Chapters 65-66

Since you asked me in DM, I upload four chapters a week usually. More if I manage to write more!

Anyway, enjoy some twists and revelations!

Chapter 65

Lily dismounted and tied her horse to a crooked, half-burnt pine at the edge of the training yard. Sabinus stood among a loose line of half-armored men, many of whom had been pressed into the legion after running from their old posts. Their faces showed sunburn, fatigue, and the quiet terror of people who had already lost too many friends.

Sabinus, released from the makeshift stockade only a month ago, now drilled the men in the way Caesar demanded—no shouting, no bribes, no blows for mistakes, only endless repetition until every movement ran smooth as a river after rain. He caught sight of Lily moving toward him, so he handed a battered practice shield to a nearby recruit and excused himself.

“You’ve got the formation, Hanno. Anyone who gets pushed out, you pull him back in. If the line breaks, you’ll die first,” Sabinus said to the men. The soldiers grunted, their voices ragged but more confident than when Lily had first arrived.

She watched him approach and noticed the way the sun struck his copper hair, making it seem even more out of place among the mud and smoke of the camp. He carried himself with the slow ease of someone who had spent too long on the edge of survival but who now believed that things might finally be turning.

“It’s time to go,” Lily said. Her voice did not waver, though she felt a pang of anxiety beneath the steady surface.

Sabinus looked at her and tried to hide his relief. “I’ve trained enough people. They can manage without me for now.” He tried to smile, but the lines on his face had deepened since the last time she had seen him. The memory of his imprisonment still clung to him, and though he walked free, Lily could see that he had not left the cell entirely behind.

He studied her for a long moment. “You’ve grown taller than me.” He said it as if he barely believed it himself.

She gave a lopsided grin. 

Lily glanced at the drill yard, where a few of the younger soldiers struggled to copy what they had seen Sabinus do. “Fewer people will die because of you,” she said. “They have a chance now, and not just against the Undead. If the soldiers know how to use Mana to reinforce their bodies, the nobles won’t be able to throw them away as fodder anymore.”

Sabinus sighed and rubbed his chin, which was rough from days without shaving. 

“You give me too much credit. Your knowledge has saved more lives than anything I’ve done. Caesar’s spreading your method faster than you can imagine. Once the soldiers start using it, leveling will speed up for everyone. The Undead won’t be able to tear through them like before.” He hesitated and lowered his voice. “You know they’ve started calling you the Goddess of Light? They’re scared and in awe at the same time.”

She winced. “I don’t care what they call me. As long as it helps.”

“Back in the Capital, they’d burn them for heresy. Here? You brought more hope to these men than anyone else, Lily.”

A wind carried the stench of boiled meat and the faint, metallic tang of blood across the camp. Lily’s eyes narrowed. 

“We should move,” she said. “Caesar told me it’s time to return. My parents know I’m alive, but for now, we should reach the villa.”

Sabinus nodded. He did not argue.

They headed for the row of horses tethered beneath a tattered canopy. Sabinus picked up the reins of a grey mare, his hands moving with mechanical efficiency. Lily started to check her own horse, but a sudden crack split the sky.

A white-hot explosion erupted above the camp, as if someone had torn open the clouds with a lance of fire. The burning afterimage lingered in her vision, and she squinted, raising a hand against the glare.

“That’s the Sacred Flame,” Lily said, frowning. “Why would Caesar—?”

Before she finished, a second detonation rattled the branches, showering them with flakes of burned pine needles. More Sacred Flame billowed high above, swirling like a banner, and she realized this wasn’t a drill or some demonstration for the soldiers.

She heard a voice booming from the sky. 

“Caesar! Finally, I’ve found you, you filthy traitor!”

Sabinus dropped the saddle blanket and jerked his head upward. Lily’s pupils constricted to star points, and she focused with the power of her ocular Skill, drawing the scene into sharp relief. Two figures hovered in the sky, both wreathed in burning white Mana, their forms larger than life.

One of them, cloaked in silver and crimson, gestured grandly. His laughter echoed across the camp. 

Lily immediately recognized Cardinal Tiberius, the one who had once commanded entire armies with a gesture. She also recognized the way Caesar’s jaw set when he prepared for violence.

“Touch my men again and I’ll execute you on the spot,” Caesar’s voice rang out, deeper and steadier than his brother’s. He stood with both feet planted on nothing but air, held aloft by pure will and Mana.

