Most of the nobles arrived at the gathering in sparkling jewel studded carriages. Many of these carriages boasted beautiful, thoroughbred horses that could have paid for the average commoner’s yearly living costs one hundred times over. A handful chose instead to boast their superiority by showing off what amazing technology they were able to get their hands on, showing up in the most advanced horseless carriages they could find. Yes, their arrival at the gathering was truly a peacocking event, one that would show all the onlookers who’d lined up just how much their station should be envied, as well as trying to one-up all of the colleagues that they could manage.
Noth had no need for such silly displays.
He arrived at the front door completely on foot, strolling into the venue without giving a single bit of a show.
Of course, this choice didn’t go unnoticed by the nobles who’d already arrived.
Noth knew there would be whispers and murmurs as soon as he entered, but they were only doubled by the pauper-like way he’d shown up. No matter how nice and noble-like his clothes might have been, or how he carried himself, none of that mattered. Now, the only thing on everyone’s lips was his lacklustre entrance.
Noth knew he was pouring more fuel on the already lit fire.
However, Noth found it hard to care.
If anything, a small perverse bit of him simply wondered how creatively the nobles could attack him over this.
Would they simply call him poor and speculate upon that?
Or maybe would they be able to come up with something even more scathing?
In a way, this was a litmus test for him to see just how badly everything else might possibly go.
The better they did insulting him with something so simple here, the worse they could do once they really dug into the meat of things.
Although they were certainly keeping their voices down to discuss Noth with each other, they completely weren’t trying to keep them low enough that he couldn’t hear them. In fact, on multiple occasions he could hear someone utter his noble name, as well as other emphasized words that were said louder on purpose to catch his attention. They didn’t even try to hide their eyes that were fixed on him, or the malice that they held. Shockingly, though, not a one of them actually stepped forward to directly confront him, and everyone simply kept to their little pockets of friends, giving Noth a wide berth as he entered further into the hall.
Truth be told, Noth was slightly unimpressed. If isolating and gossiping about him was the worst that they could do with the bait he’d tossed out, then this was going to be a disappointingly boring night. It wasn’t like Noth wanted to have hostile people jumping down his throat, but when you walk into the lion’s den, one rather expects to be met by lions instead of clawing cats. He’d been so ready to be confronted that now all of his preparation was looking like it might just have been a waste.
The teen sighed and looked around, deciding to make his way to the refreshment table. All types of fancy hors d'oeuvres had been laid out for the nobles, and many of them Noth had never even heard of before, along with ones that he’d always thought about trying but had never really gotten the chance to try. The food hadn’t committed any kind of crimes, and there was no way it could possibly hurt him with his angel’s protection, so why not enjoy what little nice things he could find? It had been ages since hostility had ever been able to affect his stomach, and he had no image to keep up in front of people who were already determined to hate him from the start. Why not try the whole spread and see what he liked? Maybe when he got back home he could recreate them for the children and Elillith, and see what they liked.
As Noth decided which hors d'oeuvre he’d start with, his angel’s smile, which had been stiff since they'd arrived, steadily fell.
She’d been all smiles and teasing on the way here, but now the good mood she’d tried so hard to hold on to had finally been marred. She’d tried to fool herself into thinking positively about this, but in the end she was reminded how rotten of a situation Noth had been put into.
“You’re just realizing that now? I expected this.”
Serris sighed and frowned harder.
Noth gave a small empty smile at her words. How nice it was that he was enough of a threat that the pope was taking him seriously. This was truly a show of how much progress he’d made. Yes, he’d graduated from a thorn in the paw to an actual threat.
If only Noth could feel genuinely happy about that fact.
Instead, he simply went back to eating.
After a while, Serris’s frown slowly dissolved away, eventually being replaced by an inquisitive look. She flitted around and looked at Noth from many different angles with her hand on her chin, and in the end she stopped next to him and tilted her head. It wasn’t until Noth finally looked her way and raised an eyebrow that she finally spoke.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Noth was such a naturally curious person that he would constantly ask questions about any myriad of things. In fact, for many years he’d constantly wished to know about the servants around him in the Kieran manor and the people he’d meet on the streets of the nearby town. Even after he’d become a lord, he still didn’t stop asking her about his townspeople. So the fact that the always ever curious Noth who practically rained questions on her had been perfectly quiet about everything was… odd.
The teen continued to look at her impassively for a short while, but eventually his gaze turned back to the food once again, picking out his next succulent bite.
“Why should I? Do any of them matter?”
It took a second for his words to register, but Serris soon burst out laughing, wiping away her nonexistent tears as she did so.
Serris scanned the crowd and then let out a giggle.
