Chapter 77: Ulrich’s Offer [2]

Once Mark’s trembling legs could finally hold his weight, Ulrich deemed it time to leave.

With the terrifying revelation of his identity hanging in the air, there had been little else to say. Ulrich took the lead, setting a brisk but manageable pace through the gloom of the woods, while Mark and Ceres trailed closely in his wake.

For the next hour, they walked the depths of the Den. Whenever a rogue magical beast dared to cross their path, Ulrich dispatched it with almost bored efficiency. He was clearly used to it by now.

Behind him, Ceres kept her head bowed, her hands pressed tightly over her hair to ensure not even the slightest sliver of her pointed ears could be seen. She was terrified of being discovered by another hunter, yet, as she watched Ulrich’s back, a strange thought took root in her mind. Truthfully, even if her disguise failed, she doubted anyone in these woods would dare raise a hand against her. Not with him standing there. He walked through the deadly wilderness as if he owned the very earth beneath his boots, which, technically, he did. It was a bizarre realization, but despite the new circumstances, she had never felt safer than she did walking in the shadow of Ulrich.

Finally, they stepped out of the Den’s perimeter into the pale light of the open territory.

"You made the right decision," Ulrich said, coming to a halt and glancing back at Mark.

Mark had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming: "You didn’t leave us any other choice!"

He had literally threatened them with the deepest dungeon in his territory if they refused. Yet, in the quiet logic of his own mind, Mark knew he had no ground to stand on. By law, he was a criminal. He had harbored a walking cataclysm and recklessly brought her to a highly magical nexus of beasts. Had the Thornbreath triggered a beast stampede, the blood of hundreds would have been on his hands.

As for Ulrich’s threat to imprison Ceres, it was, in a twisted, pragmatic way, the kindest fate she could hope for if she lost control. Any other lord would have put an arrow through her heart on sight to prevent a disaster, or chained her in iron to be sold to the highest bidder in the black markets. Instead, this notoriously ruthless Count had offered them shelter and a promise to search for a cure.

"What do you expect from us, My Lord?" Mark asked, his tone carefully scrubbed of any previous hardness, replaced by a polite tone.

The moment Mark had understood exactly who stood before him, he realized how delicate their situation was. He had no choice but to obey the Count’s demands for now. But he silently vowed that if Ulrich ever proved to be a threat to Ceres, he would fight to his last breath, lord or no lord.

"I will provide you with a residence in New Ruben, and you will live there," Ulrich replied, his crimson eyes flicking over them. "I will ensure that neither of you lacks for anything, food, clothing, or coin."

"That is... very generous of you, My Lord," Mark managed to say. He wanted to be grateful, but he couldn’t.

The fact that he was Ulrich only heightened his suspicion and wariness.

"You will stay there, strictly within my line of sight," Ulrich continued, his voice dropping slowly to a warning tone."And I strongly advise you to make yourselves comfortable. Do not try to act smart. Do not attempt to slip away in the night. It will not work against me. If I discover that you have tried to flee, after I have provided you with shelter, secrecy, and safety, you will face terrible consequences. Do not mistake my hospitality for laxity. If you run, I will hunt you down, no matter what dark corner of the continent you attempt to hide in."

Mark swallowed hard, struggling to keep his expression blank.

It was a chilling threat. Ulrich seemed clearly fixated on Ceres, and while he did not seem to harbor the base, perverse intentions typical of corrupt nobles, Mark was no fool. He was certainly not doing this out of charity. The man wanted something, and until Mark figured out exactly what that was, they were nothing more than well-kept prisoners in a golden cage.

"As long as Ceres is placed in no true danger, and no harm befalls her under your roof, we will stay," Mark replied.

Ulrich let out a short scoff tinged with sarcasm. "At the very least, I can promise I will not drag her into a monster’s den."

Mark winced, the verbal jab landing perfectly in his guts. "She needs to grow stronger. She must develop better control over the affliction. Ceres carries elven blood in her veins; I believed that if she was pushed, her innate affinity for magic would allow her to finally overpower the curse. I had to try."

"So you brought a magical curse into a nexus of wild beasts," Ulrich replied coldly. "You must possess towering confidence in your own strength to believe you alone could have stopped a Stampede had she triggered one."

"I had to take the risk to save her!" Mark shot back, his hands clenching into tight fists. "No one else in this damned world would help us. I could not risk exposing her nature to anyone else."

"So you have protected her alone?" Ulrich asked, his crimson eyes narrowing as he scrutinized the man carefully. "No one else knows of her existence?"

Mark gave a stiff, single nod.

Ulrich fell silent. His mind immediately began turning over in the novel’s original plot. Ceres did not simply disappear after Mark died in this very forest. She had somehow managed to enroll in the prestigious Arcadia Academy after all, and without a shred of nobility or wealth to her name. Ulrich knew exactly how she had accomplished it: a powerful woman had stepped in, saving and changing her life.

Until this moment, Ulrich had assumed that the benefactress was already in the shadows of Ceres’s life, even right now. But looking at Mark’s isolated stance, it was clear he was telling the truth. The girl was completely alone.

