SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant Chapter 931 - The Key

Rivena looked at her mother for several seconds before she answered. The smile went out of her face, and what replaced it was quieter and far more serious than anything she usually wore around this family.

"I think it's finally time I told you part of what I was doing during those six months away."

Seraphine lowered her fan at once while Verena kept her eyes on her daughter. Neither of them had expected Rivena to raise those missing months herself.

"So you are finally going to tell this family what kept you gone for half a year?"

"You came back without saying where you had been, refused your father a straight answer, and let everyone in this castle assume the worst. If you have been sitting on something this large, I would like to hear it now."

Rivena leaned back against the sofa and weighed the two of them before she went on. Maeron kept quiet. He already knew enough that there was no call for him to break in.

"I was looking into something else at first. I'm not explaining all of that tonight. Some of it isn't finished and some of it is mine to handle. During that work, I found records tied to the Primordials."

Seraphine's face sharpened at the word, and even Verena's posture changed.

"You disappeared for six months over something tied to the Primordials?"

"Not over them. I found evidence that the Primordials built something under the central Morgain territory, long before this castle stood the way it does now."

The room went quiet after that. Seraphine and Verena had both spent decades inside House Morgain, and hearing that something Primordial lay under the family's own heartland was not a thing either of them could take without explaining.

"You expect me to believe there is a Primordial structure beneath this castle and Valttair knows nothing of it?"

"Father knows there are older foundations under the mountain. What he doesn't know is what one section was built to do. Most of it has lain dead for centuries, and the mechanism can't be worked without a control key that went missing long before House Morgain took this mountain."

Seraphine studied Rivena's face for any sign she was stretching it.

"And you found that key?"

Rivena reached under her clothes and brought out a narrow object wrapped in black cloth. She opened the cloth across her palm without letting either woman near what lay in it.

The key was longer than an ordinary one, forged from dark metal and crossed with thin silver markings. A small black crystal sat at one end, dull under the lamps.

"That is what you spent six months hunting?"

"No. I found references to it while I was after something else. Once I understood what those records described, I changed part of my plans and followed them until I had this in my hand."

Maeron watched his sister while she talked. He knew she was still holding things back, which surprised nobody; Rivena had always kept something for herself, even when sharing would have served her.

What interested him now was what the key opened.

"You said this changes our position. Tell them what it actually does."

Rivena wrapped the key again and put it away. The last of the amusement had gone out of her voice when she spoke.

"The Primordials built a restraint mechanism under this region. It was made to pen an extremely powerful target inside a fixed area without having to beat them first."

Verena's face hardened at that. She knew Valttair's strength better than almost anyone in the room, and this was not a claim she would swallow easily.

"If you are telling me some ancient device under the castle can simply imprison Valttair, I do not believe you."

"It can't simply imprison him, and Father would keep every bit of his strength. The mechanism is tied into the old foundations under the castle and the central territory around it. Once it's live and bound to someone, it answers whenever that person tries to push power past the limits the formation holds."

She paused and let them have a moment with it.

"And the harder he pushes at the edge of it, the harder it drives that power back into him."

Seraphine slowly closed her fan. "So you are saying it weakens him."

"That isn't what it does at all. Father could still fight, still use mana, still kill anyone stupid enough to stand in front of him. He simply couldn't get out."

Maeron came in at last. This was the part that made everything Rivena had risked worth the risking.

"Which means Father stops being a man who ends wars and starts being a man in a room. The strongest one alive, and sitting on a mountain he can't come down from."

Seraphine turned toward her son. "You knew about this already?"

"I knew enough to understand why she wanted the key. I hadn't seen it until recently."

Verena looked back at her daughter, still plainly unconvinced by part of it.

"And he simply stays where you put him? A man who has broken sieges on his own walks out through a wall."

"He can try. The formation holds the ground, not the man. Once it's live and bound to him, he can't cross out of the central territory, and every time he throws strength at the boundary the boundary gives it back to him."

"Then he is caged."

"He is caged, and he keeps every part of what makes him dangerous." Rivena let that sit. "That's the point. We don't have to beat him. We only have to make sure he's standing on the wrong side of a line when it comes up."

Verena turned it over rather than throwing it out, and Seraphine arrived at the same place a moment later.

"So he can do nothing at all from inside it."

"Nothing that reaches past the line. He'd hold the castle and the mountain and no more of it."

"And the rest?"

"Ours to work through at whatever pace suits us. Garrisons, branches, the border commands. Nobody out there stands against the central family while the Patriarch sits silent in his own hall."

"And afterward?"

"Afterward we come back for him. Last, when there's nothing left outside that line for him to call on."

The room went very quiet at that.

"There is a cost to it," Rivena went on. "We get one attempt. Father has to be inside the central territory when it goes live, and the moment he knows what we're doing he will never stand on this mountain again."

Verena caught the word she had been waiting for. "What exactly do you mean by we?"

Rivena looked toward Maeron.

"The key on its own is useless. The mechanism needs access to sealed sections under the castle, Morgain blood, and authority the central family recognizes. I can't give it all of that while Father keeps me penned in here."

Seraphine followed her gaze to her son. "Maeron can give it the authority. He is First Heir."

"His position opens doors I can't. Your knowledge of the oldest family records can find us chambers the current maps have dropped, and Mother can handle the military access around the lower levels."

Verena's face stayed grave as she looked between her daughter and Maeron. She was beginning to grasp how much had already been put in place without her knowing the whole of it.

"You have spent a great deal of time on this."

"I spent six months making sure that when the day comes, we don't have to beat Father at all."

Rivena was entirely serious now. There was nothing playful or cruel left in her, only certainty.

"We don't need to kill Valttair first. We need him somewhere he can't reach us while we take everything else, and then his strength is worth nothing to him."

A knock cut across the room before anyone could answer. The door opened a moment later and a young maid came in looking frightened, her hands clasped in front of her as she bowed.

"My ladies, Lord Maeron. The Patriarch has called the family to the usual hall. Everyone in the castle is expected."

Maeron rose first. Seraphine closed her fan and stood beside him while Verena pushed herself off the sofa and straightened her clothes.

Rivena started to get up with them.

The maid swallowed before she made herself finish.

"Lady Rivena... Lord Valttair gave orders that you are not to attend."

Rivena stopped halfway up. She stayed there several seconds before she lowered herself back onto the sofa.

Verena stayed beside her daughter rather than follow the others out. The hurt crossed her face for a moment before it set into anger.

Rivena had been left behind again.