Chapter 30: “Nobles”

*Creak* The ornate golden door was pushed open by Vienna's dainty hands, its supposedly well-oiled hinges letting out an unceremoniously loud cry of protest against the forceful treatment it was receiving from the beautiful marquis.

'Why is it creaking like that?' Arthur inwardly questioned, the disparity between the door's gaudy appearance and the unholy sound of its rusted hinges filling his body with an odd sense of unease. It shouldn't be making that sound, not in such a pristine place as this where gold lined every utensil, every object. In fact, in Arthur's most ornate of opinions, it shouldn't have made any sound whatsoever, doing its duty as a door ideally without the need to express an opinion. However, the boy's query would ultimately remain unanswered as more pressing issues sprung to the forefront of the peasant's overworked mind.

Reflecting in Arthur's dirty brown eyes was not the picturesque scene of grandeur he had oh so expected from a place commonly referred to as the home of the tyrant but something much more sinister. The golden facade was gone, dropped and discarded like the unneeded mask it was, and in its place lay the true face of the lucky cat casino. Extravagant tables cramped with hopeful and despairing occupants who longed for their big break no longer filled the empty space…nothing did. Well, nothing would be an overstatement. The occasional chair, the odd standard piece of furniture, randomly appeared in the depraved room though their presence lacked the flair the main hall possessed in heaps. The walls were painted in a thick coat of midnight black that seemed to suck in the already feeble amount of candlelight that failed to illuminate the area with its warming hue but instead filled the room with an odd sense of despair? Dread? Arthur couldn't pinpoint what emotion the dark space filled him with, but he knew one thing…he didn't like it.

Though these weren't the only apparent changes in the scenery, far from it, taking the place of the previously middle-class men and women were their seemingly royal counterparts, all dressed in the most exorbitant and in-your-face kinds of clothes. They paraded around the desolate room with their faces veiled and sometimes masked, like a masquerade ball, mingling with one another and moving around the empty space without a care in the world. It seemed lawless. The lower upper-class such as the presumed knights and barons were mixing with those of higher statuses without a care in the world, a feat incomprehensible to Arthur, who knew that in this world, status, power and most importantly, bloodlines were everything and that those who possessed these traits in mass would rather die than mingle with the lesser population, an action clearly demonstrated by Arthur's loving master William who never missed an opportunity to torment the young boy in anguish of the fact that he couldn't simply execute him.

The loud, egotistical voices of the many echoed across the empty room, their tones uncaring towards their partners as they discussed business and, well, "other" topics with one another. However, their voices weren't the only sound that greeted Arthur's opened ears. He could hear distant cheers, cries of glory and, more importantly, the hollow thud of physical contact, from where though was a mystery to the perplexed peasant whose apathetic gaze scanned the room hoping to find the source of such commotion but ultimately found nothing.

Walking into the unsettling room, all eyes turned upon the new arrivals, their superior gazes quickly glossing over the overwhelmingly beautiful yet veiled figure of Vienna so as to not fall into the pit of lust that her sensual visage exuded without care and lingering on the exposed face of the pitiful Arthur. Under the watchful eyes of the collective, Arthur's body instinctively lowered itself. His previously upright head immediately fell, while his apathetic gaze became downtrodden. He didn't like this, not one bit. Their gazes felt all too familiar. He felt like a worm. Like his life held less value than the stagnant air surrounding them. And it was in this moment that Arthur finally managed to name the emotions that had previously befallen his mind. It wasn't unease. No, it wasn't something as simple as that. Arthur felt ostracised, excluded. In this room full of royalty, he felt unneeded. He felt like he shouldn't exist, like this was a world that he should never have been able to glimpse, let alone enter and that his mere presence here was some blasphemous act that went against the very nature of this world.

