The Young Master in the Shadows

Chapter 324: The Sign (2)

Lily, who was watching her dead body getting dragged away, had no idea what just happened, but as a crow, she could feel one thing… Her connection to her body had been broken. She is now free…

WTF? She asked herself as she watched the family members slowly enter the hall for their ritual.

Lily, who needed to think, quickly flew and perched on the safest place for her. Victor’s shoulder. Although he was not the Victor she knew, he was Victor nonetheless! He smelled the same. 

Everything that happened after that diverted greatly from what she had been through. She could not imagine that things could go this wrong.

Inside the hall, Victor, who almost passed out because of nervousness, was only able to awaken as a semi-player.

And Guy, who was supposed to have died, passed as a full player and was congratulated by everyone.

Victor’s cousin Ron died… He was not able to awaken!

After that, Victor who spent that night at a family dormitory was given instructions about his new role by an elder before getting sent to Vein City without getting the chance to talk to his father.

Lily, who was mostly free after her real body was killed, used her time to start inspecting the Von Weise archipelago, discovering that what Victor told her before was true, this place was rotten to the core! She made sure to check on every elder before she quickly followed Victor to Vein City.

After that, Victor, who was ordered to hide his background and do some investigative work for the family as an agent, began to work at his father’s company under Aria’s care.

He was also ordered to attend the academy where on the first day not only he failed to make any friends, he was even insulted by Linda who was a student there… That bitch was so nasty that Lily would have slit her throat right at that moment if she could. She made all the students hate Victor after she began to spout lies about how he raped her!

Teacher Isabella, who was supposed to help, chose to ignore this, as she knew Victor’s background and believed that he should repent for his old mistakes.

Victor was so devastated by all the ridicule that went out to secretly cry in the back of the school on that day. That’s where he met the twins who helped him calm down and cheered him up.

He ended up dating one of them right after, but in fact he was dating them both as they took turns…This only lasted two weeks as in the end they were stolen by none other than Tom after an accident with Nick.

They could only say sorry to Victor before they disappeared. They said that they fell in love with Tom, and they couldnʼt be with Victor…. They appeared a little harsh, but not knowing Victor’s true identity they wanted to protect him.

Victor was angry, and went to confront Tom, but was beaten to a pulp and even peed on! Tom left Vein City that night.

Victor was devastated after that for an entire month, and he just happened to meet Mira while assisting in a movie shoot then they began dating.

Lily didn’t want to confess this, but Victor and Mira really suited each other, and she, without regard to his fake orphan background, treated him very well. 

Then Mira was taken away by Victor’s brother and he could do nothing but protest to his father who was out of town at that time. So it was too late… Mira was already dead when Theodore asked Rex about her.

Lily, who made it her habit to perch on Victor’s shoulder, didnʼt know if she should be sad for Victor or amused… Victor’s luck with girls was really bad. It was as if he had a bad luck charm on him.

At this point in time, she was beginning to suspect that this was an alternate timeline. And her hunch was telling her that Victor knew about this as the way he acted hastily toward Tom since they met made sense now. And this would also explain Victor’s relationship with Mira! There was an additional point… Many of those guys that Victor ordered to be killed at the wedding were people who hurt or abused this timeline’s Victor when he was working at the company!

The next shock happened a month later when Aria was discovered to have been a fake! She was executed by the family. 

Victor, who had a secret crush on his ‘sister’, was really aggravated after hearing the news from his father.

New, devastated, Victor threw himself to his work, getting better at being an investigator where he managed to catch many of the family traitors in the act! He also began to date many girlfriends… He probably feared that one of them would leave him, so he only had more than one!

After that, he was sent on a mission to different cities where Victor continued to learn and become more confident like the Victor she knew… Not quite… This version was still too naive.

It was in TetraQuad City where in a lousy pub he met none other than Gary. They became best friends! Brothel friends!

Lily took this opportunity to leave the depraved Victor and check many things around the different cities that she had never been to!

It was all well after that, and Victor was even promoted within the family after he proved his capabilities.

Then disaster happened… Victor was scammed into breaking the family rules by Max, Titus, and Linda.

Lily, who didn’t tire and could fly around, really knew what was happening, and she wanted to warn him several times but she couldnʼt communicate with him at all. It was as if she was watching a movie go on!

