There was no way I could avoid telling my family the truth behind my Blessing. Well, actually, I could bend the truth and squeeze out more lies if I wanted to, but I didn't want to do that. I wanted to know that within this life of mine, I had the support of my family, that I could rely on my parents and my sister not worry about whether or not they will stab me in the back.

As I began to wake up, the first thing I saw was the ceiling of my room. My vision was a bit blurry, my ears were ringing, and I had trouble focusing as well. I tried to move, but every nerve in my body screamed out as if pinched by clothespins.

When I shifted my eyes to the right, I saw the blurry shadow of a person standing next to me.

Who? I asked myself, but I couldn't tell.

When I opened my eyes, I could see nothing but endless pure white wherever I looked. Yet, I had the strange feeling that I was in some sort of room and not outside. The space simply felt limited yet at the same time stretched towards infinity. It was an odd sensation to say the least.

“I'm floating?” I said when I realized I couldn't touch the floor.

Not long after we saw the beam of white light cutting through the sky, we arrived at a small clearing in the middle of the Chedelle Forest. Here, my [Mark] spell signaled that we were very close to the location of my target: Leonidas.

“Over there!” I pointed when I saw the disheveled golden hair of my niece, Cassandra.

We all rushed over to her, but the moment we stepped into the clearing, a strong scent of blood hit us. All around us, as far as the eye could see, there were signs of a terrible battle that took place here, and by the looks of it, someone had lost a lot of blood.

My cheek was still stinging from my sister's slap. It hurt, and I knew I deserved it.

Instead of going together with my injured nephew and having Luthecia put [Mark] on me or something similar, I let him go on his own. I let a ten-years-old boy, injured and hurt, to search without an adult's supervision through a forest I knew harbored dangerous monsters.

What was I thinking? I scolded myself as I followed the trace left by my spell.

Alexandre Damascus looked at me as though he saw a ghost. He couldn't believe it. He couldn't understand why or how I was still alive, after all, we all knew that he plucked my still beating heart right out of my body. A normal human being would have been dead with no chance of salvation even with this world's magic.

What's this? What's this? What's this?! I thought as I looked at the heart I held in my hand.

It belonged to the ten-years-old little boy I just killed, yet something was strange about it.

This wasn't the first time I ate human flesh, so I immediately noticed that something was definitely off about the taste. It was different, but surely this couldn't have been the reason why my [Blessing of the Thief] failed to steal his Blessing, right?

Dead...

Brother was dead... And I couldn't do anything to stop this from happening...

I was too afraid... too scared to move...

Behind him, the monster was laughing while holding my dead brother's heart in his hand.

“I really thought I wasn't going to get this boy's Blessing, but the gods must really love me!” he laughed and spread his arms wide while pulling his head back and looking up at the night sky.

Meanwhile, I merely stood there frozen... too scared to move. I just looked in a daze at brother's lifeless body.

It all happened so fast.... I thought I saved Cassandra, that there was no way that man could have survived a blow like that unscratched. I foolishly believed that this fight was over before it even began, and for a fraction of a second, I let my guard down.

That small advantage was all Alexandre Damascus needed in order to put an end to my life.

He appeared behind me in the blink of an eye and then I saw his shadow-covered hand moving towards my chest. I could see it, but my body was too slow to react. It couldn't keep up with my brain's commands.

When Luthecia arrived at the Vlamyr Estate, she was frightened and still in shock. Her hands were shaking, and her breath was ragged. With one glance at her clothes, we could tell that something was wrong, but what startled me was the blood... Her dress and her hands were stained with red blood.

If not for the fact that one of the guards recognized her, Luthecia would have definitely been treated as someone suspicious. If she was still a slave, our last command towards her would have made her unable to leave the mansion and tell us what happened. No matter the state of emergency, a slave could not stray away from their master's orders.

I was afraid... I cried and screamed in my mind.

I didn't want to die. I didn't want to feel pain and see my own blood flowing, so when I felt my end near, I called out to my big brother. He was the only one who could help me, the only one who could save me from this monster.

