Timeless Prominence

Complete chaos ensued and all the men immediately turned around, slashing their sabers frantically at this ‘Jein’, and  ‘Jein’ vanished into black wisps of smoke. The man who had a part of his calf bitten off was going to be maimed for life, even if he stopped the current bleeding. Silence ensued for a moment before one of the men lost his cool.

“What the fuck, there are actually evil creatures here! I definitely wasn’t paid enough for this!”

The whole group instantly started bickering and complaining to a man that was no doubt the hirer of arms.

“I already paid you all a handsome fee. But fine! We will double it after the job is done! Quickly!”

The sequence of events made Rein’s heart fill with even more trepidation, if that was even possible. That… that couldn’t have been Jein. It must have been a devil in the form of Jein.

Fallen advancers were often simply referred to as devils, and rumors were that they often used illusions or modified their appearances to ambush their prey. This would mean that the fallen have truly taken over the Golden Desert Town! But Rein knew that he was no devil! Yet with what just happened, this group definitely would not spare him!

Also, the ease at which the supposed leader of the group gave a higher price clearly indicated that these men are mercenaries, and the leader had long prepared to offer a higher price due to his better knowledge of the current events in the Golden Desert Town. Rein quickly deduced that this man must have prior knowledge and chose to hide some information, fearful of scaring off the mercenaries from participating.

WIth the gap of time provided by the quick renegotiation among the mercenaries, Rein rapidly slammed his doors shut, but that also alerted the mercenaries that they had a job to finish. Rein could immediately hear the follow-up sound of arrows burying themselves into the wooden doors!

“Rush the door, but be careful! The Fallen have many tricks! They will deny themselves one,or  pretend to be some seductive damsel-in-distress, among many other unscrupulous dark and evil methods!”

Rein initially wanted to open another side door to try to reach Jein’s room to fully confirm if the ‘Jein’ that vanished into black wisps of smoke was real or just a fake imitation. Luckily, his panicking mind still had an ounce of clarity and he remembered that Jein was accompanied by a personal loyal guard every night in case he ran off somewhere in the middle of the night.

His mind whirled and quickly concluded that seeing as these mercenaries are now in the Hehr Mansion’s premise, Guard Wein and Shier must definitely be dead already… The rest of the family, if alive, must have escaped through the emergency pathway!

Rein no longer hesitated, lifting up a straw floor mat underneath his bed, opening a hatch there before leaping in and closing the hatch, trying his best to have the straw mat hide the hatch again in the process.

Upon closing the hatch, he quickly locked it with a mechanism that could only be operated from his side of the hatch.

In his hurry, he had forgotten to bring a lamp, so all he could see was darkness. Using his sense of touch, he carefully but haphazardly climbed down around fifteen rungs of a ladder created from metal, before stubbing his toe into a flat ground that was the bottom of the tunnel.

He looked back up in fear at the hatch above, but it did not appear to have been discovered. Perhaps those mercenaries believed that a Fallen might transform into a piece of furniture or something of that sort…? Regardless, that’s the luck that Rein needed right now!

Thump! Thump! Thump!

Rein jumped in fright before mocking himself for getting scared of hearing his own terror.

Taking a few deep breaths, he calmed himself. Then he turned round and round on the spot, feeling for the direction of the tunnel. After his heartbeat settled down a bit, he gradually heard a soft sobbing noise in the distance.

That’s probably...Jein!

Rein initially did not notice this because of the pounding of his own heart amid the fear of the mercenaries discovering the hatch.

His hope revitalized, he rapidly went in the direction of the sobbing voice that sounded like the real Jein, and soon saw a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel. The sliver of light allowed him to finally see that the tunnel was supported by wooden beams with triangular support at the top, every few feet or so.

Rein finally reached the end of the tunnel, which opened up into a small dusty room lined with stone in all directions. A ladder at the center of the room stretched up to an overhanging hatch.

As Rein looked toward the source of the sobbing voice, he felt strength drain from his limbs and he collapsed onto his knees into a crawling position. Only with great courage could he raise his head and slow crawl over to a group of three listless bodies.

His heart was pounding now, but not from adrenaline urging him to escape. Instead it was disbelief mixed with a nervous kind of hope.

He reached out to touch the first listless body. This was none other than his father. The skin was slightly cool already and Rein felt as if a bucket of cold water had been poured over his head, thoroughly extinguishing his hope.

Looking down at his father’s lifeless corpse, he saw a number of arrows littered across the chest area. It looked to be the same type of arrow that had whizzed past his very own head earlier. 

Rein initially wanted to sob like Jein, but he found himself feeling empty in disbelief instead. He had just remembered the recent discussion at the end of which he cut off his father's concluding statement. 

“Open your eyes, father!” He half-screamed. “You still never finished that annoying statement of yours...”

There was no response. Yet Rein found himself still lacking in tears. He inwardly raged that those damn mercenaries were just killing the innocent left and right! So what if the fallen could use dark magics to present themselves as different entities?! Surely, there was a way to differentiate between the two! He promised himself there and then that he would one day kill them all!

His fist was clenched to the point where his fingernails drew blood on his palms. That pain gave him a moment of contemplation. He felt that he should be crying and yet he was instead filled with boundless anger at the injustice of it all.

At this point, Rein noticed a heavy breathing sound. He looked around trying to find the source, but soon realized it was he himself that was gasping for air and struggling to breathe.

Rein dismissed his chaotic emotions before looking at another non-moving body. It was his mother with her back propped up against a stone-wall, her loose sleeping robes drenched in crimson.

Rein felt sluggish at a scene he thought should be impossible. His parents were hale and hearty just half a day ago. They had survived and recovered after their exile from the ancestral family. How could they be dead?! When he thought of the suffering they had to experience during that time, to be hit by this disaster during their lifetime felt like the powers-that-be were hellbent on destroying their lives!

