The Family's Stain
To Serena Bennet, the word father was nothing more than a faint afterimage and a cold distance—nothing more, nothing less.
Isaac Bennet.
He was the duke who led the strongest sword house in Tera, the man who had given her his blood, and yet warm memories of him barely existed at all.
In her recollection, her father was always shut away in his study, or else wandering in search of something she could never name.
It had been different, at least, while her mother still lived.
Her mother had not come from any great house, but she had been brilliant and warm. Serena remembered the moments when a faint smile would touch even her father's stern face—the days when her mother's laughter filled the entire manor.
The two of them had clearly loved each other deeply.
But that happiness had been brief.
Until a sudden monster raid claimed her mother's life in a single, hollow instant.
After her mother's death, Isaac Bennet became a completely different man. Ancient records, forgotten ruins, traces of some unfathomable power—like a madman chasing something at the edge of the world, he shoved aside the family, the territory, and even Serena, his only remaining daughter.
When young Serena approached him craving comfort, her father only pushed her away with cold eyes. In those hollow pupils, instead of affection for his daughter, there was only a madness close to obsession.
You never once looked my way…
And then one day, her father abruptly brought home a child.
A girl with black hair and an unstable light in her eyes.
Yeon Bennet.
He took the girl as his adoptive daughter, and from that moment everything changed. A father who had already been cold now openly turned his back on Serena. Every scrap of his attention and time poured solely onto Yeon Bennet. No matter what trouble the girl caused, no matter what malice she wrought, he always shielded her.
At first, Serena tried. It stung that the girl monopolized their father's regard, but she told herself the child was a pitiful orphan and did her best to treat her well as an older sister. She spoke first, looked after her needs, and worked to welcome her as a member of the house.
But Yeon Bennet rejected Serena's kindness at every turn and mocked her for it. Like a child who carried resentment and hatred for the entire world, she endlessly caused problems and wounded the people around her.
Even so, Serena endured. It was her father's will, and she believed that someday the girl would open her heart.
That belief was shattered in the worst possible way.
That day, Yeon Bennet summoned a forbidden power inside the ducal manor—Contamination. Part of the estate was swallowed by it, and monsters were summoned inside a house protected by powerful barriers: an unprecedented disaster. The entire duchy nearly fell into irreversible danger. The house knights fought with their lives on the line and barely contained the crisis, but precious lives were lost in the process.
After that incident, even the last shred of pity Serena held for Yeon Bennet vanished. The girl was no mere troublemaker. She was a dangerous, wicked being who reached for forbidden power for her own desires, with no regard for the family's safety.
Under her father's foolish protection, Yeon Bennet had become a cancer eating away at House Bennet.
That was when it began—when Serena resolved to strip her father of the family's power and erase Yeon Bennet completely.
Her recent declaration through the Mirage Times that she would drag her father from the ducal seat had been the opening move of that plan. Most of the house elders and the knight order were already on her side. A consensus had formed: they would no longer stand by and watch a fallen duke and his problem adoptive daughter.
All that remained was to eliminate her father's last remaining influence and cast Yeon Bennet out of the family for good.
"My Lady."
The office door opened, and a retainer of House Bennet stepped carefully inside.
"We found it."
A quiet excitement colored his voice. He set a small mana crystal sphere on Serena's desk. Complex numbers and transaction records filled its surface.
Enormous sums were regularly draining from Duke Isaac Bennet's personal accounts, and the recipient was only one person.
Yeon Bennet.
"Th-this… all of this went to Yeon? To that child?"
Serena's voice trembled with rage. The amounts displayed on the screen defied imagination. Money rivaling the duchy's entire annual budget had been flowing to that worthless girl.
To squander the family's fortune like this!
Her father's folly and her hatred for Yeon Bennet boiled up together.
"So much money… where did she even spend it all? No matter how extravagant that bitch is, this much…"
"That is the strange part, My Lady."
The retainer continued carefully.
"We traced the flow of funds, but once the money entered accounts under Yeon Bennet's name, there is almost no sign it was ever used afterward. Aside from the stipend paid by the Academy for living expenses, there has been virtually no spending."
"What? No sign of spending?"
Serena's brow furrowed. So that vast sum was simply sitting there, untouched? Yeon Bennet was hardly the type to be indifferent to money. Or had she hidden it elsewhere—or had her father had some other purpose?
