Lewd System: Every Scream and Moan is EXP Chapter 396: The Duke Who Felt Nothing [2]

From there, each day of his life spun past in fast-forward, and through it, Jax and Athanasia pieced together a great deal about the Luminera.

Athanor had been the son of a duke ruling the southern region of Lux Aeterna, itself under the reign of Zeus. And with Athanor’s father lying bedridden, a forced succession-war ritual had been set to take place within seven years.

In the Luminera, most of the higher noble families still clung to this ancient rite, in which the cadets of a bloodline were made to fight one another until only a single one remained standing.

You were free to refuse a seat at the table. But once you’d taken it, surrender was never again an option.

And Athanor’s mother had forced him into that bloody succession purely to feed her own greed, throwing a boy of merely twelve into a pit of his twenty-odd monster cousins.

But by then, Athanor was no innocent lamb himself. He’d spent every day of those years shoved into one brutal scenario after another.

One vicious fight after the next. He had tasted death at the hands of ascendants, at the hands of his mother’s slaves, and at the hands of countless others serving under her private army.

Stripped of every single thing a normal child should have been given, the endless cruelty slowly whittled his innocence away, chip by chip, until nothing was left but a cold, calculating survivor.

He grew into something far more monstrous than any of his siblings. And the proof of it played out on the battlefield of succession, where he cut down every last one of them without a flicker of mercy.

He claimed the crown. He ruled the territory. But the price of it had been everything he was.

He was hollow, utterly alone, and in the end he simply stopped feeling anything at all. His life narrowed into a gray, endless loop of paperwork and expeditions.

And it was on one such expedition, sent to the mortal realm with other factions to hunt down Hercules, who had trampled the laws of the upper realm and where he crossed paths with the king himself.

Zeus approached him. "Duke Athanor. Your recent accomplishments have not gone unnoticed. Your prowess has surpassed even my own expectations."

"And for precisely that reason, I have chosen you to serve as my proxy for the primordial ascension."

It was a tournament in which celestials under a hundred years of age fought with only a single slave at their side, and the victor was granted a wish, straight from a primordial god itself.

Though in practice, that wish was always spent by the four great houses, who, unable to soil their own hands in the fighting, simply sent their underlings to bleed in their place.

Athanor inclined his head. "Forgive me, your highness. But I have not yet been bound with a mortal of my own."

"What?" Zeus blinked. "Do you mean to tell me you have never once made use of that privilege?"

He let out a faint sigh before going on. "My Duke, those pieces make for the finest companions a celestial could ever ask for. They will never once betray you. And should the need ever arise, they would gladly lay down their very lives while standing at your side."

Zeus continued, warming to it. "So go, and be quick about it. Find yourself a piece worthy of standing at your shoulder. I’ll even throw open my personal slave treasury vault for you, if it helps."

Then a thought struck him. "Ah. Which reminds me. We happen to be headed to an academy famed for gathering the most powerful mortals in all the realm under a single roof. A splendid opportunity, really. You could simply kidnap whichever one catches your eye."

Athanor bowed low. "I shall give it some thought, your majesty."

Some time later, their factions fanned out across the academy grounds, tracking and hunting for any sign of Hercules.

Athanor, as ever, did his part entirely alone. And that was when his eyes caught on a duel already in progress. A girl clad in knight’s armor, trading blows with a mage.

He found himself impressed despite himself by the girl’s swordsmanship. She was toying with her opponent, drawing it out, right up until she chose to end the whole thing with a single spell of void magic.

A knight and a mage, both at once, and of this caliber? Athanor stood genuinely stunned, and something pulled him in for a closer look.

Once the duel had ended, the girl and her defeated opponent fell to bickering. "That was completely unfair, Lysia. You cheated, dragging out that ridiculous spell of yours."

"Oh, please," Lysia shot back. "As if you’d have beaten me even once if I hadn’t."

But as she said it, her gaze slid over and landed squarely on the man in the strange, shady cloak, staring at her exactly the way so many other creeps did.

So she pulled off her helmet, tucked it against her hip, and looked him dead in the eye. "Hey. Mister. Did nobody ever teach you it’s rude to stare at a person like some back-alley creep? Or is there actually something you wanted to say to me?"

Forget replying. His entire body had locked up solid, wholly unable to process what had just happened in front of him.

His mind kept snagging on the moment she’d removed that helmet, the way her silky, deep violet hair had come spilling down, unveiling a face so breathtaking that it flatly refused to leave his head.

His heart was slamming against his ribs at the sight of that questioning, piercing stare, so hard he half wondered if he’d been struck by some kind of spell.

The emotionless monster of a duke, the man who had long since stopped feeling anything at all, simply stood there like a complete fool, silently cursing his own mind and body for daring to react to a feeling he couldn’t even begin to comprehend.