Then a voice rolled out from nowhere, "Your habit of irritating people hasn't changed in the slightest, Deacon."
"Well, I don't have a problem with anyone who doesn't deserve it," Deacon shrugged as he kept his tone casual instead of surprised after assuming he got trapped by someone else and relaxing his stance.
His eyes swept across the purple cube area he was now in, taking in the weirdly shadowy-like walls and the faint distortion that shimmered across the edges of the cube-shaped area he was now inside of.
After a few seconds of scrutinizing it, he gave a small, impressed nod before letting out a low whistle – he literally could not sense any gaps within its mana flow; in his eyes, this room sealed them off from the outside world entirely.
"This thing must've cost you a fortune," Deacon remarked as the corner of his mouth tugged upward slightly as his gaze cut toward the far-right corner of the room, where a faint reverberation of mana pulsed just a little off-tempo with the rest of the ambient mana in the room.
He ignored the slightly stronger mana reverberation coming from the corner a couple of meters behind him, as it was far too prominent and reeked of being a decoy.
"You can come out now," Deacon said with a tilt of his chin towards the weaker mana reverberation at the far-right corner of the room.
Then, after a couple of seconds, Drama Queen, Deacon mused to himself, like a curtain peeling back, a figure phased through the opposite corner Deacon hadn't been looking at. Wearing light leather armor that was covered from head to toe in enchantments, a bow slung across his back, a quiver angled neatly over one shoulder, and wearing a dark cloak across his shoulders and with a hood covering his head, Liam emerged.
"With how much you've made off the treasure hunt, you could probably afford five of these," Liam said as he walked a couple of steps forward and pushed back his hood.
Deacon's brow ticked as the realization sank in. Shit. I didn't think there could have been a third one. He'd clocked the fake reverberation of mana, the one behind him, but hadn't expected there to have been a third one – because he hadn't sensed any other one.
Crap, Deacon thought to himself in a brew of embarrassment and annoyance that he hid under his calm facade he displayed outwardly. I need to up the ante on my mana sensing training, because if it wasn't Liam who was hiding and was instead someone else who had me on their shit list, then…
Regardless – why the hell did all the cool, useful, and interesting tools have to cost so much fucking money?
Deacon kept his annoyance to himself – at being unable to sense the third hidden mana reverberation, and at the fact that all the useful tools were still absurdly expensive even after months of looting and exploring Floor Three. Instead, his eyes slid to Liam, studying him in silence. His gaze fixed beneath the man's right eye, where a third dot now sat, lined neatly beneath the others.
Another dot, a new one.
Didn't he say once that members of the branch family of House Ross had their dots under the left eye, and the main line… always marked theirs under the right one? And that the third one they gained signified that they were climbers of the Household.
Deacon exhaled faintly, the questions piling sharp and fast at the back of his tongue, but he kept them where they were. He wasn't about to give Liam the satisfaction of blurting out the first dozen.
"So…" Deacon started, clearing his throat, ready to press on with his questions, but before he could, Liam cut him off, "Your hair's gotten a tad redder on the inside. You ought to dye it to your usual hair color before the red sets in, else it could cause you problems. Big ones."
Wait, what? Deacon blinked in confusion before raising his left hand up beside his ear and pinching a strand of hair between his fingers, and tugged it free. Bringing it in front of his face, he turned it over against the purple light of the cube room he was inside.
And sure enough, half of it was still its normal black. But the other side was tinted with a light auburn-like color.
The hell?
"…Why in the…" Deacon muttered under his breath, his brows furrowing as he flipped the strand between his fingers and raised it closer to his eyes. But it did not change the fact that it that strand of hair was half-black and half-auburn. Even after pulling out three more strands of hair on different parts of his head, they revealed the same thing; each of them had his own mana signature and was half-black with lighter shades of Auburn on the other half.
How did no one notice my hair changing color? Deacon asked himself, confusedly. Is Liam fucking it to me right now and just showing off his mana manipulation. Because I'm pretty sure at least Jass or Esmerelda would have mentioned my hair changing color.
"You need to dye it to your hair's regular color before anyone gets any suspicions about it and in turn, you," Liam said, his tone sharper this time as he closed some of the distance between them.
"Wha- suspicions about what?" Deacon snapped back, dropping the strand and stepping forward himself. His voice carried a bite to it now, more out of irritation at the interruption than anything else. "People dying their hair is a normal thing, hell, most people in our year do it. Did you think that those three who were in our swordsmanship class five years ago, who had bright cotton-candy-colored hair, naturally had it?"
"But anyways, I didn't ask you here to talk about my hair," Deacon added, his eyes narrowing. "I asked you here to answer my questions."
