The Path of Ruin-Chapter 101: Cold Test

Kael stood there, his mind in turmoil, wondering how different this figure was from what he had expected.

Hakon, with a slight smile on his face, headed towards the armchairs mentioned by the Marshal. Then he saw three cups of steaming tea on the table, and his slight smile became more sincere.

"You've had tea prepared in advance... Thank you for your kindness."

With that sentence, Kael came to his senses a little. He followed Hakon to the armchairs and sat down in the one next to him.

The door closed behind them as they took their seats. The Marshal approached them with slow steps and sat down at his own place, with the table between them. He reached for the cup in front of him and took a sip. Then, looking satisfied, he turned his eyes to them.

At that moment, Kael noticed that the marshal's eyes were a little... strange. They were red, but the tone was so dark that if he didn't focus, he might have thought they were black. They looked strange on a man of such obvious age.

Strange...

Strange?

Kael paused for a moment. Then he forced himself not to widen his eyes.

The marshal... was looking directly at him. Without blinking even for a moment. All his focus was on him somehow.

"It's going to be an important meeting. I didn't want your throat to get dry."

Even as he spoke these words, his deep red eyes didn't move an inch from him.

At that very moment, Kael realized that the biggest mistake would be to be deceived by the ordinary appearance of the man in front of him, by his deceptive figure.

Yes, he was thin. Yes, he looked fragile. Yes, he was short. Yes, he was really old.

But his eyes...

His eyes were so vivid and... disturbing, contrary to the weak figure others saw from the outside, that Kael was literally frozen.

Then something even more disturbing happened.

Marshal placed a tiny smile on his face, in stark contrast to his piercing eyes. He finally shifted his focus away from Kael and turned towards Hakon.

"I just reread the report you sent me, Hakon. The situation we face is extremely problematic and dangerous enough to harm the future of the Empire."

He had only... only held eye contact for a few seconds. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

Only four or five seconds.

Why... did he feel like he was going to faint from exhaustion?

He glanced briefly at his hands.

They were trembling.

He swallowed.

The Marshal hadn't used any eon. He hadn't activated the abilities of the path he followed, nor his blessing or curse.

He had just... looked at him and reduced him to this state.

For the first time in his life, Kael felt truly overwhelmed. This... was very different from anything he had experienced before, from that woman he met in Halve or General Loukan.

It was a much deeper, more profound superiority.

The difference between them was so vast that he felt like he was looking at a mountain hidden behind the clouds. He didn't know how far that mountain stretched. He had no idea. There was an unfathomable, incomprehensible gap between him and the Marshal.

But still...

'I have... a mission.'

He hadn't come here to be rendered speechless in front of the Marshal.

He had come to play a role.

He had come to lie.

He had come to deceive this old man in front of him.

He couldn't risk faltering here.

So he focused all his attention first on pulling himself together. He calmed himself, or at least tried to. Then he turned his eyes to the conversation he was struggling to follow.

"However, you'll agree that I do have my doubts."

Doubt.

That was the real reason for the meeting.

This old man, a Marshal, did not fully trust General Loukan.

Kael had no idea what was between them. But that wasn't important.

What was important was to make him trust him.

No, not trust him.

It was to make him see his potential. His worth.

"Of course. I can certainly understand your doubts."

Hakon reached for the cup in front of him and took a small sip of his tea just like the Marshal. His expression seemed a little surprised at first, then he smiled with satisfaction.

It was hard to tell if he really liked the taste or if he was just playing a role.

"The Lockhend Family is involved, after all. Why would the daughter-in-law of such a family get involved in such matters when she could spend the rest of her life in fame and glory?"

"Indeed. That's why I want to see more concrete evidence."

"And I have that evidence."

As the Marshal narrowed his eyes, Hakon took another sip of his tea, placed the cup on the table, and reached into his coat pocket, pulling out a letter. Or rather, letters. He carefully placed them on the table, then pushed them so they would be directly in front of the Marshal.

Without saying a word, the Marshal took one of the letters. He opened it carefully and began to read its contents silently.

Narrowing his eyes even more, he opened another letter. Then another.

As he read those letters, Hakon pulled out another document and handed it to the Marshal to read in the same manner.

This time it was not a letter. It was more like... a report.