However, even though such inner turmoil occurred in the young boy's frantic mind, he still managed to pull himself away from the topic and focus on a more pressing issue, the issue of his strength. 'They're not scanning me, are they? Are they using their mana sense, fuck, I shouldn't have come here! Why did Vienna even let me enter this room when she knew there'd be so many royals? There's no benefit in me getting found out here. I wanted to make my big appearance at a later date! ' Arthur inwardly screamed, frantically attempting to suppress his overwhelming strength with his negligent amount of mana control and ultimately failing in the process. An action he took in vain as when he raised his sultry head Arthur didn't spy the shocked gazes of the masses but rather their passive-aggressive scowls. They hadn't scanned him. They couldn't have. Their expressions were too neutral, too passive to have witnessed Arthur's monstrous "Talent." 'What's going on?' Arthur couldn't help but question upon seeing the passive-aggressive glares of the group.

{To answer the host's question, the royals here have still yet to attempt or even think about trying to sense your strength. It seems to be common etiquette for them not to pry into the level of one another, and besides, in their eyes, you're not even worth the effort,}

The system informed to which Arthur could only suppress a wry smile. 'Thanks for the compliment,' Arthur helplessly murmured as his feet began to begrudgingly move forwards, guided by Vienna's sudden yet subtle strength.

The couple sluggishly moved through the crowd of royals, narrowly dodging many of the occupants while occasionally being stopped by the stray knight whose alcohol-influenced mind brought with it an unnatural and misplaced sense of confidence.

"What's a pretty girl like you doing with a kid like that?" One knight slovenly questioned, his windswept brown hair dancing on his balding head.

"He's my servant," Vienna begrudgingly answered, trying her best to keep the conversation as brief as feasibly possible and immediately distancing from the drunken man, who, like a pest, trailed after the pair, his steps shaky and eyes clouded wine spilt forth from his swaying glass with seemingly no remorse staining his flashy clothes in a horrific red.

"Hey~" He swayed, "Why don't you ditch the kid, and what say you and me have a quick one-on-one session if you know what I mean," He hiccuped, his clouded eyes leering at the passive Arthur who could only spare the man a meek nod of "Subservience," He couldn't act up right now, not if front of so many people, he had to remain calm.

'I want to kill him,' Arthur inwardly blurted, a seething rage taking hold of his usually calm and calculative heart. He didn't know why but in recent months, his emotions had begun to run rampant inside his normally collected mind. Just seeing someone speak or even touch Vienna, Charlotte, and even Iris was enough to make Arthur lose his cool and crave their instantaneous demise. He had reasoned that the childish hormones had brought about such emotions in his brain though this theory still lacked any solid ground to stand on. Still, Arthur knew one thing, and that was that he had to get past this temperamental stage as soon as possible. He couldn't enter Eden academy with this state of mind. Less he wished to bring about untold calamity.

"No, thank you," Vienna apathetically stated, slapping away the man's out-stretched hand and quickly pulling Arthur away from the stunned knight whose face was now a cherry red with rage. Never before had he been so disrespected. Even the head of the furfur clan, his boss had never belittled him to such a degree, at least not to his knowledge.

"WHAT!" The man yelled, attracting the attention of pretty much all the nobles present. "Do you not know who I am? I'm Roland Tybalt, leader of the Furfur knights! I'm a noble!" The man angrily screamed, his free hand clenching into a tightly balled fist while his occupied one spilt the entire contents of his glass, typically, such a display of drunken rage might have scared the still new Arthur, but in this case, the boy struggled to suppress an ear to ear grin.

