Chapter 57
"Dear, please handle yourself!"
His wife quickly supported him. Right now, she was fuming with anger as well.
Her daughter had finally done the unthinkable. She had always been an honest and sincere child, but now she showed such stupidity that invalidated all her past achievements.
She actually dared to auction the family treasures so brazenly...
"It's all my fault. I failed to raise her properly..."
"No, no, it's not your fault alone. We have failed as parents..."
"I don't know what will become of our family now... the only hope I had was placed on the [Stone of Sight]. It was supposed to be used to awaken Lucia's bloodline, and now it's gone..."
"D-Didn't she say that she was confident that the stranger will return the artifact back in a few years? If so, then there's still—"
"Are you crazy? Do you actually believe that? Lucia is naive and unreliable when it comes to such matters. She's only good when it comes to talent; her social skills are limited just like her knowledge about the world..."
The father reprimanded the mother.
Hearing this, she fell silent. His words did seem to make sense after all.
No matter how supportive she was, she knew her daughter well.
He slowly got up, supporting himself with the help of his wife.
"Where are you going now?"
"I cannot trust Lucia... I need to go and find the artifact myself... or at least find a solution to this mess, or else we are completely doomed," he said in a resolute tone.
"What are you even going to do?" Lucia's mother could not help but ask uncertainly.
"I'll try to see if I can find the stranger first by asking around first... if push comes to shove, I still have some connections with the Mystic Purge Clan..."
"The Clan! You think they will help us? They had long moved forward. You'll only be making a fool of yourself among those high-class noble exorcists. We both know they detest low-class powerless exorcists like us."
She could not help but warn worriedly.
"I know, but I must do something or I'll never be able to live properly..." He said with eyes closed as he recalled some memories of the past.
Taking a deep breath, he told his wife, "I'll be leaving for the central area. I need to teach Lucia a lesson as well."
With that, he left the room in a hurry, leaving behind a worried woman.
'Oh, Lucia, my child. What have you done... causing so much trouble to your father... I hope he won't be too harsh on her.'
It was clear that her father was a paranoid person.
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"Zippy, I am back!"
Oliver announced as usual and received a lazy 'meow' in response back.
The cat was laying in the courtyard on its back with its bloating belly upwards.
She had just eaten and was now laying around in laziness.
"..."
His lips could not help but twitch at the useless cat. Her antics were very undignified for a reputed clan guardian.
He directly ignored the cat and went inside.
He placed the [Stone of Sight] in a secure box and rested by the side.
'I have now acquired the artifact; now I need two more things before I can awaken [Future Sight]...'
He thought in a composed state.
'The first condition for this stated that the individual must sacrifice their sight in order to become a vessel capable enough to handle its power.'
But naturally, he was not interested in doing that.
With [Cosmic Void Gaze], he could easily bypass this condition. He was already a strong enough vessel.
It would be more or less like adding an attribute of [Future Sight] to the [Cosmic Void Gaze].
'The second one is the difficult one to achieve at the moment.'
He looked at the rapier laying by his side and lightly brushed it with his fingers as he remembered the second condition Lucia had to undergo in order to awaken her latent potential.
'The Trial of Oracle.'
'It was a trial that one must undergo if they wished to use the [Stone of Sight] at any cost. It was a trial that was there conducted by the mysterious being Oracle in order to find people worthy to inherit the powers. Anyone succeeding in the trial would directly become a Prophetic Kin.'
'But...'
'The trial was held in the Mountains of Mist which was a place located quite far from the Mystic Purge Clan. Not to mention, the coordinates of the place where the trial was supposed to be were hard to locate.'
'It was more or less like a test as soon as one stepped foot in the mountains; after all, a seer must be able to see all paths and find the correct one out of the many misleading ones.'
'If I succeed in clearing the trial, I could awaken the bloodline that Lucia was able to obtain as well.'
He pressed onto the rapier as he thought about it. He could not use Lucia as a medium to obtain tenfold benefits this time. First of all, he was already tied to Nadia at the moment and had no plans to switch targets. He didn't know when Lucia was going to awaken the bloodline—it would probably be quite late in the future.
He didn't have the patience to wait that long. By then, he might have already met with the main protagonist of the novel.
Not only that, Lucia had little training benefits to offer as compared to Nadia.
Nadia, being the rich miss of the clan, had countless resources at her disposal so her growth rate was faster than Lucia's, who belonged to a poor family with little resources to spare.
Not to mention, that she was now on her own training by herself, which would slow her down even more. It was not worth it.
'The Vasa Family seems to believe that it was their latent bloodline that was awakened by the [Stone of Sight] while in fact it was not entirely the case. Their ancestor was able to clear the trial of Oracle and was thus able to obtain the famed bloodline called [Tomorrow's Path]...'
'However, since he married a weak woman afterwards, his children were not able to inherit the powerful blood in his veins... the [Stone of Sight] was something like a key that he had managed to obtain from the place where the trial was held.'
'The artifact was a sort of key that helped the bearer bypass some difficult stages and advance. It was not clearly mentioned but only in brief... Lucia's grandfather was the last person who knew of these things but unfortunately he died in the battlefield not able to clearly teach his son about this stuff.'
Oliver could not help but shake his head when he realized this.