“Execute me? Caesar, you’ve grown senile if you think you can threaten me! I am the strongest—”

Caesar moved with terrifying speed, crossing the distance between himself and Tiberius in an instant. The Cardinal tried to react, but Caesar’s fist smashed into his ribs, sending him spinning through the air. Tiberius bellowed, and spirals of white fire erupted from his arms. He swung back, but Caesar pressed in, never giving ground, hammering him again and again with blows that struck like thunder.

Lily’s focus shifted as she heard the faint whistle of something slicing through the air. She turned, barely in time, and saw a black-fletched arrow speeding toward her head. She channeled power through her arm, moving with the certainty of someone who had trained for this very moment, and slapped the arrow aside. It snapped in half and tumbled into the dirt.

Sabinus swore and ducked, covering his face. 

“The Gens Iulia’s men. They can’t see us.”

“They won’t,” Lily answered, spinning in place, her eyes searching the treeline. “But it looks like they decided to die. They’re not above level fifty, Sabinus. Tiberius must have known this was a low-level camp and didn’t want to take troops from other places.”

He nodded, his jaw set. 

“If they recognize us, we can’t ever go back to Lumina. We have to get out now.”

Lily clenched her fists and stared at the rows of men emerging from the forest. Dozens wore white tabards marked with the insignia of the Gens Iulia, and behind them, a handful of robed figures crackled with burning Mana. 

[Fire Mages]. 

[Templars].

“They’re going to slaughter everyone,” Sabinus said, his voice raw with fury.

Lily shook her head. “Not if we move now.” 

She took a deep breath and reached inside herself, searching for the current of Caesar’s Skill—Lux Vitae Overdrive. She willed the power into her body, feeling every nerve ignite, every muscle tighten until her veins shone with unbridled mana. She stepped forward, her face covered by a strip of cloth, and threw herself into the chaos.

Her metabolism, empowered by the Mana, ran so hot that her skin started steaming. 

She draped a piece of cloth over her head, shielding her appearance, and then ran toward the attackers. 

The first wave of [Templars] charged, swords flashing. The [Fire Mages] hung back, their hands weaving sigils that sent sheets of flame sweeping through the camp. Men screamed as fire caught their uniforms. The weaker recruits broke and ran, but a few veterans closed ranks, trying to buy time for the others.

Lily fell among the attackers like a meteor. She ducked beneath a clumsy swing from a robed [Mage], drove her fist into his gut, and threw him over her hip. A [Templar] lunged from the right, swinging a massive longsword. She sidestepped, grabbed his arm, and locked his wrist in a brutal hold. The man roared, spittle flying from his mouth, but Lily twisted his arm behind his back, kicked out his knee, and threw him face-first into the dirt.

A second [Templar]—this one at least level forty—charged at her, swinging a warhammer. She didn’t try to block it, but let it crash past her shoulder, closing in and slamming her palm into the side of his jaw. The force didn’t break his neck, though the impact snapped something. He staggered, his eyes rolling back, but stayed upright.

Lily cursed. Undead were slow and fragile compared to these men. A [Templar] of the Gens Iulia had the strength to tear a horse in half. 

She ducked another blow and rolled behind the man, driving a knee into his kidney, then slipped her arm under his chin and yanked him into a chokehold. The templar twisted and bucked, nearly throwing her off, but she tightened her grip. His armor dug into her forearm, but she forced his arm up and heard the pop as his shoulder dislocated. He screamed, but Lily kept squeezing, drawing on every ounce of strength Caesar had forced into her training.

The man thrashed, clawing at her arm. She felt blood run down her cheek from a wild backhand, but she held on. When his struggles weakened, she gave a final jerk, snapping his neck. He slumped to the ground, and she let him fall.

A [Fire Mage] tried to incinerate her, hurling a spear of white-hot Mana. Lily dove aside, rolling through mud and ash, and came up beneath the mage’s guard. She drew a knife and jammed it into his thigh, then drove her fist into his solar plexus. The mage collapsed, retching.

She heard Sabinus shouting something behind her. He fought with his face turned away from the men, careful not to reveal his family’s techniques. His blade flickered, cutting down a [Templar] with precise, efficient blows. He never showed his back, and he never let an enemy catch him in open ground. Every time someone lunged for him, he dropped low, swept their legs, and crushed their throats with the edge of his shield.

