The Discarded Husband: Lucian Vale - The sovereign Collector

Chapter 10

Lucian kicked the interrogation room door open with a single strike.

Brak!

The rusted iron hinges snapped from the stone wall.

Lucian stood in the doorway, his shirt torn and soaked in blood.

His breathing was ragged, one hand pressing tightly against the gaping wound in his left shoulder.

Blood dripped rhythmically from his left elbow, forming a thick crimson puddle on the cold stone floor.

In the middle of the room—Seraphina stood arrogantly right beside the iron chair where Amara was restrained.

A purple mana whip was still neatly coiled in the hand of his ex-wife.

On the other side of the room, Aldric Stormbane stood casually with both arms crossed over his chest.

As if he had long been waiting for his arrival.

Lucian stared sharply at the faction heir.

Aldric returned the gaze—as if he were looking at a pitiful corpse.

"You really fight like a wild street dog," Aldric sneered.

"Fifty elite students, and you broke through them with your bare hands."

Aldric shook his head slowly, his expression full of false concern.

"Very inelegant."

"But I admit that dirty performance was quite entertaining."

"Like watching a circus clown struggling on the verge of death."

Lucian did not respond to the lowly mockery at all.

He forced his trembling legs to step into the room.

Aldric snorted softly and raised his right hand into the air.

Above his palm, a dimly glowing ancient artifact slowly manifested.

It was a thin net made of tightly woven strands of energy.

The Star Binding Net.

Lucian immediately recognized the deadly object just from its form.

A hereditary artifact of the Stormbane family.

It was not designed to kill instantly, but to bind, suppress, and drain mana until the victim was paralyzed from within.

Lucian forced his leg muscles to jump sideways to evade.

But his broken body's reflexes were far too slow to respond to the threat.

Aldric threw the net with a professional laugh.

Instantly, the artifact expanded dozens of times within a fraction of a second.

The net engulfed Lucian’s entire body in thick, heavy blue energy fibers.

Lucian struggled, trying to tear the net apart with his bloodied hands.

But the magical threads tightened further, wrapping and pulling his body in every direction at once.

He lost balance and fell to his knees against the stone floor, his upper body collapsing shortly after.

"Ugh!"

It felt like thousands of tiny icy needles stabbing deep beneath his skin—draining whatever remained inside him tonight.

He tried to summon the Karma Chains or open his Judge Domain.

But nothing happened.

His physical energy was completely exhausted, and the net mercilessly drained the last remaining drop.

His body was now fully locked to the ground, unable to move even an inch.

Seeing her ex-husband helpless, Seraphina stepped closer.

"This is the end of the path you chose yourself, Lucian."

Her voice flowed calmly, like an instructor advising a foolish student.

"You actually had the option to die peacefully."

She stopped right in front of Lucian’s face pressed against the cold floor, looking down at him with disdain.

"But you insisted on coming back here to humiliate yourself."

The mana whip in her hand crackled with threatening purple sparks.

"The Fire Lotus Artifact you risked your life to obtain that night?"

Seraphina mentioned the name of the valuable item casually.

As if she were discussing the price of a stale piece of bread.

"Aldric has twenty similar artifacts in his storage vault."

"If only you knew how worthless your ridiculous sacrifice was in our eyes."

The crushing insult was delivered without the slightest trace of guilt on her beautiful face.

"All the artifacts you brought, the fact that I accepted them was already a blessing for you."

Lucian did not respond.

He simply lay there on the cold floor, his breathing growing shallower and more erratic.

His mind raced.

Not because he intended to surrender to death tonight.

Not because there was nothing insane left he could do to fight back.

But because he was fully aware...

Forcing his remaining karmic energy now would only make his internal organs explode faster than Aldric’s plan.

So he restrained himself and thought—searching for a single small opening they had overlooked.

Lucian’s golden eyes—now dim and barely glowing—moved slowly.

He followed the flow of magical pathways within the room, searching for the weakness of this artifact.

The net binding his body vibrated constantly with a certain rhythm.

That magical rhythm was directly connected through a straight line to one main source.

Toward Aldric.

Every active artifact has a contract thread.

An unspoken agreement between weapon and owner — I work for you, you pay with mana.

A cost Aldric had already calculated.

But what if that cost suddenly changed?

He did not have enough energy to destroy the artifact.

Not enough to attack.

But to touch that thin contract thread — just touch it — might still be enough.

Seraphina was still talking. Lucian no longer heard her.

He summoned a tiny spark of his karmic energy.

Not a chain.

Not a domain.

Just a spark — as small as the tip of a needle, the last remnant of what remained.

That spark touched the contract thread between the net and Aldric.

And Lucian changed just one thing.

The payment deadline.

Not one month from now. Not one week.

Now. Multiplied. All at once.

Aldric frowned.

A sudden pull from his artifact — like something demanding payment outside the schedule.

"...What—"

CRAAAK.

Aldric’s mana was drained in an instant. Far beyond what he could provide at once.

The Star Binding Net did not receive its payment.

And the artifact switched to its secondary compensation.

Flesh and blood.

The fibers that had been binding Lucian suddenly shrank — retracting toward their contract source. Toward Aldric’s hand.

"Wait— don’t—"

KRAK. KRAK. KRAK.

Aldric did not have time to scream before the pain came.

The net bound his hand and pulled.

The sound that followed was not something easily forgotten.

Aldric screamed.

Fell to his knees.

His face pale as paper, his eyes wide — still unable to process what had just happened to him.

Seraphina stepped back.

For the first time that night, her calculating expression cracked.

The fibers binding Lucian completely faded.

Lucian rose.

Slowly.

Very slowly.

His hand pressed against the floor, his knees pushed, his body followed reluctantly.

Every movement felt like pushing against a wall.

But he stood.

He looked at Aldric still kneeling. Then at Seraphina standing stiff in the corner of the room.

He did not move toward them.

Not because he did not want to.

But because there was something more important on the iron chair behind him.

Lucian turned.

Amara was still seated there. The mana shackles on her wrists had lost their power.

Her head hung low, her hair covering her face.

Lucian knelt in front of the chair.

"It's over," he said softly.

He lifted Amara onto his shoulder.

His torn shoulder protested violently — pain struck like heated iron driven into bone.

He ignored it and walked toward the door he had broken earlier.

Behind him, Seraphina did not move. Aldric did not move.

The room was silent except for Lucian’s ragged breathing and his heavy footsteps on the stone floor.

No one stopped him.

On his shoulder, Amara—who was pretending to be unconscious—briefly opened one eye.

Lucian could barely stand.

His ribs were cracked.

His shoulder was torn.

Each step left a thin trail of blood on the stone floor.

Amara closed her eye again.

And quietly, without a sound, she began channeling a stabilization spell into Lucian’s chest — slowly.

Carefully.

Just enough to keep his heart from stopping before they left this place.

Lucian felt the warmth in his chest.

He said nothing.