◆Laure's POV◆
When I was just a kid, my parents died during a monster's invasion of our village.
With my parents gone, I became a homeless kid waiting to die. I thought my situation couldn't get much worse until I was kidnapped by slave dealers.
I lost hope to live, but that's when Lord Revarge saved me.
From then on, he took me in and trained me to become the retainer of the Tenth Young Master, Lexus Revarge. Young Master has unique features that are inherited from both of his parents, especially the Lord. Being the youngest son of a high noble family, he is deeply doted on by his father which his siblings are jealous of leading to their frequent fights.
I watched my young master grow up as a handsome and capable young man. He is both skilled in literature and swordsmanship, however, he lacks talent in magic which further affects his relationship with most of his family.
When he turned 15, his magical attributes were measured, and the results were all five on every single element, lower than those of the commoners. Except for the Lord, this disappointed everyone in the house. The ongoing prejudice from his birth mother and siblings, on the other hand, is simply too much for the young master to bear, even with the Lord's assistance in counseling and safeguarding him. This resulted in him slowly isolating himself from the crowd.
And when the young master turned 18 years old. He completely distanced himself from everyone.
He became so aloof and cold that no one would dare talk to him apart from his father who from time to time would check on his well-being; and his mother and siblings that would embarrass him, ridiculing his incompetency.
Although the young master is deeply underestimated by others, he still lives his life as it is. Doing his duty as the tenth young master of the house.
However, last week, something happened that never once occurred to us.
The young master did not return after heading out on a mission. The Lord was so furious that he argued with the mistress to the point of slapping her which had taken us all in surprise.
After that, he commanded me and Kira to find any traces of the young master while at the same time erasing any rumors of his disappearance to avoid any possible feud that could happen on the young master's turf.
In this case, we ran into two possibilities of the young master's disappearance; either because of the way he was treated inside the house that he became tired of it or that he got into trouble somewhere that made him unable to return in due time. We also thought that it might have something to do with his mission, but it was only a recon C-class mission in the outskirts of Revarge's Territory which is a place under the protection of the empire, it was very unlikely to get in trouble so we ruled out that possibility.
The young master is strong even though he is unable to use magic so the Lord concluded that it was because of how he was treated like an outsider by his birth mother and biological siblings.
'As the retainer of the young master, I wasn't able to fulfill my duty. So this time, with the Lord's order, I am determined to find him no matter what.'
We searched for the young master for three days straight but we absolutely couldn't find any traces of him. It is as if someone deliberately erased them.
This made us think that he might have really encountered trouble and not just been running away from home.
Either way, we continued to search for him.
A week passed and we still had no clues of his whereabouts, not until we stumbled upon someone whom he claimed to be that he is an information broker.
He is a shady character, but we are too desperate. To what we've agreed to, we gave him the exact amount of money he demanded, and in return, he told us where the young master is.
From Kingdom Cilla, we traveled our way to the town of Fuerte, part of Kingdom Eldonte, which, according to him, is the place where the young master is located.
We arrived after two days of traveling and immediately started to find him. But like last time, we are not able to find anything. So we asked some people if there was something weird currently happening in the town.
They just threw strange gazes at us and didn't even speak of anything when we asked them. Even some places that are usually known for their information-gathering expertise weren't able to tell a thing.
It is as if, they are afraid to say it.
Since we couldn't get anything out of their mouths using simple and friendly methods, there is no reason for us to hold back. The young master is at stake, we won't leave here unless we get the answer we deserve to know.
This entire town belongs to the Fuerte Nobilities, and as I previously stated, it is part of Kingdom Eldonte, which has a strained relationship with Kingdom Cilla, so our movements are restricted, but that won't deter us.
Together, we head our way to the red district.
It is a place where people with money let their stresses out - a perfect location to get someone to talk easily.
"Are you sure about this?" I hesitantly asked her for the second time as we walked out of one of the shops that sells products to people who occasionally visit the place.
"Why? Will you do it in my stead?" She asked, turning back to examine me from head to toe.
I just stared at her quite impressed that she is willing to take this role. She even goes as far as wearing obscene clothes that could easily get the attention of men.
"This job won't fit you and besides..." She said pausing as she looked down at my private part shaking her head.
"...you have that thing on you. It won't work." She added. I felt awkward by her pointing at my thing but I shook it off and coughed as if it didn't happen.
"Which brothel is it?" I asked changing the topic.
"That brothel." She answered pointing at the biggest and fanciest building in the area.
No doubt, the customers of that place are mostly high nobles or those who have high-prestige backgrounds.
But even though the place looked fancy, the security was still lacking. By simply grooming up, you could easily get in; luckily, I have some extra clothes here inside my storage ring.
So following Kira's lead, she entered the building first, and after a few minutes, I followed suit. As soon as I went in, I saw her already hooked up with a man, heading to the next floor.
I acted naturally as I followed them up to their room.
With Kira deliberately leaving the door unlocked, I was able to enter without a hitch.
