Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 580: Chapter 580 – Taming the Fourth Year: Journey – Objective Change – 3

“Have you considered talking to someone about this?”

“No,” Larissa responded perhaps too quickly, the word escaping before she could moderate her tone or consider the suggestion. “There’s nothing to talk about. I just… get distracted sometimes.”

Her tutor sighed softly, the sound carrying years of experience with young nobles who carried burdens too heavy for their small shoulders.

“Do you want us to suspend the lesson for today?” her tutor offered gently, setting aside the etiquette diagrams.

Larissa opened her eyes wide and shook her head with an urgency that spoke to deeper fears than simple academic responsibility.

“No. I need… I need to stay busy. When I have nothing to do, it gets worse.”

♢♢♢♢

Luna sat in silence in the center of the room, surrounded by Liora, Mayo, and Matilda, but feeling completely alone.

Her friends tried to offer comfort, but their words seemed to bounce off an invisible barrier she had built around herself.

The isolation was self-imposed but no less real for being chosen. Each attempt at consolation felt like it came from across a vast distance, filtered through layers of grief and anger.

Liora felt so bad she had even lost her natural curiosity. Normally she would have bombarded Luna with questions about her outing with Ren, dissecting every detail.

But how could she do that now when Luna remained dim and depressed, as if she regretted even being alive? The questions died in her throat every time she considered asking them, replaced by a careful silence that felt almost as painful as the original grief.

Luna’s family situation was devastating. She had naively thought her uncles would take time to find out about her father’s temporary absence, that things could be resolved discreetly before anyone else noticed his departure.

But those bastards had seized the first moment the seal went off to put their dirty hands on the ‘star’, which Liora knew seemed to be some kind of important family treasure, as soon as Sirius found himself outside the seal’s protective range.

Even Mayo, usually armed with sharp comments and sardonic humor, remained unusually quiet. The heavy atmosphere had stripped even her of her usual attitude, leaving her without the verbal weapons she typically used to cut through tension.

Matilda tried to fill the silence with comforting words, but even her efforts sounded hollow in the dense atmosphere of desperation that had settled over them like a suffocating blanket.

“In the chaos now, with the city being attacked,” Mayo whispered bitterly to inform Liora, her voice loaded with impotent rage that made her hands tremble, “it seems they’re going to make bold moves to ‘help’ the city and gain better political standing.”

Her hands closed into fists on her lap, knuckles white with the force of suppressed fury.

“It’s unfair. They’re going to try to use that star key to achieve accomplishments in the defense that will give them power they don’t deserve, using troops that shouldn’t correspond to them by right in the first place…”

Luna suddenly raised her head, her eyes focusing on Liora’s words with an intensity she hadn’t shown in days. The change was so abrupt it was almost physical, like watching someone emerge from deep water gasping for air.

Liora immediately realized her mistake and extended a hand toward Luna, trying to stop the thought she could see forming in her friend’s eyes like a storm gathering on the horizon.

“Luna, no. Only adults can gain achievements and make real contributions in situations like this, we don’t have permits. We are…”

But Luna was no longer listening.

Something had changed in her posture, in the way she held her head. The passive desperation that had characterized her behavior during the last few days had transformed into something more dangerous: determination fueled by righteous anger.

“Luna,” Mayo intervened, recognizing the expression she knew all too well, the look that preceded Luna’s most spectacular acts of defiance, “whatever you’re thinking, stop right now.”

Matilda moved closer, extending a comforting hand. “Your father will return soon, he said it would only take a few days. Things will resolve without you having to…”

“No.” Luna’s voice cut through the air, carrying an authority that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than teenage rebellion. “Things won’t resolve on their own. And I can’t keep sitting here while they dirty her!”