The unexpected information left Serena briefly unsettled. Everything surrounding Yeon Bennet was always like this: a string of things that defied common sense.
But it did not matter. Whether the money had been spent or not, the fact that her father had improperly diverted the family's wealth was clear. That alone could serve as decisive evidence to completely unseat him.
Yeon Bennet… every last coin that flowed to you, I will reclaim without leaving a single copper, and put it to use for the family. And as for you…
Serena's eyes shone cold.
Yeon Bennet's very existence was a stain on House Bennet—one that had to be wiped away.
"And my father's whereabouts?"
Serena's voice was as cold and firm as ice.
The retainer bowed his head deeply, as if ashamed.
"…I am deeply sorry, My Lady. We have still… found no trace of him whatsoever. His Grace has vanished as if he never existed at all."
Serena's brow tightened.
The moment she declared she would bring her father down, she had mobilized every force under her command within the family to secure his person. She had given him no time to flee or prepare a counterattack; every plan had been meant to move in secret and with speed.
And yet he had disappeared without a trace?
Of course, Isaac Bennet was no easy opponent. A Level 8 Grandmaster Swordsman. Across all of Tera, those who could face him head-on could be counted on one hand. Subduing him and taking him into custody was never going to be simple.
That was why Serena had taken the risk of allying with the Holy Theocracy. Thanks to a secret pact with them, she had secured enough force to neutralize her father's few remaining loyal knights and seize control of the house.
The price, of course, was far from light. What the Theocracy wanted was obvious. They would use House Bennet's power and influence to expand their own reach. The family's independence itself might come under threat.
But Serena had willingly accepted that cost. She could not simply watch the Bennet Duchy rot further because of a fallen father and a wicked adoptive daughter—could not stand by while the family's honor was defiled.
And yet the most critical piece of the plan—securing her father's person—had gone wrong from the start. Even though she had moved swiftly the moment she publicly declared she would depose him, he had already vanished without a trace. As if he had known everything in advance.
Unease closed in.
Where in the world had her father gone? Had he simply gone into hiding? Or had he sensed her plan with the Theocracy and was preparing some other counterstroke? Or—could a third force have intervened?
The retainer's report did not end there. He hesitated a moment, then carefully raised another matter.
"And My Lady, there is one more matter I must report."
"What is it?"
Serena lifted her eyes from the documents and looked at him.
"In the early hours of this morning, there was an intruder at the Bennet family mausoleum."
"The mausoleum?"
Serena's brow creased slightly. The mausoleum was a sacred space where the successive heads of House Bennet and other key figures lay at rest—and at the same time, a special place linked to a dimension apart from the outside world.
"Who would dare do such a thing?"
"The exact identity has not been determined, but the intruder is estimated to have been someone of considerable skill. There is no need for concern, however. The forces guarding the mausoleum eliminated the intruder."
He added the last as if to reassure her.
The ducal mausoleum did not merely house the spirits of the past. It was also a passage connected to the powerful beings who protected Tera. The founders of the Five Great Ducal Houses. All of them had reached Level 9—the extreme limit a mortal could attain. The gate to the Spiritual Realm had closed, so they could advance no further into the domain of Transcendents, but their power and stature already approached that of half-Transcendents.
And at present, they remained in the deepest, most secret place in Tera—a dimension called the Lighthouse, where the System Administration Bureau was located—watching over calamity-class monsters. Each family's mausoleum was a passage leading straight to that Lighthouse.
An intruder in a place like that?
The question rose unbidden. The mausoleum was a family holy ground, but it was not a place known to hold precious treasures or relics. On the contrary, because Level 9 beings were involved directly or indirectly, it was a dangerous site where careless approach could easily cost a life. What could anyone have been after, to take such a risk?
"Have the intruder's purpose or backers been identified?"
"Not yet. They left almost no traces, and the knights who dealt with them report finding nothing of particular note…"
Serena fell silent for a moment, thinking. It left a bad taste, but they had handled it; it was unlikely to be a major problem. Perhaps it had simply been a foolish graverobber who took a wrong turn, or some force that tried to exploit the turmoil in House Bennet. Either way, what she needed to focus on now was dealing with her father and Yeon Bennet. An intruder at the mausoleum was a secondary concern.
"Very well. Keep watching, and report at once if anything else unusual arises."
"Yes, My Lady."
When the retainer withdrew, Serena looked down again at the fund records floating in the crystal sphere. The unease about the mausoleum intruder faded quickly from her mind.