Mercenary rode a horse, staring into nothing while grinning dumbly in joy. All his thoughts were occupied with one single thing, the brilliant smile of a beautiful girl gazing at him from a distance. That smile was the best thing he saw in his life. It was the light itself. Nothing was more gorgeous than her smiling at him. It was love. He was sure of it.

“You ok, there boy?” Asked a gray-haired man driving a carriage at his side, snapping the mercenary back to reality.

He shook his head watching the man in confusion for a few seconds.

“I…I…what?” Stuttered in confusion mercenary

“You’ve been spacing out the entire time boy. You may fall if you don’t hold your reins carefully boy.” Said the gray man shaking his head.

“Where are we…” Asked the mercenary only now noticing he was riding a horse beside the luxurious carriage driven by the man that spoke to him.

“Almost reached the place where you said your young Master’s carriage turned over. They should be just over that road bend, over there, if you described the place right.” Said the carriage driver.

“I did?” Asked the man still trying to come to his senses.

“Ay. You’ve asked that question several times by now boy.”

“I already asked?”

“Several times, boy. Infatuated you entirely didn’t she? That lass... Your head must be filled only with her now? Well, I can’t blame ya boy. I saw how you two looked at each other. That must be love at first sight. I am jealous of you boy.”

“Love?” Asked the man dumbfounded as the image of a smiling girl flashed in his mind again.

“Ay! Believe me, boy! I've seen enough to know that thing. You two been smitten, that's for sure.”

“She…” Said Mercenary trying to remember the girl. She was all blurry in his mind as if a dream. But that smile! He could not get her smile out of his head even if he tried.

“Tanya. That maid. Ay, she’s a good girl but shy. Never saw her so much as look another man in the eyes, not to mention smile the way she smiled at ya, boy. Love, I tell. No doubt about it.”

“Tanya.” Murmured the mercenary he tried to remember her but everything about her felt like a dream. Try as he could he could not remember a thing except for that angelic smile. He could not remember anything about his visit to the noble house just now as well for that matter. 

All he knew was that when he wondered whether he really was there, a voice inside his head told him ‘Yeah. He was there. He spoke with the family head and got a carriage just as young Master Keneth ordered him to do. And when he was going out he met her…Tanya. Everything after that was simply a blur. It was love at first sight. He was in love. He was sure about it.

“Tell me about her. Tell me about Tanya…eem”

“Don. You even forgot my name, boy? Do you even remember the household you were in just now?” Asked the man and the mercenary's eyes went wide as he really could not remember.

“Ahahah.” Laughed the carriage driver out loud. “How will you return to her if you don’t remember it? Dunkan, boy. It was Baron Duncan’s household. Remember it for God’s sake or poor lass would be left heartbroken because you never found your way back. Ahahaha.”

“Baron Duncan.” Muttered the mercenary

“Ooh! There they are, just as you said. Guess I am not getting killed in the bushes after all, am I? Ahahah. You can’t blame an old man for being doubtful, boy.” Laughed the carriage owner.

The mercenary looked ahead seeing the group in the distance. The turned-over carriage was now back prone but the wheels were missing. It was surrounded by his friends from McAlister's private mercenaries, with their captain peering intently at them. He waved his hand at them and the door of the carriage opened with young master Keneth exiting it to look in their directions as well.

“Oh. He seems serious and very pissed, boy. Ya better snap at attention or you gonna have your ars chewed. Better ride to them and report, boy. Don’t make them wait.”

“Y…yeah. You are right.” Said the mercenary making a serious face and spurning his horse to gallop. 

The carriage driver smiled as he saw the mercenary off. 

The mercenary barely opened his mouth when he reached them, to report to his officer but their young master had no tolerance for hearing even that, before lashing out at him in an angry outburst, as if that would somehow make the carriage get there faster. 

Both the Captain and his subordinate merely bowed apologetically in silence not wanting to irk their seething with anger master even more with their excuses and apologies.

