Lawrence froze in suspicion, his mind overflowing with questions on why he had called him.
"I'm guessing you're wondering why I called you here."
[Is he a mind reader now?]
"As I mentioned before, this is about your son."
"Nathan?"
"Do you have another son that I'm not aware of? Anyway, Nathan's in a bit of a jam… or should I say 'will be'."
"Is it because of that attack on his school?"
"I'm surprised you knew but still chose to ignore him."
"I'm not. I have things I need to sort out before I come back to him."
"Personal?"
"Complicated."
"Well, now I need you to forget everything you were about to do and go help Nathan."
King Augustus continued eating his food.
"What do you mean? Help him how? If you know he's in trouble, you should've gone to help him right away or sent one of those stuck-up noble ass kissers you have instead of talking to me."
The king raised his finger as he was savoring the food.
"This food is so good. Better than all that fancy crap I had to swallow. (wiped his mouth) To answer your question, I came to you because if the others knew what he was doing, he would be in almost as much trouble as he will be right now."
Lawrence frantically waved his hands around and asked,
"Let's take this back a bit. Why is he in trouble, and who's he in trouble with?"
"Alright, I'll dumb it down for you, Lawrence. For starters, during the attack on the academy, Nathan fought one of the commanding 'Heralds of Life'. For now, we'll call him Xavier. You see, Xavier was a nasty guy in all of this. He fought Nathan until he turned him into a pulp, but that's not all. There was this other student fighting alongside Nathan, called Harry. After a long, hard-fought battle, Xavier killed Harry, or to be more accurate, Harry sacrificed himself and took the blow instead of Nathan. Afterwards, the Herald left, leaving your son crying on a dead student's corpse, but that's not all. After the investigation, we found their hideouts, and now Nathan has their location."
Lawrence frustratingly rubbed his hand on his forehead.
"How did he know where they were? I thought you people kept things like this close to yourselves."
"Don't be mistaken, we do keep them hidden. But unfortunately, we forgot some other key variables."
"Which are?"
"Kids. Captain Regina has a daughter, and she just so happened to be a long-time friend of Nathan's. To be honest, she shouldn't be blamed for all of this since she gave Nathan the wrong place. But fate decided to work its magic. So basically, he's going to take revenge on the Herald."
"For fuck sakes…"
King Augustus took a drink of the apple juice beside his plate and looked over Lawrence's stressed-out state. He looked out the window and took a deep sigh.
"Can you blame him? He takes it after you."
"You don't know a damn thing about me."
"If only that were true. But I have one question to ask you."
"What is it?"
"Have you told him about his mother yet? His actual mother, not the adoptive one."
Lawrence instantly stared at the king with an intense gaze, with mana leaking out from him. Other people in the tavern felt suffocated with this immense pressure, and some went outside.
"Be careful there, Lawrence. I may be covering myself with a cloak, but I am still King. Don't give me a reason as to how I still kept this title after so many years."
He calmed himself down and drank the cup of water the waitress left for him after sitting down.
"Why are you so fixated on his mother anyway? She's gone."
"Maybe you're right. But if you don't tell him what his other magic affinity is or where it comes from, it might be too late."
"Please explain because my mind is far too gone to think straight."
"To put it simply, magic is inherited through birth from their parents, but in small cases others are born without it. In terms of Nathan, he was born with an affinity for shadow magic, which come you, your whole bloodline. Studies over the years show us that a child is born with one of the affinities from the parents."
"Are you giving me a theory lesson all of a sudden?"
"If you let me finish, then you'll understand why I'm telling you this. As I was saying, kids get what the parents have. But as of the past few years, there's been an increase in kids having 2 affinities of both mother and father. Even a sort of evolutionary change where a water mage is able to turn it to ice. The reason I'm telling you this is that I believe the same will happen to Nathan."
"You think he'll have this big evolution with shadow magic?"
"No. He'll have his mother's affinity. The only times this happens are because of extreme stress or uncontrollable adrenaline. As I've come to tell you, he's about to fight a Herald that almost killed him. He'll even have people with him this time, so this is basically a suicide mission from your son."
"When is this all going to happen?"
"Right now."
Lawrence abruptly stood up and shouted,
"What!?"
King Augustus pointed his finger out the window in the direction of the fated fight.
"If you run as fast as you can, you might be able to help him out."
"Alright."
As he was about to rush out of the tavern, he turned to Augustus.
"Aren't you coming?"
"Not yet. I'm still waiting for my dessert."
"Damn you."