Chapter 376: Seventeen [I]

Trafalgar was alone in his room within Morgain Castle.The silence there was not accidental. It was deliberate in its restraint, built into the stone and spacing, into the way the walls neither pressed in nor offered comfort. Valttair would return today. The conversation with the head of the Sylvanel family had concluded, and with his return the uncertainty would end. Today, it would be known what decision had been made. Today, it would be known when they would go to war.

War was approaching. Not as a rumor or a distant possibility, but as an inevitability already in motion. The world would descend into chaos soon enough—territories shifting, bloodlines tested, structures breaking under pressure. Trafalgar acknowledged it without tension, without anticipation. He did not feel fear at the thought. If anything, there was only a quiet awareness, steady and unmoving, as if the future had already aligned itself and was simply waiting to arrive.

Trafalgar turned away from the window and began to dress.

There was no hurry in the movements. Each motion was measured, practiced, done with the same calm precision he applied to everything else. Fabric settled over his shoulders. Clasps were secured. The act itself required no thought, yet his awareness lingered just enough for one fact to surface.

Today, he turned seventeen.

The realization carried no weight beyond acknowledgment. There was no celebration attached to it, no sense of loss or longing for what the day might have meant under different circumstances. Just a number advancing by one, marking the passage of time rather than any change in who he was.

Seventeen was not an event. It was a line crossed.

Trafalgar exhaled once, slow and controlled, and let his focus settle inward.

’Status.’

The response was immediate. A translucent interface unfolded before him, lines of information aligning with clinical precision, hovering in the air as if the space itself had learned to obey him.

[Host: Trafalgar du Morgain][Title: Cursed Heir][Age: 17]

’The system updates so quickly’

[Race: Half-Human / Half-Primordial][Bloodline: Primordial Being][Core: Flow][Class: Swordsman / Riftspawn][Talent: SSS]

[Abilities]

Passive Abilities:– Primordial Body (Lv. MAX)– Riftborn Feast (Passive)– Sword Insight (Lv. MAX)– Morgain Blade (Lv. MAX) – Unique Rank

Active Combat Skills:– Arc Slash (Lv.2) – Common Rank– Severing Fang (Lv.2) – Rare Rank– Severance Step (Lv.2) – Epic Rank– Earthsplitter (Lv.1) – Epic Rank– Morgain’s Requiem– Morgain’s Final Crescent– Crosswind Edge (Lv.1) – Common Rank– Morgain’s Linebreaker

[Items & Equipment]

– Maledicta – Evolutive Weapon (Rank: Rare → ?)His primary sword. Adaptable and evolving with user growth.

– Oathbinder – Legendary Accessory–15% mana skill cost+15% overall damage

– Shadowhide Leather Armor – Rare Rank+25% chance to blend into darkness+10% damage protection vs monsters

– Armor of the Unborn Star (True Name: Obsidian Wings) – UniqueForged by the Primordial MotherNegates 1 critical hit (cooldown-based)Reduces all incoming damage by 20%Passive: Primordial Dread – Void creatures instinctively fear the wearer

– Leather Undersuit – Uncommon Rank. Light armor, resists slashes and mana pressure

– Widow’s Whisper – Rare Dagger. Slightly increases bleeding duration on physical cuts

– Nightpiercer – Epic Longsword. Forged from mythril alloy; enhances critical damage and attack speed (+10%)

– Blazewick Torch – Common. Basic illumination tool

– Shadowlink Echo – Rare Item. Records and transmits encrypted voice messages using mana

– Leviathan Fang Pendant – Legendary Rank. Greatly increases underwater endurance (breathing, pressure resistance, stamina)+20% physical damage while submerged Passive: Ocean-Born Resilience – reduces movement penalties underwater

Trafalgar let his gaze pass over the window in silence.

It was... excessive. Not in presentation, but in accumulation. Passives layered atop one another. Equipment that would have defined entire bloodlines in the hands of anyone else. Despite his core being Flow, his body carried the weight and resilience of something closer to a Prime.

’Heheheheh...’

The thought came without pride, almost amused. ’It’s insane, what I have now.’ Strong—undeniably so. Far beyond what could be called normal. Enough that the coming war no longer felt like an unknown variable, but a path already traced.

The window faded as he dismissed it, leaving the room unchanged.

Strangely, as the image of battle and chaos surfaced in his mind, there was still no fear. Only the quiet certainty that whatever role awaited him, he would step into it as he was—aware, prepared, and unmoved.

Trafalgar remained where he was for a moment longer, the afterimage of the interface still lingering in his mind even after it had vanished from the air.

’It really is a mess of power,’ he thought, the phrasing blunt, almost dry. ’If someone saw this without knowing me, they’d think I stole it. Like I looted a dynasty.’

He glanced down at his hands, flexed his fingers once, feeling the subtle density beneath the skin—strength that did not belong to a seventeen-year-old boy, not in any normal sense. Primordial Body wasn’t a title. It was a fact written into his bones. Sword Insight wasn’t a talent that made him skilled; it made him efficient in a way that bordered on unfair. And the passives... the passives didn’t simply support him. They carried him.

’Flow,’ he reminded himself, almost out of habit. ’My core is Flow.’

It should have meant something. A certain limitation. A certain profile. A shape of power that required finesse, timing, control.

But his body did not match that profile anymore.

Even without pushing mana, even without calling a skill, he could feel it: the baseline was too high. The resilience. The weight behind every movement. The way the world seemed to yield a fraction sooner when he decided to move through it.

’A Prime...’ The comparison formed naturally, not as a boast, but as a measurement. ’I’m not there. Not truly. But if you stripped the names away and only looked at the result...’

His mind drifted forward, uninvited, to the shape of what was coming. War. Not a distant conflict fought by faceless banners, but something that would reach into territories and families, tear open long-maintained agreements, force people into corners where bloodlines mattered more than law. He could already see it the way he saw a sword trajectory before it happened—lines intersecting, pressure building, an outcome waiting.

And somewhere inside that outcome, his role had a place.

He didn’t know the exact position yet. Valttair would decide that. Valttair had already begun moving pieces. But Trafalgar understood the simplest truth beneath it all.

He would be used.

Not in a demeaning way. Not as a victim. As a weapon. As leverage. As presence. As inevitability.

The thought didn’t tighten his chest. It didn’t raise his pulse.

There was no fear.

Only acceptance—quiet, settled, almost calm. As if he had already stepped over the threshold in his mind, and now all that remained was to walk the distance.