The Young Master in the Shadows
Chapter 493: Space Portal

The sun was setting as Victor, Aerith, Lyra, Emira, Rosette, Ariana, Mirai, Meril and Macil stood at the entrance of her palace.

“Your master is late…” Ariana commented. She couldn’t wait to leave this backward world back into the comfort of modern society,

“Are you sure he said at noon?” Aerith asked as she looked at the desolate palace. As they were leaving this world, they had already sent all the servants away after paying them a hefty reward. These were their last moments in this world and at first, she was at first a little nostalgic but that had already passed hours ago and now she was plain bored.

“He can get a little late sometimes…” Victor began to say just as the air around them shimmered and an old man appeared out of thin air. Almost immediately everyone felt a pressure forcing their body down.

Aerith was used to it, but Rosette, Ariana, and Mirai who were meeting this mysterious master for the first time felt a little taken aback.

“Master!” Victor quickly greeted.

“Sorry, the girls just wouldn’t let me leave…” the Master said. “I can’t just leave them without fully satisfying them…”

“Master, please spare me the details….”

“Kids these days…” the master shook his head “… Don’t worry, I set the appointment to be a little early just in case, the best time to cross is now!” he said as he waved his hand and out of thin air a large structure made out of black obsidian beams appeared in front of them.

It looked like a giant gate frame with all kinds of talismans pasted around it. “Creating this thing was difficult, so be grateful!” he spat.

“Are those dragon bones?” Aerith couldn’t help but ask as she inspected the gate’s beams.

“Yes… They are of the lowest grade, but finding big ones like those is hard…” the master nodded. “Are you ready… Once we leave this world, it will be very hard, almost impossible to go back here for the next 20 years!”

“20 years?” Rosette couldn’t help but ask.

“At that time travel between worlds would become a little easier…” the master said mysteriously. “Now step back a little…”

“WAIT!” someone suddenly called, making everyone turn to the side toward the palace’s entrance where a young man and young woman came running.

“Quras… What are you doing here?” Lyra asked flusteredly as she didn’t dare look at her mother or sister.

“I want to go too, me and my sister already have many enemies here… And I… I want to be of help to you…” he told Lyra holding her hands before turning to face Rosette. “Lady Rosette, please allow us to come too…” he bowed.

“Quras…” Lyra bit her lip as Aerith and her mother opened their mouths wide. Was this the little man-hater they knew? It seemed like Victor was right! 

“Quras, right? You can come!” the master suddenly said.

“Master…” Victor acted as if he wanted to complain.

“This guy has a fate in Trilaria, he will find his way there one way or another…” the master said, wondering if he was going to watch a love triangle between Tulip, Lyra, and Quras in the future. Well, it is not his business. No wait… Vic might also be one of her future husbands… Like that would ever happen! “After we go there, you better behave and Victor will take care of you and your sister!” the master added after a brief pause, having a Scion owe him a favor was a good thing!

“I understand!” Quras said, looking at the master with gratitude before nodding to his sister who was blushing due to her brother’s rash behavior. Still, she also looked toward Lyra with gratitude as she was the one who saved her from Slavery back at the auction!

“Does anyone else want to go?” the master asked, looking up to the sky.

No one answered, including the Storm lord who was watching with annoyance. She was waiting for them to leave so she could be free from the contract!

“Suit yourselves…” the master chuckled as he stepped toward the ‘Gate’ and took out a rabbit’s corpse. It was a strange-looking demonic rabbit with a split-mouth. He put it on the floor and then flicked his finger, lighting it on fire.

Moments later the flame spread climbing into midair until it filled the entire gate.

Pooooooooof.

It turned off all at once leaving a black smoke that began to form what looked like a vortex that had some very strange fluctuations around it.

“The gate is a little unstable, you have to make a leap of faith right into the middle… Don’t resist at all!” the master said. “What are you waiting for? Come on…”

“Let’s go… “Victor was the first to jump with Emira who automatically held his hand.

Woosh… He vanished.

The master nodded. “Come on, I can’t leave this open for too long…” he said with a little tired voice.

Aerith thought for a moment then jumped after Victor.

Mirai and Ariana followed.

Meril and Macil, holding each other’s hands, were next.

Lyra gestured to Quras who nodded then jumped with his sister.

