Chapter 66: Lurking in the Dark I

Herbert pressed his hand on his forehead. He felt that being worried for Ingrid was a silly mistake.

After shamelessly acting flirty in front of her adoptive family, he had no right to get mad at her for doing the same. It wasn't like it was the end of the world either, so he instead thought of the other matters that bothered him.

With his finger on his chin, he thought about the current state of Ingrid. He wondered if it was because he had tampered with her original destiny that she had become like this. Originally, Ingrid was supposed to face tremendous pressure which would help her metamorphose into becoming the story's last boss. This was how she had gotten herself involved with the church which then used her as a tool.

However, since he had altered her life, Herbert felt that she might have lost her edge since her motivation for getting stronger was constantly being eroded by spending time with him. After all, the Ravenmoon family was extremely powerful and huge to the point that almost everything that she needed would come at her beck and call.

With her meager strength both politically and physically, she should have been more cautious, especially since she was looking to build herself a force that she can depend on to face off against Duke Cloven.

Because he had been busy with everything else, he had mostly let her do as she pleased. However, he had also received reports about her activities and he had seen that she had been wholeheartedly training herself to increase her rank through unrelenting training.

After thinking about it up to this point, Herbert finally realized the main difference between the Ingrid in the story and the Ingrid that he was with. The Ingrid that he had met was given a direct chance to challenge her adoptive father. Although it could also be said that she had the Ravenmoon family as a backer, she wholeheartedly believes that she can catch up to Duke Cloven's strength and steal his position from that standpoint.

"No, I can't necessarily say that she had gotten weaker. Because she didn't look for power from another force, she had become stronger individually."

As he reaffirmed himself, Herbert called out to Oliver who has, at this point, basically taken the role of his assistant.

"Young master, you called?"

"Oliver, send a letter to Lord Eric. If he can't make another breakthrough within a week to enter deep into Oxsword territory then tell him to let the battlefield enter a temporary lull."

"Understood."

"Also, I want you to include this intelligence report on the Rozenblood Duke as well. As the owner of the manor, it should only be right for him to be the one to welcome the guests."

"Is there anything else, young master?"

Herbert glanced at Oliver before he continued.

"Yes, actually, there's one more thing. I want you to prepare our luggage. I want everything packed and ready to go at any moment. We're going to leave the Hawkwoods soon."

After saying this, Herbert smirked before letting Oliver take care of the rest of the matters that needed to be done.

As Herbert stretched his body, he figured that it was about time to end things at this stage, he should make his real move soon. If things went well, he never intended to make a personal move, however, since Duke Cloven was personally moving, he knew that the fun was all over.

During the past few days, he had not been slacking. Ever since he had reached the Transcendent rank with his Ravenmoon bloodline, he had been training himself to increase his strength to prepare himself to fight against any unstable factors in his plan to prevent the protagonist from killing him.

In the original story, he had never made it into the Transcendent rank, thus, he was easily killed by the protagonist. There were a lot of reasons as to why this is, but most of it should be because he had spent his time trying to woo the Ninth Princess while neglecting his training.

However, now that he was far away from the Ninth Princess, he had been able to reach the Transcendent Rank 1 for his Ravenmoon bloodline and the Awakened Rank 2 for his Serpentdream bloodline.

Throughout his journey to rapidly increase his strength, he made sure that nobody had a clear gauge of his actual strength. The outsiders of the Ravenmoon still think that he was only at Rank 8 while others with better intelligence organizations speculated that he was at Rank 9 as an Awakened. However, since he had broken through this winter to the Transcendent stage, he was now levels above their speculations. Including his Serpentdream bloodline and Ingrid's newfound power, he felt that he had a lot of cards up his sleeve.

The next day, Herbert was in front of his carriage with Ingrid looking at him confusedly.

"Why are you in a dress?"

"You were the one who told me to prepare myself for the guest, right?"

Herbert finally remembered that he had forgotten to inform her of their new itinerary. So, he then commanded her to change into an attire fit for moving around. With the help of her maids, she was quickly able to change into something more practical to move in.

"Great. We're going now. Let's go."

"Wait a minute. First, you told me to prepare to meet the old geezer, but now we're going to leave?"

"Oh, we are going to meet him."

Although she seemed confused, she somehow tried to make sense of it and managed to quickly respond by giving him another question.

"Hey, is it really fine to personally go and meet him? Shouldn't we wait for him to come instead?"

"Who said we're going to meet him now?"

"Huh?"

"He's already taken the initiative by coming to find us. Why should we let him do as he pleases?"

"If we're not going on a journey to meet him then where are we going?"