The Young Master in the Shadows

Chapter 264: Elvish

It was already dusk when Lara returned to the mansion, where she quickly headed to her room, took a quick shower with El, then went downstairs for dinner.

“How was your sleepover, Miss Lara?” Hilda asked as she prepared the table with the girls, they usually had their meal together. Victor made sure that they saw each other as family.

“It was ok…” Lara said with a smile on her face as El who sat beside her secretly nodded. Lara made a lot of new friends. As a girl who grew up without any friends, she felt refreshed. Although that girl Stephani was a little snobbish, she was passable.

“Good! You must remember not to trust people easily though!” Hilda warned as she watched the other girls take their seats. Aria and Hana seemed to be getting along rather fine. Monica was still feeling awkward but Theta, who became much more confident lately, seemed to be leading her by the nose, so she would be fine.

“I understand…” Lara said as she pouted. Her mother and teachers on the island had already taught her how to be cautious.

“Good! Now, let me introduce you…” Hilda said as she clapped her hands and a little girl whom Lara didn’t see before stepped forward. She was wearing a black suit that fit her perfectly and made her look super cool.

“This is Yin. Young master Victor has assigned her to be your personal bodyguard!” Hilda said, nudging Yin seemed a little distracted inspecting the people around the table. That young master Victor was definitely a pervert. Thankfully he seemed to be only interested in older... much older girls.

“Ah… Nice to meet you, Young miss. Please take care of me from now on!” she said as she awkwardly bowed as Hilda taught her. Yesterday she had a crash course in proper etiquette.

“Ah… Nice to meet you too! I will be in your care too!” Lara said with a sweet smile. She liked having new friends and this girl Yin looked really pretty nice. And her esteemed brother would only choose the best of the best to be her bodyguard!

“Come sit with us, there are no strangers here!” Lara added the same way Victor usually invited the girls. Yin looked for approval from Hilda then grabbed a seat next to Lara where she sat and remained silent as the girls began to question Lara about her sleepover.

“Where is esteemed brother? Didn’t he return from Newlure city?” Lara asked after putting a slice of potato in her small mouth.

“Ah… He had to go on a field trip with his friends at the academy…” Hilda quickly answered. “He should return anytime today…” she said, it was just an F-ranked dungeon after all.

“Oh….” Lara pouted as she continued her food, she wanted to ask for permission to invite her new friends for a sleepover here.

Yin, who had finished observing everything, sighed and began to eat as she disabled her Soul Vision skill, before rubbing her eyes which hurt a little.

She had just inspected her new mistress, Lara. To her surprise, the girl’s soul had something wrong. It was very pure but somehow it felt strange. Like a withering flower.

Victor had warned her not to reveal this soul skill to anyone though, so she could only tell him what he saw when he got back.

But what really distracted her earlier was not Lara, but the little girl beside her whom Lara called El. Why was her soul so damn bright? Looking at her was looking straight at the sun! It hurt her eyes!

She suddenly paused and looked straight at a girl who was awkwardly chatting with the other girls. They called her Monica. she had a demon’s scent on her!

It was very faint, but Yin could smell it. Was she a demon? Yin inspected her soul while using her hand to shield her eyes from El’s dazzling soul light… No, Monica was perfectly normal. It was not her. She must have met or touched a demon in the last couple of days!!

….

After finishing with the twins' revenge, scamming Rebecca into signing a very ‘fair’ contract and getting some intimate sleep in his large sleeping bag, Victor, with his ever-expanding entourage of pretty maids, made his way through the garden.

Yes, Rebecca was now with him and she had become one of his dogs!.... It was in her contract. Victor even put an electrified leash on her.

The girls had to ask him why he had that thing on him, but he didn’t reply and just smiled smugly. He didn’t want to disappoint them by telling them he just took it from one of the men he killed. He wanted to create the illusion that he was always prepared.

As for Rebecca, he was conflicted about her, But there were a couple of reasons why he decided to spare her.

First of all, he didn’t want a lot of his classmates to die as that might cause the wedding to be delayed.

Secondly, like the two girls Lina and Mila, he planned to expand his spy network, and a girl with Mimic skills was really precious! It was an uncommon skill after all. Victor planned to make this girl join Alpha’s spy organization after leaving the dungeon.

Thirdly, she was still young and can be trained to his liking.

Lastly, Victor needed a scapegoat to escape the eyes of his enemies, he was planning to use Alex, but that idiot got herself sent immediately to the lowest floor, so Rebecca! Would work as a good temporary replacement.

As for his feeling of resentment about what she did in his past life, he will make sure she would feel them in her bones when he trains her later...

"he he he..." he began to smile evilly then paused and threw a dagger at a nearby tree, making another poor player fall to his death.

Now they were heading toward the base that Gustave used before. The skeleton queen’s boss chamber.

Along the way, Victor made sure to hunt every player who thought those girls looked yummy. Victor was in fact using the girls as a lure for the said players as he disguised himself.

One must know that Victor had already succeeded in killing all the leaders of the three biggest groups in the garden. Gustave, the boss who was after Mana and the skinny guy who attacked him with Rebecca earlier. Only scattered shrimps were left at the moment, and Victor had no plan to go after them as long as they didn’t try to get his toys.

In the end, they reached their destination after eliminating 31 Players and 14 Skeletons.

Victor looked at the grand cathedral-like building and sighed. This was the first boss’s room! It was built on the fringes of the garden.

“Victor!” A short pretty girl jumped into his embrace as soon as he walked through the grand doors! It was none other than Lin who as soon as she reached this floor was instructed by Victor to come here before him and clean this place up.

Victor casually hugged her and patted her head as he inspected the hall. The floor was full of corpses that she cut into pieces. No, they were undead. Gustave must have left them to guard this place, and after he got killed they began to roam freely. That guy probably didn’t have any living men with him, as all of his followers were undead.