The last one standing was Rosette who turned and bowed toward the storm in the distance before going into the ‘Gate’.

The master nodded then quickly followed. The moment he entered the gate, the entire structure vanished into thin air.

***

“Your Highness…” Naga who entered the throne room bowed politely, then frowned looking at the Storm lord’s annoyed expression. “Is everything alright, master?” she asked as her master frowned.

“I am fine… It is just a guy acting a little sneaky trying to fool me…”  the storm lord who was carefully watching what was going on in Rosette’s place, smirked. “Although I have no idea where he is hiding, the moment he leaves this world I will catch him… Is there anything?”

“It is about the library’s vault; the artisan couldn’t open it… He said that the joints seemed to be melted by some very corrosive material that he had never seen before, and it would take at least 15 days for him to clear them…”

“Melted… Corrosive material?” the storm lord frowned. “That poisonous bastard might have left something in there after all… It is my fault for neglecting that place. Make them hurry and unlock it!”

“Ah... Understood…” Naga said as his head turned fast. How the hell was she supposed to make the artisan who was working as fast as possible work faster? Should she sleep with him, or should she kidnap his family?

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

All of sudden, an explosion startled both the Storm lord and Naga making both turn to a side wall that shimmered and then vanished to reveal a window overlooking the capital.

There in the distance, they could see smoke going out of one of the administrative buildings.

BOOM!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

BOOM

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

BOOM

BOOM

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

It was followed by 9 other explosions all around the capital.

“NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNn….

Before the Storm lord could jump from her seat, the demon-detecting sirens began to sound.

“Master!”

“Smart move… But this little distraction will never work on me!” the storm lord spat. “Naga, take care of things here… “she said before vanishing.

***

“LET GO OF ME! This is an assault on the Von Weise Family's Rights! YOU BASTARDS, MY YOUNG MASTER WILL NEVER FORGET YOU! HE WILL FUCK UP ALL OF YOUR MOTHERS…... MNMNMNmnmnmnmnmnm….” Lili, who began to use some very nasty words as she was dragged into the ceremony room, was quickly gagged by one of the elders who couldn’t take it anymore. She was just too foul-mouthed!

“Is she really our daughter?” Catalya asked her husband as she watched Lily, who was almost completely naked, futilely resist the guards who dragged her toward the altar. She was a little reluctant to come back here, but after the news of Lily and Yulian’s return, she decided to put her grudges against the von Krone family aside and come attend the cleansing ritual.

“Yes…” Aaron sighed. “The DNA test never lies, and she is as beautiful as you are….” he said gently, putting his hand around his wife's shoulder.

She shot him a glare. “You mean as Your Aunt Venus…”

“Ehm….  Kinda…” He quickly withdrew his hand.

“Can’t they treat her kindly?”

“As you can see, she is not cooperating at all, going as far as to bite one of the elders’ ears!” he sighed. Yulian did warn them that she was a biter. “We already showed her the facts about her origins but she completely refuses to cooperate… But that is to be expected… She was raised in another family, after all, you know how brainwashed she might be!”

“...” Catalya nodded. 

“In fact, this procedure was invented to treat people like her, who get so involved in their journey that it begins to affect them badly!” he continued.

“I am just worried what kind of side effects it will have on her,” Catalya said. “The last time I trusted your family with something it didn’t go exactly well…”

“Ah… that was an oversight… Don’t worry, everyone here knows what they are doing. After the cleaning, all of her memories of the past would no longer affect her! Although she would appear a little robotic for a while, after a year or so she would be completely normal!” he replied. “You can ask Yulian… Although his cleansing wasn’t as powerful as the one, they will use on Lily, it should be the same!”

“...” Catalya just sighed. She met Yulian earlier, and he was as useless as she remembered him to be. Well, at least his heart was in the right place as he kept asking her about his other younger daughter Tulip. He clearly grew up to be the kind who took familial relationships seriously just like his elder brother.

He also mentioned something about finding some girl that he was interested in. She needed to look up Alice von Weise ASAP as she was not going to let the Von Krone family manipulate them ever again!

***

“Now stop moving!” An elder with a bandage on his ear scolded Lily as he secured her with chains to a golden pole atop an altar that was in the middle of a large hall.

