Chapter Three: The Sorcerer

Baron Maury Stevenson sat on the sofa near the fireplace, his complexion sallow. The hearth before him was cold and lifeless, and the gas lamps in the room remained unlit, casting everything in a somber gloom.

More and more people poured into Saltwell Town, leaving this fallen noble unsettled. Since his youngest son, Carlos Stevenson, inherited the pure bloodline of the Winter Moon, few things had managed to depress him so deeply.

“Is Augusta really just going to stand by and watch?”

The old aristocrat sat motionless, his words laced with mocking self-talk. In one darkened corner of the room, a hunched figure crouched—short but powerfully built, with tough, dark skin exposed and corded with muscle.

At Maury’s words, the dwarf lowered his head even further and muttered, “My lord, the Steam Guardian acts on his own. No one knows what he’s thinking.”

Maury grumbled under his breath.

“My lord?”

Maury shook his head, neither confirming nor denying, then asked, “I heard his steam turbine malfunctioned today?”

The dwarf in the shadows shook his head. “Saltwell’s mining hasn’t stopped. The steam elevator is still running as usual.”

Maury’s eyes remained indifferent, though his lips twitched, the stubble there forming a bolt-like pattern. “Julio, as the overseer of the salt mine, pay more attention to the upkeep of the machinery. Stay at the mine, and while you’re at it, see what Augusta is scheming in the steam valve house.”

“Yes, my lord.” Julio nodded, emerging slightly from the darkness, yet still avoiding the murky daylight spilling through the window behind him.

The dwarf paused, then added, “One more thing, my lord—Young Master Carlos went to the treehouse outside town this morning.”

Maury Stevenson was silent for a moment before saying, “I see.”

Julio bowed respectfully, then picked up an object from the floor resembling a manhole cover, lifted it with ease, and leapt down into the vertical shaft below.

The room fell quiet.

“It seems I’ll have to make some preparations,” Maury Stevenson thought to himself as he slowly rose from the sofa.

Suddenly, his body swayed, his posture stiffening as he stood.

“Lord Maury, it’s been a long time.”

An uninvited guest stood several steps behind him. Staring at the noble’s rigid back, a faint, wicked smile curled the stranger’s cold, sharp features.

“Gale—one of the Shetley brats?”

Maury started, but swiftly identified his visitor. The man’s voice was unmistakable—a smoker’s rasp, hoarse and rough.

Gale Shetley seemed unsurprised that the noble immediately recognized him. Yet as he watched the silver-haired aristocrat relax and calmly return to his seat—not even deigning to look back at him—a flicker of inexplicable anger welled up inside him.

Once Maury was settled, he leisurely drew a cigar from his case and lit it with practiced ease.

Gale cursed inwardly, annoyed, then sneered coldly from the shadows, a chilling cackle rising from his throat.

“My lord remembers my family name—how deeply honored I am!” Gale’s face, lined and mottled, twisted as his words scraped out, his voice as broken and trembling as a damaged tape.

He continued, “You didn’t expect we’d ever meet again, did you? When I was thrown into the deepest cells of the collapsed salt mine, I didn’t expect it either. Life is full of surprises.”

Maury Stevenson exhaled a long cloud of smoke, his expression distant, as if struggling to recall something.

“Yes, Gale Shetley, I truly did not expect it—just as your pious father never imagined his own son would betray the light, become a sorcerer, and fall under the sway of demons.”

“It was the foolish Holy Church that killed my father, and you were their butcher,” Gale retorted, drawing a gray-black wand from his cloak and leveling it at the man on the sofa.

“Great sorcerers have no need of the light’s mercy.”

Maury shook his head, as if unafraid of the death that might come at any moment. He ignored the deadly glow emanating from the wand behind him.

Taking a deep drag from his cigar, he coughed as the potent nicotine filled his lungs, then sneered, “The light shows no mercy to fools. As for greatness? Ridiculous! You’re nothing but a lackey of the mud-dwellers, unworthy of the Shetley name…”

“Don’t you dare use that word to insult friends of the human world. You’re provoking the Sorcerers’ Alliance and the entire Underworld.”

“Sorcerer? All I see before me is a rat driven into the sewers by the light—a fool who killed his own father. And demons are no companions, only mud-dwellers from the underworld…”

“Damn you, shut up!” Gale snarled, casting his spell with a twisted grin.

A crimson serpent of fire shot from his wand.

Boom!

A deafening explosion.

The searing red glare illuminated Gale Shetley’s contorted face in the shadows.

The Underworld is no den of demons—

To him, and to all sorcerers, it was the noblemen with power who were the true butchers and devils, persecuting them relentlessly.

The heavy roar of the withered wood wand made Gale’s tense face relax a little.

The crimson glow faded in an instant.

Stepping from the shadows, Gale looked at the crimson pool blooming behind the sofa. Maury’s body slumped forward, his head hanging low, the burning cigar rolling across the polished floor.

Gale’s throat worked as he sneered at the corpse.

“Lord Enzo has descended. All of Saltwell will perish for your ignorance.”

He mocked the dead man loudly, satisfaction twisting his features.

But his words had barely died when his throat was squeezed shut by an invisible force. His mocking grin contorted into a mask of terror and disbelief as dread swept over the young sorcerer.

“Oh? Is this abyssal incursion a commander-class one? The Sorcerers’ Alliance has indeed paid dearly. So the crisis in Sylin City was their doing, then?”

A familiar voice sounded by Gale Shetley’s ear, so close as to brush his skin. That voice—it belonged to none other than Maury Stevenson, whom he himself had just killed.

Half his face still shrouded in shadow, Gale began to tremble uncontrollably, his eyes widening in horror, unable to comprehend the impossible.

“This… This can’t be.”

Only when he felt a cold stab at his throat did he realize Maury Stevenson was pressing a fine silver needle into his artery. By then, it was far too late.

At least, the final flat, emotionless words spared him from dying bewildered.

“Thank you for the information. By the way, your Fireblast was impressive—burned right through the sofa and penetrated my substitute automaton’s core, you bastard.”

Maury Stevenson of the Winter Moon—barely inheriting thirty percent of the Winter Moon’s bloodline and mastery over puppetry—knelt by the corpse at his feet, frowning in thought.

He then turned and strode to a corner of the study, kneeling beside an antique lacquered cabinet. With a series of mechanical clicks, the cabinet rotated like a puzzle box, finally unlocking with a crisp snap.

Reaching inside, Maury retrieved a mechanical pocket watch.

The dial bore no numerals—just a single slender hand, turning slowly around a small golden orb of light at its center. Beside that tiny golden point, a jet-black sphere moved in parallel.

Maury Stevenson’s expression grew grave. He snapped the watch shut, slid it into his breast pocket, then donned his black top hat and overcoat from the rack. Stepping over Gale’s lifeless, staring corpse, he walked out into the night.