That meant the woman from the novel had only discovered Ceres after Mark’s death. Since Ulrich had just rewritten history by keeping the old man alive, that woman might not yet have made her entrance. Ulrich had already been formulating contingencies to deal with her interference. Now, it seemed he had a momentary reprieve, though he doubted the hand of fate would let him maneuver so smoothly for long.

"I will deal with her affliction," Ulrich finally said aloud, pulling his thoughts back to the present. "You do not need to concern yourself with the methods."

Mark did not look reassured yet. "My Lord, forgive my rudeness, but how exactly are we supposed to trust you? You are Count Rubenhart. Your family is famous only for its ruthless witch hunts."

It was a fair point. Ceres was half-elf, but the affliction tearing through her chest was a Witch’s Tree. Everyone in Skargardia knew the bloody history of the Rubenhart name. Ulrich’s mother had died by a witch’s curse, driving his father into a horrific crusade that saw countless witches burned and slaughtered across the territory.

Even worse, Ulrich himself had continued the horrible tradition upon inheriting the title. While he lacked his father’s rabid fanaticism, the populace vividly remembered the purge he had commanded just two years ago. He had wiped a supposedly peaceful village of witches off the map entirely. To hand a girl with a witch’s heart over to the lord of the pyres felt like delivering a lamb to the slaughterhouse.

"I stopped the witch hunts two years ago," Ulrich replied. "Though I will not be pretending by telling you I do not harbor a deep hatred for their kind. If a witch misuses magic to cause harm within my borders, I will not hesitate to have her executed."

Mark listened carefully to the way he used his words. It was true that there had been no witch hunts held in the Rubenhart territory for two full years. More importantly, Ulrich’s strict phrasing suggested a shift in his father’s ruthlessness and his own. His father had killed witches simply for breathing; Ulrich, it seemed, was willing to let them live so long as they did not step out of line and threaten his lands.

"Putting my personal disdain aside," Ulrich continued, brushing a speck of ash from his sleeves. "Two years ago, I took in three young witches. They currently reside in my estate. They are provided with the finest education, food, shelter, and clothing my wealth can afford. I doubt you are ignorant of the fact that they now bear my family name."

Mark nodded slowly. He had indeed heard the rumors.

When the news first spread, everyone had thought it was a sick, sadistic joke, the Butcher of Rubenhart adopting three orphaned girls from the very village he had ordered razed. But then the formal decrees had been signed. He had legally bound them to his bloodline, granting the name of the woman slain by witchcraft to three young witches. It seemed nonsensical to everyone and still nonsensical.

Yet, Mark had to admit that a man did not legally adopt children and elevate them to nobility if he harbored malicious intentions toward them.

"It has been two years, and they lack for nothing," Ulrich added, his gaze drifting back to Ceres, who was watching him with wide, wary eyes. "I can provide her with equal advantages. Protection, comfort. and a future."

Mark’s jaw dropped. "Y—You wish to adopt her?!" He asked, dumbfounded.

Ceres gasped, her heterochromatic eyes going wide with shock as she gripped the fabric of Mark’s clothes.

Ulrich winced, hearing that.

"No," he said curtly.

He was already expending an exhausting amount of time and energy managing the three sisters, or, at the very least, the two eldest. He had no intention of adding Ceres to that chaotic household. In the novel, Ceres and the three sisters had possessed an antagonistic, blood feud relationship as Ceres was a protagonist character, while the three sisters, after their trauma, had turned evil and wished only for the destruction of Skargardia and human Kingdoms.

While Ulrich did eventually plan to introduce them to one another, hoping to rewrite their bitter history and forge an alliance before things went irreparably wrong, he had no desire to force that connection so soon. Moreover, the three sisters were now public figures, paraded in noble circles. Ceres needed to remain a closely guarded secret. He could not afford to make the young elf famous this soon.

Mark stared at Ulrich for a long moment, deliberating until finally speaking. "I understand, My Lord. I will place my trust in a nobleman’s word," he said. "However, I have one condition. I wish to be present in the room whenever you intend to study the Thornbreath."

Ulrich gave a short nod.

With that single nod, Ulrich finally secured his grip on Ceres. When he had ridden into the woods this morning, he never could have anticipated walking out with one of the most vital pieces of the novel’s overarching narrative in his grasp. It was a very convenient, if unexpected, prize.

He glanced at Ceres. Though she was visibly trembling, slightly scared upon learning who he was, he saw no hatred in her unique eyes.

It made sense. Biologically and spiritually, she leaned far closer to her elven heritage than her witch blood. She did not seem to despise him for his past purges against witches, especially since her coven had rejected and abandoned her the moment her affliction was discovered.

As they resumed their walk, Ulrich felt quite satisfied. By altering Ceres’s fate and keeping Mark alive, he had successfully dismantled a dangerous death flag from the novel’s timeline.

At the very there wouldn’t be some dangerous, vengeful woman watching over his every move in his academy life as a teacher.

At the very least, it wouldn’t be a vengeful woman...