“Mnnnnnnn…...” Lily tried to act as aggressively as possible while inspecting the cleansing room with her eyes. It was the same as she remembered from her trip in the other timeline. 

This place was one of the most important places in her family. Although nowadays it was only being used for cleansing, it had a ton of other usages that would only come into light after the demons invaded this world. This altar can not only remove curses and the like, but it can also remove demonic possession and return the shattered souls to their original form.

In fact, one of the reasons Victor didn’t make her a Blood slave was because it would be canceled when she goes through the ritual. And it might even cause him a backlash!

She sighed as she slowly calmed down. Not entirely, she kept glaring at one of the elders who was looking around in a suspicious way. 

This guy worked for her uncle, and if her guess was correct, he would try to sabotage the cleansing, maybe altering the array slightly to damage her soul. 

Well, it didn’t matter…

As if resigning to her fate she closed her eyes and listened to the high elder making a speech.

“Lily Von Krone, today we wash you of your past so that you might live your true self… As per the souls of those who passed…”

As he began to mumble stupid things, Lily ignored him as she secretly activated her bloodline.

Her skills should have been all locked by a talisman, but her bloodline wasn’t. As someone who saw the future, she knew of a technique to activate her bloodline skills without going through the system.

It was a little tricky, but by remembering the feeling she spent a lot of time getting familiar with, she could do it.

What was important now was the timing.

She watched as the elders finished their mumblings and then began to activate the altar making it begin to shine with a warm light. She knew this light would soon burn her very soul and separate it from her own memories.

Closing her eyes activated her bloodline skill, TIMELESS INCANTATION This thing was very costly and usually going even 5 minutes to the past would drain her of all of her energy, but she was not going to the past, but to the future so it was a lot easier!

The moment her skill activated she was no longer in her body, but a crow that flew upward and perched on the side of the altar, watching as if on speed up, the world around her moved. Everything from her body getting drowned by that light, to the sneaky elder activating a talisman to make the cleansing 1000 times stronger to her parents who were worriedly watching from the side.

The cleaning took 169 minutes before the light faded and Lily prepared to fly back into her own body. Then it happened.

Woooooooooooosh………

The light that faded strengthened again, forcing everyone in the room to step back, even crow Lily felt some pressure from it but before she could understand what happened, it all ended in a split second.

Everyone looked at each other, not sure what happened.

Lily, who felt that she was losing connection with her body for some reason, didn't dare to hesitate as she flew back immediately and entered her own consciousness, ending the skill’s activation.

She succeeded.

She wanted to quickly open her eyes and act as if she was lost or something but for some reason, she couldn’t. She was completely drained as if her energy had just gone through something big. 

And there in her mind, there were all kinds of new memories… They were about her, but yet foreign as if she was watching some other version of her like a movie.

It took her a moment to understand what those were and realize many things.

So… It was another timeline after all! A timeline where she was not Lily the assassin of the Von Weise family, but Liliara Von Krone, the first disciple of the Spirit empress and her heir.

Still, that world was not a place she would ever want to go back to as Victor didn’t exist in it!

***

Victor laughed as he watched the capital burn from his hiding space. Using the chaos, he successfully, ‘borrowed’ a few things before leaving.

The gate earlier was all fake. Rosette and the others didn’t cross back to Trilaria, but into his cauldron where they lost consciousness the moment they entered. He planned to keep them there and transport them safely. This was the best way!

Using a hidden path that he charted in the past few days, he made his way out of the capital heading east while avoiding using any skills that might expose him.

Thankfully, due to the death thread around his neck, he could make sure that the Storm Lord was not aware of his position. When she focused on him that thread usually turned darker!

In fact, he tried devouring this thread to get rid of it, but for some reason, he gained nothing and the thread materialized in seconds. He was not sure about it, but it seemed like devouring threads had a lot more to do with it than he expected.

Anyway, his trip was a long one. After traveling far enough from the capital while staying low, literally, he was disguised as a lizard. He changed into an eagle and began to fly.

It took him 10 entire hours to finally enter the desert again. Here he was out of the Storm lord and into the Sun lord’s domain.

Another 20 hours were needed to cross the desert and finally reach the Death Gorge. Heading as southern as possible to keep away from the sun lord’s investigation teams that were still searching for him and randomly hunting for suspicious-looking Elven horses.