* 

Sabinus had sparred with Lily hundreds of times, but never like this. He had seen her train with Caesar, had watched her learn how to move her body so it became a weapon. But now, as she tore through the ranks, he realized he had never truly seen her fight for her life. She moved like a demon, every strike ending in a kill.

She was good before, but she lacked something—this… this is incredible. I’ve never seen an Unclassed person move like her. What is she going to become after she finally obtains a Class?

She spun through three [Templars], slipping between their blows. She hooked a leg around one’s ankle, threw him down, and stomped on his wrist until the bones shattered. She took his sword and used it to parry a blow from the next attacker, then smashed the pommel into his face, caving in his nose.

Sabinus felt the hairs on his neck rise. He knew what it was to kill, but he had never moved like that. She made the rest of them look like children swinging sticks.

A Level 50 [Templar]—one of the higher-ranked ones, judging by the quality of his armor and the way the other soldiers gave him space—stepped forward. He was a giant, taller than Sabinus by a head, and his sword gleamed with inscriptions that glowed red with Mana.

He pointed at Lily. 

“Deserter!” he roared. “You’ll pay for betraying the Gens Iulia!” His voice rang with conviction, but his eyes were wild.

Lily did not reply. She rushed him, feinted low, and tried to kick out his knee, but he anticipated her. He caught her leg, twisted, and hurled her into the dirt. She rolled, sprang back up, and ducked a horizontal slash that would have taken her head off. The templar pressed her, using his strength to batter through her defenses. She barely blocked a blow that drove her to her knees, her arms numb from the impact.

He tried to stomp her head, but she rolled aside, swept his leg, and climbed back to her feet. She jabbed for his throat, but he caught her wrist and squeezed until her bones creaked. She growled, broke his grip with a brutal headbutt, and staggered back. The templar pressed in, raining blows that bruised her ribs and rattled her teeth. He grabbed her by the hair and tried to drag her down, but she twisted, kicked his ankle, and wriggled free.

* 

Lily knew she could not win this by trading blows.

 She feinted right, ducked left, and got under his guard. She wrapped her legs around his waist and locked in a triangle choke, using every bit of leverage and strength Caesar had taught her. The [Templar] thrashed, but Lily squeezed, tightening the hold until he turned red, then purple. He roared, smashed his fist into her side, destroying her ribs, and nearly broke her grip, but she held on, using [Life Flow] to patch herself up from the mortal wounds she was receiving. 

But then, one blow caught her on the head and she momentarily lost her senses. When she came back, she saw Sabinus resting over her, his sword dripping blood. 

She looked to the side and saw that the [Templar] she had been fighting had been beheaded.

He grabbed her by the arm. 

“We have to go. Now. We killed most of them. Only low-level ones remain. We can’t afford anyone, especially the Cardinal, to see us.”

Lily glanced at the sky, where Caesar and Tiberius traded blows like gods fighting for the fate of the world. They seemed evenly matched. For a moment, she worried Caesar would fall, but she saw the fury in his eyes and knew he would not die today.

She nodded and followed Sabinus. 

They sprinted through the shattered camp, past burning tents and bodies, until they reached the horses. Sabinus threw himself into the saddle and pulled Lily up behind him. She clung to him, her body aching, her breath ragged, but her mind focused.

They galloped away from the carnage, cutting through the trees and down the narrow, twisting path that would lead them back to the Dead Lands, where the Gens Claudia’s villa rested. 

Lily did not look back, though the sounds of battle still echoed behind them.

As they reached the edge of the forest, Sabinus slowed. Lily turned, searching for any sign of pursuit. She couldn’t see anyone. 

* 

Someone watched from the shadows as Lily and Sabinus left the camp, waiting several minutes before following them on horseback. The person wore a cloak that hid most of their features, but a single lock of white hair slipped from beneath the hood.

The stranger mounted a dark horse and urged it after them, following at a distance.

Chapter 66

Sabinus reined in his mare at the edge of the overgrown lane, where the dead grass and nettles tangled around the rusted gate. The abandoned villa loomed beyond, its crumbling walls rising out of the Dead Lands like the ribcage of some ancient beast. 

Every window stared back at them, blind and hollow. Moss clung to the stonework and the scent of decay drifted through the stagnant air.