“Ah… I suppose when you say it like that I can’t say you’d be wrong… But you’re missing one important fact: I have no plans to ever care about the lackeys of a monster. My mind has no space in it to wonder about this horde of performing beasts trying to get my attention. I’m only going to focus on one person and one person alone today, and that’s the man who ruined my and my parent’s lives. After all, why care about the stones making the road rocky when there’s a boulder threatening to smash you?”
His eyes never turned back to her, but Serris could still see the intensity in them. She quivered for a second, and for a quick moment she showed a weak expression. Her heart ached anew for how tough the small boy she’d always looked after had been forced to become, and a tiny piece of her couldn’t help but feel that it was somehow all her fault. But soon that weak visage was replaced inexplicably by a look of pure love.
Noth quickly glanced at her with a confused frown, trying to understand what strange leap of logic had run through her head, but he almost immediately gave up trying; He knew he would never be able to follow her strange thought process. All he could do was try to ignore how uncomfortable her gaze was making him.
Sadly, the eager hyenas in the room took his glances and mumbles towards his invisible angel to mean that their bullying was having an effect.
It seemed it was decidedly time to move on to the next step.
Two men came forth. Besides their differing builds, they both seemed to give off the same ‘superior’ aura, as if everyone else around them were simply beneath them. Their outfits were overly luxurious and cumbersome looking, however they wore them like they were born in them. And their faces… Though they clearly wore different expressions, the end result was the same: Obvious disdain.
Serris let out a small gasp of what sounded to be amusement laced with venom. She bent over cutely so that she could make it into Noth’s field of view, and softly spoke as if she were letting him in on some kind of conspiracy.
Noth raised his eyebrows slightly and lazily turned his head in the direction that his angel was gesturing. His eyes immediately felt strained as they took in the layers upon gaudy layers of gems that were sewn all over the men’s attire. Perhaps if there were more light in the room, the two of them would have glittered as brightly as two garish stars. Who knows, maybe that’s what they were going for. However, the dark disgust in their faces certainly diminished the effect enough for Noth to only need to squint a little bit.
It seemed that the show was finally about to start.
How fun.
The teen quickly snagged a glass of champagne off of the refreshments table in case he needed to stealthily talk to his angel, and then fully turned himself in the two men’s direction, waiting for them to strike up a conversation. At first, when they stopped in front of him, they looked like either one of them might just burst out yelling indignantly at him at any moment, but instead they soon cooled down a bit and simply looked him over without saying a word, one with a disgusted look, and the other with a scrutinizing glare.
After a few minutes of the uncomfortable looks, as well as a few sips to pass the time, Noth eventually gave up, deciding that waiting on them to finally get to the point had turned quite boring, and so he turned back to resume his taste tests without a word. This action clearly seemed to anger the two men further, as one of them could be heard clicking his tongue, while the other quickly marched forward and smacked the picked up appetizer out of Noth’s hand.
Chuckles filled the watching crowd.
Serris let out a disbelieving gasp, with a flap of her wings accentuating it.
Noth’s eyes laid sadly on the wasted bit of food that now lay across the opulent carpeting.
The food had done nothing wrong to deserve such treatment.
Perhaps Noth had grown up being bullied in such a way, but yes, it had indeed been many years. No one had had the audacity to treat him in such a way in quite a long time. At most he’d expected ‘civilized’ and ‘cultured’ people such as nobles to behave better than the thugs that had beaten him as a child. How silly of him to expect such a thing from people who he already knew to be impolite. He wouldn’t find a modicum of manners and respect in such a place.
And what’s more, such people accustomed to privilege wouldn’t care about some small scrap of food. Maybe only he, who’d been starved out for years and had been forced to scrape rotten food off the ground, was the only one in this room who would feel upset over the tiny wasted scrap.
He should have expected it, but this gathering was really reminding him of his past a bit too much.
Of course, it was now, when Noth was having an awful time trying to remove his almost boiling eyes from the small tragedy in front of him, that one of the two men finally felt that it was time to speak. He was clearly emboldened, thinking that the shocked look on Noth’s face meant that he was starting to learn his place. He straightened up his posture and wiped his hand that had touched Noth with a handkerchief as if he were removing a layer of filth.
“How dare you not greet us first, you uncultured swine?! Haven’t you learned even a small bit of etiquette?”
The second man let out a soft snort and leaned towards his accomplice, talking a little more softly as if he were trying to be polite.
“Come now, don’t you know the poor boy’s origin? Surely he’s never even heard of the word ‘etiquette’ before, let alone been taught it.”
The two smiled wickedly towards each other, and then both of their gazes quickly whipped back towards Noth.
“I say we should teach the fool a few manners, then, don’t you?”
“Yes, that sounds like a splendid idea.”