Dong! Dong! Dong!
The heavy, resonant tolls of the estate's central clock tower echoed across the grounds, signalling the exact stroke of noon.
Ren was just about to head back to his room with Kon when the heavy wooden doors of the training courtyard suddenly swung open. A coordinated group of figures marched into the secluded space, immediately shattering the peaceful atmosphere.
At the forefront stood Clan Head Kyora's personal butler, his posture immaculately straight. Trailing closely behind him were several elite combat maids. Unlike Tsumugi, these women were fully geared for violence, their faces cold and unreadable. Lethal weapons—a wicked spear, a polished broadsword, and even a heavy iron mace—were strapped securely to their waists and backs.
Unfortunately, Tsumugi had already departed to resume her regular estate duties just moments prior, leaving Ren and Kon completely alone.
Seeing the heavily armed entourage barge into their quiet sanctuary, Ren and Kon immediately tensed, their small bodies instinctively going on high alert.
"Young Master Ren," the butler spoke, his tone chillingly polite and formal, entirely at odds with the armed guards flanking him. "The Clan Head and Lord Azelior are requesting your presence."
Hearing the butler's polite demand, Ren's expression warped slightly, a bitter smile tugging at the corners of his lips. 'It seems my time has officially run out.'
Kon, perched tensely on the boy's shoulder, wilted in dejection, his silver ears drooping flat against his head.
"Mm." Ren nodded in quiet resignation, forcing his small hands to stay steady. "Let's go."
**********
The journey toward the grand reception room was suffocatingly quiet. Not a single word was spoken, the heavy silence broken only by the rhythmic, militant clicking of the maids' boots against the polished floorboards.
When the armed entourage was halfway down the main corridor, a small, solitary figure suddenly stepped out from the shadows and directly into the middle of the hallway, completely blocking their path.
The butler at the front halted, frowning slightly as he assessed the obstruction. "Successor, what is the meaning of this?"
It was Kaguya.
"Nothing much," Kaguya stated coolly. She paused for a moment, her icy eyes drifting past the imposing combat maids to lock directly onto Ren in the centre of the formation. "I am simply taking my brother back with me."
Hearing this blatant defiance, the butler's frown deepened into a severe scowl. "The Clan Head and Lord Azelior have explicitly ordered his presence."
"Mm. I am aware." Kaguya nodded in brief acknowledgment. Then, completely unconcerned by the armed guards or the authority of her father waiting in the reception room, she added, "And I said, I will take my brother back with me."
Her tone was absolute, not budging a single inch.
"The orders of the Clan Head are absolute," the butler stated severely. He slowly raised his hands, meticulously tightening the wrists of his black gloves. "Forgive me for the disrespect, Successor."
Then, without any warning, the fabric of his gloves flared to life, bursting with glowing blue runes. His feet slid apart. His right heel dug firmly into the floorboards while his left toes angled forward. His knees softened slightly and his spine straightened, dropping perfectly into the standard Two Principles stance of the Eight Extremities Fist.
For a single heartbeat, he was completely still, a coiled storm disguised as a man. His cold eyes locked onto Kaguya, fully intending to immobilize her in a single strike.
Then, with an explosive stomp—whoosh! —the butler blitzed toward her.
Watching the attack unfold, Kaguya remained entirely calm. Unlike a novice like Riku, her icy eyes flashed slightly, perfectly tracking the high-speed trajectory of the veteran fighter.
Then—
BOOM!
The butler crashed into Kaguya with devastating force, causing the wind around them to whip violently outward from the point of impact. Yet the young girl was completely unharmed; in fact, she looked entirely relaxed. The butler's glowing palm had been halted just a single centimetre away from her stomach, violently repelled by a shimmering blue barrier.
Spiderweb cracks fractured across the magical shield from the sheer physical force of the blow, but it held steady.
"It seems my father's personal butler is quite strong," Kaguya commented calmly, her gaze lazily flicking down to the fractured shield. "Looks like I miscalculated a bit, allowing my barrier to crack."