Lily swung down first, boots crunching on broken gravel. She looked up and scanned the upper windows, letting her eyes adjust, and waited for Sabinus to dismount. The sun had dipped low behind them, and a silvery haze clung to the ground, muting the world into shades of gray and bone-white.

Sabinus pressed his lips together, watching the ruined house. 

He hesitated. “You said your mother mentioned something about this place—a mirror, right?” He kept his tone light, but she heard the uncertainty underneath.

She shook her head, glancing at the weeds knotting through the stonework. 

“All I know is what you told me my mother said. She said there was a mirror here. I have no idea about anything else. No secret passages, no escape tunnels. Just a mirror. That’s all I’ve got myself.”

He scanned the tree line, wary, and checked the pommel of his sword. 

“Nothing else? Does a mirror say anything to you?”

I won’t tell him about the Great Skill.

She shook her head again and stepped past him. 

“That’s all. If there was anything important, I would’ve said so.”

Sabinus accepted this. He squared his shoulders and followed her to the gate. They pushed through the iron bars and made their way through the dry, waist-high grass that scratched at their legs. They both checked for movement, for the glint of eyes in the undergrowth, but nothing larger than a bug appeared. Still, Lily felt the heaviness in the air. The Dead Lands always pressed down on her, filling her with the expectation that something would crawl up from the roots and grab her by the ankle.

They reached the villa’s crumbling wall and followed it until they found a break. The stone had collapsed long ago, leaving a gap wide enough for two people to pass. Inside, weeds and wild mint had claimed the gardens. A pair of headless statues stood crooked on their pedestals. The path curved past a bone-dry fountain where lily pads grew in the mud, and where something that looked like a human jawbone rested at the bottom.

Sabinus made a face and kept walking. 

“This place is worse than I thought.”

She nodded and scanned the shadows.

“We need to check for Undead. If anything powerful is here, we don’t want to get surrounded.”

He grunted and drew his sword, but as they made their way through the ruined courtyard, only a handful of shambling corpses stumbled into view. Their skin stretched thin over their bones, and their eyes glowed with a faint, hungry light. None of them looked above Level 10. Sabinus dispatched of them in an instant. 

Once they made a circuit and confirmed there were no threats outside, they moved through the breach in the outer wall. The old stone had collapsed under the roots of a twisted yew, so the path into the grounds had become overgrown. Thistles and dead nettles reached up to Lily’s knees. She stepped carefully, feeling the crunch of brittle stems under her boots.

Sabinus said, “We should be careful inside. I don’t like the feeling of this place.”

She nodded. The moment she stepped through the broken archway, she felt a chill. The grounds inside the wall had once been a garden, but now, only a cracked fountain and a line of toppled statues marked the center. Half-buried in dirt and debris, Lily noticed a familiar curve of stone at the base of the fountain, which made her throat tighten. She tried to ignore it, but the sense of recognition grew with every step.

They stopped before the villa’s main doors, which had rotted and sagged off their hinges. The facade was the same style as every noble house Lily had ever seen—broad steps, high columns, cracked plaster, and ornate carvings now worn almost smooth by the years. The sense of déjà vu grew stronger. She felt as if she had come home after decades away, only to find her childhood memories haunted and sour.

She whirled and looked back, finally realizing where this feeling was coming from. 

“This place—it’s the same of my home. It’s literally same. The statues, the fountain, the garden. Only a few details are different, but… that’s probably something that was changed recently. Why is it identical? This is creepy.”

Sabinus frowned and nodded. 

“Are you sure, though?” 

Lily nodded.

“Well, let’s enter.” 

Sabinus moved to step inside, but Lily stopped him with a raised hand. “Wait. Before we go any further, let me check for traps or enchantments. There’s too much Death Mana in this part of the Dead Lands for me to feel comfortable.”

He nodded, stepping aside while she focused. She closed her eyes, took a breath, and activated her ocular Skill. The world shifted. A web of Mana lines, visible only to her, stretched from the villa’s doors and wound through the entire building. The Death Mana inside was so dense that it seemed to pool and swirl like black water in every hallway and corner.

She opened her eyes and said, “There’s an immense amount of Death Mana inside. More than I’ve ever seen. It’s concentrated in the heart of the villa. I don’t sense any powerful Undead outside, but I don’t trust this place.”

Sabinus shifted his weight from foot to foot, looking uneasy. “Should we go in?”

“Wait, let me check something.”

