Chapter 699: Chapter 699 - Taming the Fifth Year - Blood Debt

This wasn’t just students being greedy or desperate.

This was something coordinated by adults who should know better.

"These idiots..." Zhao’s voice was tight with anger. "Their job is to observe. To protect in case of real danger. Not to participate in conflicts between students..."

"And yet," Ren pointed subtly forward, "I can sense six adult presences positioned. They don’t seem to just be watching... They seem prepared to actively intervene."

"Yes... This is more than opportunistic theft," Zhao concluded, his voice hardening with each syllable. "This is a declaration of war."

Klein’s mind raced, processing the variables. Three groups... Tutors willing to break protocol and watchers positioned like pieces on a combat board.

He had an idea of what was happening because he’d been offered the same thing.

The memory surfaced unbidden. Many nights ago in a shadowy corner of the academy courtyard. A messenger with no house colors. A sealed letter that burned in his hands.

"Substantial rewards for those willing to... complicate matters for certain teams. The kind of crystals that could restore a fallen house to its former glory."

Klein saw the numbers... Very substantial.

The offers had been tempting. The figures were obscene for a student, even for a fallen high noble like himself. Enough to start rebuilding what his family had lost, to reclaim their position among the great houses little by little.

But this...

He watched the tunnel ahead with new understanding, pieces clicking into place.

Three groups ambushing with adults wasn’t the simple exam sabotage asked for. This couldn’t be only about the rewards circulating among opportunistic nobles. The tutors and watchers in combat positions, the tension in the air like electricity before a thunderstorm.

This looked like attempted murder.

But who could be so stupid, so monumentally idiotic to mess with a duo formed by Zhao and Ren?

♢♢♢♢

Jin Strahlfang watched from the shadows of the upper tunnel, his spirit tiger fused with him in a way that had become disturbingly ’natural’...

His fury and other intense emotions pushing him to the point where he no longer knew where the beast ended and where the human began. The marks glowed on his skin with Silver 2 intensity, product of months of obsessive doping with that new mutant blood medicine that the opportunistic noble lady had given him.

The same noble who’d arranged all of this.

The same one who’d whispered poison in his ear about justice and honor while feeding him pills that made his beast stronger and his mind cloudier. Pills that blurred the line between human thought and animal rage until sometimes Jin couldn’t remember which impulses were his own and which belonged to the slightly corrupted tiger burning in his veins.

Seeing that he wasn’t going to be anywhere near Luna’s choice, they’d decided on a "better use" for him.

The words echoed in his memory with the woman’s cultured accent, her smile sharp as broken glass.

"Why waste your huge potential on a lost cause, young Strahlfang? The girl will never choose you. But there are... other ways to prove your family’s worth. Other paths to honor that don’t require winning useless hearts."

She’d made it sound reasonable. Logical even.

"Your brother deserves justice. Your family deserves respect. And all it requires is removing a problem that threatens us all."

Months preparing for this exact moment.

Finally.

The group behind him and the two flanking him waited in silence. Fifteen young tamers total, all guided by six men and women, all former Strahlfang officers dismissed for reasons that were never quite explained. Every one of the fifteen youngsters possessed beasts at Silver 1 or higher. Five adults at Gold rank.

All with their own reasons for being here, though none as pure, as just as his.

Jin’s hands trembled slightly... Not with fear.

With anticipation.

With the sweet promise of closure that had eluded him for years. The kind of closure that came with blood and screaming and watching life drain from the eyes that had stolen life from someone he loved.

He remembered the night that had changed everything.

The details were seared into his mind with the permanence of a brand on flesh, every moment preserved in perfect, terrible clarity.

♢♢♢♢

Almost 4 years ago...

The messenger arriving at the Strahlfang mansion with news that no younger brother should receive.

"Jean has fallen... We found his body near the border with the plains."

Time had stopped.

No.

The denial had been immediate.

Jean was the perfect heir, the golden son, the brother who always knew exactly what to say, what to do, how to shine. Jean couldn’t be dead because Jean was...

Jin had run to see the body they’d brought, expecting it to be a mistake. Maybe someone else, someone similar perhaps, but not Jean... Never Jean.