It took the coachman a few more minutes to drive the carriage to them. 

When he stopped the carriage he jumped off the coachman's seat and bowed deeply.

“Your Highness, Young Master McAlister, I am butler of the House of Baron Duncan. My master sends his best regards and in deference presents you with his best carriage for your needs. I shall await here to guard and protect your carriage until the workers from the nearby village arrive. We will repair your carriage and send it with an escort back to your house.” Said the man making a bow of deference before hurrying to the side of the carriage and opening the door for the young nobleman.

“Very good. Send Baron Duncan my appreciation.” Said Keneth McAlister climbing into the carriage that the butler opened for him.

As he put his leg on the step he looked the carriage over with surprise.

“Your Master, Baron Duncan, must be quite a successful man to own such a luxurious carriage. Its quality is no less than my own.” Said Keneth.

“Indeed, Your Highness. My master's business has been on the rise lately.”

“Wonderful.” Said Keneth taking out insignia with his family’s contact sigils written on it. “May Baron Duncan contact me at a later date. I think we might find opportunities for cooperation in the future.”

As Keneth sat inside the carriage, the butler bowed with respect and closed the door.

The carriage driver seat was immediately taken over by one of the mercenaries and at Keneth’s order, the team immediately started to move, leaving the butler alone with the broken carriage.

As they rode off, Butler straightened up with a smirk on his lips, watching as the carriage and mercenaries of the McAlister family were slowly disappearing into the distance. 

Once they were completely gone from view his appearance suddenly changed into a young man.

Noah extended his hand toward the broken carriage and stored it into his homework folder. Then walked around picking even the broken parts of the wheels and even spreading the smell-concealing powder, erasing every trace and leaving no evidence behind.

“Have fun you son of a bitch. Hope you don’t die this easily. I still have other plans for you.” Smirked Noah before disappearing from the empty road.

As the McAlister group rode toward the Margrave O’Sullivans mansion, hurrying the horses to not let their master be late too much, they focused only on getting to the destination as fast as possible, so in the slowly dimming light of the setting sun, no one noticed as the crest on the side of the carriage slowly changed its appearance as the magic spent on the illusion gradually wore off. And from the simple crest of a baron, it gradually changed into the elaborate crest of another, high noble family.

*****

William O’Sullivan walked around the room with a plastered smile, drinking wine and thanking his guests for their congratulations, while thinking the entire time that these people disgusted him to no end.

"This was the true high society life that his father so fervently praised?" Thought William.

These people…most of them were already engaged or had a fiance, yet here they were doing whatever dirty thing they wished with prostitutes and having no qualms about cheating on their spouses.

William understood that traditionally Noble society was greatly patriarchal with women’s rights severely diminished. Even daughters of the High Nobles barely had any say in their fate and future life, existing mostly for the purpose of strengthening the family through arranged marriages.

With women's rights in inconsequential and loveless marriages where wives often refused to share a bed with their husbands after giving him at least one heir, it was no wonder that men allowed themselves to live in polygamy. Many nobles had second and even third wives, often finding love with mistresses. 

Many women understood that and took it as inevitable. William's mother lived her life bearing with his father's occasional concubines, which he tended to change every few years once his interest in them diminished or when he found a new object of infatuation. But at least there were feelings involved.

However this…this was different. There were no feelings, no appeal or affection between the partners. Just lust and sexual permissiveness. No one in this room cared about their fiances and wives back home, having sex with whoever they wanted and how much they wanted. Their partners meant to them so very little, William felt sorry for all those women who were engaged with all these men. But then again many of those women hated their spouses to the bone and cheated on them as well. The noble society was just this rotten.

If this is how his father wished him to live then he would have to be greatly disappointed. 

William was a one-love person. He had his dear Evelina, his one and only. He loved her with his full heart and she answered him with no lesser if not stronger feelings. Unlike others in this room, their feelings were genuine. As long as he had her, William did not need other women. No matter how beautiful and sexy they were, no woman in the world could substitute his dear Evelina. 