She went to the place the mirror was situated back in the villa in Lumina, but found nothing, not even the mound of earth that was supposed to be there. 

“Nothing. Let’s just go in.” 

He nodded, his face set. “We go together, then. No wandering off.”

She agreed and stepped over the threshold. The entry hall felt wrong in ways she couldn’t put into words. Every arch and corridor matched the villa where she had grown up in Lumina. The same checkerboard marble, the same broad staircase, the same scuffed balustrades—every detail felt copied with the precision of a madman. The air stank of old incense and dust, and every time she turned, she half expected to see a servant carrying a tray or her mother’s voice calling from a distant room.

Sabinus checked every doorway with his sword ready. The silence stretched. Nothing moved except the dust.

She moved through the first hallway, expecting the same decoration of her home for some reason. 

But here, in this twisted copy, there was nothing but a pale patch on the wall, where something massive had once hung. The rest of the wall was mottled gray and black from smoke.

Sabinus stopped in a ruined library at the end of the hall. He crouched and picked up a heavy tome, brushing cobwebs from the cracked leather cover. The book had been half-eaten by mold, and most of the pages crumbled at his touch.

He squinted at the cover and tried to read, but the script meant nothing to him. 

“This is gibberish,” he said, holding it up. 

She took it and ran her fingers over the faded words. When she focused, the letters seemed to rearrange themselves, twisting into shapes she recognized. She read out loud, “Histories of the Gens Claudia.” 

The weight of the name hung in the air. 

“How did this even survive here this long?” she wondered, turning the book in her hands. She didn’t finish the thought.

A bone-chilling wind swept the room. The shadows thickened, gathering in the far corner. The air pressed in on her chest, cold as winter. A figure phased through the cracked plaster, moving without sound. It stood as tall as the ceiling, a ghost in blackened armor, trailing wisps of smoke and the stench of old blood. Its eyes burned like dying stars. It carried a sword that shimmered with darkness, longer than Sabinus was tall.

Sabinus shouted, stepping between Lily and the apparition. 

“Lily, run! That thing is above Level 200!”

The Death Knight drifted forward, its steps leaving no mark on the ground. It lifted its sword and pointed at them, but Sabinus did not flinch. He tightened his grip on his weapon and squared his stance.

Lily screamed his name and tried to channel Life Mana, but before she could react, the Death Knight’s hand shot out. Its grip closed around Sabinus’s arm. 

Instead of burning or corrupting him, the way most Undead would, the ghostly hand passed through flesh and bone without resistance. Sabinus’s body jerked, his mouth open in a silent shout, and the Death Knight began to sink into the floor.

“Sabinus!” Lily’s voice cracked as she lunged forward, swinging her sword at the Death Knight’s helmet. The blade passed through it as if slicing through fog. The Death Knight did not even look at her.

She channeled every drop of Mana she could muster, trying to break the spell, but her blows did nothing. The Death Knight’s eyes flickered. It dragged Sabinus down with it, the floor swallowing them both as if they were falling into a pit of darkness.

Lily fell to her knees, pounding the ground, but the only answer was silence. The ancient villa shuddered, and the room fell still.

Sabinus was gone.

*

Lily, not knowing what else to do, clenched her teeth and, despite being terrified, ran to where her room.

Something inside her—her intuition perhaps—told her that the answers would be there.

There, she found another ghost.

A woman, though, not hostile.

The woman looked royal, with long blonde hair and a crown of faded gold set askew on her brow. Her gown trailed tatters of white and blue silk that shimmered with cold light, and her face was familiar—so familiar that Lily’s breath caught in her throat. The ghost watched Lily with eyes that seemed to burn with the same stormy blue that she had inherited from her own mother.

The ghost did not attack. Instead, she drifted near the frost-rimmed window, her hands folded in front of her as if she still waited for someone to return home. Lily approached slowly, every muscle braced for violence, but the apparition did nothing except regard her with a look that mingled sorrow and fierce resolve.

Lily stood her ground, gripping her sword until her knuckles went white. “Who are you?” Her voice did not rise above a whisper, but the words hung in the frozen air.

The ghost’s gaze sharpened as if she had waited years to hear that question. 

“It took a while for me to awaken. You’re my heir, aren’t you?”

“What?” 

“Let me introduce myself,” the ghost smiled, “and to whatever power awakened me. I am the first matriarch of the Gens Claudia, Claudia.”