Return of the Fallen Nobleman With an SSS-Rank Talent-Chapter 55: Return of Zephyr

After an unusually quiet lunch, Adam said goodbye to his fiancée and mother before retiring to his room.

He needed to decide what to do about Zev.

The door closed behind him with a dull thud. The calm of the house contrasted with the constant noise of thoughts in his mind.

He sat down at the desk and rested his chin on his hand as he looked at the old leather-bound book. In its pages, he had written down, from memory, spells he had witnessed in his past life.

Thanks to his SSS-rank magical talent, his mind was clearer, more precise. He remembered complex formulas, runic structures, and advanced variations.

The problem wasn’t memory.

It was compatibility.

Many of those spells didn’t match his affinities.

Strange affinities. Rare even among prodigies.

He had traveled across the continent in his other life, seeing enough to reconstruct some possible paths... but with his current circle, trying to force them would be suicidal.

He slowly closed the book.

That wasn’t the urgent matter.

What am I going to do with you, broken boy...?

Zev’s name didn’t need to be spoken.

He could take him to a dungeon. Force him to grow up. Forge him in real combat.

Or he could leave him alone.

Allow him to live far from steel and blood.

Adam pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose.

He knew what war did to people. He wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy... and yet, Zev’s talent with the sword was too obvious.

Too valuable.

Too dangerous to waste.

He leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling.

The decision had been made the day he bought them.

I’ll stick to the original plan.

He couldn’t afford to show weakness now. He had acquired them to strengthen his future faction. Changing course out of sentimentality would be a contradiction.

They had been cultivating Mana Dragon Lotus with relative peace.

That stage was over.

His gaze returned to the book.

If he was going to lead them into a bloody future, he had to become stronger first.

According to what he had learned from Alaric, magic rested on two fundamental pillars: understanding and practice.

Without understanding, power was unstable. Without practice, it was useless.

To advance to the next circle, he had to master both.

And therein lay his greatest obstacle.

Five affinities.

Shadows. Ice. Lightning. Light. Water.

Five different foundations. Five complete processes. Five times the same effort.

That was also why he had suggested to his mother that she contact an important merchant: he needed the basic texts for each affinity to accelerate his progress.

He exhaled slowly.

For now, he only had access to one.

So he set about studying water magic.

...

After studying water magic, Adam spent the afternoon at the training ground, practicing basic Asterin fencing moves while trying to apply them with magic.

This proved very difficult for him, because he had to divide his attention between two things: fencing and the magic diagram in his heart. In short, he had to split his consciousness into two.

To multitask. Since he wasn’t used to Adam, he found it quite difficult, but it also made him smile, because he felt he was improving by leaps and bounds.

Sweat ran down his neck while his mind remained clear. It was simple.

As evening fell, the sky began to turn orange and purple. The servants lit lanterns around the training ground, and a gentle breeze swept across the property.

Adam finished his training by resting his sword against his shoulder as he gazed at the horizon beyond the mansion walls.

Then he sensed it.

It wasn’t a clear sound or a desperate cry. It was a disturbance in the atmosphere. The faint echo of disorderly footsteps approaching from the main entrance, too heavy to belong to a servant, too irregular to be normal.

Adam frowned.

A moment later, a guard burst into the courtyard, his face pale and breathing heavily.

"Young Master...!"

Adam was already walking toward the entrance before the man could finish his sentence.

The front gate was open. Two soldiers were holding a man between them, trying to keep him from falling to the ground.

Adam recognized him immediately: it was his father.

Zephyr.

His father barely lifted his head, and for a second their eyes met. Those eyes, which had always conveyed unwavering determination, were now dull, clouded by a pain that went beyond physical exhaustion.

Alisha appeared behind Adam, and the sound that escaped her lips was barely a broken sigh.

"No..."

Zephyr tried to speak, but a violent cough interrupted him. A dark liquid slid from the corner of his mouth, falling to the floor with a soft, wet sound. The smell that accompanied it was not that of blood.

It was bitter.

Corrosive.

Adam stepped forward and held his father’s body before his legs gave way completely. As he touched his skin, he felt the abnormal heat radiating from it; he noticed something strange: marked, blackened veins spreading like roots beneath the surface.

"What happened?"

Adam asked, but his voice no longer had its usual calm.

One of the soldiers replied with difficulty.

"W-We don’t know... When we were on our way back, he suddenly collapsed for no apparent reason... as if he had fallen ill out of nowhere. After that, he got worse."

Adam’s jaw tightened with certainty in his mind: the traitor was never in the territory, but had always been in the royal capital.

Damn it!

At that moment, he felt a touch; he put his thoughts aside.

Zephyr closed his fingers around Adam’s wrist with what little strength he had left, forcing him to lean closer.

"No... it was...."

Adam felt something tighten inside him, cold and sharp.

Zephyr’s lips moved again, but this time no sound came out. His grip weakened. His fingers, which had held swords and decisions for decades, slowly slipped until they were motionless. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

The silence that followed was neither loud nor dramatic. It was heavy.

Adam held his father’s body as the servants rushed about, and Alisha gave orders in a voice that trembled just enough to betray her.

But something had changed.

Adam’s expression was extremely dark; he looked up at the dark horizon beyond the walls and, for the first time in a long time, he did not see his home.

He saw a board.

And someone had just moved the first piece.

With tears running down his cheeks and his father in his arms, he was going to make the person responsible pay three times over for this.

[End of Volume 1 ─ Return.]