CHAPTER 206: EROS REVEALS THE TRUTH.

Eros asked, eyes still on kael, "and what if we say No."

Kael only chuckled eyes gleaming, "with the benefits I present, I doubt you will."

He chuckled and Eros followed. Both men laughing loudly together. Eros then spoke, "this will be my answer."

Instantly, he released his technique.

*Alpha’s Presence *

Just as everyone felt like they were before a king, pressure mounting, Eros moved, from his storage ring materialized a long sword.

The blade of the sword landed right in front of Christiana’s neck.

The tension around the banquet table grew so heavy it could have been sliced with Eros’s own blade.

The golden glow of the chandelier above flickered as if the light itself hesitated to witness what came next. The air was still, save for the faint hum of Eros’s Alpha’s Presence that was slowly fading.

This was dominance so sharp it seemed to distort the very breath of those around him.

For a heartbeat, no one spoke. Butler Pa’s hand twitched at his side, his soul energy flaring faintly—until Eros’s words slashed through the silence.

"Trust me, mutt. You are fast, but not faster than a blade already kissing skin."

The butler froze. His eyes turned to Prince Kael, as if asking for an order.

The silver line of Eros’s sword edge gleamed just beneath Christiana’s throat, close enough to reflect the trembling rise and fall of her pulse.

Across the table, Violet’s eyes widened, her hand halfway raised toward her broad sword.

Sir Williams’s jaw tightened, his instincts screaming at him to move—yet even he dared not test the space between thought and death that Eros had just claimed.

Something was just not right. Why would Eros point the edge of a blade to the neck of Christiana, one regarded as an ally?

Kael was the first to find his voice, his expression surprisingly struggling between charm and command. "Baron! What are you doing to my guest?"

Eros turned his gaze upon him, cold and amused, as though addressing a child pretending to rule a kingdom.

"Do you take me for a fool?" he said, voice laced with venomous calm.

Then, shifting his eyes toward Alexis, he spoke with almost surgical precision. "We already figured out that you were poisoned. Have you thought of who did it?"

The monk blinked in confusion, folding his palms together. "Poisoned? The Abbot checked himself. That was a cultivation accident."

Eros tilted his head. "Then how did Prince Kael here know that the poison in her body clumped together to form the pill she just spat?"

The words fell like thunder in the silence. Every pair of eyes at the table turned to Kael. His polite smile faltered, though only slightly—a hairline crack in his princely façade.

Alexis’s voice trembled as she spoke, "What do you mean? Was it not my husband, Luke, who poisoned me?"

"Yes," Eros said softly, stepping closer to the table, blade still steady before Christiana’s neck. "He was. But who do you think sent him? How was a weak man like Luke able to create such a complex poison?"

His lips curved, not in humor, but in pity.

"And while we are at it," Eros continued, "let me ask you this: we all know what Luke was capable of in martial arts. Even your grandfather had to raise his cultivation with piles of resources just to make him competent enough to compete with the heirs of the other grand duke families. How then was ’weak’ Luke able to track us within the dungeon and attempt to take my life?"

The silence that followed was almost sacred.

Sir Williams leaned forward, voice low and strained. "Baron Eros... it would seem like you are heading somewhere. Please don’t beat around the bush."

Eros sighed. ’These people are slow’, he thought, his eyes narrowing. ’I thought humans were supposed to think faster than this.’

Eros had forgotten that one part of his soul was made of a genius psychology professor.

Then he lifted a finger and pointed it directly at Kael.

"Luke works for him. He is the mole planted in your family, Alexis. Yes, even your cultivation poisoning—Prince Kael here is responsible for it."

Every breath stopped. The golden lights flickered again.

And in that perfect, suffocating stillness—Kael’s faint, frozen smile no longer looked princely.

It looked predatory.

Sir Williams’s brows furrowed deeply, his voice rising with restrained disbelief.

"Baron Eros," he began, his tone measured but skeptical, "that does not make any sense. Why would—"

But before he could finish, Eros raised a single hand.

The air rippled with soul energy.

A low rumble answered his gesture as the curtain of water behind Butler Pa shivered and then exploded outward with a deafening crash. Droplets flew across the chamber like shards of glass, glimmering under the chandelier’s golden light. The magical flow collapsed—revealing the heart of its source.

Suspended in midair was the Golden Anchor Stone of Healing.

Only now, it looked wrong.

One half of the crystalline stone glowed with divine radiance—pure gold, humming with benevolent energy.

But the other half was twisted, veined in murky violet, its light sluggish and corrupted. The dark side pulsed faintly, sickly, like a dying heart trying to beat in sync with the living half beside it.

It had the same hue as the pill Alexis had vomited.

Gasps filled the hall.

Eros’s voice broke the silence, smooth but cold, echoing off marble walls.

"The Golden Anchor Stone is a very unique anchor stone," he began. "Many don’t know this, but it was also famed for another gift—one few dared to speak about. In fact, the emperor forbid it. And keot it in secret amongst the royal family of the empire one thousand years ago."

He paused, eyes flicking toward the prince.

"Poison."

The word fell like a curse.

"Yes," Eros continued, "just as it can heal anything, it can also create the deadliest of poisons known to the world. That same venom saturates this entire dungeon—corrupting its beasts, its soil, its air. That is why everything outside the central region is the way it is, and only the central region looks like its unnaturally prospering."

He lowered his blade slightly, but his tone grew heavier, darker.

"This is its balance. Its equilibrium."

For a long, haunting moment, the only sound was the faint hiss of evaporating water on the marble floor.

The revelation hit like a hammer blow.

No one spoke—not even the monk dared breathe too loudly.

They had never known. None of them had.

Only Prince Kael’s composed smile seemed to flicker under the weight of this truth.

Eros, however, stood calm. His eyes reflected neither triumph nor anger, only the sharp focus of a man who had followed every thread of deceit to its source.

He had not stumbled upon this truth by chance. From the moment the Golden Anchor Stone’s radiance had first appeared before him that night, he had known something was wrong.

Where others had celebrated a miracle, he had gone to do his own investigations.

After all, he was once a god. And gods enjoyed to play with mortals.

There was no such thing as a free gift.

He had the treasure of Alaska the threatened. And within were records of the anchor stones.

Eros’s suspicions were further admitted by Belamorte and Lady Sayuri...