SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

Chapter 470: Chapter 470: Before the Visitors Arrive [I]

There was not much time left before the wedding.

Even so, before all of that, Trafalgar was in Velkaris again, walking through the city with the kind of calm pace he rarely allowed himself when other people were around. Today he was not dressed like the heir of a Great Family. Something simpler, more casual, the sort of clothes that let him pass through the streets without dragging the weight his name usually brought with it.

Beside him walked Rhosyn. She was also dressed casually, though in a way that made it painfully obvious someone had influenced her choices. The oversized white shirt, the black skirt, the black boots, the bag hanging from her shoulder, it all fit together too neatly to have happened by chance. Mayla’s hand was easy enough to see in that. Trafalgar noticed it the moment he looked at her, though he did not say anything at first. The clothes suited her more than he would have expected. They softened nothing about her presence, but gave it a more natural look, one that felt strangely normal for someone who was anything but.

Rhosyn seemed entirely unconcerned with that. She walked with the same confidence as always, glancing here and there at the streets before speaking in the tone of someone who had been holding a complaint in for a while.

”Does that old pervert really have to come?”

Trafalgar looked at her from the corner of his eye. ”You really have a very casual way of talking about an ancient dragon.”

Rhosyn did not even try to look ashamed. ”Well, it’s the truth.” She adjusted the strap of her bag and kept walking. ”That old man tried to flirt with me, and I hadn’t even seen him in decades. If anything, I’m being generous.”

The corner of Trafalgar’s mouth twitched slightly. ”Generous.”

”Yes,” Rhosyn said with complete seriousness. ”Very generous.”

For a few seconds the conversation stayed light, carried by the easier rhythm of their steps through the city. Velkaris was lively as always. Streets full of movement, voices mixing with the occasional sound of carts, merchants calling from storefronts, mana-lit signs hanging above places that never seemed to sleep properly. One of the few cities where power, money, trade, and ordinary life existed so tightly packed together that the line between them sometimes blurred.

Then Rhosyn’s expression shifted. The change was small, but Trafalgar noticed it immediately. Her eyes lost some of that dry amusement, and when she spoke again her tone was lower. ”By the way... was it really true, what you told me? About the Primordial presence?”

”Yes.”

Rhosyn went quiet for a moment. ”And you’re sure they noticed it because of you?”

Trafalgar exhaled softly through his nose. ”I can’t say that with certainty. But I wasn’t exactly controlling myself much during the war.” His eyes narrowed a fraction. ”After so much time, maybe what you gave me to suppress my Primordial aura stopped working properly.”

That made Rhosyn turn her head toward him at once. ”No,” she said, sharper than before. ”That shouldn’t be possible.”

For once she was completely serious. No teasing in her face, no trace of her usual mockery. She looked like someone examining a possibility she genuinely disliked. ”That isn’t the kind of thing that just stops working like that.”

Trafalgar said nothing, letting her think.

Rhosyn’s eyes shifted ahead again, but her mind was moving quickly now. ”There are other possibilities,” she said after a few seconds. ”They might have recognized the armor. Or...” She paused briefly. ”They might have noticed that you’ve been closing Rifts.”

Trafalgar considered that. It made more sense than the alternative. Too many things had happened in that war, and he had moved too openly in several of the key moments. What had drawn attention might not have been his aura in the purest sense, but the collection of signs surrounding him. The armor. The Rifts. The fact that he had been involved in things no one else should have been able to handle so easily.

”Yeah,” he said at last. ”It could be that.”

Rhosyn nodded once, though she did not look fully satisfied. ”It has to be something like that.”

”Maybe.”

The uncertainty remained anyway. Too many pieces moving now, and too many people with enough knowledge to connect the wrong things if they looked closely enough. The Council had already confirmed that much. The world was shifting faster than before, and each shift made it harder to hide what should have remained hidden.

As they continued forward, the building they were headed toward gradually came into view. Arden and Marella’s place stood where it always had, familiar enough that Trafalgar recognized it from a distance. Outside, seated with the easy ownership of someone who had spent years in the same routine, Arden was smoking a cigar while reading what looked like a newspaper.

Even from where he was, Trafalgar could make out enough of the pages to notice what everyone in the city was probably talking about by now. The Council’s decision. Most of the front page seemed to revolve around that alone, the main subject obvious from the larger lines of text: the creation of the new force.

’I didn’t expect that decision.’

He kept walking, calm on the outside, while his mind moved elsewhere. For something like that to pass, the majority must have voted in favor. And if that had happened, Valttair had almost certainly supported it. A structure like that was too important, too influential for House Morgain to simply stand aside and watch. Even presented as a neutral power meant to respond to Rifts and Void Creatures, there was no chance the Great Families would allow it to exist without sinking their hands into it somewhere.

’My grandfather being among the Ten Elders still feels absurd.’

Even now it had not fully settled. That one fact alone meant House Morgain’s influence ran deeper than what most people saw from the outside. The Eight Great Families already shaped the world enough as it was, but the Elders stood even closer to the machinery beneath it all. If his house had reach there too, then House Morgain was woven into far more than banners, land, and titles.

And yet, the more he thought about it, the less he believed a decision of this size could have happened so cleanly without something behind it. More hands. More interests. More long-term calculations than what would ever be written in the public version of the news.

’There has to be more to it than this.’

His thoughts shifted to Darian. Now that he sat in Kaedor’s former seat, he would be in a position to hear things he never could have before. Enough to be useful. Enough to give Trafalgar a clearer picture of what was happening inside those meetings and what kinds of decisions might follow this one.

’I should go see him one of these days.’

As they drew nearer, Arden turned another page, the smoke from his cigar drifting slowly into the air. Then, sensing movement or perhaps simply noticing the direction of footsteps by habit, the older man lifted his gaze from the paper. His eyes landed on them.