“Now... die.” said the man covered in that spooky shadow aura.

Save me, brother! I screamed in my mind as I saw his hand pointed at me.

Using the telepathic link between us, I asked Cassandra to tell me everything she saw and was happening around her. I also kept encouraging her to be strong and not lose hope. We had to keep focus and stay alive until aunty Eliza arrived with reinforcements. Sister was the one pulling me towards her, and with [Mark] cast on my body, I pulled the others towards us.

I just prayed they would get here in time and hoped that my divine protection from all of those gods didn't expire already. They promised me a happy and good life, right? So there was no way they would mess up and get me or my sister killed!

Struggle as they might, little children, especially little girls, had no way of fighting against me. I was more powerful than them. I had the strength and speed of an adult body as well as more Blessings than they believed anyone could ever possess. A total of 64 were at my disposal, and now I was going to steal three more.

Who could stop me? No one!

It came as a surprise when this brat shouted like that. She should have been under the influence of my [Blessing of Charm], which I stole some time ago from a wimp of a priest of the temple of the Goddess of Love Shanteya. It should have brought everyone around me under my control, having their hearts and wills bend as I pleased. It should have worked, it always did!

Yet, this brat screamed for help, just like they spoke up against me when we first met. What was up with that? How could my Blessing have failed?

The moment I started running towards the Chedelle Forest, where my sister was taken, my whole body screamed in agony. My muscles felt like they were being pulled apart by trucks and every step I took sent waves of pain rushing through my nerves.

Even with my ridiculous regeneration power, I wasn't fully healed yet, but if I stopped now or showed any signs of weakness or pain in front of aunty Eliza, then she would spare no second to rush over to my side and stop me from going farther.

When I came through, I was in the middle of a forest. The trees were skipping past me in a flash, and I felt like I was flying or more like my mind was being carried away towards some unknown place by some unknown force.

It took me a moment to realize that I wasn't alone. I was being carried by someone.

He was fast, and a strange red aura covered his body. It held a similar feeling to the one aunt Eliza let out when she activated her Blessing. That was why, at first, I thought that it must be her, but then I saw his piercing cold eyes shining in the pale light of the moon.

I couldn't afford to waste any more time. The longer I lazed around on the floor trying to heal, the lower Cassandra's chances of survival were.

I had to hurry...

I had to catch up with that bastard and save my little sister from him.

“What are you doing, Leonidas? Your body... It's not healed yet!” aunty Eliza said with tears in her eyes when she saw me struggling to get back up on my feet.

When I heard the scream of my niece, I knew that something was wrong, but the first to act wasn't me, it was my nephew, Leonidas. The little boy ran so fast, I thought I saw a blur. I gave chase after him, but when he reached the door of their room, he was attacked by the kidnapper.

I didn't see what happened to Leonidas, but a powerful wind pushed me back, almost making me stumble back down on the stairs. I managed to grab hold of the rails in the nick of time and held onto them like my life depended on it.

Aunty Eliza's magic training was the same as always. She made me circulate Magic Energy between my palms without letting it overflow or go out of control. Even for an expert user, this was still a rather difficult exercise to go through as it tended to make use of almost of his focus. That was why my senses were currently peaked at their maximum. I could even hear Luthecia's humming, who was washing the dishes in the kitchen, which was on the other side of the house. The door was closed too.

Brother was acting silly. Of course, there was nothing to be sorry about! The one to blame was the scary man, Alexandre Damascus. I couldn't see him as an ordinary knight, there was something strange about him, something... scary.

The moment I saw him, there was a dark fog floating around him, which, from what I could tell, only I could see. In the time of a flick of a candle, it spread to everyone in the room, but when it tried to get close to me or my bother, it wasn't able to touch us. There was something scary about it. I didn't understand what it was, but it made me stand still, frozen in fear as I watched it circling around me, trying to reach me like a fox that prowled around a locked-up hen in a cage.