'Is he a fucking idiot,' Arthur inwardly berated, amused by the man's apparent stupidity. 'Everyone here's a noble, and what's more, he's bragging about being a knight, the lowest rank possible to a marquis nonetheless. Geez, I thought I was an idiot when I walked into this room, but he clearly takes the cake for being the dumbest person in the room. He well and truly is a fucking dipshit.' With such thoughts bouncing around in Arthur's gleeful mind, the boy couldn't help but release an agitating grin. Arthur liked this. He liked to see this man flailing about attempting to justify his existence in the room, and more importantly, he wanted to see what would happen if he provoked him just a tiny bit more. 'Doing this won't make anyone suspicious of my strength, will it?' Arthur quickly debated his mind, already having formulated the perfect plan of attack to get on the knight's nerves

So with an agitating grin spread across his face and a snickering laugh, Arthur looked the man in his bloodshot eyes. "I'm sorry, mister, but your claim to being a noble doesn't seem to hold much power here," Arthur politely informed, a gentle smile momentarily replacing his agitating grin, "Maybe try bragging about something else? You're balding head, for example. It seems to be quite a feat to be able to keep it like that for the past couple of years," Arthur continued. Silence filled the room for what seemed like an eternity as the man attempted to process Arthur's stunning remark. He had been insulted. The head of Furfurs knights had been so effortlessly mocked by a child, a servant child no less, and when such realisation dawned upon the man's drunken mind, his face exploded into a violent crimson. Such mockery wouldn't stand. He wouldn't allow it, not from a servant, not from anyone. He was a noble. No matter how low his title was, he still held great pride in this fact, too much pride, one would say, for a man that had decided to hit on an infatuated marquis. Still, pride nonetheless, a fact that Arthur had so effortlessly taken, deduced and used against the man within seconds of their meeting, he couldn't kill him. But he sure as hell could get him removed from his position amongst the upper echelons. Arthur was petty, and more importantly, he had Vienna with him, the current head of the Zepar family that held such great ties with the Furfur family one could say they were bound together.

"Y-Y-You, You brat!" The man screamed, his mind a tempest of violent thoughts, all of which centred around the figure of this slightly cute child. "H-How dare you insult-" However, before he could even finish his sentence, he was cut off by the sensual tone that could only be generated from Vienna's graceful body.

"How dare he what? How dare he make a point? You mean nothing here, everyone's a royal, and yet you still seem to cherish this one fact like it's your lifeblood," Vienna sensually stated, "Now I wonder what's going to happen once I spill this little misadventure of yours over to your boss, you know me and madame Furfur are quite close friends, and I'm sure she'd much rather keep herself and her land in my good graces rather than go out of her way to protect some stray dog who doesn't even know his place in the world," Vienna continued her words resonating in the man's drunken mind and turning his face a pale white, sweat poured profusely out of every inch of his exposed skin while his bloodshot eyes seemed to quiver in their place, suddenly the effects of the alcohol that had previously filled his mind with an overwhelming sense of confidence where nowhere to be found. He was scared, Arthur could tell. This man was in a pit of despair, and yet instead of feeling remorse for his scummy and manipulative actions, Arthur's mind became clouded with a strange sense of pleasure. He was enjoying this. He derived unknowing joy from seeing the confident man's life crumble before his very eyes.

"Now~ Why don't you get out of here before I request for security to come take you," Vienna stated with an unrestrained smile of sadistic glee. No one should dare interrupt her time with Arthur~. She was getting her revenge against the man that so boldly hit on her in the presence of her dearly beloved, an action comparable to a cardinal sin in Vienna's obsessive mind, and such a sin deserves its rightful punishment. 'I'll have him killed later,' Vienna absentmindedly commented, images of her household's very own torture chamber flashing like a strobe light in Vienna's addled brain feeding her with new ideas on how she could make the man pay for his misgivings.

"A-Ah-AHH!" The man screamed, breaking down on the floor before the couple who merely observed his breakdown with adamant joy in their hearts. 'He really is an idiot!' Arthur inwardly grinned, continuing his prior beratement of the man, 'He hasn't even bothered to ask Vienna to back up her claims at all. For all he knows, she could be lying through her teeth about her connection to the Furfur clan, and yet here he is breaking down on the ground after having his whole life destroyed in front of him,' Arthur continued, unaware of the absurdity his statement carried.