"These are summaries of Baron Dolcan's activities over the past few months. Similarly, I found a few things in the Imperial archives about Feria Lockhend's movements in recent months. All of this matches the contents of the letters. Upon careful examination, it is clear that what is written in the official archives matches the dates when the crimes were committed."

With every line he read, the Marshal's expression grew colder.

"Hmm."

Finally, he put down the letters and documents.

"It seems my suspicions were unfounded. I can't reject these when they come directly from the Imperial Archives."

He seemed a little... uncomfortable. However, Kael couldn't quite understand the exact reason.

Was he upset because Feria Lockhend was truly guilty and they would have to deal with a duchy... or because he had failed to take advantage of General Loukan and Hakon?

Perhaps both.

Or maybe there were other reasons.

"When our meeting is over, I will order Feria Lockhend's arrest so she can be brought to trial. I will also inform the Emperor. We can both guess how the Lockhends will respond. The Empire will be in turmoil for a while."

The Marshal narrowed his eyes slightly and took another sip of his tea. He was deep in thought. The wrinkles on his face were even more noticeable than usual.

But then he paused.

His eyes slowly shifted from the table he had been focusing on to Kael.

"This is the boy in the report, huh..."

Kael suddenly felt his hair stand on end. A momentary tremor spread through his entire body.

"Let's see."

His instincts were screaming at him.

He felt the danger not superficially, but with his entire body.

"?!"

The warmth he felt seemed to drop as deathly coldness enveloped his body. But that wasn't all. The walls of the room seemed to... merge with each other, spiraling inward and collapsing.

As if time had stopped, he couldn't see Marshal, who was paying close attention to him, or Hakon, whom he could see out of the corner of his eye, moving.

Reality was bending before his eyes.

The world was losing even more of its already diminished colors.

His vision was blurring, then finally beginning to change.

"U-ugh!"

Was he breathing?

He couldn't feel his lungs.

No, he was beginning to lose all feeling in his body.

Only...

It was cold.

He was freezing.

It was as if he was waiting to die naked in the middle of a snowstorm.

No matter where he looked, the only thing he could see was... snow and storm.

'No...'

The cold was freezing his brain, slowing his thoughts. But he forced his ability to think as much as he could.

He wasn't in the middle of a snowstorm.

He was face-to-face with the Marshal.

At least he had been a moment ago.

So finally, among his thoughts that seemed to be freezing, he could think of something logical.

'Am I being tested?'

He must be.

Then... how could he respond to this?

What he was experiencing now... was most likely an illusion; he didn't really think he was in the middle of a snowstorm.

Even if everything around him seemed to scream that it was, it must be so.

How could he break an illusion, though?

He closed his eyes.

But that wasn't enough.

Illusions targeted his senses. They confused his mind. They made him feel what he saw as if it were real.

Now, there was a response he could give to this.

He could simply erase all his senses completely of his own free will.

He touched his Follower Ability. As his eon reserve began to rapidly diminish, he erased all his senses one by one.

First, the cold disappeared, then the faint light he could see even with his eyes closed. The sound of the storm faded into nothingness, and when he lost the taste of his freezing saliva, he found himself completely in nothingness.

An infinite void where he could feel nothing.

No light, no sound, no taste, no smell, no feeling... nothing.

But doing so meant that even if he escaped the illusion, he would be leaving himself completely at the mercy of his enemy.

That was why he had left behind one single sense.

The sense of eon.

Even if everything else was gone, he could still feel it.

The foreign eon enveloping his body.

Every living thing had eon in its body. There was also eon in the atmosphere. He could perceive his opponent's position, his own position in the space he occupied, and move by relying solely on his sense of eon.

But...

'H- huh?'

There was a problem.

'Wh- what?'

The eon in the atmosphere, which should have slowed down as it passed through the walls of the room and other objects, Hakon's eon, which should have been right next to him, the Marshal's eon, which should have been standing right in front of him...

None of them was there.

That eon he felt enveloping his body...

It was everywhere.

In front of him, behind him...

It stretched out endlessly.

It was as if it were the storm itself.

He opened his eyes.

As his senses returned one by one, he realized that during the time he had been numb, his body had frozen even more, and he was struggling to move, but he didn't care about that at the moment.

Based on what he felt, with not a single flaw in his senses, reaching meters away from the eon, he finally understood.

This...

This wasn't an illusion.

He really was in the middle of a storm.

He was truly about to die from the cold.