Laughter rolled across the square by the city gates, cracking through the air like a whip across bare flesh. One of the young aristocrats, unable to contain his amusement, clapped his hands; others giggled behind their fingers, pointing at the carriage whose crest — the bloodstone of House Deira — had once inspired fear, but now seemed little more than an object of ridicule.
— "That's how you deal with upstarts," someone jeered from the back, and the crowd answered with a low rumble of approval.
Pavel stood a little apart, arms crossed, his head tilted slightly, smirking with venomous condescension.
— "Serves you right, worm," he hissed, as if already celebrating a victory in a game long decided.
A guard, bloated with confidence and swaggering in his step, approached the carriage. His boots struck the ground heavily, each thudding step counting down the moments to humiliation. He grinned, squinted, and, just as he leaned in to peer through the window, felt something strange.
The world suddenly shifted. No—split apart.
The rain-slick stone underfoot, the grey sky, Pavel's face, the crowd — all vanished into an abstract, blotched mosaic. The guard never understood what happened — he never even realized he was already dead.
And then they heard the sound.
Not a blow. Not a scream.A soft, wet splatter — as if a bucket of water had been upended on the ground.
The guard's head, sliced cleanly and with terrifying precision, slid off his shoulders, like a piece of overripe fruit carved by a razor. A gush of dark-crimson sprayed from the severed neck, and the body soon followed, collapsing with a dull, meaty thud. Blood quickly pooled around the carriage wheels, an expanding crimson mirror that quivered with the reflected panic of the gathered faces.
Silence.
A chilling, absolute silence.
The carriage's curtain fluttered.
And from the darkness of the window, a face emerged.
Calm. Emotionless. Cold as the grave.
No anger. No triumph.
Reinhard.
His right hand, still suspended midair, was wreathed in a fiery shadow, thin as smoke, and from his fingertips blood dripped slowly. He held no sword. Cast no spell. He had simply cut the man apart with his bare hand, as though flesh were parchment.
— "So that's how it is…" Reinhard murmured, rotating his wrist as the mana faded. — "I can create quests… simply by endangering myself. Interesting."
[System Window]
[New Quest Created!]
[Conditions:]
1 → Kill the disturber of your peace (1/1)
2 → Humiliate the instigator (0/1)
[Reward: 0.5 AP]
Reinhard glanced down at the blood pooling near the carriage, then at the frozen crowd. Pavel stood, his face ashen, lips trembling as if he wished to speak — but air clogged in his throat.
Unhurriedly, Reinhard opened the carriage door and stepped out, casually wiping his hand with a white handkerchief that soon bloomed red.
His boots touched the wet stone without a sound, only the faint crunch underfoot — bone? Pebble? — betraying his approach. He did not hurry. He offered no explanations. He simply walked. And every step was a judgment.
The crowd parted without a word. The aristocrats who had been laughing moments before lowered their gazes, pretending not to see. Some trembled. A young man of House Laurens instinctively stepped behind his servant.
Reinhard stopped before Pavel.
Finally, Pavel found his voice — it wavered, but strained for authority.
— "You… you had no right. He was a city guard. This is an attack on—"
— "Silence," Reinhard said, without even sparing him a glance.
Pavel snapped his mouth shut as if struck.
Reinhard raised his left hand slowly, almost lazily. In it flared a transparent, black-gray sphere, swirling like pollen caught in a dead breeze. It was invisible to the naked eye, but to anyone remotely sensitive to mana, it was palpable: a pressure, as though the world itself held its breath.
He stepped closer.
— "Punishment, Pavel de Romane, for your attempt to disgrace the heir of House Deira, and thus my entire bloodline." His voice was steady, each word tolling like the strike of a clock. — "You wished to see a worm? Then behold one."
He raised his hand. Pavel flinched — too late.
The sphere of mana burst in a flash of furious wind. Everything behind Pavel — carriages, banners, people — was hurled away like paper in a hurricane. Pavel himself was flung onto his back, his clothes torn, his hair scorched, his scream ripping the air from his lungs.
He was not dead. But everyone saw: he was broken. Humiliated utterly.
And at that moment:
[System Window]
[Quest Complete.]
1/1 — Kill
1/1 — Humiliate
Reward: 0.5 AP acquired.]
Reinhard turned away without a glance at Pavel or the cowering crowd. He simply climbed back into the carriage and shut the door behind him.
The carriage moved on.
And for a long time afterward, silence reigned over the square by the gates. Only the slow dripping of blood from the guard's blade, seeping into the cracks of the stone, bore witness to what had transpired there.