The butler forced his gaze upward to meet Kaguya's icy eyes, absolute shock written across his face. 'So fast!' At such a short, point-blank distance, most mages would never have the reaction time to defend against such explosive, kinetic martial arts. It was a massive, horrifying shock to the veteran fighter that a ten-year-old girl could mentally calculate his trajectory and deploy a defensive barrier almost instantly.
Still completely unconcerned, Kaguya murmured, "It is a shame that you were not quite fast enough."
Then, lazily turning her gaze away from him and back toward Ren and the armed maids, she uttered a single, chilling word: "Seal."
Suddenly, hundreds upon hundreds of glowing magic circles materialized out of thin air, forming a tight, inescapable spherical encirclement around the butler. Before he could even twitch, the dense arrays collapsed inward, rushing toward him with merciless precision.
When the blinding light of the runes finally faded, the imposing man was entirely gone.
Clink! A tiny, perfectly round marble dropped onto the polished floorboards, rolling gently through the empty void where the butler had just been standing.
All the while, Kaguya hadn't even bothered to look back at him.
"Dear brother, come with me," Kaguya said soothingly, looking past the armed guards at a shell-shocked Ren. "You will be safe with me."
Coming to his senses, Ren looked at Kaguya with a deeply complicated expression. He glanced at the combat maids surrounding him, who had already drawn their weapons and were tensely poised for an attack. Slowly, he shook his head.
"No, Ane-sama. I will go with them." Ren absolutely did not want to cause any more trouble or draw the Clan Head's wrath down upon his sister. "Please stop this," he pleaded softly.
Hearing this outright rejection, Kaguya's left eye began to twitch. "What do you mean, brother? The Underworld is not a safe place. Come with me. I will keep you safe."
Ren didn't reply this time, his silence firmly holding his ground.
One of the maids, nervously eyeing the marble on the floor, gulped hard. "Successor, please step aside. The Clan Head will not be pleased when he learns of this."
Kaguya's eye twitched even more violently. Her left hand slowly rose to her own neck, her fingernails suddenly digging into the flesh and scratching at her skin furiously.
"Why won't you obey me...?" she mumbled, her soothing, rational facade completely cracking.
Her icy gaze darkened into pure, murderous anger. "I am doing this for your own... GOOD!" Kaguya screeched, her voice breaking with manic intensity.
She unceremoniously raised her right hand, a complex magic circle instantly flaring to life around her palm. "SCRAM!" she shouted at the maids.
A terrifying blast of heavy gravity shot down the hallway. It perfectly bypassed Ren, slamming directly into the guards.
"Ahh—!!" The maids screamed in unison as they were violently launched backward. They crashed heavily into the far walls of the corridor before sliding down to the floor in an undignified, unconscious heap.
"Stop this, Ane-sama!" Ren shouted, unsheathing his longsword and levelling the heavy steel blade toward her.
There was one more crucial reason he refused to go with his sister: he simply did not trust her. During every single interaction they had ever shared, Ren had felt a deep, unsettling discomfort crawling beneath his skin. Right now, every instinct in his body was screaming at him to stay away from her. He would honestly rather bet his life on the unknown horrors of the Astaroth clan than willingly hand himself over to Kaguya.
"This is the last time you will defy me, brother," Kaguya said, her voice dropping back into an eerily smooth, collected tone. "Come with me... and I will not have to hurt you," she whispered with chilling finality.
Ren responded by igniting his Ki. A pure, blinding white aura flared to life, coating his small body in a protective, thrumming energy. "I will not..."
"Force it is, then," Kaguya stated softly.
Despite her perfectly calm and level voice, a bottomless, terrifying madness danced wildly in her icy eyes, a dark storm inextricably mixed with a chilling hint of genuine regret.
Raising both of her hands and pointing them directly at Ren, Kaguya uttered a single, chilling command: "Box Seal."
