Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System!-Chapter 391: Robert Revelations

Parker stared at the fragment pulsing in Nyxavere's hand—black, vile, and breathing like it still thought it had rights. A piece of soul, dark and corrupt, writhing like a parasite caught mid-feed. The throne hall hadn't breathed in minutes. The silence wasn't just tension—it was confusion, fear, denial clawing at the edges of comprehension.

And then Parker asked the only thing that made sense.

"Two times?" His voice was calm. Measured. But it carried like thunder across porcelain.

The kind of voice that meant someone was either about to get answers—or buried for not having them.

"Robert tried to kill me once. At the estate. That's the only time."

Nyxavere smiled. Not cold. Not cruel. Just the kind of smile gods give mortals when they say something small-minded, his eyes twitched at her look. She lifted her hand, the same one still gripping the corrupted soul, and snapped two fingers.

Space cracked.

A screen formed in the air beside her, rippling like silver stitched into glass. Light bled through it, shifting and sharpening until it showed a woman—tired, pale, beautiful—Parker's mother, unconscious in a hospital bed. The air around her flickered with tension.

On it, his mother lay unconscious in a hospital bed, skin pale, exhausted, body still recovering from labor. The machines beside her beeped rhythmically. Nurses moved around, adjusting blankets, whispering things the screen didn't care to share.

She had just given birth to Parker.

And then minutes later—

It happened.

The scene played out without pause. A moment of stillness. The kind you feel right before something horrible happens.

A figure entered the frame.

Not a man.

Not a nurse.

Not a doctor.

But a werewolf—large, deformed, its limbs too long, its face twisted like it was wearing the shape of a monster it didn't earn. Not just any werewolf—this thing moved like a shadow that forgot how to stay flat. It stalked toward the infant, claws glinting, eyes blank. It wasn't rage. It wasn't hunger. It was programmed murder. The thing lunged.

And in the center of the scene, the newborn Parker stared—silent, breath shallow, alive. The scene carried on to the end when the werewolf retreated after failing to kill him leaving only it's claw marks.

The screen flickered.

Parker exhaled, one breath deeper than usual, and then the memory hit like a hammer wrapped in velvet.

The dream.

That half-dream, half-recollection he had when he and Ere escaped the Blackwood estate. The one he dismissed as trauma rewriting itself. He'd seen this. A version of it. But it had faded like fog once he woke up.

Now he remembered.

The hall didn't move. Not even the wind inside the damaged throne room dared whisper.

Even Robert was watching, dazed, broken, his head slightly tilted. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something—but nothing came out. Just silence. Like his soul couldn't keep up with the body it barely recognized anymore.

And then—Julian.

Julian fucking stammered.

"Th-that… that wasn't my father," he croaked, pointing toward the spectral werewolf on the screen, eyes wide. "Voidhowls don't… we don't turn into that. We don't shapeshift into werewolves. We're wolves."

Nyxavere nodded, calm and unbothered.

"That's right, genius." she said sarcastically when he stated the obvious. "Because that wasn't just Robert. That was **this." She held up the soul fragment again, and it pulsed like a heartbeat with too many teeth.

"Robert has been… borrowed. Controlled. Not completely possessed—no, that would've been easier. This thing didn't just want full control. It wanted to sit in the dark and puppet him. Influence. Twist. Hide behind being Robert and wait for the perfect moments to strike."

Parker's jaw clenched. He didn't speak, but his silence was acidic.

Nyxavere continued.

"And it wasn't obvious. Even to me. But when you beat him"—she turned, eyes finding her father—"when you brought Authority pressure down on him, something cracked. The outer soul trying to impersonate Robert broke just enough for Robert's real soul to start crawling back. That's why he cried. That's why he hesitated."

Helena inhaled sharply. Maya's hands shook. Even Annabelle didn't blink. No one dared. A nearly Omiscient daughter was talking and she knew more than that could try to understand.

"And the other soul?" Nyxavere gestured to the fragment twitching in her hand. "It panicked. It saw the shell breaking. So it tried to pull power—not just from Robert—but from beyond. From something older. Darker. Just to finish the job. That's when I saw it. That's when I moved." That's when Nyxavere saw the the descent of the borrowed power and acted.

The room felt colder. Even Seraphina tilted her head, wings twitching like she was calculating whether they should burn something now or wait.

