A few days after Tirus made his beast contract.
Silmore empire,
Elrod estate,
In a room,
On a desk sat a young man with curly brown hair and brown eyes. This boy was Evan Van Elrod, the duke's second son.
Although he still hadn't become the patriarch of the family, he was required to do all this work, he had no choice since the work load was continuously increasing.
"Haah….brother's death really gave us a lot of trouble, now even I wish he didn't die." Evan sighed. He never really liked his brother because his brother was simply too outstanding, due to which, Evan was compared to him all his childhood, which led him to despise his sibling to the core.
"How is the production of purple cherry wine going?" He inquired.
"The production hasn't been going as smoothly due to the lack of some ingredients, if we replace those ingredients, then it may change the taste of the final product, which may cause dissatisfaction among the customers." Answered the lady who was standing in front of him.
Her name was Chole, his father, Duke Mason's, mistress, she was even the mother of the duke's illegitimate child, but the child had died due to a disease two years ago.
"Do you have any solutions?" Evan asked, he really had no idea what to do in this situation, so he guessed that he might as well ask for some solutions from others.
"Search harder for the ingredients, raise the price of the wine. If we can't get the ingredients, then we can only replace the ingredients and lessen the price." Chole gave a suggestion, soon Evan replied with a shout filled with a sense of achievement.
"Great idea, do it." He yelled the top of his lungs.
'Looks like I'm not so incompetent after all.' He thought joyously as if he was the one who came up with the solution.
"You may leave now." He said as Chole exited the room.
Looking at the sky from his room's window, he saw a black bird, which resembled a crow, sitting on a tree branch, looking at him with a slight blue glint in its eye.
"Blue light?..Nah, I must be imagining things." He thought as he made his way to his father's room.
….
In another room,
Duke Mason sat on his chair, drinking wine as his maids massaged his shoulders.
He didn't notice Evan entering his room at all.
"Father, how are you feeling today?" Evan asked his father, but he didn't reply to his question.
Several seconds passed, yet the duke didn't reply.
"Father, I'm asking you! Are you feeling alright? Do you need something!?" He roared with increasing intensity, soon, he was met with a glare from Mason.
"You fool! Just because you are doing some of the work in my place doesn't mean that you are now older than me! You are still the son, and I am still the father, don't you dare talk to me that way!" Mason reprimanded loudly.
After a moment of silence,
"…. Just go away." Duke Mason said in a low voice filled with disappointment.
"You…" Evan didn't say anything as he made his way out of the room.
'Even though brother is gone, nothing has changed for me…' He thought. Even though his brother was gone, he would never get acknowledged by his parents, this was his life and the harsh truth.
Without even looking back, he went to the market along with a few knights as his guards to find some relief.
It had been a little more than a year since the news of his brother's death came. The estate's situation was worsening day by day and the workload was increasing.
Evan had been given all of the work to do, while the Duke passed his days drinking wine.
….
In another room,
A woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties was lying silently on her bed. The woman had blonde hair and blue eyes, milky white skin and a lean body. She wasn't wearing any make-up and her hair was messy.
"How many days has it been since he died?" She wondered.
"It's been a little more than a year, my lady." Her bodyguard, Lyle, answered in a low voice.
"Mhm…" Once again, silence filled the room.
Looking at the woman in the bed, Lyle couldn't help but feel her heartache.
Lady Elena's health has also been declining ever since the death of her eldest son. This news had thrown the Elrod estate into chaos, but the one who was most affected by it was Elena.
She refused to go out of the estate. She had even lost her appetite.
"I don't want any of this, I'm not going to live much longer anyways." Was the statement Lyle always got when she tried to uplift Elena's mood.
There were already rumors going around that she had gone crazy due to her son's death and now just wanted to die. But Lyle, her bodyguard, didn't want to believe it even after she heard it from her directly.
Elena couldn't even return to her relatives since she was a noble, every action of hers had significant meaning no matter what her mental state was.
....
In the county of Duke Ryan,
Duke Ryan was sitting on a chair, thinking about something.
He had used his connections with the other nobles to secretly cause trouble for the Elrod estate, now the production of their specialty, the purple cherry wine, had a considerable decline.
He was now very close to dealing a fatal blow to them.
'I will see their fall, for sure.'
Currently, a black bird with faint blue light in its eyes, was staring at the duke from the branch of a far away tree.
....
Faraway, In the magus city of Lonburg,
In the Inner section of Central district,
"Hm, so that's how it all is, huh." Tirus murmured in a soft voice.
Ever since he became a magus, he felt the urge to go to the Elrod estate, as if there was something he had to do, this urge didn't originate from emotions but rather, intuition.
After studying the contents of the nameless wanderer's records on curse magic, the main reason for this intuition turned out to be karma.
From the records he had gotten from the inheritance about curse magic, he could tell that curse magic was mostly related to karma.
If he didn't do something and did not cut all ties with his family, then in the future, someone could use his family member's blood to indirectly put a curse on him. Although fightning curses wasn't too difficult and he even had several methods, but why defend against curses all the time when you could just cut all ties with the blood relatives to be permanently safe from such type of curses?
One of the best ways to cut all karmic ties with someone was killing.
But he wasn't going to do something that extreme.
Now that Tirus had become a rank 1 official magus and had enough resources to start anew, he figured out a new method to cut the karmic ties and thought that now would be a good time to do it. This new method was created using the inherited knowledge as base. It could easily be performed on living beings, however, the process of breaking karma was very taxing, both on spiritual force and mental energy and required time.
'I'll wait for this Ryan to make the move first.'
'Now, aside from making sure that nothing unexpected happens, I'll just have to wait, my goal would be flawlessly achieved.' Thinking about his plan, Tirus couldn't help but put up a smile.
To be continued….