SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant Chapter 535: An Important Meeting [VI]

Caelum’s voice sliced sharply through the chamber.

"I’ve found something you should read, Young Master."

Trafalgar whipped around instantly. Darian followed right after.

Caelum stood by the distant wall of the room, clutching three scattered sheets in one hand and a much more frayed thinner page in the other. He’d already pulled them free from the surrounding mess, which spoke volumes on its own. When Caelum summoned him for this, it couldn’t be trash.

Trafalgar strode across and snatched the thin page first.

The script differed entirely.

Not the tight, icy handwriting for recipes, notes, or data. This bore heavier strokes, jagged edges, like the author had scribbled it in haste while memories burned fresh.

"Icarus?" Trafalgar queried.

Caelum nodded slightly. "Seems like it."

Darian lingered nearby, wordless.

Trafalgar started scanning it.

The opening words alone shrank the space around him.

Trafalgar’s grip firmed on the paper.

He pressed on reading.

Darian’s ears flicked.

"Millions?" he murmured softly.

Trafalgar ignored him for now, eyes racing further.

That halted Trafalgar cold.

The air in the room chilled further.

Caelum stood statue-still at his side, yet his focus had intensified.

Darian broke in this time. "Read that bit again."

Trafalgar obliged.

Slower now.

Darian’s jaw clenched.

"So that’s truly the sole path."

"For the moment," Trafalgar replied.

He flipped to the following page.

Darian exhaled deliberately. "That beast actually pitied us."

Trafalgar dipped the sheet barely to respond. "That’s hardly the gravest issue."

He lifted it back up.

That phrase weighed like lead in Trafalgar’s heart.

Ancient blood.

Referring to the Primordial bloodline.

Darian caught the grim look on Trafalgar’s face and held his tongue.

Caelum ventured the question. "Does it explain the reason?"

Trafalgar flipped ahead.

"I believe so."

The subsequent part was briefer, yet each sentence stabbed harder.

Darian’s fist gripped the nearby table’s rim.

"Rulers."

Trafalgar dipped his head once.

"Hierarchy exists among them too," Darian noted.

He read onward.

Silence stretched for multiple breaths.

Trafalgar reached the page’s final notes, which felt more like a summary than mere findings.

Trafalgar set the page down.

This time, he addressed Darian directly.

"That’s what Caelum hinted at earlier. Icarus wasn’t just coaxing speech out of curiosity. He was shaping it. Nourishing it. Drilling our world’s ways into it, ensuring that if it broke free, it’d come back bearing treasure beyond mere talons."

"Knowledge," Darian finished.

"Yeah."

Caelum reached out, and Trafalgar handed over the page. Caelum scanned it alone, face impassive as always, though a subtle tension lined his lips at the end.

"This shifts the threat’s magnitude entirely."

"It truly does," Trafalgar agreed.

Darian stayed silent briefly, processing. When he spoke next, any prior detachment had vanished from his tone.

"If true, that escaped monster didn’t merely endure."

"No," Trafalgar said. "It returned home laden with our identities, our order, our flaws."

Silence descended once more.

Eventually, Trafalgar glanced around the chamber anew. Shelves crammed with jumbled studies. Tables buried under scribbles. Vials. Trial records. Shards. Far too vital to abandon.

"I’m grabbing all that matters."

Darian nodded at once. "Naturally."

"No time to organize it fully here." Trafalgar eyed a side shelf and spotted an aged leather document case, built for papers not journeys. Dust dusted its surface, but the latch held firm. "This’ll work."

He placed it on the table, snapped it open, and began packing.

The odd-script pages went in first. Then the sap blend notes, the alchemist’s role, Icarus’s notebook scraps, and any stray sheet linked even vaguely to the void beast or trials. Caelum pitched in seamlessly, selecting with speed and precision. Darian assisted as well, methodical over hasty, yet effective.

When finished, the case brimmed heavy.

Trafalgar latched it and hefted its bulk.

’Barth’s in for a treat with this.’

Trafalgar secured the case fully and faced Darian.

"Darian, you’ll need to alert the Council of Sages eventually. But let me extract every scrap of intel from these writings first. Then I’ll reach out with a strategy."

Without a second thought, Darian bowed his head immediately and replied, "As you command, Trafalgar du Morgain. I will wait for now."

Trafalgar cast a quick glance at Caelum.

That proved sufficient.

Caelum grasped the hidden meaning behind those words in an instant. Every discovery within this chamber carried peril great enough to shatter the world's fragile balance if unleashed without restraint. The lurking presence of millions of void creatures in a separate dimension, their ability to remember, organize, and adapt, the revelation that the escapee had returned laden with knowledge of this realm—none of it could be exposed recklessly.

Staying silent remained the best option for the moment.

Trafalgar gripped the case tighter and spun toward the doorway.

'Looks like visiting here before heading out with Zafira was indeed the smart move.'

A subtle notion surfaced right afterward.

'Hm. Looks like my vacation won't turn out boring after all.'