Victor was kicked out of the family, all his savings confiscated and all of his gold diggers girlfriends left him overnight!

It was an utter disaster!

Lily felt very sad for him as in the next few years he was reduced to a merry pitiful beggar. He could only get a job for one or two days before someone would come and ruin it for him… It was Linda who more than once, sent gangsters to attack him.

Victor was able to get a secure job once though, working for his maternal family as a hotel guard… He was kicked out a year later when his grandfather died and ended up in the streets again where his uncle who fabricated a crime against him threatened to break his legs if he saw him ever again in Golden Waterfall town.

So Victor lived in misery for a few years during which he was devastated more than once by the news of the death of his little sister, his grandmother, and then his big brother. Only Alice was secretly taking care of him at that time… That was before she stopped after she was imprisoned in her sect after her master was killed and the Caspian used his power with the elders to corner her. They didn’t kill her though, they still feared her family.

Lily, who was going around the world and learning about its secrets and searching for a way to stop her skill and return to her timeline, checked on Victor every once in a while. He was really miserable.

Then it happened.

She was searching inside some sect’s secret vault that day when the earth shook. 

She quickly flew into the sky and from above she saw the sky crack like shattered glass and from behind swarms of demons began to flood the world.

Lily quickly flew to the place where Victor was as she was always able to smell him. He was working as a fisherman on a boat in a coastal city on that day. The city was overturned by a three-headed sea serpent that shot a beam of energy that vaporized everyone in town.

Victor survived as his boat was pushed by tidal waves into a faraway beach.

When he landed on dry land, he was different. He had awakened into a full player.

For the first few days, he acted couscous, exploring his abilities until he was confident with them he began to head toward his family archipelago! He needed to reach the nearest port first.

This trip took Three full years of walking through the devastated land full of demons and monsters. 

Victor’s class, who Lily guessed was a spy or an assassin, was only good at sneaking around. That’s where he got the habit of being secretive probably.

Lily who watched could see how human resistance around the world was able to push most of the demons away in a year… Clearing some safe cities at the very least and making some major human shelters around the world. Then they began to fight each other…

Victor, after getting derailed many times because of the explosion of new danger zones and dungeons around the world, and after getting involuntarily conscripted in raids and marital cities no less than three times, finally reached the port city nearest to the Von Weise family. Victor found it in ruins, completely abandoned. There were some rumors about his familyʼs destruction.

Victor quickly found an old fishing boat which he used to travel to the archipelago with Lily perched on his shoulder…

He reached there one week later, and the previously prosperous family archipelago was in ruins with demons and goblins everywhere, lining in the shadows of the collapsed palaces and picking their sharp teeth with the bones littering the islands. 

Lily, who wandered around before checking on her assassin sisters who suffered under Guyʼs hands and then at the hands of the inquisition hall after Guy and Dick ran away, had witnessed what happened when that guy appeared on top of the Von Weise Archipelago with 11 other masked players. 

They brutally killed everyone here because one of the family’s new elite heirs, one of Victor’s cousins raped that man’s sister on the night of the reckoning and then slit her throat!

That guy only took two years to grow from a weak shrimp to a fighting god while killing the swarms of assassins the family sent against him during that time. Gaining more allies and experience as he grew up!

At first, the family could only send some random guys because of the reckoning, so by the time they realized what their enemy had become, it was already too late!

That guy was like a web novel character and the Von Weise family was like some noble evil family… they were in a way….

Lily, who finally realized what the term scion meant, could only watch the devastated Victor who began to cry on his familyʼs burnt mansion when he found it.

After that, Victor seemed to have been broken, he left the archipelago and began walking aimlessly, working as a mercenary here and there to get some food. Killing demons and monsters to quench his anger.

He wanted to kill that guy, Lily could tell, but he could do nothing as that man kept getting stronger and stronger. Then she heard that some otherworldly overlord, named the lord of light, adopted him as a son and engaged him to his daughter!

During this time, Lily made it a habit to search the world for People she knew…

Tom was at it, collecting girls like some trading card game.

Teacher Isabella seemed to have joined some new power called the free players association and was convincing Tom to join them.