His father may have waited for this day just to have a chance to organize such an immoral event, where he had an excuse to sink into hedonism, but William waited for this day for just one single reason. By the end of today's event, he would officially be considered an adult in accordance with noble society's traditions.

Tomorrow he would be able to go to Evelina’s house and propose to finally arrange the date of their marriage. They’ve been engaged for years now, waiting for the day when he would finally be deemed a full-fledged adult and be allowed to take a wife.

Just for that reason alone, William struggled to advance his system so hard, reaching the twentieth level at eighteen years of age, which was quite an achievement among nobles. 

Many nobles reached the twentieth level of their system and had their Final Bachelor party before being considered full-fledged adults only in their twentieth years.

William however had a purpose. He did not wish to make Evelina wait just like all these lazy slobs that had no care for their engaged partners. 

He fought and struggled to quicken their union. It was his greatest show of love to her, which she was greatly happy about.

They talked on their far talking device almost every evening, many of their discussions ending with their confessions of love to each other and how they desired to be with each other. He wanted to make her happy. So he did his best to quicken that day. This day was finally tomorrow.

Tomorrow he would be able to take her away from her family house and live together until their marriage.

William thought that all these old traditions of nobles were just a vain clutching at a fading past, in the hope of closing their eyes on changing world.

Noble houses still showcased their daughters as soon as they reached childbearing age, organizing Coming-of-age Balls where they introduced the girls as if saying to all ‘Look this pussy here is now officially on the market’. Yet a man had to reach a certain level of strength, proving his worth as if saying that it is men who could wield the power. 

Even though in the last centuries the unstoppably rising Adventurers guild long since shattered all their old mossy views, proving that women were not just flowers to be picked and could possess a power to be reckoned with. 

Countless female adventurers rose to the levels that many nobles could only dream of, showing that not only men can wield strength and that systems and magic weren’t only men’s prerogative.

Commoners have long since adapted to the new reality. There were barely any people now stupid enough to think women could not be their equal. 

Even the Royal family silently agreed to it by raising the system-level quota of women in Noble families, which all nobles were obligated to, up to the same level as men.

However, among nobles, this view still prevailed. Even though women now could study in academies and be politicians. The noble society, as if stuck in the past, still refused to acknowledge it, living by the old traditions.

“How stupid this all was.” Though William. However with his dream finally so close to coming to reality he wasn’t going to fight it. He proved his worth by the age of eighteen completing all noble traditions so that no one would dare question him. Especially that man…His future father-in-law. A stupidest and the most stuck-up on old ways man that William could ever find but he still tolerated the guy. 

William sighed, dodging another prostitute, smiling seductively at him no doubt sent by his father as he noticed her speaking with the man just a minute ago. 

His father said that his association with Noah dirtied his reputation. There was a time when William actually believed the man and even betrayed their friendship. Now he was of another thought. Association with all these disgusting acts dirtied him and all he cared for. Especially his feeling of love. What would Evelina say seeing all this?

William tolerated all these things around him, yet had no desire to participate in any of them. Fuck his father. Let him sink in this hedonism as much as he wished. William was higher than that man. The only regret was that he could not get away from here.

His father would not allow it. This was only a part of the evening ritual. There was something else his father constantly hinted to him about. Something he was to be told in front of everyone now that he was an adult. But that would still be hours away and he had to wait for it patiently. For now, it was the ‘socializing’ time.

In this, it was no different from Coming-of-age Balls for young ladies. 

While young people would go around getting to know each other, the parents would be building alliances and building new business relationships. Usually, these relations would be guaranteed through the tieing of the two families in the arranged marriage of those same young ladies who were showcased on the ball and who would be in the dark about it until the end of the ball.

In the case of the Final Bachelor party, it was almost the same. Only business relations were built here more actively. William was sure that it had something to do with men being more agreeable to the conditions and going easier on compromises toward each other when they were drilling the same woman at the same time from both sides.

