The morning sun crept over the high walls of the Thorne estate, casting long beams of light through the dark, secluded gardens.
Underneath the massive oak tree, Sera's localized ice-dome was beginning to melt. Tiny droplets of water fell from the frost barrier, landing silently on the grass.
Inside the dome, the air was still perfectly cool and entirely dead to the outside world.
Lucian opened his eyes. He didn't stretch, nor did he groan.
He simply laid there for a moment, processing the fact that he had just experienced his first full, uninterrupted eight hours of sleep since arriving in this nineteen-year-old body.
The hammock was surprisingly comfortable.
He sat up, the blanket slipping off his chest. As he shifted his weight, a sharp ache flared in his right wrist. He looked down at the swollen joint.
The two S-Rank Guild Masters had hit him with the force of a speeding truck, and his neglected physical frame had taken the brunt of it.
Lucian glanced around the garden. The estate was dead quiet. The partygoers had long since passed out or gone home, and the morning patrols hadn't started yet.
He closed his eyes. He didn't need to chant a spell or draw a mana-circle. He simply reached into the abyssal depths of his soul and let a microscopic fraction of his dormant power seep into his physical veins. It wasn't the terrifying pressure of the 'Dragon's Fear' he used to the thugs last time but it was a pure, restorative vitality born from lifetimes of regenerating lost limbs and surviving fatal wounds.
A faint, almost invisible golden light pulsed beneath his pale skin. The swelling in his wrist vanished instantly. The torn ligaments knit themselves perfectly back together. He flexed his fingers, no pain, no stiffness. Good as new.
The reason he didn't used this in his injury in the accident last time is because there were witnesses, but since nobody saw that he got hurt he can do this at least.
Lucian climbed out of the hammock, leaving the ropes and the melting ice dome behind, and quietly made his way back through the servant's entrance into the west wing.
He had barely reached his door when a tall, stiff figure stepped out of the shadows of the corridor. It was Hans. The butler's face was drawn, and he looked like he hadn't slept at all.
"Young Master Lucian," Hans said, his voice dropping into a solemn, formal register. "The Marquis requests your presence in his primary office... Immediately."
Lucian looked at the butler. He knew what this was. The succession banquet was over. Silas was officially the public heir. The loose ends needed to be tied.
Lucian gave a single nod. He turned around and followed Hans through the sprawling, silent mansion.
The Marquis's office was a cavernous room built to intimidate. Heavy oak bookshelves lined the walls, and a massive mahogany desk sat in the center, bathed in the gray light of the morning.
The Marquis sat behind it, looking every bit the exhausted patriarch. He had spent the entire night securing alliances for eighteen-year-old Silas, and now he had to deal with the nineteen-year-old failure.
As Lucian walked in, hands stuffed casually into his jacket pockets, the Marquis felt a familiar surge of frustration. His eldest son looked so frail, so completely hollowed out. There was no fire, no ambition. Just a blank, pale canvas.
"Sit," the Marquis commanded, his voice heavy with authority.
Lucian didn't sit. He just stood in front of the desk, staring blankly at a silver paperweight.
The Marquis sighed, rubbing his temples.
"Last night, the succession was officially formalized. Silas is the future of this family. Which leaves the question of what to do with you."
The Marquis leaned forward, interlacing his fingers. He had prepared this speech for weeks. He was ready for the tears, the screaming, the desperate begging of a son clinging to his lavish lifestyle.
"You are unstable, Lucian," the Marquis said coldly. "The healers have declared you apathetic and broken. Keeping you in the main estate is a political liability. I cannot have the press photographing my eldest son wandering the halls like a ghost. So, you have two choices."
The Marquis slid a thick stack of legal documents across the desk.
"Option one: You remain here, but you will be permanently confined to the medical ward. You will not leave. You will not be seen. Option two..."
The Marquis tapped the papers. "You sign these. You surrender your noble privileges, your claim to the Thorne name, and your access to the family vaults. You will be given a meager, basic civilian allowance to prevent you from being homeless, and you will leave this estate by noon."
The Marquis leaned back, waiting for the devastating weight of the ultimatum to crush his son. He expected Lucian to realize that he possessed no skills, no power, and no ability to survive in the real world. He expected total capitulation.