"Well then, shall we continue our little journey Arthur," Vienna sweetly hummed, her hold of the boy tightening. "Now that there's no pests to bother us, it should only take a matter of minutes for us to reach the meeting room,"

"P-Please don't tell madame Furfur, I-I'll do anything!!" The man screamed in a futile attempt to reconcile his relationship with the departing Arthur and Vienna. However, his pleas, his heartfelt yells, ultimately went unheard as the couple simply turned their backs on the crying man with no remorse present in their rapidly beating hearts. His life from this point forth was in their hands. He was a toy for Vienna to play with, to break, a fact both Arthur and Vienna were aware of but one they felt no need to complain about.

Soon the gentle, rhythmic pitter-patter of Arthur and Vienna's synchronised footsteps joined the mass of sound that once again filled the previously silent room as many of the nobles entertained themselves in speculation over Vienna's identity and, more so, whether her threats truly held any power over the withering man. The pair were a mystery to the masses, Vienna because her presence had never been spotted in the rambunctious place prior to this moment, and Arthur, well, no one really talked about him. Sure there was the occasional query about the boy's purpose in the room, but that was all. It was like he was air to the nobles who had previously taken great joy in the child's mockery of the lower-ranking man.

Though soon enough, the passing sounds of boisterous laughter and hushed gossip removed themselves from both Arthur and Vienna's minds as they passed through the spacious room and promptly arrived at a dark wood door, with steel hinges shaped into the most gorgeous of flowers and ornate gold encrusted panels the monument stood before Arthur with a daunting scale of nobility, it had no need for the gaudy exorbitant amounts of gold that its fellow gateways possessed in the lower levels of the casino nor did it care for any finely encrusted gems that gave it's brethren their artificial aura of aristocracy, no, despite lacking all the features a peasant would assume to be mandatory for a nobles possession the simplicity of the door's design exuded more nobility than all of the other items in the lower floors combined.

Still, in the eyes of Vienna, the door's aura meant nothing. Her gaze didn't even linger on the finely sculpted hinges and instead instantly directed themselves to the bronze door knob that poked out of the sculpted piece of art with apparent defiance before grabbing hold of the mechanism and giving it a violent twist. *Eek* The door slowly swung open, revealing yet another dark area, the polished oak wood flooring that had previously lay underfoot in the midnight black room was now nowhere to be found, replaced by the hard grey texture of what looked to be stone while the already scarce amount of lighting dissipated filling the abyssal corridor with absolute darkness so thick that even Arthur struggled to see any distance greater than a few centimetres, his hands were gone, his nose was gone, everything was gone, consumed by the void of darkness. The only thing that remained to guide the boy through this almighty abyss was the soothing warmth generated from Vienna's clasped hands.

*Step, step, step* The gentle steps of Arthur and Vienna soon began to echo against the tightly compact walls of the corridor, the sound of their journey serving as the only stimuli to occupy the pair's weary minds as they continuously trudged through the seemingly endless expanse, that was until Arthur heard it, a distant noise, a sound he couldn't quite make out but one still unique enough to set itself apart from the monotonous steps. And with every stride forward, that sound only grew in volume and clarity. If at the start it was nothing more than a gentle echo, a ghostly reverberation that one could easily mistake for a simple trick of the mind, now it was a deafening roar, haughty laughter and boisterous cheers filled Arthur's alert ears guiding him towards the source of it all while at the same time a more subtle sound added itself to the unruly mixture, the same sound Arthur had heard earlier of distant flesh upon flesh contact though this time it was much louder.

'What's going on?' Arthur could only helplessly wonder, his mind too perplexed by the strange assortment of stimuli to create a steady image of what could be happening in the room up ahead, a room Arthur managed to catch a brief glimmer of through the cracks in what looked to be yet another door, a gentle light serving as the only sign to his escape blended into the grey stone flooring. At the same time, Vienna placed her hand against the new sensation of the invisible door before giving it a rough push and flooding the dreary corridor with a light so bright that it momentarily blinded the stunned peasant.