It was a containment technique specifically designed to safely compress and trap a living target without harming them. Instantly, glowing blue lines materialized in the air all around Ren, rapidly sketching the skeletal outline of a perfect cube. The solid walls hadn't formed yet, but the trap was closing in.
Ren, already in a defensive stance, immediately slashed at one of the glowing lines, attempting to sever the spell before it could fully activate. His heavy steel sword sliced cleanly through the light, leaving a brief, flickering gap in the line. But instead of dissipating, the magic simply reconnected a split second later.
Alarmed, Ren darted backward, desperately trying to physically move out of the forming cage. However, the glowing lines simply shifted and expanded to match his every movement. No matter which way he dodged, the skeletal box relentlessly tracked him, keeping him trapped within its expanding boundary.
Seeing that physical evasion was useless, Ren stopped moving and closed his eyes. He mobilized his latent spiritual power, pushing his senses outward to analyse the magic. Naturally, he couldn't rationally understand the complex runic formulas happening around him.
Instead, he could only rely on his intuition as a martial artist.
'There!' His eyes snapped open. Gripping his sword with both hands, he plunged the blade downward, driving it viciously into a seemingly random spot on the floorboards.
Instantly, the magic shuddered, and jagged cracks began to spiderweb across the glowing outline of the box. Seeing his success, Ren pushed his body to its limits, channelling a massive surge of pure white Ki directly into that single anchor point.
With a sharp crack, the entire framework of the box seal completely shattered into harmless, dissipating sparks.
"You have grown stronger, Ren," Kaguya complimented, genuinely impressed as she watched the boy expertly dismantle her spell. "But it is still not enough."
Curling the fingers of her outstretched hand to form a hollow, cage-like sphere, she aimed the center of her palm directly at him.
"Ball," she uttered, casting her second spell.
This containment technique operated on the exact same principles as the Box Seal, but formed a flawless spherical boundary, granting it a far more robust physical structure and eliminating any vulnerable corners. The only reason Kaguya hadn't used this superior spell initially was its heavy mana consumption; she needed to preserve her reserves to successfully escape the estate with Ren later.
This time, a single, continuous blue line instantly encircled Ren's body. Learning from her previous mistake, Kaguya flooded the array with raw mana. The spherical barrier completely solidified in the blink of an eye, trapping the boy inside before he could even attempt to sense its anchor point.
"Crap!" Ren cursed in alarm.
With the impenetrable barrier already trapping him entirely, he could only swing his heavy steel sword, slashing furiously at the glowing walls all around him.
Ting! Ting! Ting! Ting! Sharp, metallic clangs rang out through the corridor, but this time, absolutely no damage was done to the sphere. Not a single crack appeared, even as Ren desperately pushed his Ki output to its absolute limit.
"It is no use, brother," Kaguya stated coldly. "You are simply too weak."
The terrifying truth was that Kaguya was still holding back a considerable amount of her power. If she had used her full magical strength, it would have been effortless to kill him. However, her singular goal was to capture him unharmed, so she strictly restricted her magic to less harmful spells. Otherwise, Ren's fate would have been exactly the same as the marble-sized butler currently resting on the floorboards.
"Ugh!" Ren recoiled, the heavy physical blowback of his own deflected sword strikes violently jarring his small, exhausted arms. He was completely trapped.
But just at that desperate moment, a familiar, frantic voice echoed from the far end of the corridor.
"Ren-chan!"
It was Kon!
In the chaotic blur of Kaguya's sudden ambush and her devastating, gravity-crushing attack on the combat maids, the little spirit fox had utilized his tiny size to silently slip away into the shadows. Because Kaguya had been so obsessively focused on securing her brother, she hadn't even noticed that his familiar was missing.
Kon hadn't run away in fear, he had raced off to bring reinforcements!
Author's note: Hi guys! A little change of pace here, I'll be shifting the daily upload schedule to Midnight GMT moving forward. Thanks for reading!