Heavenly Castle - Chapter 72 – The curtain rises

[COMPLETE] Can a royal Romeo and Juliet find their happy ending?

Ayleth, Princess of Zenithra, is secretly trained in hand-to-hand combat, and collects swear words she doesn't know how to use. During the Festival of Peace, in which every royal son on the continent will be at the castle for a month, she is instructed by her parents to find a husband. Yet, Ayleth has never even been kissed—until the very first ball, when she meets the man in the Lion mask.

Etan is a seasoned warrior, and the Prince of Summitras. He attends the Festival hoping to find a powerful wife who will help him conquer the dark sorcery of their bloodsworn enemies, the Kingdom of Zenithra. But at the very first ball, he discovers the masked woman who captures his heart is the Heir to the evil empire.

Ayleth and Etan face an impossible battle. Will their love survive? Or will their parents' dark dealings keep them apart forever?

[Mature content. No sexual violence.]

******

“You…” She stepped back. Then back again, her mouth dropped open. “You… You cannot be…”

“I am,” Etan said, and his hair raked back as he pushed his mask off his handsome face. So handsome her heart raced.

His hair was ebony black, his skin a warm brown that threatened to fade in in the winter months. He stared at her with glittering green eyes, over high cheekbones and a noble nose, his jaw tight and shadowed this late in the day. His chin was high over the pillar of his neck that she’d just touched with its hard lines and steel strength, so different to her own. And his chest... She gasped and covered her eyes. She’d humiliated herself revealing her stupid, childish curiosity.

“No, Ayleth. This changes nothing.”

“How can you say that? It changes everything!” She was horrified to realize she was crying.

“Ayleth, please.” His voice cracked on the plea and she stared at him, shoving her mask up and off, despite how it would pull her hair out of the beautiful twist the maid had managed for her.

His eyes locked on hers and she couldn’t think. She couldn’t breathe.

She had met her One. And he was the son of her bloodsworn enemy.

She stared at him as he stepped forward again, offering both hands, palm up. “Touch me,” he whispered. “Hold my hands. This is real, Ayleth. I don’t know how it happened, but this is real. Please don’t deny it.”

She couldn’t resist. She raised a trembling hand to his cheek, letting her palm catch on the scruff of his jaw. He blew out a breath and put his hand over hers, and that jolt that happened whenever they touched shivered through her again.

“Please, Ayleth.”

“I cannot deny it,” she whispered.

In Victorian England, occult practitioners and the Nightmen Police, who hunted occult practitioners, were at odds and engaged in a fight to the death. Legend has it that one of the occult practitioners was a mysterious merchant who ran the world’s largest underground black market in the occult arts, offering a variety of rare treasures. Word says that the Nightmen have a newly appointed young detective whose decisive actions have solved many cases, and occult practitioners are terror-stricken hearing his name.

Duan FeiZhou: Good, both are me.

He transmigrated to this era because he accidentally clicked on an email titled “Congratulations on your million dollar inheritance” and confusingly agreed to join the Nightmen’s side to fight against the occult practitioners.

Who knew that the next day he would inherit a mysterious inheritance from his uncle – the owner of the world’s most prominent black market of secret arts underground trading… This was a bit awkward.

Duan FeiZhou decided to stay away from the strife to avoid falling off the horse and became a salted fish.

On the one hand, crazy black market customers hope that the black market will close down as soon as possible. On the other hand, the Nightmen are negatively idle, hoping that he is quickly fired. However, the more he rushed customers, the more the business of the black market became red hot. The more negativity, the more he was promoted in the Nightmen.

Seeing that the double-sided was becoming a bigger hassle, he was afraid his mask would fall off..

The Scotland Yard’s NIghtmen Leader, code name Z, has white hair, blind eyes, mechanical prosthetics, metal spine, all from war damage; his hobby is hand-rolling cigars, and if he can not save the hostages, he will shoot them together with the criminals. His highest ideal in life is to exterminate all the occult practitioners in the world.

He thought he had a heart of gold with a painful past, but step by step, he was impressed and conquered by the new young Nightman… He also reformed him.

Until one day, he learned that the young man who tugged at his heartstrings was his lifelong enemy – the owner of the world’s largest underground black market for secret arts.

Z: Oh well.

- Description from Novelupdates

I, Ichinosuke, failed to get a job for 100 consecutive times. Furthermore, my record is still being updated as unemployed.

In the class where everyone awakened to Class A, Rosen was violently attacked online for awakening to a Class D hero template.Fortunately, the awakened Class D template is a 'growth' template rarely seen in a thousand years.So what if others have a strong S-level template, they only have one skill for life, while I can use my Class D 'transform' skill on par with you!Not to mention upgrading from D to C, where I can awaken new skills, and the new skills are even more powerful!Continuously leveling up, awakening more skills.And as the level increases, the form also changes, evolving into monsters similar to those in 'Classic of Mountains and Seas'!......The class teacher and the principal, not recognizing talent like Mount Tai, persuaded Rosen to drop out. Rosen could only work at the crematorium to earn currency to buy Awakening Stones, temporarily enduring for a month.Coincidentally, other forces ran rampant, killing their classmates who awakened to Class A and Class S.Thus, Rosen discovered several familiar corpses appearing in the crematorium...Facing the corpses of those who bullied him while they were alive, Rosen chose...