Invictus did not care about the awful acting of Lydia and her kids. He just continued walking while listening to what they had to say behind his back.
"Let's tell Uncle about this!" Suggested a kid, angry because Invictus did
not give them even a single piece of Plata.
"Yes, yes! I'm sure Uncle will definitely punish him!"
He paid no mind to the blunt threats he was hearing from Lydia and her kids. In his mind, no one in Haven City will be able to stop his wicked plan.
"One week. I'll spend a week here and get things ready."
Even if the place looks like a total mess, with fights going on here and there, screams and yelling clamoring, and poverty portraying itself transparently, Invictus still managed to find a decent place to eat.
[Al's diner]
Nostalgia hits Invictus, memories that did not need to be remembered. It was the place where he shared a meal with his fake friends, people that made him believe they were real comrades.
Their images only bring rage to Invictus' frenetic heart. None of them matters to him anymore. Only the destruction of Estaria and their deaths along with the king was all Invictus sought.
"Oh, what a fancy customer we have here!"
Clean new clothes mean you're either a newcomer or a filthy rich citizen of Haven City. It's either of the two.
"Sit down, sit down! It's not every day you see a newcomer! It's been a year since one came to my little pub!"
***
Let's go back to the time when the attack from Doloria Kingdom on King Estaroth's castle whereupon it completely obliterated the king's place to the ground.
The clearing of the debris and huge chunks of rocks left by the invasion took an hour before they could see the floor where countless bodies of people from Doloria's forces and Estaria's forces were buried.
Cleoantra and Vinyl helped with the job. They slew a number of hunters, mages, and skilled knights from Doloria. As for the other four in their group, they were not there. The four were on a different missions.
Hubert was also with Cleoantra and Vinyl. The two of them were looking for him after he said he was gonna enter the castle to gain more kills than the two of them can achieve.
One by one, Cleoantra and Vinyl inspected the dead, looking through everyone, hoping that the foolish Hubert did not die.
"Is that everyone?" Cleoantra asked Vinyl who was also looking through the dead people lying on the ground. "I didn't see him here."
"Neither do I!" Vinyl answered, disgusted at his blood-stained hands.
"Eugh! Maybe he just ran off somewhere?"
She's so done with Hubert's unpredictable course of action. Cleoantra sighed and decided to look at something.
"The pathway to the underground floor has been cleared, right?"
"I guess so..." He shrugged his shoulders, using one of the soldier's
untainted clothes to clean his hands off the blood.
"Come with me to the Oubliette. King Estaroth wants to check if Invictus
is already dead."
"Ehhh... Do we really have to go down? I reckon we can't get past the obstacles, all the rocks that fell down there. Look at the ground, some of
it is broken. It surely must have dropped down there."
Vinyl is one narcissistic guy. A self-centered bastard who thinks highly of himself, someone who has an excessive interest in his self-proclaimed beauty, and thinks that the world revolves around him.
A guy who is overly self-conscious like Vinyl is hated not only just by men but also women. Some of it was because he thinks he is better looking than most of them when in reality, he is just another average dude who is overconfident.
"Stop acting like a faggot, or I'll fucking break your neck, Vinyl. And stop
blinking your eyes with those long eyelashes!"
If there is one person Vinyl should be scared of, it will be Cleoantra. The feisty and barbarous woman does not care about his feelings and says whatever comes to mind.
Cleoantra doesn't always get angry, and when she does, Vinyl will make sure not to get in her sight. He'll be in one hell of a beating.
"Only if you lead the way."
The way he speaks and acts is still manly. None of his actions could be seen as something womanly or soft, except for being extra on himself.
Together, they went down the underground where the Oubliette is supposedly located.
"I... told you. G-Going through these obstructions is gonna be a hassle!"
Between large debris and destroyed pillars of the cells below, getting through it proved to be hard. It was almost impossible until Cleoantra used her physical strength to move the stones away from their path.
One huge chunk of rock was sitting atop the. The door to the Oubliette was plugged with some more rocks that needed to be cleared, and
everything underground was dark.
Only a lamp that gives little light was the only source of illumination inside.
"Use the lamp to see if he's still alive."
Vinyl put the lamp closer as he could get it, but they still could not have a clear look at who was inside the Oubliette.
"Didn't you leave some residual magic essence in Invictus' body? Go and sense it."
Mana is carried through the veins like cells. Once a person dies, the blood flow will stop, and the red blood cells slowly consume the mana mixed with them.
The narcissist tried sensing the residue of his work on Invictus, and he could not find a trace of his own mana, resulting in a clueless conclusion.
"No trace of it whatsoever. And it's not Hubert either like we expected."
Cleoantra wanted to make sure that it really is Invictus but she does not want to go down the Oubliette just to check. Even Vinyl would not go down even if she used force on him. It was disgusting.