“Are there any living survivors here?” Victor asked Lin as he slowly let go of her.

“No… There were some fresh blood stains in one of the inner chambers though!” she said as she followed Victor who began to walk around inspecting this place. She sneakily pulled his hand and held it as she began to walk beside him.

Although this place was designated as a boss room, it was more like a throne hall of some palace with a high gilded ceiling and long faded murals filling the walls. The girls walking beside Victor began to slowly walk around and inspect the area curiously.

“What with all of these gibberish symbols?” Mila, one of the two girls Victor saved, asked as she inspected the engravings that accompanied the murals on the walls.

“They seem to be some kind of writing…” Lin replied as she tried really hard to ignore Lily who was shooting daggers into her… bam… Lin who was distracted bumped into Victor who stopped abruptly at the largest mural in the hall. It depicted a pretty woman with armies of skeletons coming out of a strange coffin and kneeling in front of her.

Below the mural, there was a long text that seemed to be describing the scene above.

“Young master, can you read this?” Mina asked as she watched him squint at the text.

“Yes…” Victor replied, surprising the girls.

This language was not the one he knew, but it was very close to one he learned before when he worked as a librarian. High elvish!

Among all the possible languages in the world, the Elvish language had a very distinct feature. It was timeless.

Elves considered themselves better than anyone else, and their language holy so they disdained speaking in any other. Coupled with their long life span it meant that the language didn’t change a lot throughout the time and between the worlds, the elves sprawled through.

That’s why elvish was considered one of the 10 Lingua francae of the universe. And Victor in his research had learned 6 of those to some varying degrees of proficiency. The other four languages were impossible to learn for a human.

“Really?” Rebecca asked in surprise. “What does it say?” she added earning herself a glare from Lily and the girls. She quickly shut up remembering her position. She was at the bottom of the food chain in this group.

Victor didn’t seem to mind the question though. It was a rare chance for him to show off in front of his girls.

“It tells the story of the owner of this place. My Mistress….. No, sorry, wrong subject…. A queen… she was probably that same skeleton queen boss,” Victor said as he carefully began to read the text. Elvish was not a language he liked as every letter could mean different things depending on the social status of both the writer and the reader… earlier he was reading it as a subject to the queen.

“The … queen who conquered the something-something grand dungeon…. Did what…. Gave blowjob? Ah… No …. Ah yes…. She spared the demon boss and offered to make a deal with him and spare him in exchange for him serving her forever and granting her kingdom unlimited prosperity and…. Bananas? No, that's the word for fruit!….. Strange…. Anyway, This mural was built to commemorate that scam…. No...Deal… yes it’s a deal!“ Victor said, affirming his words. He didn’t recognize all the letters, but he got the general meaning.

Although the mural didn’t say what happened next, Victor could guess. Deals with demons never go well.

Except for Lin who thought that Victor looked really good when he had that expert look, the other girls looked at Victor while unsure if he was joking earlier or did he really read that... Even Lily who was taught to speak 5 languages proficiently as an assassin had never seen anything like this before... Not that she doubted Victor, but lately she began having this strange feeling that he seemed to be always scamming the people around him.

“What language is this young master?” Mana asked just to be sure.

“Elvish, High Elvish to be precise… I met an old hidden master once. He spoke it to show off, and I made him teach me…” Victor lied casually, he learned this from one of the pretty slave elf maids Yulian gifted to him... she was a princess or something....

“Oh…. “ The girls didn’t know how to reply to that.

“What about the symbol drawn on the coffin?” Lin suddenly asked, making Victor frown and look up again. He didn’t notice it before because it was a little faded.

“This is not an elvish letter, but a hell symbol…” he said with a frown, a very deep frown. “Change of plans…” he said as he turned to face the girls with a very grave expression. Hell was the name that people gave to the demon's original world. Any demons who came from there were not to be trifled with. Those guys were the real deal!

“The levels blew would be much more dangerous than I expected, so Mina, Mana, Mila, Gina…”

“I am Lina!” she protested.

“Really?... Whatever, too many names to remember… Anyway, you girls with Rebecca will now make your way upstairs to the top floor then wait there,” he said. “Only Lin and Lily will accompany me.”

Victory really wanted to send Lily away too, but he didn’t dare to. She would not like it at all if he was left alone with Lin. Taking care of Lily alone would not be too troublesome. He also wanted to level her up a bit before the wedding so that she would have enough stamina to face what would happen that night…

“But…Young master…” The twins suddenly said. They wanted to protest.

“No Butts, your safety is my top priority. Downstairs, with your level, you will only hinder me!” Victor scolded then turned to the two other girls Mila and Lina. “From now on, the two of you will act as if nothing happened between us. After the dungeon gets cleared you will contact my team by the number on the card I gave you. The girl named Alpha would tell you what to do!” he explained before looking at Rebecca, who began to vibrate… no shake a little.

“After the dungeon gets cleared you do the same, and my men... women will contact you,” he corrected himself, “ For now, I have a mission for you though! If you do it well, I wouldn't mind forgiving your past mistakes. I might even start giving you a good salary!” he said, making her nod like a chicken.

“What should I do…” she asked.

“Mimic me!” He said, “Simply from now until the end of this raid you will be acting as an arrogant young master…. A slightly injured young master!” He added, taking a spare ring and giving it to her.

“Oh…” she nodded as she grabbed the ring and wondered on what finger should she put it.

“This one has an extravagant tent and food… Use it with the twins when you reach the upper floor. Make sure that all the teachers and the students think that I am there!” he explained winking at the twins who nodded unwillingly… They really wanted to go with him, but this mission was important too.

With this, Victor might be able to feel the destiny sect, who would surely review the reports after this raid was finished.