William avoided the gaze of the prostitute sent toward him by his father and joined a group of men enjoying a lesbian show of several ladies. He threw a few jokes and toasted several already quite tipsy young men, before leaving the group once noticed that the woman sent by his father luckily was spirited away by another young nobleman, sparing William from the need to interact with her.

As he looked around he saw his father’s gaze from the corner of the room. William raised his cup as if in toast gazing his father in the eyes with a slight smirk before his father turned away with a disapproving scowl on his lips. 

This somehow made William feel slightly victorious over the insufferable man, bringing a small smirk to his lips, but it quickly vanished as he noticed another gaze from a man who stood at his father's side.

If his father's gaze merely showed his disapproval, what this man's eyes showed was pure disgust and hate, however, that expression quickly vanished as William’s father turned back to the group continuing their conversation. The hate and disgust were quickly masked by hypocrisy, turning his face to courteous and amiable as he joked and laughed with his father.

William was quite used to this by now. Whenever his father was present this man would all but crawl at his legs yet his eyes burned with a true hatred toward William when his father was not present. The worst thing about this situation was that it was actually William’s future father-in-law and his beloved Evelina’s father. 

The man was fat and hung all over with golden accessories, looking like a jewelry shop's showcase, not even realizing how much he fit the cliche. 

It was common to see some newly appointed nobles showing off their wealth, hanging themselves with accessories like a new-year tree. The families with a long heritage of power and status found this as a laughing matter. Often throwing jokes about these nobles behind their backs. 

You could barely see any accessories on Counts and Higher nobles and the ones they had usually only served one purpose: protection. These accessories would be enchanted with the best enchantment that was ever possible to get their hand on and each one cost a fortune.

However, there were such cases just like his future father-in-law among higher nobles that would go around showcasing their wealth as some dumb baronet. There was always a reason for it. 

It was almost a rule that their family's business was not going well so much so that they would most likely lose their title in the future. For some reason in their attempt to quench the gossips and mask their troubled situation, they would start showing off their wealth. The more they did the worse the actual situation of their business was. It was so common that it actually proved their distress to everyone even more, so it was most stupid to do, yet there were still such examples showing up on occasions, proving just how vain and idiotic the nobility tends to be.

It pained William to see the degree of desperation of Evelina’s family situation, but at the same time, he was thankful. 

A few years ago she was promised to another family and although even then they had feelings for each other, they would not be able to be together as her father seemed adamant in his hate toward William's family. It’s only after the death of their family's patriarch, Evelina’s grandfather, did the situation change. In just a few years, under the management of that idiotic man, the business of their family suffered such a downfall that his desperation made him swallow his own feelings and bow to William’s father, asking for engagement in the hope of turning their worsening situation over under Margrave O'Sullivan's wing.

Margrave was not actually a real peerage. It was more of a title or an appointment that had roots in the noble’s constant squabbles.

The King was a ruler of a country, but his royal family was chosen by the Central Cathedral from among one of the Old Noble families that had been equal in the past and had the peerages of Dukes. When the Royal family was chosen, the leftover Duke families would always squabble in the hope of wringing that seat out from under the King and sitting on it themselves.

These constant squabbles made it impossible to organize an efficient army as Dukedoms would rarely agree on something without a fight.

To quench this problem, the King would appoint the title of an Archduke, who would be responsible for the military of the entire region.

Each Kingdom had four regions and four Archdukes, as well as four armies.

Dukes in their time ruled over a part of a Region called Dukedom as small-time Kings and faced the same problem if only on a smaller scale, which brought them to appoint a title of Earl from among the Marquise families in their Dukedom, which was also a military title and was responsible for protection of a part of Dukedom - Earldom. Each Dukedom would be thus divided into several Earldoms.

Going down the line, Marquises found the need to appoint a Margrave who would be a protector of a County where several squabbling Counts would never come to an agreement. 