He’d run so fast his lungs burned. So fast that his heart felt like it would burst.

He’d arrived at the place where his brother lay.

And what he saw...

Jean.

The heir... The brother who’d always been there... who’d made difficult look effortless, who’d smiled with confidence that came from never doubting his place in the world.

Covered in dirt. Throat cut from side to side. His eyes open, staring at the sky, seeing nothing. The blood already dried and dark, turning brown at the edges.

"It was in the line of duty," the officers said, their voices carrying the hollow tone of men reciting prepared statements. "His patrol encountered unexpected resistance."

Lies.

Jin knew it from the beginning with an instinct that went beyond reason... Jean didn’t do standard patrols.

Jean sought glory, opportunities to prove his worth to their demanding father. And that day, that damned day, he’d found something else.

Something that had ended with the Strahlfang heir bleeding out in dirt far from home, his ambitions dying with him in a ditch that would never be marked with his name.

It took a long time to reconstruct the real truth through rumors and loose pieces of information that his father tried to bury.

A remote house attacked, a peasant family and resistance that hadn’t been anticipated because who expects peasants to fight back? Who expects the farmers from the past to stand against trained soldiers with noble beasts?

And yet somehow they had.

Somehow they’d killed Jean Strahlfang, the golden heir, the future of their house.

The Strahlfang pride had ended up buried in a different yet unmarked grave, the incident covered up to avoid uncomfortable questions from Selphira.

"It was Lin," everyone said at one point, the rumor spreading like fire through dry grass. "It had to be the assistant under Selphira’s wing. Her student was the family’s son, and everyone knows how aggressive that unhinged woman has been since that tournament."

Jin had understood from the first time he heard the rumor.

For months he hadn’t known, feeding his hatred toward an empty term that had robbed his brother. Planning a revenge he could never execute because the identity was protected by his own father.

Until he heard about teacher Lin and the family of Ren Patinder.

Until he imagined those light claws tearing through flesh with brutality.

Master Lin’s kicks were elegant, fast and deadly.

But she hadn’t been responsible.

The cut on Jean’s neck...

Patinder.

The boy with the weakest spore in the world. The insignificant peasant who shouldn’t even have been at the academy. The one who dared to mock cultivation methods of his family and his friends’ families from day one, with that infuriating calm that dare suggest he knew secrets they didn’t.

He had killed Jean.

The revelation had been like being punched in the stomach... But all his rage redirected, all his thirst for vengeance finally with an appropriate and achievable target.

Except it wasn’t achievable.

Because Ren Patinder, the peasant boy, had turned out to be a monster under the umbrella of Selphira and the royal family after the war. A prodigy protected by Dragarion himself, though for a short time. Then coddled by Selphira and Julius. A genius who defeated superior students, who purified corruption, who performed miracles as if they were trivial daily tasks.

Untouchable.

Protected by power that Jin’s family couldn’t challenge. Not directly. Not while Julius and Selphira’s attention was focused on rebuilding and the kingdom needed unity against the mutants.

Jin had gone to his father.

The memory still burned.

He’d explained everything. Reconstructed Jean’s death with evidence gathered over months. Demanded action, family justice for the murder of the heir.

His father had to understand...

He had to see that letting this stand meant the Strahlfang name meant nothing. That any peasant could kill their children and hide behind powerful protectors without consequence.

And his father, the man who’d demanded justice during the war...

Had become a coward after losing that same war.

Had refused.

"The Patinders are under Selphira’s direct protection now." His father’s voice had been cold, clinical, like discussing trade agreements rather than family honor. "Going against them would be suicide at this point. Jean fell in an unauthorized operation attacking civilians. There’s no honor to defend here... Only shame to bury deeper."

Shame!

His father spoke of shame when the heir lay in an unmarked grave! When Jean’s blood had soaked into dirt that didn’t even carry a marker with his name!

"Besides," his father had continued with that cold, calculating voice that Jin hated, that made him wonder if the man had ever loved Jean at all or had only valued him as an asset, "you’re the heir now... You should thank your brother’s death, since it opened your path to power."

Monster.

His own father was a monster who saw Jean’s death as a convenient opportunity instead of a tragedy to avenge.

But Jin wasn’t his father.