kind smile. It was the smile of a predator that has grown tired of playing with its food.

"I," he said, his voice a quiet, simple, and utterly final thing, "am the man who is about to teach you a very short, and very loud, lesson in the importance of proper threat assessment."

He did not need to give a verbal command. His will, and Iffrit’s, were one.

The nine-foot-tall demon of magma and fire moved. It was not a charge. It was not a blur of speed. It was a single, inexorable, and utterly unstoppable step forward. It raised its colossal, flaming zanbatō.

The duel was a brutal, and beautifully, one-sided execution.

The Hellfire Crow, acting on a final, desperate instinct, vomited a torrent of its black, abyssal flame at Iffrit.

Iffrit did not even bother to block it. He simply walked through it. The lesser, corrupted fire of the Abyss parted before his own, pure, primordial flame, like water flowing around a mountain of incandescent rock.

The crow shrieked in terror and tried to take to the air. But Iffrit was already there. The flaming zanbatō descended. It was not a wild, clumsy swing. It was a precise, elegant, and almost contemptuously casual movement.

It did not cleave the crow in two. The flat of the massive blade simply… tapped… the crow’s wing.

The effect was instantaneous. The wing, a beautiful, terrible thing of living shadow, did not just burn. It was unmade. It dissolved into a cloud of black, hissing ash, its conceptual reality utterly and completely erased by the touch of the annihilation-fire.

The crow let out a final, gurgling scream of pure, spiritual agony and crashed to the ground, a broken, lopsided, and utterly defeated thing.

Franz screamed as the psychic backlash, the full, undiluted agony of his spirit being so casually and so contemptuously dismantled, slammed into his own soul. He collapsed to his knees, his own, carefully constructed world of arrogant power and demonic pacts crumbling into a ruin of pain and abject terror.

The entire, magnificent duel had lasted less than ten seconds.

Lloyd was about to give the final, quiet command, the order to have Iffrit deliver the final, cleansing blow, when a new, and very unexpected, player entered the fray.

A new sound cut through the quiet aftermath of the battle. The sound of a woman’s sharp, and very familiar, intake of breath.

Lloyd’s head snapped up. And his own, carefully constructed, cold, and professional composure, for the first time that night, faltered.

Standing at the edge of the garden, her own Royal Guard held at bay by a gesture of her hand, her face a pale, beautiful mask of pure, stark, and world-breaking realization, was Princess Isabella.

She had seen it. She had seen it all.

She was just in time to witness a sight that would shatter her entire, carefully constructed worldview. She was just in time to see Lloyd Ferrum, the failed student, the awkward professor, the glorified party planner, standing as the calm, and absolute, master of a magnificent, terrifying, and very, very familiar, demon of fire.

The exact same demon, with the exact same power, that she had seen wielded by the legendary, mysterious, and heroic "White Mask" during the attack on the Academy.

Chapter : 1266

The pieces, the contradictions, the impossible, illogical data points of the past few months, all slammed into place in her mind with the force of a physical, and very painful, blow.

The secret brother. The grand conspiracy. The hidden, ghost warrior of House Ferrum.

It was all a lie. A beautiful, magnificent, and utterly foolish lie she had told herself to make sense of a world that was not making sense.

In that single, silent, and absolutely world-breaking moment of clarity, she realized the truth.

The monster. The hero. The legend. The White Mask.

It was him.

It had always been him.

The moment of revelation, for Princess Isabella, was a silent, personal apocalypse. It was a quiet, internal event that was more violent and more world-shattering than any of the physical battles that had just taken place. Her entire, carefully constructed understanding of the world, her neat, logical, and utterly flawed conspiracy theory, had just been systematically, and very publicly, annihilated.

She stood frozen at the edge of the ruined garden, a statue of pure, unadulterated, and comprehensive shock. Her mind, a sharp, analytical instrument, was struggling to reboot, to process the new, and utterly impossible, data.

Lloyd Ferrum. The failed student. The awkward, bumbling academic who had been expelled from her own Academy for a spectacular lack of talent. The quiet, eccentric "Professor" whose appointment had been a personal, and very public, insult to her own sense of intellectual and martial superiority. The "glorified party planner" who had, with a series of infuriatingly clever and deeply confusing moves, somehow managed to stumble his way into the heart of the royal court.

That man. That infuriating, paradoxical, and utterly unimpressive man.

Was the White Mask.

The legendary, mysterious, and heroic figure who had appeared at the Academy in a storm of fire and righteous fury. The god-like warrior who had single-handedly, and with a casual, contemptuous grace, dismantled an Ascended-level Curse Knight, a creature that had brought her own elite Royal Guard to its knees.

The two images, the two identities, refused to merge in her mind. It was a logical impossibility. A square circle. A hot ice cube. And yet, the evidence was right there, a burning, nine-foot-tall, and utterly undeniable fact, standing in the middle of her father’s garden. The demon of fire was the same. The power was the same. The quiet, unshakeable, and utterly terrifying authority was the same.

The secret brother, the grand, multi-generational conspiracy of House Ferrum, the hidden, ghost warrior trained in the shadows… it had all been a lie. A beautiful, magnificent, and utterly foolish lie she had told herself to make the world make sense again. A story she had invented to explain a power that she could not, and would not, attribute to the one, single, and deeply, personally, and infuriatingly, pathetic man she despised more than any other.

The truth was so much simpler, and so much more monstrous.

There was no secret brother. There was no conspiracy.

There was only him.

The monster, the hero, the legend… it was him. It had always been him.

She looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time. She looked past the simple servant’s uniform, past the quiet, unassuming posture, past the infuriating, sarcastic smile that was now, she realized, not a sign of weakness, but a mask. A perfect, brilliant, and utterly impenetrable mask, designed to hide the terrible, magnificent, and god-like power that was sleeping just beneath the surface.

And in that moment, she felt a new, and very strange, and deeply, profoundly, and almost comically, unsettling emotion.

It was not anger. It was not humiliation.

It was a feeling of profound, and very personal, and almost religious, awe.

And it was immediately followed by a wave of pure, white-hot, and absolutely incandescent fury.

She had been played. Not just by him, but by everyone. Her father. Her brother. The Headmaster. They had all known. They had all been in on the joke. And they had let her, the brilliant, perceptive, and powerful warrior princess, run around chasing ghosts, a fool in her own, private, and very public, comedy of errors.

The humiliation of it was a physical blow, a hot, sharp, and utterly unbearable thing.

While Isabella’s entire world was silently, and very dramatically, imploding, the battle in the garden was reaching its quiet, professional conclusion.

Lloyd, seeing her arrival, seeing the dawning, world-breaking realization in her eyes, felt a flicker of something. It was not fear. It was not panic. It was a deep, profound, and very weary sense of… annoyance.