And Parker?

He looked at the thing.

That soul.

And for the first time in a long time—

He didn't know who the real enemy was.

But he was about to find out.

"So… so all along—seventeen fucking years…" Julian's voice cracked like it wasn't sure if it wanted to come out as a question or a confession. His hands twitched, his lips pale. "He wasn't even the one?"

Nyxavere exhaled dramatically, arms crossed, lashes fluttering with practiced annoyance. "Genius finally connects the dots," she muttered, loud enough to be petty. "And here I thought you'd need another decade."

Parker didn't flinch. He sat back on the throne—deeper this time, heavier, like gravity had increased just around him. He wasn't tense. He wasn't relaxed. He was just… processing.

What did you do with a rage that had nowhere to land anymore?

All his life, all the fury, the broken bones, the verbal beatdowns, the nightmares where he ripped Robert apart limb by limb—and now this? Now he was supposed to accept that the monster he hated wasn't even real? That Robert Blackwood, the patriarch who destroyed his youth, wasn't the monster—just the cage the monster had worn?

He didn't know what the hell he felt. It wasn't relief. It wasn't forgiveness. It was more like whiplash from a high-speed emotional car crash. Like someone had yanked out the devil from under the bed and told him it was actually just a puppet.

He looked down at his own hands. They weren't shaking. But something in his chest was. Deep, low, nearly imperceptible. He didn't want this.

He wanted clarity. Closure. A clean enemy to erase.

But now? Now the man he'd planned to crush for years was just another victim in the story. Someone who had lived beside his family—beside him—as a passenger. Helpless. Watching. Knowing at any moment, the thing controlling his body —him—could slit families throats— Julian and Annabelle's, and walk away without blinking.

That thought made Parker snap.

He clenched the armrest of the throne, nails digging deep into the obsidian wood.

Robert's voice rang out, "Imagine someone wearing your face," he muttered, voice flat, low, deadly. "Staying with your family. Holding your child. Knowing if they wanted to—they could kill every last one of them... and you'd just fucking watch."

Parker couldn't even process what that meant it but understood how terrifying that was.

Parker couldn't imagine it.

Someone wearing his skin, walking in his place, holding his voice like a weapon. Someone powerful enough to kill the people he loved—Tessa, Maya, and more importantly, Nyxavere—and doing it all under his name.

And the terrifying part?

Nyxavere wouldn't even fight back.

She could—hell, she'd burn down dimensions without blinking—but if she knew it was him, if she believed even for a second that her father was the one raising his hand to kill her, she'd let it happen. That's how broken she was. That's how pure.

Parker's jaw tensed.

He couldn't live in a world where someone else had that kind of control. His authority, his presence, twisted and could be aimed at the very people—at any moment—who gave him reasons to keep moving. Just the thought of it—of someone touching her under his name—made him sick.

For the first time since this started…

He didn't just understand Robert.

He sympathized with him.

Was he angry? Pitying? Grieving for a man he'd once sworn to drag through hell?

He didn't know.

And that scared him more than anything.

A little distance away, Evelyn's parents had knelt beside the man that once ruled the Blackwoods with love and care untill it turned into cold disdain suddenly—now collapsed, panting, free. They worked gently, channeling small pulses of healing magic, barely strong enough to do much but give him something familiar to hold onto.

The father—an older man whose eyes had seen too much—looked down at Robert, still blood-streaked and ragged, his soul practically humming with bruises.

"I always wondered," the man whispered, voice cracked from age and guilt. "When you changed. It wasn't sudden. But... it wasn't you either. I thought I'd failed you. Thought you'd lost your damn mind after Parker was born."

Robert gave a soft, bitter laugh. His throat rasped from lack of use, but the words still landed. "You didn't fail me," he said, eyes half-lidded, voice hollow. "I was there. Watching. Screaming inside. But that thing—it was always louder."

He closed his eyes. "You can't imagine it. Knowing it could snap at any moment. Slaughter everyone I loved. My family. My boy. My sweet spoilt daughter. And I... couldn't stop it."

There was silence. No one dared interrupt.

Robert looked to the side, at Helena.

His voice cracked. "But I knew. If anything happened… Helena would stop it."

Helena didn't answer.

She didn't even blink.