When Arthur regained his senses, what greeted his dilated pupils left him both baffled and angered, tens if not hundreds of noble men and women all congregated around the centre of this rather expansive room, their gazes all fixed upon the centre where a large wrought iron cage stood with unmistakable defiance. But it wasn't the cage that angered the poor Arthur. No, what truly brought fury to the boy's mind was what was currently occurring in such a structure. He had gotten his answer to his previous question. He now knew where the source of the dry thumps he had heard for the past few minutes originated from and, more importantly, what was causing them.

Locked in the iron entrapment with their figures partially concealed by the many bars stood two beings. Two creatures, two monsters, locked away behind bars, their figures bloody and their bodies swollen. The two monster's stared at one another with shrunken eyes, their green skin dyed in a horrible, vile shade of crimson.

'Goblins?' Arthur remarked. 'They really captured some goblins and are making them fight one another for sport,' Arthur continued his previous rage that he had barely managed to suppress, blossoming into a violent flower of pure fury. Arthur hated goblins, though it wasn't this fact that made the boy's anger flare but something else. You see, Arthur hated goblins for a reason, and that was because he knew how they worked. They were lustful vile creatures who would prey upon weak women and children in a vain attempt to corrupt them in a fickle, almost petty self-assured vengeance against the human race that had degraded them to the point of monsterhood. But even these lecherous creatures had morals, or at least a guideline of sorts keeping them alive, and that guiding light, their one foundation, was the singular rule that they would never fight one another. It was taboo in goblin society to even think about attacking another member of their species. Arthur respected this rule. It was the only thing stalling him from massacring the entire species in his playthrough, but the scum surrounding the cage had forcefully broken that rule. These "Nobels," If they could even be called that, were forcing them to fight one another for what, pleasure? Wealth? Whatever it was didn't matter to the fuming child.

Arthur hated goblins, but in this one moment, the nobles temporarily surpassed his hate for them. Arthur's jaw clenched in suppressed fury, and his eyes quivered in their sockets, shaking so violently with rage that his vision began to blur. He hated them. He really hated them, the pretentious gall they had to forcefully break another society's taboo for their amusement, to cage these creatures, to mentally defile them with such pressure, all of it rubbed Arthur the wrong way. 'They should have just killed them,' Yet no matter how much Arthur inwardly protested the abuse, he outwardly said nothing. He just stood there, trembling. Arthur couldn't do anything. He wasn't strong enough to oppose such a group, nor did he have the backing to get away with such a slaughter.

"Can we please go?" Arthur meekly asked, clenching the distracted mother's dainty hand, successfully pulling her attention away from the mass of people and redirecting all her focus upon the quivering child.

"Um…sure, this isn't our destination anyway," Vienna hurriedly commented, resuming her strut with the young Arthur in tow. They walked past the compact group having no need to interact with the masses, and were met with what appeared to be a concealed staircase hidden to the far right of the room. "We're going up," Vienna briefly stated, taking the first of many steps up the tricky stone staircase, her every motion, her every sound emulated in the bland orange-hued walls that served to enclose the party, that was until they reached the top. A small plateau of sort's with an almost mirror-like varnished wooden floor and a plain beige wood door, the pretence of grandeur was now gone, and all that remained was a neutral homely feeling.

"Is this it?" Arthur blandly questioned, tired of having been stopped by the many doors in this seemingly infinite building and their increasingly more unsettling occupants and features.

"Yes," Vienna sighed. She, too, was bored with the casino's myriad of surprises and, like Arthur, just wished for the journey to end. "Are you ready, Arthur? You remember your promise, don't you?" Vienna anxiously asked. She didn't want Arthur to become the centre of attraction more than he already will be, thanks to the fact that Vienna was bringing him into this top secret meeting.

"Yep," Arthur nodded, inadvertently answering both of Vienna's queries with his childish smile.

"Fine then, stay close to me, and don't speak unless spoken to, ok?" Vienna warned, pushing open the plain wooden door.