Duke Falconcrest could not believe it.
What had seemed on the verge of success had failed yet again, and for no apparent reason.
Duke Falconcrest could not tell what had caused this experiment to fail. He pressed a hand lightly against his head, utterly troubled. It was giving him a headache. Why? What exactly had gone wrong?
He was not a mage and had little prior experience with experiments, so he had no understanding of the situation before him.
At that moment, frustration seethed within him. A savage gleam rose in his eyes, and a murderous impulse filled his heart, as though he wanted to tear everything apart.
Only after a long while, with several deep breaths, did Duke Falconcrest barely manage to suppress that murderous impulse. Traces of lingering fear appeared in his eyes.
The situation was growing worse. He did not know when it had begun, but a violent emotion kept surfacing within him. It was starting to affect his judgment and sway his mind. Duke Falconcrest was, quite simply, afraid of it.
As a rogue, Duke Falconcrest's greatest strengths had been his temperament and patience. In the past, he could persevere for days on a mission. Whatever happened, he could face it calmly, without anger or resentment, and certainly without doing anything irrational. Impulsiveness had been utterly foreign to him. But things were different now. Under the influence of that violent emotion, Duke Falconcrest found himself becoming impulsive, handling certain situations with no maturity at all.
That alone would have been tolerable. The real problem was his craving for destruction and delight in killing. Those were not feelings Duke Falconcrest welcomed.
Duke Falconcrest had no particular feelings about killing or destruction. He would not object to either, whatever form they took. After all, he was not a