As Margrave of their County, William’s father, although a Count in the peerage, was responsible for the military sector of the entire County, having a final say in the County military budgets division. 

Having a chance to latch himself to that milky tit through family ties was the only reason that Evelina’s father agreed to give up his daughter and become a subordinate to William’s father.

Nobles were too proud. They were happy to grow in equal or dominant roles within alliances. But being below someone irked them to no end. This man’s situation put him in a situation where he as a Count was totally dependent on another Count who was titled as Margrave and was in the position of superior power. No noble liked to be in a position where someone could dictate his fate. And this man no doubt hated it to the core. However, he could not show it to William’s father. This caused him to spill it with his entire demeanor on William as he was just an heir and had no say in family matters yet.

It was quite stupid, after all, William would one day inherit it all and this man would pay for his behavior. Still…ruining hundreds of years of heritage within just a few years showed exactly that. This man was incredibly stupid.

“You seem like you wish to be somewhere else, young master.” Said a woman’s voice from his side, startling him a bit. In his thoughts he did not notice her approach, so now he’d have to talk his way out of the situation.

“Do I?” Said William, plastering an insincere smile on his face, gazing at the woman only momentarily without really looking at her before pulling his eyes aside and taking a sip from his wine, showing that he wasn’t interested in her.

As he looked to the side he saw his father's group of several men in tow with his future father-in-law move toward the hall where his father's private office was, while laughing and smiling but leaving the women behind. It was going to be a business discussion from the looks of it. No doubt the men he was going to talk with had been quite satisfied with the evening. That fat sleazy Father-in-law was only too happy to run after them like a dog as he felt he would receive a meaty bone from their group.

“Yes. I am sorry if I am being presumptuous, but the way you dodged those girls earlier tells me that you have no interest in what’s going on here tonight, yet have no way out to leave.” Said the woman with a gentle voice.

William lowered his glass, turning to the woman once again, this time really looking at her.

She wasn’t high and had to look up to gaze into his eyes. She had quite a cute face, however, what startled William, was how she reminded him of his Evelina. From that gentle voice to her slight smile. He quickly shook these thoughts out of his head, gazing away. How could he compare his beloved to this prostitute?

“That’s none of your business.” Grumbled William, feeling a bit meek in her presence as he tended to be with Evelina.

He instantly felt bad that his answer seemed so rude, but felt no desire to apologize. 

He turned to walk away but felt her gentle touch on his forearm.

“I apologize, for these words, master. I did not wish to anger you.” Said the girl with that same smile that so much reminded him of his beloved.

“I just hoped my hunch was right and we could help each other out.” Said the girl releasing his hand and looking into the ground with a shy look.

“Help how?” Asked William.

“I just feel a bit tired today and thought that I’d rather have a bit of rest. But our contract for today would not allow it. So I thought that if you want a reason to get away… maybe…maybe we could sneak out making it seem like we went to have some privacy.” 

“That…” Said William thoughtfully. Why didn’t he think of this earlier? As he thought on it in silence the girl seemed to misunderstand him as a shade of fear painted her face.

“I am sorry master. I do not wish to laze around. I just really felt under the weather today and felt a bit tired. I am sorry. I’ll go work. Please don’t take offense to my words.” Said the girl quickly turning to walk off.

“Wait.” Said William. “I like your idea. Let’s go take a rest.” He added, offering her his hand.

The girl smiled a brilliant smile at him, reminding him once again of how much she looked like his Evelina and hung herself on his hand walking with him to the side.

“Say…master. Is there maybe a chance we could go to some other room than these? The music and noise are quite loud here even with the closed doors of side rooms…” Said the girl meekly.

William stopped their walk and looked at her before changing their direction.

“You are right. Let’s go a bit down the hall. There is a good room that doesn’t let the noise through.” Said William and together they walked out of the main party hall under the cheers of several of his acquaintances who raised their glasses in a toast, cheering him on, seeing him finally choosing a girl for himself.

Well, let them think whatever they want. Thought William as he and the girl walked off.