Inside, I saw a king-sized bed surrounded by see-through red curtains and Kira, with her straight and solemn face, standing, stepping her right leg on the man's back, who was at the moment cowering on the floor.
"What do you want? I said I don't know anything!" I heard the man voice out a strong denial.
It seems like they are having a good conversation without me.
"It is a simple question; why can't you answer it?" I spoke as soon as I approached them, grabbed his neck, and slammed him on the wall, raising him and attempting to choke him to death if he wouldn't say a thing.
He was choking trying to get loose from my grasp. He even tried to use magic but it was for naught, Forget about using it, he is too weak to even fight me.
Even if we go as far as rampaging here inside, people won't mind. A brothel is still a brothel after all.
"I will tell you! I will!" He replied, barely out of breath, realizing he was no match for me. I immediately removed my hand, and he limply fell to the floor, coughing.
I didn't allow him a second to rest and ordered him to talk immediately.
"Kingdom Eldonia is currently facing a threat from an unknown secret organization whose goal is to overthrow the kingdom", he said with a hoarse voice, still trying to catch his breath.
Now it's clear why those people did not dare say a thing about this; it could be a sign of treason against the kingdom itself by spreading it to others, most importantly, the outsiders.
"What else?" I asked.
"And one of them is the person you're looking for," he quickly added. I flinched as I heard him, but I managed to keep my cool. Kira did not seem to choose him out of thin air. He is highly knowledgeable about this 'rumor'.
The aura in the room abruptly shifted. When I saw Kira approaching the man, I took a step back and let her handle the rest. She drew her sword from its sheath and thrust it at him.
"Where is the young master?" she inquired with a chilling tone.
Even though it is not directed at me, I can still feel her immense killing intent. She deserves the title 'lone killer'.
"You will kill me anyway, right? Then I might as well say this; your young master will soon be dead. I saw him get dragged inside the mansion of the town's lord. He will probably be thrown in the dungeon cell and left there to rot to death." He answered smirking, deliberately taunting us.
Kira immediately beheaded him in mere seconds. Blood spurted out and spilled onto our clothes. When I attempted to clean up the mess we made, she stopped me and said to wait.
After some time, someone knocked on the door.
I was perplexed at first, but then I realized
To get the young master, we have to get inside the lion's den, and the only way to do that is to kill someone who will get us there.
We were captured and thrown here in the cell dungeon, but there is not even a single sign of the young master inside.
We were duped, I thought. But the next morning, we saw the young master. He is heavily guarded, with handcuffs on both of his neck and hands.
"How dare they treat a Revarge like that?", I said in a low voice while gritting my teeth. My hands are itching to break out of the cell and just kill them on the spot, but Kira stops me.
"It's not time yet", she said, but I could also see that she was also trying hard to hold herself back.
So instead of rampaging and completely exposing our identity, I calmed myself and waited for the right moment to strike.
I bet they know he is of high nobility, but they never even bothered to inform the Revarge house.
They are using Young Master as bait to entice some of the members of the aforementioned secret organization; otherwise, they would not have gone this far. They must already be aware that the Revarge Nobility and the secret organization are not as closely linked as the Cilla Kingdom; otherwise, they would have readied their army for war.
This is an internal struggle within their country, and foreigners are not to be involved, but just because the young master is said to be one of those rebels doesn't mean he has to be put in here.
Damn them!
"Get ready," Kira said quietly, jolting me back to reality. I quickly realize that the entire dungeon is in uproar, and then I notice the young master outside his cell, holding the keys. He quickly flung it towards our cell. We get a sense of what the young master is up to so while everyone else in our cell was squabbling about who gets out first, we went on with our plan, which was to kill everyone here except the young master. We began with our cellmates, killing them one by one with augmented magic swords, and then moved on to the rest of the captives.
Our garments became more soiled; we scrubbed them down to appear more desirable in front of our young master, but it only made things worse. But, because our youthful lord doesn't seem to mind our appearance, we ended up welcoming him with blood all over our bodies.
"Laure greets the tenth young master of Revarge House."
"Kira greets the tenth young master of Revarge House."
We both greeted in unison kneeling on the ground while bowing our heads.
"Why are you here?" He asked with his calm and cold voice unbothered by our presence.
Seems like if we hadn't come here, he wouldn't even bother coming back home.
The young master seems to have changed a lot even in this short period, it's quite amazing and scary.
We quickly departed unseen without dragging things out any further. With this, it is safe to assume that they will conclude that the young master has been rescued by his fellow members of the said secret organization.
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A/N:
Hey there guys!
With a few back stories of Laure (male) and also some information to get to know more about the life of the previous owner of Shiro's body.
Perhaps, this chapter might be a bit boring for you guys since the first part is mostly just about Laure saying this and that but it is essential, and I hope you guys still like it.
Thank you for reading!
Asked me if you guys have a few questions, I'm open to answering them :)
Hope to see y'all in the next chapter!