The Twins were dead. They sacrificed themselves to save Tom. 

Monica seemed to have become one of Tom’s girls.

Margret’s fate was unknown.

Hilda… Unknown.

Alex… Unknown.

The Von Geldstadt family fell into an internal strife after their patriarch died and killed each other.

The Von Zwei family was eaten by a giant tentacle monster and their grounds turned into an SSS dungeon taht no one dared to approach… Linda was there hiding after some of her crimes were revealed.

Many of the students at the academy ended up dead in the Reckoning.

Then there was that Principal. James trove… He turned out to be a spy for her family.

Yes, her family, she was surprised by what happened to them after she left.

Her mother, seemingly devastated by the news of her disappearance said she had enough. She left the Von Krone family with a swelling stomach, returning to her family home. A city that was built in the middle of the ocean. It was named the sunken empire.

Her mother was a princess there.

She gave birth to a baby girl, Tulip.

Wait… didn’t Victor meet this one calling her a bitch?

Lily only had to observe her for three days to nod. She was an arrogant snobbish bitch who was ruined by her mother’s pampering!

Lily, as a crow, spent the following years moving around, learning secrets, and realizing why Victor never truly shows his power.

Behind the world, there were some very scary powers. The Lords!

Lily really wanted to know more about them, but they lived in other worlds, and she had no way of going there.

Two changes happened after about 50 years… Just when the Von Krone family cemented their power as the world’s hegemon!.

The first change was when Lily came to check on Victor, she discovered that, to her shock, he fell in love with some adventurer girl. They seemed to have married three days after the meeting.

Sure that girl was super cute, but after spending 3 hours with the lovely couples… Lily, not wanting to drink any more vinegar, decided to return to her family, where they had been collecting world knowledge. She had many things to learn there! Maybe she would find a way to return to her Victor…

That’s when she was confronted with the second change in the world. Her father, seeing that his imperial brother’s behavior was getting too brazen and tyrannical, got many of the elders’ help and challenged him to a fight where he beheaded him taking advantage of the fact that the guy was poisoned by some nasty thing.

Wait… Wasn’t this the same poison Victor used on Tom? Some things began to make sense the more Lily learned!

Getting the Imperial throne, her father quickly launched a full investigation into his brother’s crimes and her mysterious disappearance which had not been investigated thoroughly before.

So for the next few years, Lily could only watch as many things got uncovered. Her uncle was an utter madman.

She would occasionally go and check on Victor, who had three cute kids by that time. This fact made her super jealous… She also wished to get him some kids.

This all collapsed a year later, when she was in her father’s imperial office, peeking at his reports… One of them indicated that the Young Light Lord was spotted reentering this world!

She felt that something was wrong, so she quickly flew to check on Victor. It was too late. The wooden cabin he lived in with his family was burnt to a crisp. She could tell that this was not long ago, so she quickly followed Victor’s smell and found him with his family members in a heap of corpses, totally mummified as if someone drew all their blood.

She was horrified as she landed on Victor’s body and looked at his empty dead eyes full of hatred.

She didn’t know what to do… She couldnʼt believe it!

She could only fly around him and crow to no avail.

She was very distressed.

This was not supposed to happen….

Was she wrong all along?

A single tear fell from her eye and strangely enough when it landed on Victorʼs shoulder. It began to shine with golden light!

She also felt it… From the inner depths of his body, a few drops of blood were clinging to his soul that didn’t dissipate yet. As a crow, she could feel such things.

Lily didn’t know what to do… But she felt that there might be a way! He was her one and only. She couldn’t let him die!

Then, from the inner depths of her soul, an ancient power. She knew what to do. 

She perched on Victor’s chest, then channeled her soul through his body using the tear as a conduit. 

The golden tear slowly turned golden, taking the shape of a crowʼs talon as it was engraved on Victor’s soul.

Lily was marking him as hers… From that day, he would be hers, and she would be his. They would be very hard to kill as long as the other was alive. Their souls and fates would be connected! So if one of them were to be truly killed, the other would perish too!

So Victor, with the new influx of energy began to heal up at a visible rate as the few droplets of blood burnt themselves with Lily’s soul fire.

Then he woke up to his miserable reality and the sight of his familyʼs corpses!