The soldiers, muttering about the slave’s unruliness, grabbed Luke’s limbs and dragged him toward the subjugation unit’s base.
“Damn it, what a pathetic situation.”
Even as he was dragged away, Luke glanced back several times at the spot where Herace had disappeared.
However, the soldiers’ plans to “educate” Luke at the subjugation unit didn’t go as smoothly as they’d anticipated.
Luke Clayton was far more unruly than they could have imagined.
“Don’t touch me, you bastards!”
He snarled and roared as they reached the base, startling the soldiers who had thought him docile during the journey.
Observing his temperament, they decided it was time to teach this slave his place.
The easiest way?
Activate the magic in his slave collar.
But his noble master had neglected to transfer the registered command, rendering the collar useless in their hands.
Their only other option?
Instill fear through brute force.
“You worthless slave!”
“Who’s worthless? You, rotting away here at the edge of the world, waiting to die every day, dare to talk down to me?”
The subjugation unit’s base in the northern wastes was akin to an exile for disgraced nobles and criminals.
Luke’s biting words struck deep, causing one soldier to lose his temper and charge at him.
No matter how wild and strong Luke appeared, he was still just a noble’s discarded toy—or so the soldier believed.
After all, he was a trained warrior accustomed to battling monsters in the freezing northern winds.
“Why would I?”
But Luke was faster.
His fist slammed into the soldier’s solar plexus with devastating precision.
The soldier, winded and overwhelmed by the pain, staggered back.
Luke didn’t waste the opportunity, hoisting the man into the air and slamming him into the ground.
The impact echoed as the soldier screamed in agony.
“You think weaklings like you can tell me what to do?”
This thrill—this intoxicating rush of dominance—had been absent since Luke’s fall into slavery.
Now, the dormant beast within him, Luke Clayton, had awakened.
Luke sneered, a savage grin spreading across his striking face.
His aura, a mix of raw power and untamed charisma, made the soldiers flinch.
“What the hell is this slave…?”
“Is he some kind of gladiator?”
Though shaken, the soldiers couldn’t afford to lose their pride.
They were still the subjugation unit, their reputation as fierce warriors their last shred of dignity.
“Get him!”
“Damn slave!”
They charged all at once, confident that even Luke couldn’t handle their combined strength.
Yet his sharp blue eyes gleamed with a dangerous excitement.
“You’re too slow.”
Years of grueling training under his father, the head of a prestigious magical family, had honed his combat skills.
Even without mastering aura, Luke Clayton had never met his match among ordinary men.
The first soldier to approach was kicked aside effortlessly.
Another was struck down with the hilt of Luke’s sword, crumpling to the ground.
Without the transcendent power of aura, battle was ruled by brute strength—and Luke had it in abundance.
“By the Ice Spirit!”
Someone attempted to cast a spell.
“You’re too slow,” Luke sneered, ready to strike again.
Luke’s desperate struggle as a swordsman to defeat a magician and gain the head of the family’s recognition had finally borne some fruit.
He managed to gain enough speed to interrupt the magician’s casting.
‘Compared to that monster, though…’
A person pretending to be a noble, whose name Luke didn’t even know, didn’t need to chant to cast magic.
He could just snap its fingers.
As if that wasn’t enough, it had unfathomable reserves of mana hidden inside its smaller frame, surging like a vast ocean.
“Th-this is impossible…”
The magician who had tried to pin down Luke collapsed to the dirt floor as well.
The slave, who had been the target of several soldiers at once, was completely unharmed.
A few shrewd soldiers quickly bolted from the scene.
“C-Captain… Cough… The captain won’t let you get away with this…”
“Shut your mouth if you know what’s good for you.”
Luke was well aware that the real challenge was only just beginning.
No matter how disgraceful this unit might be, it was still the Northern Monster Subjugation Squad.
The Captain couldn’t possibly be as pathetic as the rest.
But hearing their groans only annoyed him further.
“Ugh!”
Luke plopped himself onto the back of a defeated opponent.
Feeling triumphant about defeating such rabble was laughable at best.
This wouldn’t be enough to catch the attention of the Clayton family head, let alone defeat the purple-haired monster fair and square.
‘More importantly, where the hell did that bastard go, leaving me in a place like this?’
Grinding his teeth, Luke seethed.
‘He told me I was remarkable. That I had potential.’
No one had ever told him such things before.
‘Even treated my wrist.’
Not even his blood relatives, who only mocked him, had ever gone so far as to help him while acknowledging his ability.
‘And then he just tries to toss me aside?’
Unforgivable.
He had to take responsibility for his words.
Luke would bare every ounce of his talent, no matter how deeply buried, until that man was forced to exclaim in genuine admiration.
Until the man admitted it was worth coming here to meet him, Luke wouldn’t look away.
He sneered inwardly.
‘Think you can just walk away from a game you started? Not a chance.’
His blue eyes glinted coldly. If waiting didn’t bring him back, then—
Deliberate footsteps approached.
“Is this the slave?”
The lethargy of someone resigned to their fate echoed in the soldier’s voice, weighed down by a life of routine slaughter.
No power, no will—a man stripped of responsibility.
At least, there would be no more annoyances while he waited.
‘Are you all stupid?’
* * *
Herace spent the entire day searching, but he couldn’t find a single trace of the Bookworm in the vicinity.
‘Did it stop tampering after twisting the opening?’
If the beginning of a story is altered, it naturally veers off course, so maybe it didn’t bother with what came next.
Or perhaps it had simply amused itself with a minor prank and wandered off to another book.
‘No, that doesn’t seem right.’
It had been a thousand years since Herace had captured the Bookworm, a being notorious for sowing chaos across countless open worlds, and forged an alliance.
For it to suddenly break their long-standing pact suggested a reason.
Considering only this book, ‘The Black Sheep Swordsmanship Genius of a Magical Family,’ had been tampered with, the connection was clear.
Whatever the reason, he couldn’t yet discern it.
But it wasn’t just a hunch.
There was evidence—the Dimensional Management Bureau’s painstakingly developed Bookworm Detector.
When Herace had last checked, the Bookworm had been inside ‘The Black Sheep Swordsmanship Genius of a Magical Family’.
‘In any case, the story won’t unravel further for now.’
Good.
His priority was aligning Luke with the original plot before investigating further.
Though it was disappointing not to find any clues, what mattered was ensuring the story proceeded properly.
It was almost time.
Herace had memorized the location of the first boss’s cave to prevent further derailments.
If Luke panicked and fled, he planned to use magic to steer him back.
For now, he returned to the Subjugation Squad’s camp, where Luke was causing trouble.
“What is this garbage? You expect me to eat this?”
“W-we eat it too, really!”
“Shut it. Don’t treat me like a slave.”
Even as a disgraced noble, now a slave, Luke astonishingly had the audacity to boss around the common soldiers.
Was the world’s narrative force subtly guiding him?
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