"..."
Lucian looked down at the papers.
He reached into the pen holder on the desk, pulled out a heavy, gold-plated fountain pen, and uncapped it.
Without reading a single line of the fine print, without hesitating for a fraction of a second, Lucian flipped to the last page. He signed his name with his perfectly healed right hand. The signature was smooth, indifferent, and entirely final.
He capped the pen, dropped it on the desk, and slid the documents back toward his father.
"Can I go now?" Lucian asked. His voice wasn't laced with sorrow or spite. He sounded like a man asking if he could finally leave a very boring meeting.
The Marquis stared at the freshly signed paper. His mouth opened slightly, the grand, commanding aura of the High-Rank Hunter completely faltering. He had prepared for a war. He had not prepared for his son to surrender his entire life's inheritance with the casual indifference of signing a grocery receipt.
"You..." The Marquis stammered, entirely unsettled by the flat, deadpan look in Lucian's eyes. "You don't even care?"
"..."
Lucian blinked. He turned around and walked out of the office, leaving the door wide open.
Packing took exactly five minutes.
Lucian bypassed the massive walk-in closet filled with millions of credits worth of enchanted silk, tailor-made suits, and vanity artifacts. He grabbed a simple, canvas duffel bag. Inside, he tossed three plain black outfits, his encrypted data-slate—which currently held enough hidden proxy funds to buy a small country—and his toothbrush.
He slung the bag over his shoulder and placed his heavy noise-canceling headphones around his neck.
As he walked down the grand staircase toward the front doors for the last time, he found his path blocked.
Lily stood at the bottom of the stairs. She was wearing her pristine Academy uniform, clutching her heavy leather school satchel to her chest. Her lower lip was trembling slightly, and her eyes were wide and sad. She had already heard the servants whispering.
"They said you're leaving," Lily said, her voice small, echoing in the grand foyer.
Lucian stopped on the bottom step.
He looked at his ten-year-old sister. She was the only person in this entire, suffocating mansion who had never demanded he be anything other than what he was.
"Yeah," Lucian said.
Lily sniffled, stubbornly wiping her eyes with the back of her sleeve. "Well... I don't care what Father says. I'm going to come over to your house when I'm not busy with my tutors."
Lucian reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, crumpled piece of paper where he had written down the address of his newly acquired property. He held it out to her.
"Sector 4," Lucian said.
Lily took the paper, reading the address carefully before tucking it safely into her uniform pocket.
"The floor is good for homework if you came" Lucian added.
He reached out and gave the top of her head a single, flat, completely unenthusiastic pat. It was the absolute maximum amount of physical affection he was capable of offering. Lily managed a small, wobbly smile.
Lucian walked past her, pushed open the heavy glass doors of the Thorne estate, and didn't look back.
Thirty minutes later, a cheap, dented yellow city taxi pulled up to the extreme outskirts of the capital. The air here didn't smell like ozone and expensive perfume; it smelled like old asphalt and damp earth.
Lucian stepped out of the cab, hoisting his single duffel bag.
He stood in front of his new property. A high, rusted iron fence surrounded a large, wildly overgrown mini-garden. Thick thornbushes choked the pathway, and the two-story house looked like it hadn't been painted in three decades. To anyone else, it was a depressing, abandoned ruin.
To Lucian, it was a fortress of solitude.
He pulled the heavy iron gate open. It screamed with the sound of rusted hinges, a terrible, grating noise that made him wince. He made a mental note to oil it. He walked up the cracked concrete path, stepping over the weeds, and unlocked the heavy wooden front door.
He stepped inside.
The house was completely empty. Dust motes danced in the excellent natural light pouring through the large, uncurtained windows.
There was no furniture. There was no mana-grid humming in the walls. There were no servants, no expectations, and no annoying siblings.
It was utterly, blissfully silent.
Standing in the middle of the dusty, empty living room, Lucian dropped his bag on the floor. He let out a long, slow exhale, feeling the last lingering tension of the Thorne family drain out of his frail muscles.
For the first time since he had woken up in his hundredth life, Lucian Thorne smiled.
The ultimate lazy retirement had officially begun.