There was so much blood that a pool of it formed to the side of his mother’s body, and Jein was endlessly sobbing while sitting in her lap, with streaks of dark red blood here and there on his body and clothing. Jein did notice Rein, but he seemed to only wail louder.

“Jein!”

Jein only clutched harder at their mother’s robes upon hearing Rein’s voice. Rein suddenly remembered that a fallen had not so long ago taken Jein’s form. That ‘Jein’ had been hacked down and vanished into black wisps.

Rein knew barely anything regarding the fallen. As far as he knew, there wasn’t actually a corpse after that fake ‘Jein’ was slashed down, so it was entirely possible that this ‘Jein’ might very well be a fallen proficient in imitating a child in distress.

He observed Jein head to toe, scanning Jein’s facial expression, and remembering what a random mercenary had said before regarding close members being able to identify real or fake.

This was definitely his younger brother!

He reached out, and felt that his mother still had some barely detectable warmth in the body.

“Mother!”

His loud shout brought his mother’s eyes open. But her eyes were dim like a candle about to be extinguished at any moment. Her face looked gaunt and her breath close to inaudible. Her eyes could barely focus onto Rein’s face. Her mouth opened and her voice was raspy.

“My son...I…”

She suddenly coughed out blood. Rein did not want to admit it, but with the blood pool as well as a likely internal injury… he knew in his heart this would be his last moments with his mother. 

Once again, he cursed those damn mercenaries in his heart, and swore that he would present their heads to the Hehr Mansion on pikes one day!

This was the only current way Rein could restrain himself for now-- a promise that he wasn’t even sure he could execute. His mother struggled, trying but failing to reach behind her back for something.

Rein knew there was something important, tried his best to calm his trembling hands, and quickly reached behind to find two small pouches. Looking inside he saw a brass key in one with a few gold and silver medallions. The other pouch also had a few identification medallions, but they were bronze and copper.

Trying to calm Jein down in fear that someone would find them through his cries, Rein hung one of the pouches around his small neck, in hopes that it would provide him with some comfort.

Jein clutched at the pouch in his hand and slightly calmed down, though tears were still flowing in silent streams down his cheeks.

“The brass key...bank...business commodities, rights, deeds…”

His mother could barely talk, uttering the simplest few phrases to get the point across. She did not mention the medallions. She knew that Rein was fully aware of what the medallions were used for.

Her eyes constantly switched between Rein and Jein’s face, trying her best to burn their images into her mind. But soon, her eyes became lifeless, and her head drooped down. Rein quickly closed her eyelids.

Rein’s eyes grew wet and he wanted to scream, but his throat felt dry and hoarse, and all that came out were a few hacking grunts. And yet the tears still would not come for him. He picked up the still whimpering Jein, who continually clutched at the pouch around his neck. It would seem as if Jein too, could not truly cry anymore. Jein’s eyes appeared increasingly dead as if he had lost all hope.

Rein didn’t know how he was still able to take action in this kind of situation. He only felt numb and felt his body moving on its own, as if there was an inherent survival instinct that wouldn’t let him rest no matter what. Although he felt enraged, his father’s teachings allowed him to stay relatively clear-headed.

He was already thinking ahead. He knew he had no chance of becoming an advancer, but with the House Hehr assets, he could maintain some semblance of normalcy and gradually find those responsible and hunt them down one by one by hiring other mercenaries, or perhaps, even an advancer. But, he would need to get out of the current dire situation alive first.

To his knowledge, most mercenaries are still mortals, and generally speaking would have mastered magics up to around the mid inner realm-- half-way through transforming their body constitution into a full aurae conductive state. As long as he had the funds to hire someone stronger than that…

As he made preliminary plans for his actions, his wet eyes caused Rein to nearly trip over something soft and pudgy… it was the arm of the third body. This was Jein’s guard, but he, too, was covered in blood and had his chest punctured by arrows. Clearly, there was no life left in him.

Rein tried his best to remain calm while carefully thinking through his plans, but right now, he was feeling all kinds of chaotic emotions that he had never experienced before and could not understand nor resolve.

There was a sense of continuous fear and dread intermingled with sorrow. He also felt a burning anger sitting in the pit of his stomach. He still struggled to fathom why these mercenaries were so hellbent on killing them all, including even the innocent animals. Was it the end of the world if a few escaped?  He even wondered that maybe, all this had happened because he chose to inform the imperial guards of the Fallen’s presence in the first place!

He wanted to return to slash the group of men down. However, his rationality prevailed. While he had practiced basic mortal arts that allowed him to kill a boar, his magic power was only a beginner, in a lower range of the inner magic realm of power, and it certainly had zero chance of improving in the near future.

Also, there was no way he’d be able to face a group of mercenaries, who definitely had more experience. As mercenaries, they definitely at least reached halfway through the inner realm. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been hired.

All of a sudden, out of the corner of his eye, Rein suddenly noticed the fingers of his father’s corpse twitch. He turned in shock and disbelief. His father couldn’t be alive.His body was completely cool  

His father couldn't still be alive! His body was completely cool when Rein had touched it earlier!

He crept closer back to his father’s corpse. 

Katcha!

His father’s jaws suddenly lowered, leading to a mouth wide open with a grinding noise. A black wispy air gushed out right from the mouth, flowing into Rein through his mouth and nose.

Rein didn’t even have time to swear as his vision flashed and he started hearing a crackling voice in his head.

“This is nothing personal… but I lost my body. Well, you’ll do… it’s not as if an inner realm with your talent would amount to much in life anyway! Ahahaha...”