Re: Tales of the Rune-Tech Sage

Chapter 128: Pitiful Kurt

CH128 Pitiful Kurt

***

Alex ignored Earl Drake Fury’s declaration.

He had already taken the position of heir to the Fury line with his own hands.

Whether Drake made an official announcement or not was irrelevant—it was already an indisputable fact.

Hidden beneath his hood, his attention remained fixed on Kurt’s corpse.

At the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, Alex truly pitied the boy.

The person Kurt had become... wasn’t entirely his fault.

Granted, one could argue over who bore the greater share of blame, but what was undeniable was that both Drake and Joselin were culpable for what had transpired—for who Kurt had become.

An arrogant, oblivious pawn... a tool in the power struggle between his two parents.

Joselin had been so fixated on claiming control of the Fury family that she overlooked the collateral damage her ambition inflicted on her own child.

In the process of building Kurt’s reputation, she had surrounded him with sycophants—ass-kissers who showered him with praise, never once pointing out his flaws. They only sought to benefit from his status, and he never realised it.

Worse, Joselin herself had thoroughly indoctrinated Kurt into believing that Earl Drake’s throne was his birthright. Something inevitable. Preordained.

This toxic combination left him accustomed only to compliments, completely unprepared for criticism or failure. He had become arrogant in his innate prowess, never grasping the universal truth:

’There is always someone better.’

He lacked the core qualities required of a leader—the very role his mother was grooming him for.

In truth, he wasn’t a leader at all.

He was the epitome of a follower.

A mummy’s boy who only ever followed his mother’s instructions. Incapable of independent thought.

Alex didn’t place the blame solely on Joselin, though.

Drake was just as guilty.

Whatever Joselin had done—or was doing—Drake had the power to intervene. He could have separated Kurt from her if he truly wanted to.

There were countless legal and cultural pretexts within the Virellian Empire, especially within the militaristic Fury family, that could have justified such an action.

The Fury clan, after all, ran child soldier camps—facilities that trained children as young as seven to become elite warriors, ready to join the family’s forces when they reached adulthood by the age of fifteen.

It was eerily similar to the Spartan agoge from Alex’s previous life.

And Kurt? He had displayed extraordinary physical prowess as early as age five.

Drake could have easily used that as justification to remove the boy from Joselin’s influence and place him in the Fury training camps.

Sure, it would have caused tension with Joselin, the Holts, and by extension, the Machholts.

But they couldn’t protest it directly. Not when there was such a clear precedent.

Drake could have simply argued that enrolling Kurt in the camps was for the good of his future as a warrior, a means to fully unlock and cultivate his potential.

He had the authority. He had the opportunity.

And yet... he chose not to act.

This might make little sense in some other family, but this was the Fury family. Much like the infamous Spartans of old, paternal love here was shown not through displays of affection, but through forging one’s son into a powerful warrior and soldier.

Thus, Drake could have argued that sending Kurt to the harsh military camps was his way of showing love.

Joselin could whine and complain all she wanted, but the Holts or Machholts would be powerless to stop him. Heck, they might even understand Drake’s stance—after all, their own families had their own warped definitions of ’affection’.

But Drake didn’t bother.

In his wariness of the mother, he seemed to forget the son. He failed to see that Kurt also carried half of his blood.

Blinded by his caution for Joselin, he marked Kurt as belonging to the enemy camp.

A decision which, ironically, ensured it.

That one act closed off any chance for change in the boy, and all but confined him permanently to the side of opposition.

From this point of view, Kurt was a pitiful youth—his path to ruin laid out and sealed almost from the moment he could walk and wield a weapon.

’Then again... I am not that different from Drake or Joselin, am I?’

Alex sighed.

’In the end, I used him too... to establish my position. Worse still, rather than try to save him, I killed him. All in the name of proactively eliminating a potential nuisance.’

Life is complicated...

The truth was, the outcome of the duel between Alex and Kurt had been a foregone conclusion before the first blow was even thrown.

At no point was Alex ever truly threatened by Kurt. The five-minute flurry Kurt managed at the start? That was simply because Alex let him have it.

Compared to Udara’s momentum and attack stacking—which came with the devastating blend of Amazonian brute strength (not lacking much compared to a half-titan bloodline possessor) and immaculate technique—Kurt’s momentum lock-on was child’s play.

Having sparred with Udara for days, Alex could’ve broken out of Kurt’s pressure at any point. Heck, he could’ve done so even more easily than how he did during the second half of the fight.

Kurt only shone because Alex chose to let him shine.

Which begged the question:

Why did Alex take such a risk?

Why would someone as proactive as him—someone who routinely removed obstacles from his path the moment they appeared—hold back?

Simple.

He wanted to goad Kurt. To lure him into arrogance. To make him drop his guard.

To put him at ease.

After all, how else was he supposed to get the confession—or rather, the confirmation—he needed?

To Alex, this duel with Kurt was never the end goal.

It was simply a means. A secondary objective in a much larger, multi-layered scheme.

A scheme far more important than securing a public victory.

A scheme, to Alex, far more critical than staking his claim as Earl Drake’s heir.

No, the true goal... was much bigger than that.

**