They immediately figured out that Stoga was on the rooftop. It was because when they looked at the mansion from the garden, they saw countless glowing torches, and Zen headed straight there with Mina.
Along the way, he rendered every one of Stoga’s officers they came across powerless, sending their right arms flying. Then when they reached the hanging garden, they discovered Stoga and Emile drinking together in the square gazebo.
“What is the meaning of this, Lord Mina?” Stoga asked without even trying to hide his anger. Once again, he treated Zen like a nobody.
So Mina replied firmly, “I could ask you the same thing, Your Excellency Stoga. Are you aware that instigating foreign aggression is a crime that warrants capital punishment?”
“Instigating foreign aggression? I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Stoga insisted.
“Don’t act like you don’t know. In that case, how do you intend to explain the Earl of Tus sitting next to you?” Mina pressed Stoga even further, though he still refused to admit it.
Meanwhile, Emile jokingly shrugged his shoulders, played dumb, and asked, “Are you sure you aren’t confusing me for someone else?”
Baron’s knights and the rest of the officers still guarding Stoga sneered arrogantly at Zen and Mina.
Mina ground her teeth, but Zen was unfazed. “Let’s quit the charade already.” He took the two letters out from his breast pocket. “As you can see, I’ve seized the letters from the Earl of Tus that were sent to Mr. Traitor here. If I present these to the proper authorities, you’ll be finished.”
“What?!” Stoga looked at Zen for the first time. The prefectural governor’s eyes were steeped in rage and hatred. Next to him, Emile covered his face with one hand as if to say, Oh, god...
Zen continued, ignoring how these two scoundrels were panicking. “You wear those flashy clothes because you yearn to become a noble, right, Your Excellency Stoga? Then could you graciously come along with me? Show me that you have the dignity of a noble.”
“Shut up! Shuuut uuup!” Stoga raised hell, spitting and pointing a finger at Zen. His actions didn’t hold the slightest trace of elegance or refinement befitting of a noble. “Kill him! Cut down this awful man right now!”
“What unwitty comebacks.”
Stoga grew even angrier at Zen’s wry smile and barked, “Nabak! Times like these are precisely why I pay you a high salary! Now show me that it was worth my money!”
A middle-aged man, who was leaning against the square gazebo pillar, threw aside the amber wine bottle he’d been guzzling. His left sleeve had been cut off, his shoulder exposed. Zen couldn’t ignore the three-eyed dragon tattoo etched on the man’s skin.
“Be careful, Sir Zen!” Mina warned. “That man is the one who uses that demonic sword technique!”
“Understood.” Zen assumed a cautious stance as he stepped forward. He held his sword in both hands, putting it in front of him in a traditional stance.
He’d purposefully held his sword loose at his side during the earlier fight in the yard because it allowed for more flexibility when surrounded. In a free-for-all, you needed to have a perfect mastery of adaptability. He’d of course learned that by imitating that swordsman he’d encountered in his teens. In exchange, he’d paid the high fee of that night haunting his dreams, leading him to cry out from the nightmares.
On the other hand, in a one-on-one fight, you were stronger if you held your weapon the traditional way. At the very least, he hadn’t perfected his adaptability that well yet. How about that man named Nabak, though?
Nabak kept his hold on his sword loose by his side and casually shortened the gap between them. The dragon tattoo’s three eyes grew steadily closer, and the nightmares of Zen’s teen years flashed across his mind.
“That woman behind you was a letdown. Now, are you qualified to speak with me?” asked Nabak.
“How about we speak with our blades instead of our mouths? Or were you being literal?”
“Shut up!” Nabak curled the ends of his mouth and casually came in with an attack. He put his blade over his head, striking down with a wide, diagonal swing.
Zen clearly saw the path it was going to take and moved to catch the blow with his sword.
However, in that instant, the muscles in Nabak’s exposed arm bulged dramatically, and the sword’s trajectory bent mid-swing.
But Zen had also changed his position to receive the blow. He clashed his sword against Nabak’s redirected strike and easily deflected it.
“What?!”
“Judging by your tattoo, it seems you’ve also met that swordsman, but what was that just now? Were you trying to use that demonic sword technique? All you did was try to brute-force your sword’s path into bending, right? Frankly, it’d be faster to swing it normally. You’re just a paper tiger.”
That swordsman’s demonic sword technique was something else entirely. Its workings were way more mysterious. To this day, Zen couldn’t understand or imitate it.
“I understand,” Zen continued, taking the offense this time and speaking with every slash of his sword. “You can’t forget that night. You see it in your nightmares even now too, right? And yet you can’t help but admire him. You copied him and got his tattoo. You know, I won’t laugh at your feelings.”
“Sh-Shut up! What would a brat like you know?!” Nabak shouted angrily as he struck back.
“No, I get it. We’re fellow pupils, after all, right? Although I don’t know which one is the senior here—which of us met that swordsman first?”
“What are you talking about?!”
“Oh, you didn’t actually pass?” Zen charged in with an impressive strike. Nabak hurriedly raised his sword and managed to stop the attack a hair’s breadth away.
“He’d probably actually been testing someone else,” Zen said. “Maybe you were just watching from the sidelines, and you abandoned that person and ran?” He spoke like he had watched it play out firsthand.
“I’m telling you to shut up!” Nabak flew into a rage. It seemed Zen had hit the nail on the head.
Zen threw a few more powerful slashes. Nabak failed to divert them, and he struggled to block them too. In the end, Zen sent Nabak’s blade flying.
In a normal duel, this would mean Zen had won. But this was a battle to the death, no holds barred. And Nabak wasn’t Zen’s only opponent.
A shadow was coming at him from behind. It was an assassin dressed fully in black, their face also concealed beneath a black hood. They’d been lurking under the veil of darkness that shrouded the hanging garden, hiding their presence so well that even Mina, who’d been watching over Zen a small distance away, hadn’t sensed their approach.
This masterful assassin was neither Stoga’s subordinate nor Nabak’s pupil.
Emile quietly chuckled to himself. He knew the assassin’s true identity, so he felt at ease. They were the trump card he’d brought from Baron.
However, as Zen was facing the disarmed Nabak, he immediately spun right, swinging his sword behind him. He defended himself against the assassin’s surprise attack at the last second.