Precedence System: I Take My Rewards In Advance

Ollie continued crawling.

Silvy tried to rise once more, but Ethan grabbed her and threw her toward the courtyard wall. Her little body struck the stone before dropping to the ground.

This time, she did not get back up.

”N-No...” Ollie’s breathing turned ragged as he forced himself to crawl faster.

Ethan walked toward Silvy, but before he could reach her, Ollie managed to drag himself into the path between them and stretched one trembling hand toward the little dragon.

”D-Don’t... touch her...”

Ethan stopped and looked down.

Ollie could barely keep his head raised, yet the glare he gave him remained full of anger.

Ethan placed his boot over the boy’s hand.

Ollie’s face twisted the moment pressure came down, and a broken cry escaped his throat. ”AHHHHH!”

Several servants flinched at Ollie’s cry while Silvy’s eyes opened weakly, her head shifting toward him just as Ethan lifted his foot from the boy’s hand and continued walking toward her.

Silvy tried to growl when he crouched beside her, but the sound barely escaped her throat before his fingers closed around one of her horns.

He lifted her by it.

Silvy’s body hung beneath his hand, her wings drooping while dust covered her pitch-black scales. Her silver-gray eyes had already closed.

Ethan looked at her with little concern.

”You should’ve just agreed.” He lifted her a little higher by the horn. ”As long as you’re not my sister’s pet, it doesn’t matter—”

”BASTARD!!!”

The shout tore through the courtyard so violently that every servant turned toward the entrance.

Zishan and Elinox stood beneath the arch.

They had returned.

Neither of them moved at first.

Zishan stared at the scene before him as his mind struggled to understand what he was seeing. Ollie lay near Ethan’s feet with tears streaking his face, one injured hand curled against his chest.

Then, Zishan’s eyes moved upward.

Ethan was holding Silvy by one of her horns.

His Silvy.

The tiny dragon who kept calling him Papa, pulled his hair whenever she wanted attention, and treated Elinox as though she had already decided the woman belonged to their strange little family.

Her wings hung limply beneath her, while dirt and bruises covered the pitch-black scales of her small body. She wasn’t moving.

Zishan stared at her for several seconds, and the expression on his face gradually disappeared.

Something inside him opened.

He could not understand what it was, nor did any forgotten memory surface to give it a name. The System did not appear before him with an explanation either. Instead, a sensation buried somewhere deeper than the life he remembered began stirring inside his body, carrying with it something so foreign that even Zishan himself did not seem aware of what was happening.

Mana throughout the courtyard recoiled from him.

Elinox felt the change before anyone could speak, causing her to turn toward Zishan as her violet eyes widened. She had experienced killing intent from soldiers, assassins, monsters, generals, and creatures powerful enough to tear through entire military formations, yet what was spreading from the young man beside her did not resemble any of them.

There was anger within it, but calling it killing intent alone felt inadequate.

Something had awakened inside Zishan.

Gravity distorted around Elinox’s feet as the surrounding air began bending away from him, and even Space responded with a faint tremor that only made her expression change further.

Across the courtyard, servants struggled beneath the pressure. Some collapsed onto their knees while others lowered their heads, unable to remain standing properly. Ethan himself had lost the confidence on his face as he stared at the young man across from him.

The disturbance did not remain within the Holmes estate.

Far beyond its walls, windows rattled across the capital despite the absence of wind. Horses inside military stables became restless and pulled against their restraints, while Mana crystals throughout several buildings flickered without explanation. People moving through distant streets stopped when a faint tremor passed beneath their feet, leaving many of them looking around for an earthquake that never came.

There was no attack upon Olmost and no spell hanging above the city, yet for several moments, the capital itself seemed to respond to whatever had stirred inside Zishan Walker.

Elinox could feel how dangerous it was.

She knew that she should have been concerned with suppressing the pressure before it spread any farther, yet her attention remained fixed on Zishan. Fear should have been the only reasonable response to what she was sensing, and everyone else around them seemed to agree.

For some reason, hers was accompanied by something else.

She found herself captivated.

The realization confused her, and she almost forgot what was happening in front of them. This was the same young man who complained about money despite discovering that he belonged to a Marquess House, spoke far too casually around people stronger than him, and became embarrassingly enthusiastic whenever cupcakes entered a conversation.

Yet as he stared at Ethan, Elinox could barely recognize him.

There was no panic on his face and no uncontrolled rage twisting his expression. Even the anger that should have been there seemed to have settled somewhere much deeper, leaving behind a frightening calm that made the pressure surrounding him feel worse.

Zishan finally walked forward.

The stone beneath his foot cracked.

Ethan’s fingers loosened around Silvy’s horn without him seeming to notice, and Elinox disappeared from beside Zishan the moment the little dragon began to fall.

She reappeared near Ethan and caught Silvy carefully against her chest. The moment Elinox felt how limp the newborn had become, her own expression darkened.

Zishan never looked away from Ethan.

He had already seen Ollie crying on the ground. He had already seen Silvy’s bruises and the way Ethan had been holding her by one of her horns.

He did not need to see anything else.

Even the System seemed to understand that this was not the time to speak, as not a single message appeared before his vision.

Zishan stopped several meters away from Ethan.

The young man swallowed.

He was Level 300, while the person approaching him seemed to be only Level 99. Ethan knew the difference between them better than most people would, and under any ordinary circumstance, those Levels should have been enough to tell him exactly who held the advantage.

His body refused to believe it.

Every instinct he possessed was warning him that the person standing across from him was something he should not provoke any further.

Zishan finally raised his head and met his eyes. ”How do you want me to kill you, little bastard?”

His voice was quiet.

There was no shout accompanying the threat and no rage trembling through his words, which somehow made Ethan’s face lose even more color.

Zishan took another step.

The pressure covering the courtyard deepened, and for one brief moment, Elinox felt something through the Mana surrounding him that sent an unfamiliar sensation through her entire body.

It was as though Zishan Walker was standing before them, yet something impossibly old had opened its eyes from somewhere far beneath the person she knew.

He stared at Ethan, who had beaten two children while neither he nor Elinox had been there to protect them, and the calm in his expression never changed.

”Mutilation... or complete decimation?”

The words crossed the courtyard without Zishan needing to raise his voice.

”Choose.”