Liam let out a long, drawn-out sigh before tilting his head slightly to face the side to stare at the purple wall on the right, as though they were suddenly more interesting than Deacon, who was standing four and a half meters away from him. His posture stayed relaxed, arms loose at his sides and not having a shred of a desire to unsling his bow or reach for his sword that lay on the back of his hip, horizontally sheathed, yet that small shift in his gaze carried the weight of dismissal.
"…Ask away then."
"Fuck you," Deacon replied at his sudden disinterest, the words slipping under his breath, though he didn't bother hiding them. Squaring his shoulders and leaning forward slightly, he refused to let Liam's detached act get the upper hand of his interrogation. "Why did you attack me after I killed the Fungal Colossus? The Floor One Final Boss? Last I remember, you were the one who called off our friendship and said you didn't want to hang out anymore, and that we should go our own separate ways without involving each other. So, what's the deal with that sudden change of mind after five years of doing that?"
"It was to protect you," Liam replied without missing a beat as he turned his head back toward Deacon, locking his eyes onto him with unnerving levelness.
"…What do you mean, help me?" Deacon asked as his voice lowered by a few octaves and carried an edge of disbelief at Liam's words.
"The Floor Boss was already dead. You had more than enough time to lower your bow the second the kill notification popped. Don't hand me bullshit about how you couldn't stop an arrow you shot just as it was about to leave your bowstring; I've seen you use Manashields offhandedly back when we were 9."
"I didn't fire my arrow at the Boss nor did I try to stop it," Liam said evenly, the words carrying deliberate weight. His tone wasn't defensive – no, it was as sharp as an arrow. "I aimed at you. I intentionally attacked y–"
"Yeah, I fucking got that!" Deacon snapped, his voice rising as he closed the distance, stopping just half a step from Liam. He was close enough to see his own reflection in the man's eyes – his own gaze burning with frustration and anger, jaw clenched tight, his whole body radiating fury and disbelief.
"I'll say it again: last time I checked, you told me you wanted nothing to do with me. That if I did something stupid, you wouldn't lift a damn finger."
"So, explain that!" His glare sharpened, words grinding like teeth. "What the hell did I do to you to make you almost blow my head clean off my shoulders with that arrow? If I didn't dodge it when I did, I could have died."
"You wouldn't have… Besides, you were drawing too much attention to yourself," Liam answered plainly. "You might not understand it now, but I was helping you."
Even with Deacon practically breathing in his face and seething with anger and confusion, Liam's calm demeanor didn't falter, and if anything, his nonchalant attitude fueled Deacon's agitation. As to Deacon, it felt as though Liam was comparing him to something that was far beneath him, not a peer, and especially not as someone with whom he had been best friends.
"Attention?" Deacon repeated the word rolling out of his mouth like it tasted wrong. His eyes narrowed, disbelief shading into fury. "You… attacked me because you thought I was rushing to the front lines as a melee attacker because I wanted attention on me?"
"Me of all people?" Deacon said, pressing his right index finger to his own chest in disbelief.
"Why the fuck would I give a shit about what others who I don't even know exist think? And even if I did, why would you care if I got attention on me?" Deacon said as his hands splayed outwards. "You're the number one in our generation. The golden son of the oh-so-great Ross family. Everyone knows you – half of them want to be you, the other half just want to fuck you so they can crawl into your damn House."
"So why the hell would you care if a couple of people turned their eyes on me?" His voice sharpened with every word, the last few syllables landing like blows as Deacon jabbed a finger into Liam's chest. Once. Then again. And again. A steady rhythm of accusation thudding against the leather and enchantments covering Liam's body.
In response to Deacon's words, Liam looked as though he'd just bitten into something lemon, but he quickly forced down the brief flash of emotion he showed.
Shifting his weight forward and brushing Deacon's hand off his chest with a quick slap of his palm, Liam moved closer to Deacon, walking into his own personal space.
"The attention you are gathering is not of those of the floozies that try to get you to bed them, nor the others in the academy who lust after flame and glory," Liam said while keeping is voice low, but sharp, as though it were a steel blade. "It's the attention of the nobles; the upper echelon of them. And if they find out what you are–"
"And what's the prob–" Deacon started to snap back, but Liam's voice cut through his words as though they were paper
"No! Shut the fuck up and listen to me now."
The sudden anger and forcefulness in Liam's voice froze Deacon for a half-beat, as now surprise flashed across his face before his anger could catch back up. For as long as he knew Liam, he was never one to cuss.
"Your kind is hunted by the nobles. Hunted by everyone who remembers the War of O'12. If they learn that your kind is still alive and that you are the last one, then you, and everyone near you, will be tortured to death."