*****Right now, all his attention was locked on Lyria, every muscle in his body screaming with restrained rage.Although his lips strained to hold the polite, composed smile of a man who hadn't lost his composure, the faint twitch of his jaw betrayed him, staring at Lyria across from him, who stood as unmoving and unreadable as a glacier.The icy rage that had burned Sarah just now was gone, yet her expression remained deadly.She met Lucius’s eyes with a chilling absence of warmth, giving nothing away. Yet, that very detachment and complete indifference only wound the tension in the hall tighter.Lucius hated it, he hated her looking at him like that, and he hated the fact that a man like Xavier… that walking stain of an ex-convict, had somehow earned the kind of reaction from her that he himself, a mighty F-rank fighter, wasn’t able to get.If someone had ever told him before now, even as a joke, that he would one day have to stand here, humbling himself before a woman like L

*****The hall had fallen into a state so still and so quiet at this moment that it felt as though both time and space themselves had been halted for it.Every single person… the E-ranked fighters, the F-ranked fighters, the nobles, the nameless, and the servants, stood rooted to the spot right now, their faces drained of all color, their jaws dangling against the floor, and their eyes bulging like they had just witnessed the end of the world.No one moved, no one murmured, no one blinked, and no one reacted.In fact, right now, everyone in the hall looked less like people and more like lifeless puppets, their souls snatched away, leaving nothing but empty shells behind.Why was this: the words Lyria had just spoken didn’t merely land; they detonated like a thunderclap in their minds and souls.“My sudden act of familiarity was because of Master Xavier.”“Master!!!!!!”The words continued to ring nonstop inside their minds, refusing to fade away, louder and louder, until it fe

*****The room stilled again, but this time it was a different kind of silence, all brows furrowing, and everyone filled with confusion.Xavier, however, ignored it all.Instead, he tilted his head slightly, his eyes narrowing on Sarah like she had just turned herself inside out before him.“Earlier,” he continued, his tone turning colder and quieter, “you said I was convicted for a crime so vile that even the devil would flinch.” His voice dropped lower. “Have you conveniently forgotten that I committed no crime?”The shift in his voice was like winter slamming through the hall.People actually shivered subconsciously and swallowed unconsciously.Xavier wasn’t smiling again. Not even the slightest trace of the earlier warmth could be seen on his face again.“I defended you from a sexual predator,” he spat, his voice hardening. “From a man who should have been the one on trial. But because I was a nobody, because his family knows someone in the court and is more powerful than

****There are different kinds of silence.There’s the normal, ordinary silence… the simple absence of sound. And then there’s the abnormal silence.This one is the heavy, suffocating kind that feels alive. It wraps around throats and squeezes them until every breath turns sharp and shallow.It was the kind of silence where even your own heartbeat didn’t just thump in your chest… it thundered so loudly that it sounds like a war drum in your head, and the rush of blood in your veins roared like a storm against your eardrums.And this latter silence… it was the one that currently enveloped the grand hall.That’s right.At this moment, every single soul in the hall… whether noble or common, male or female, arrogant or meek, was frozen in place, appearing transfixed, and their gazes locked on one man...Lucius Scoan, the once-proud heir of the Scoan family, who was now on his knees, looking so horrified, pale, and trembling so violently that it looked as though his very bones had

****Augustus looked ready to explode at this moment, causing half the crowd to instinctively lean back, as if expecting him to erupt in flames.Lyria, however, wasn’t impressed. If anything, the sight seemed to disgust her further.“Crashed your banquet?” she scoffed, her lip curling as if the words themselves were poison. She pointed back at the Scoan father and son, the gesture sharp as a blade. “You two clowns ruined your own banquet when you dared to humiliate the Master. Don’t twist things. If you want to blame anyone, it was you.”She let the silence hang for half a beat, then added, her voice dripping venom:“And honestly… it seems your family is really tired of living.”This was it.The crowd froze, their blood running cold. A collective shiver swept through the guests as their eyes widened and their ragged breaths filled the silence.Finally, all mouths hung open in stunned disbelief.‘Did she just… threaten the Scoan family?’The thought struck everyone at once, a