Chapter 9: “Speak of the Hound”

Celestia’s heart sank the moment she laid eyes on the man standing before her. ‘This is worrisome. Very worrisome indeed,’ she thought.

Her father had assured her that he would hire the best possible instructor to train her for the trials ahead, which was why she hadn’t bothered to double-check the man’s identity beforehand. But now that her instructor stood in front of her, introducing himself, Celestia felt a growing headache.

Of all people, it had to be him.

The man was middle-aged, tall and fit, with a weathered face that spoke of experience. He wore a simple training uniform, but Celestia could see the outline of well-toned muscle beneath the cloth.

Jade. A veteran climber of the Tower, renowned enough to have been given the moniker The Weapons Master. In the story that Celestia read, Jade was fated to become one of the most dangerous adversaries the protagonist Arthur would ever face. This man standing before her was destined to stand against Arthur as the boss of the fourth arc of the webnovel.

Celestia maintained a composed face, but internally her mind whirled. ‘Father, what have you done? You’ve hired “The Collector” himself to be my trainer,’ she lamented silently.

Of course, Jade wasn’t known by that fearsome title yet. The infamous name “The Collector” would come later, if events followed their original course.

She recalled the key points of Jade’s backstory as it had been revealed in the story’s narrative.

Sometime in the future, Jade’s life would be brutally shattered. Thieves would break into his home, seeking his prized personal armory. Those scoundrels would set fire to his house, and in the resulting inferno, Jade’s wife and young child would lose their lives.

Jade had been a devoted family man, content with a quiet life, but the loss of his family changed him irrevocably.

Jade would hunt down the thieves in a frenzy of grief and rage, only to discover a far uglier truth behind the attack: the burglars had been hired on the orders of the Imperial Prince. That revelation was his turning point. Consumed by sorrow and a thirst for vengeance, Jade directed his wrath toward the Empire itself. He threw his lot in with a faction of revolutionaries seeking to overthrow the imperial family, and in doing so, he stepped onto the path of a villain.

When Jade’s treason became public, people stopped calling him the Weapons Master. Instead, they gave him a new title: The Collector.

He began collecting the weapons of every person he defeated. Each weapon taken was a symbol of justice in his eyes. By the time Arthur and his party confronted him, Jade had amassed an arsenal’s worth of armaments. In their climactic battle, he unleashed all of them with masterful proficiency.

It had been a gruelling battle that pushed Arthur to his limits. Yet in the end, Arthur did what protagonists always seem to do… he talked. Arthur found an opening not by strength, but by words. He delivered one of his signature heartfelt speeches, and implored Jade to remember who he truly was. He spoke of honor, of the innocents who would be hurt if the revolution plunged the Empire into chaos, and even expressed sympathy for the pain Jade carried.

It was the classic hero’s gambit: to reach the noble heart of the villain buried beneath anger and grief.

And just like the cliché it was, it worked. Jade faltered. For the first time since his fall, genuine emotion besides wrath flickered in his eyes: regret, sorrow, a glimmer of the man he had once been. That hesitation was all Arthur needed. The hero seized the chance to strike a decisive blow.

Jade was defeated. He collapsed amid the debris of their battlefield, gravely wounded, with Arthur kneeling beside his fallen opponent as Jade, in his final moments, spoke of his wife and child with tears in his eyes.

He died shortly after. It was a tragic, pitiful end for a man who had once been respected and happy.

This realization flooded Celestia’s mind while Jade stood there, entirely unaware of her inner turmoil. The man before her was not yet that broken “Collector” of the future. Right now, he was a valuable individual with impressive skills, and more importantly, a man who deeply loved his family and led an upright life.

She barely registered the specifics of his words, something about discipline or personalized regimens, because her thoughts were spinning off-course. ‘This is a man who will lose everything,’ she thought

This was a man who, at present, was satisfied with his life: a family waiting for him at home, pride in his hard-earned accomplishments. That aura of a family man at peace. There was a quality in Jade, a grounded sincerity, that she couldn’t help but admire.

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He possessed traits that she wished she could claim for herself. Celestia wondered what it must be like to feel such contentment with one’s life.

She realized, with a jolt of clarity, that she wanted this man on her side. A talented fighter seasoned by real hardship, who nonetheless valued family… If Celestia could somehow prevent his tragedy and keep him from walking down that dark path, he wouldn’t have to become Arthur’s enemy.

‘But at what cost?’ a cold, pragmatic voice in the back of her mind whispered.

Celestia’s brows knit together slightly. If she actively changed Jade’s fate, Arthur would lose a crucial opponent on his journey. Jade’s downfall and the subsequent battle had been a vital part of Arthur’s growth as a hero.