Warhammer: Return of the Dragon.

"Of course not," Antoine said solemnly, raising his lowered head to meet Natalie's eyes.

"But every time I pick up the pen, I don't know what kind of mood to use to depict your face. Maybe one day when inspiration comes, I will be unable to suppress the strong desire in my heart and engrave you forever in the depths of my soul, but now I can't..."

"I hope this day won't last too long... Then let's get back to the story of Antitira."

The implication of Natalie's words made Antoine secretly shake his head. He could only sit on the bench as he wished and slowly tell a sad tragic story.

Arthur came over with a wine jug and a crystal glass, looking at the delicate atmosphere between the Countess and the wandering knight, and asked a straightforward question with his not-so-high emotional intelligence.

"What happened?"

Natalie gave Arthur a fierce look and told him to shut up.

The knight, who strictly abided by the rules between master and servant, silently poured a glass of wine for the two of them, then stepped back and stood in the corner waiting for the end.

Moistening his throat with the sour wine, Antoine began to continue from the previous paragraph.

"Anthetira voluntarily allowed herself to be trapped in a secluded cave. As a living person, she entered the realm of Hades..."

While Natalie was listening to the story attentively, Antoine's attention was also attracted by those eyes that were as deep and elegant as rubies.

If the world was a huge whirlpool, for Antoine, Natalie's shining eyes were the center of the whirlpool, tearing his entire soul inward bit by bit until it turned into powder-sized fragments and fell into darkness.

The long chanting did not stop after the head maid entered the residence. This serious and rule-abiding woman could feel deeply touched by this tragedy.

"While he was still conscious, he held the woman in his feeble arms. As he gasped, a stream of blood flowed down her pale face. He lay there, corpse upon corpse, and the unfortunate man finally completed his wedding in the House of Death..."

In order to make a living, Antoine, who had just arrived in Fengyu City, performed as a bard among the nobles. Initially, he only sold some exquisite and flashy poems.

But after meeting Natalie, Antoine, who saw the Countess for the first time, somehow chose a tragedy, the tragedy of "Antigone" in which he fought alone against the entire symbol system.

Through those eyes that occasionally revealed sadness, he guessed that the Countess was not as innocent and kind as she looked. Under those deep eyes, there must be something hidden in her heart...

Natalie was already in tears, choking as she wrote on the parchment the ending of Haemon. The pauses in her writing, which were clearly different from the smooth flow of the previous text, were enough to prove her feelings about the story: "He knew that his lover was a lonely martyr, but he still went to the underworld with her..."

Arthur, who was standing beside him, expressed a different view with a serious expression on his face: "No, it was disappointment in his father's dictatorship that triggered Haimon's suicide for love."

Ai Nadi, who was concerned about the integrity of the story, also stood out from behind the curtain, gritting her teeth and questioning: "Creon should also be punished, what is his outcome?!"

Three people, three different ways of thinking.

Antoine had no time to think about why the three people who grew up together had become like this. He looked at the sky and found that night was about to fall. He drank the last bit of wine in the glass, slapped his thigh and prepared to leave.

"The ending of the story...even I don't want to tell it myself. In a few days, I will organize the whole story into a written article and present it to Her Excellency the Countess. It's getting late, and I should go back."

Without waiting for Natalie's response, Antoine hurried out. If he continued talking, given her persistent character, she would definitely ask him to continue the prequel story.

……

As soon as he left the upper city, Antoine breathed a sigh of relief, pushed open the wooden door of the courtyard, prepared to pack up and head straight to the orphanage. But just as he was about to unlock the iron lock with the key, a sharp male voice suddenly came from behind him.

"You are the descendant of the Masail family?"

When Antoine heard the family name, his pupils suddenly shrank. He obviously did not expect that someone in faraway Aldolf actually knew the name of Sayil.

His first reaction was not to ask who the speaker was. Instead, he reached to his waist with his right hand at lightning speed, pulled out a dagger, and stabbed backwards.

Years of training made the fine steel dagger as fast as an arrow, but the speaker was even faster. When Antoine stabbed out the dagger and turned around to observe, his palm had been firmly grasped, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not break free.

But I still have a dagger...

His empty left hand reached to his waist again. This time, Antoine no longer attacked by straightening his arm, but stabbed from under the armpit in a very stealthy manner.

With the sound of tearing cloth and the feedback of the dagger piercing into the flesh, Antoine knew that he had succeeded.

The person behind him did not cry out in pain as he imagined he would, but instead there was a hint of appreciation in his tone.

“Good job, but still no.”

A fist wrapped in gauntlet appeared in Antoine's eyes, and in less than half a second, it had landed on his abdomen.

For a moment, Antoine felt that his body was torn apart with the abdomen as the center, and perhaps a bloody hole in the flesh had appeared under the terrifying force.

Flying in the air, he could only sigh helplessly before his death, saying that he had been hiding for so long, and what was coming would eventually come.

When he fell to the ground, the hard floor made him feel a sharp pain in his back. He felt as if he had lost his strength and was unable to move. He could only watch the defendant walk towards him.

Antoine smiled sarcastically and coughed twice: "I didn't expect you could catch up here. I'm really surprised."

The man whose face was covered by the tall brim of his hat was stunned. He straightened his body and looked down at Antoine lying on the ground indifferently: "You seem to have some misunderstandings about me, Antoine Masayl."

"Forget your misunderstanding. I ran from the north to the south of the empire. You came to Fengyu City from a distance of thousands of miles. If you are not chasing me, are you here to send Jin Mazi away?"

"Hunting?" The mysterious man murmured in a low voice, seeming to be confused by Antoine's words.

When he was silent for a while, Antoine found that there was no hollowness in his body, so he clenched his fists.

run!
Just as Antoine pressed his palms to the ground and prepared to use the momentum to run directly out of the yard, the mysterious man seemed to have finished thinking and said in a very subtle tone: "I never thought that the son of Sayil would flee like a wild dog. Is this simple yard your home, or a disguised hiding place?"

After these questions, Antoine looked solemn. He stopped thinking about escaping and stood up, holding the sharp dagger in one hand and pointing it directly at the mysterious man.

"The past I tried to escape from has never left me... But before I give up, I will tear a piece of your flesh off."

"Is that so... But you have no chance. Traitors cannot be tolerated by Ulthuan..." (End of this chapter)