After finding a good place hidden between a few large rocks, he activated his disguise skills to their fullest before slowly activating his demonic and Draconic bloodline and then jumping down.

It was clear but this place was the safest place to hide his gate as no one would be able to find it, and even if they did, no one would be able to cross it!

The only drawback would be that if he wanted to send someone here, he would need to do it by himself, but he was ready to do that in order to avoid many risks. A trip here every few months wouldn’t really bother him!

It took him a while to finally reach the spot where he first met Emira and pull her out from the cauldron.

“We are here….” he said, brushing her hair. “Choose a spot!”

Emira nodded, then pulling his hand she guided him into a cave to one side. It was different from the one where he felt the death energy as this one was the opposite with the death energy here much weaker. 

“Did you stay here before?” he asked as he noticed a small pond to the side.

“Um…” she nodded, pointing to a rock. “There…” she said.

Victor nodded, then using a shovel he began to dig. It took him 30 minutes to make a 10-foot-deep hole.

“This should be deep enough!” he said before moving his hand and making three coffins containing three people appear in the hall side by side. They were clean and dressed in traditional Elven garbs as if they were sleeping. 

Those were Emira’s parents and elder brother. After she regained her memories, she found them between the thousands of corpses Victor kept in his cauldron and asked him to help her bury them!

Victor thought for a moment then took three flowers from his storage ring. “Those should bloom even here…” he told Emira who kept her eyes on them, still she didn’t cry.

“Um…” she nodded, taking the Death Flower, a rare plant native to Death Valley, and placing one on each corpse before beginning to push the dirt with her small hands. Victor quickly helped her, finishing in an hour. Although he was in a hurry, he had to give the little girl some time to say her goodbyes.

“This is for their best… “he told her before turning to the graves where he put three engraved headstones. “Do you need some time?” he asked Emira who kept looking down.

“No… Let’s go…”

“Enter the cauldron then… The trip will be dangerous!” he said making Emira vanish immediately as she didn’t resist at all.

Looking at the grave, he bowed politely “Don’t worry, I will take care of her!” he told them before turning and leaving.

The first thing he checked was the very dangerous cave, but even after he leveled up a few times, he couldn’t even step inside without feeling like he would really die, so he could only turn and leave.

He walked for another 10 minutes or so before he found another cave. This one was not at the ground level, but about 80 feet up in the gorge’s wall, but the Death energy in it was so thick that no sane guy other than him would dare walk inside.

He jumped there and after inspecting the place and making sure it was good enough, he headed to its deepest part where he took out a large Orichalcum boulder. 

The moment it left his storage space it fell to the ground and caused the entire cave to shake a bit.

Although this thing was rare, at the end of the day it was just an expensive foraging material, so with rosette’s help he managed to obtain it under the guise of wanting to give it to a friend blacksmith.

In fact, this thing was going to act as the anchor for his gate. He couldn’t have asked the Storm lord for it, less she manipulated it somehow or left a trace on it. In fact, all the gate materials he asked for were fake, just things to sell later for a good profit.

Making sure the boulder was in place, he took out a wooden stick and a stencil made out of wood and a jar of green goo.

Although the working materials were a little primitive, he still quickly managed to engrave an array on the plate. The moment it was completed, he felt a strange ripple around confirming that the sealing formation was complete.

This array worked both for sealing and to hide the fluctuation in case someone was trying to find him. It was also a backup to make sure no one else would be able to use the gate if it was found, and that the death energy here wouldn’t escape to Trilaria through it.

Making sure everything was ready, he activated his disuse skill to hide everything just in case and put his hand on the plate.

He closed his eyes and activated his Space Portal skill.

Victor frowned and then began thinking about his wives and his blood slaves.

This time he thought about a certain cave behind the factory he stole from Nick, although it was not the best place, the target must be a place he was familiar with so he didn’t have a lot of options. And Margret should have already prepared it for him!

He took a breath and pressed Yes.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM, a familiar looking crimson colored gate materialized in front of him. It was just that as soon as it happened, he collapsed to the ground, feeling completely drained.

It took him 8 hours to recover somehow after eating no less than 9 spurious-grade pills. 

Feeling energized again and making sure that the gate was stable, he gave the death thread around his neck one last look and then jumped.

The Novel will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!