Unsealing Emptiness

These two scary guys had asked him a random and confusing question, and now they had brought him to a place with no life in sight. Even when he knew that they weren’t here to harm him, his heart could not rest easy with all the pressure.

*Sigh.*

“It’s just that we thought...” Raymond briefly explained to him how they had assumed too much.

. . .

“Wait a minute. So Young Master is the son of Miss Sylvia?!” To say that Irvin was surprised would be an understatement. He had to take a moment to digest their words.

“Young Master is truly extraordinary...” Irvin could not help but mutter, which made Raymond and Alver raise their head a little.

.....

“Well, he is my nephew, after all. How can he be mediocre?” Raymond boasted.

“Before we go, do you know anything about what had happened to him?” Alver asked. One of the reasons they had come here was to inquire why that despicable man had announced that both his sister and nephew had died on that fateful day.

Irvin shook his head regretfully. He was fully aware of how much these two brothers adored their sister, so it could be imagined that their love for that sister’s only son wouldn’t be any less.

“It hasn’t been long since I came under Young Master, actually. The poison would have most likely caused mine and Haley’s death if he hadn’t helped us. But by then, he was already grown up. To be honest, I had thought him to be an old sage who had changed his appearance,” Irvin recounted his encounter with Ozul.

“Haha... It must have been fate if nephew coincidentally had the cure to that poison,” Raymond laughed, ignoring the fact that it was his own brother’s order that Irvin and Haley were poisoned in the first place.

Raymond thought that Ozul might have one of the cures to the poison, but Irvin shook his head and said, “No. Young Master did not use any medicinal herb. He used his own powers to remove our poison.”

Hearing his words, Raymond and Irvin also remembered that they hadn’t sensed even an ounce of Mana from him. Their own nephew was starting to become a mystery to them.

“But I have talked to someone who supposedly knew Young Master from long ago...” Irvin said, instantly getting their attention.

“Don’t get your hopes up, even he knew only a few things,” Irvin was getting used to their presence.

He had been afraid of them before but seeing their childlike behavior had eased the pressure weighing down on him.

“The first time he had met Young Master was when he had only been a teenager, he says...” Irvin narrated the few parts that he had heard.

This person who Irvin was talking about was, needless to say, Oliver. He hadn’t been able to shut his mouth about his time with Ozul to Irvin and Haley.

Alver and Raymond carefully listened to whatever Irvin said.

“One thing I do know is that Young Master is looking for his arms...” Irvin remembered. That was the only useful thing that Oliver had told them about him.

“Arms?” Alver muttered curiously while Raymond’s mind gears started turning.

“Yes... It’s hard to believe, but Young Master did not have his left leg before either. But he was able to get it back somehow. From who or where? I don’t know,” Irvin explained after noticing their confused expressions.

Although Alver really did find it hard to believe, Raymond suddenly remembered when he had first met Ozul. That time when he asked him why he was up against the Church, he had also said something along the lines of, ‘They have something that belongs to me. I simply want it back...’

‘Does that mean those Church bastards are the ones troubling my nephew as well?!’ Raymond connected the dots and concluded that it must be his arms that Ozul wanted back from them.

Alver noticed Raymond’s clenched fist and realized that he must have figured something out, but he did not ask anything here.

That was all Irvin could tell them, so the two brothers took their leave, immediately disappearing from the place. Even what they had learned only caused them to be more saddened by the facts.

They wouldn’t have asked anything themselves, but they could not find even this much when they had sent their own men for investigation. Asking Irvin was their last choice. Alas, that was the most he could tell them as well.

After they had left, Irvin sighed with heavy shoulders. Although he had always blamed Alver for sending men after them all those years, he himself knew that his course of actions had hurt him a great deal.

Irvin wouldn’t have told the two brothers even these small things, but the truth was, he wanted them to know. So Alver and Raymond would know what they had done wrong and what its consequences were.

“Are you seeing this, Miss Sylvia? I wasn’t there that day... but here, destiny brought me to your son instead. Maybe it really is fate,” Irvin looked at the sky as he spoke with a smile on his face.

“How could I forget that little girl always liked the name Ozul... where had she even learned that name...” Irvin muttered under his breath before heading back to the town.

. . .

“What do you think of him, brother?” Alver asked Raymond as the two flew back to the estate.

“What I think of him shouldn’t matter, Alver. He is working under our nephew now, and our nephew has his own plans,” Raymond answered. After a little while, he added, “Now that he knows he is Sylvia’s son, Irvin would not slack off... he was Sylvia’s butler after all...”

——–

While all of that happened, Ozul was in the Neutral City, slowly walking down the streets to check out each prominent building.

He had nothing better to do anyway, so he decided to walk to the Littlewood Auction house leisurely. Unfortunately, nothing interested him in those giant structures full of either food or clothes.

After a while, he was in front of the Littlewood Auction house, which he remembered was owned by the Ashin family. He noticed that there wasn’t a crowd at the entrance this time as there was when he had come here previously.

There weren’t any guards around either. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought that he might have come to the wrong place.

He did not have anything to sell, and he didn’t think that anyone from the backdoor would still remember him and let him in so easily. So, he walked inside from the front entrance to the hall full of seats. He noticed that tens of people were decorating the hall.

‘Does the auction start only at night or something?’ Ozul thought before he began to look for someone in charge.

As he was about to approach a man that was seemingly giving orders to the people, he stopped to look at someone peering at him from a distance.

“...!”

The eyes that looked at him from the far left corner of the hall above the balustrades immediately hid away when he looked at them.

‘Hmm?’ Ozul looked back down and realized that the workers were ignoring his presence. And just to the side, he could see the stairs going to the 2nd floor.

“Whatever, I have this ring anyway...” Ozul muttered as he looked at the silver ring. The Ashin family owned this auction house, and this ring was supposed to permit him to be almost anywhere that belonged to the family.

He made his way to the stairs and climbed up to the 2nd floor. Once there, he followed the minuscule trail of Mana that he had observed from below.

As he walked in the corridor, he could see everything in the hall below. Bidding also happened from this floor, but those who stood here had a little higher social standing than the ones seated below.

Ozul arrived before a closed room. He sensed the person who was looking at him was behind the doors.

Just as he was about to open the door, he heard a cold voice from behind, “Where do you think you are going?” The icy voice seemed to belong to a woman.

When he turned around, he was surprised to find that it was the woman that he had come looking for. The stony voice belonged to Hana.

Hana herself was surprised when she saw his face.

“It’s you!” Hana blurted out with a loud voice. How could she forget the person who had asked for many odd things in exchange for the Harmony Leaves?

Ozul didn’t reply and instead only nodded his head, making Hana realize her act of manners was un-ladylike. She promptly gave a small bow to him, still feeling a great deal of gratitude as those Harmony Leaves had saved her sister’s life.

Immediately after that, she looked down the hall with an unamused face and scolded, “Get back to work!”

The staff that had previously been staring at her after her loud voice started acted as if nothing had happened and quickly got back to their work.

“Why don’t you come inside,” Hana motioned towards the door which Ozul previously was about to enter.

She maintained a soft smile on her face when talking with him, but inside her mind, ‘Is he mad at me for shouting at him earlier? What is he even thinking?!’