The Descended Mountain Villager Is The Supreme Commander

The mountain air was still. The small wooden house at the foot of Mount Olympus looked the same as it had three years ago. But the woman standing at the door was not the same.

"The engagement is off."

Nina Watson stood with her arms crossed, her eyes cold as winter glass. Not a flicker of warmth. Not a trace of the girl who had once cried into Darius's shoulder when the pain from her illness became too much.

Darius blinked twice. He set down the cup of herbal tea he had been preparing and looked at her face, searching for something familiar.

"Nina, I haven't seen you in three years. And this is the first thing you say to me?"

His voice was calm but his chest tightened with something he could not name.

Nina pressed her lips together and looked at the ground. Before she could speak, a sharp voice cut through the air like a rusted knife.

"What else is there to say? The engagement is done. Finished. Over." Chloe Watson stepped in front of her daughter, planting herself between them like a wall built out of pure contempt. Her designer handbag swung from her wrist as she jabbed a manicured finger at Darius.

"Three years ago, your crazy old master came crawling to us, claiming he could cure my daughter's illness. That is the only reason I let Nina set foot in this miserable, rotting shack of a place." Chloe's lip curled as she looked around the modest room. "Now that Nina is perfectly healthy, that ridiculous engagement your master squeezed out of us is void. Gone. You hear me?"

Darius's jaw tightened. He remembered every sleepless night. Every dose of medicine he had prepared under Alesio's careful instructions. Every moment he had spent pressing acupuncture needles into Nina's meridian points while she screamed in pain, begging him to stop.

Three years of my life. And she calls it a scam.

"Mrs. Watson, with all due respect, Nina's illness was terminal. The doctors in Whitemoor City gave her six months to live. My master and I treated her every single day for three years. She is standing here because of that treatment."

Chloe threw her head back and laughed. The sound was ugly. Sharp. Like glass breaking on marble.

"Treatment? What treatment? Nina was never even sick! Your master was a fraud and you are his little apprentice fraud. The Watson family is one of the most prominent families in Whitemoor City. Do you honestly think we would marry our daughter to a penniless, worthless leech like you?"

Her eyes swept over Darius from head to toe with open disgust.

"Look at you. No money. No family. No future. You are garbage, Darius. You are the gum on the bottom of my shoe. You are the roach that crawls out of the drain at night. And you had the nerve to think you could marry into the Watson family?"

Darius felt the words land, one after another, like stones thrown at a stray dog. But his face did not change. He turned to Nina.

"Nina. Forget your mother for a moment. I am asking you. Do you feel the same way?"

Nina's eyes darted to the side. Her fingers twisted the strap of her purse. A thin thread of guilt flickered across her face, there and gone, like a match struck in the wind.

"Darius, I... yes. I think it is better this way."

She could not meet his eyes when she said it.

She cannot even look at me. Darius let out a slow breath and nodded once.

Chloe was already reaching into her handbag. She pulled out a check and tossed it onto the wooden table like she was throwing scraps to a stray.

"Here. Ten thousand dollars. Take it, be a good little boy, and stop scamming people for a living. Consider this charity from the Watson family to a parasite who does not know his place."

The check sat on the table between them. Darius did not look at it.

"You know what you remind me of, Darius?" Chloe tilted her head, enjoying herself now. "A tick. A fat, bloated tick that latches onto someone else's skin and sucks their blood until they notice and burn it off. Well, congratulations. We noticed. And we are burning you off."

She grabbed Nina's arm and turned toward the door.

"Come, Nina. We have wasted enough time on this mountain with this nobody. We need to get back to Whitemoor City immediately. I heard that a mysterious and extremely powerful figure is arriving in the city soon to select a bride from among the eligible young women. This is your chance. Your real chance. Not this joke of an engagement with a man who owns nothing but the dirt under his fingernails."

Nina let herself be pulled toward the door. But at the threshold, she stopped and turned back.

Darius was standing exactly where she had left him. His face was blank. Unmoved. Like nothing had happened at all. Like the engagement, the three years, the treatment, and her betrayal meant absolutely nothing to him.

Why doesn't he look hurt? Why doesn't he beg me to stay?

Something uncomfortable twisted in Nina's stomach. She had expected anger. Tears. Pleading. Instead she got nothing. And somehow, nothing felt worse.

"Nina! Stop standing there staring at that waste of space. Let's go!" Chloe's voice was already halfway down the mountain path.

Nina turned and followed her mother without another word.

Chloe's heels clicked furiously against the rocky trail as she kept talking, more to herself than to Nina.

"Honestly, what a joke. That old master of his was probably some homeless lunatic who filled the boy's head with nonsense. Nina was never even sick. The whole thing was a con from the beginning. A pathetic, disgusting con by two bottom feeders trying to attach themselves to a real family."

Nina said nothing. She just walked.

Back inside the house, Darius stood alone. The check sat untouched on the table. He looked at it for a long moment, then picked up his phone.

He scrolled through his contacts until he found a name: Servant No. 1.

He pressed call. It rang once.

"My Lord. Your orders?" The voice on the other end was sharp, alert, and filled with absolute respect.

"I am coming down the mountain. Ten minutes."

"Understood, My Lord. Everything will be ready."

Darius hung up. He looked around the small house one last time.

The herbs drying on the rack. The old wooden table where he had ground medicine for three years.

The chair where Alesio used to sit and watch him work, correcting his technique with a gentle hand on his shoulder.

Master, you told me the world outside this mountain would test me. I did not think it would start so soon.

He picked up a simple jacket, stepped outside, and began walking down the mountain.

Ten minutes later, Nina and Chloe reached the highway at the base of the mountain.

Chloe was still complaining about the state of her shoes when a line of black luxury vehicles appeared on the road, one after another, stretching back as far as the eye could see.

Chloe's mouth fell open.

"Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Isn't that the fleet belonging to Harvey? Harvey Whitfield? The richest man in Whitemoor City?" Her eyes went wide as saucers as she counted the cars. "There must be thirty vehicles at least!"

She grabbed Nina's arm and started pulling her toward the road.

"Come on! Maybe we can get a closer look. If Harvey is here, maybe there is an opportunity for us to introduce you!"

She rushed forward, but two bodyguards in black suits stepped in front of her like walls.

"Ma'am, step back."

"Oh, no no no, you misunderstand. My car is parked just across the street. I just need to cross." Chloe smiled her sweetest smile, the one she reserved for people with money.

The bodyguard's face did not move. "The road is blocked off. No one passes."

Chloe opened her mouth to argue, then looked at the size of the man's arms and thought better of it. She stepped back and stood on her toes, craning her neck, trying to see past the wall of vehicles.

"Who on earth are they here for? On this empty mountain road?"

Up ahead, in a spot Chloe could not see clearly, Darius walked toward the front vehicle with his hands in his pockets.

Harvey Whitfield, the wealthiest man in Whitemoor City, a man who could buy and sell entire city blocks before breakfast, stood beside the car door.

The moment he saw Darius, his entire body trembled. His eyes turned red with emotion. He dropped to one knee, pressed his fist to the ground, and lowered his head.

"My Lord!"

Behind him, every single person in that procession, dozens of bodyguards, assistants, and drivers, dropped to their knees at the same time. The sound of knees hitting pavement echoed down the road like thunder.

In the distance, Chloe's jaw hit the floor. She grabbed Nina's arm so hard her nails left marks.

"What... what is happening? Who are they kneeling to?"