LANTER’S POV—20 YEARS AGO

There was once a family of renowned butlers who were highly sought after among all the noble families of the Empire. From grandfather to father to son, they all took pride and dignity in being perfect manservants.

However, there was eventually a boy named Lanter born into this family who hated the idea of being a servant. He was humiliated at the thought that he and his father lived in the house of a family much richer than them, people who had everything they could ever want and who were famous throughout the Empire.

The boy obeyed his father and acted as a good servant during his childhood, but as he became a teenager, Lanter became rebellious.

His work became sloppy, and he did not take care of his appearance. There eventually came a day when his father, who was the butler of the house, dragged Lanter into the pantry to lecture him.

Lanter’s father, even while angry, kept a stiff and formal expression. “What has gotten into you?” he asked. “Never has a member of our family acted as you do. You come close to bringing disgrace upon my name. How does it look if a father cannot control his son, especially when that father is in such a position as I am?”

Lanter scowled. “I don’t know how you do it, Father. How are you content to live every day like a slave to somebody else? You are a lot smarter than some of the nobles who come to dinners and parties. I bet you’re as smart as our boss!”

His father gave a thin frown. “That is unimportant,” he said. “If there are nobles who act shamefully, they bring that shame upon themselves. I am content with my own dignity and intelligence. I do not require the praise of anyone else to know who and what I am. That is what it means to be a man, my son.”

That sounded stupid to Lanter. Surely his father was just trying to make himself feel better about his position. “I don’t want to be a servant, or even a butler like you!” he snapped.

“Then what do you want?” his father asked calmly.

“I want to do something that matters! Become a knight, or a famous explorer, or something!”

“When you become an adult, you may pursue whatever career you wish. And if you run away now, I will not try to stop you.” For the first time in what felt like years, Lanter’s father’s expression softened just a bit. “But I love you, my son. And when you return, I will be here waiting for you. I cannot promise that your position as a servant will remain available, but no matter what work you do, I will always love you.”

Tears suddenly came to Lanter’s eyes, and he was more embarrassed than he could ever remember feeling. He ran out of the room and avoided his father for the rest of the day.

That night, there was a dinner party in their employer’s mansion. Many lords and ladies and their families came to eat in the banquet hall into dance long into the night.

Lanter was assigned to a certain section of the banquet table, at which several children of nobles were sitting.

One girl with red-gold hair in a blue dress was the prettiest girl Lanter had ever seen, and he felt the tips of his ears redden whenever he approached the table to refill drinks or add a new course to the banquet.

A hulking boy sat next to her, the son of the richest nobleman in the Empire. He wore an ill-fitting suit and had a bad habit of talking with his mouth full.

He clearly wanted to impress the girl, and quickly noticed that Lanter blushed whenever he saw her.

The noble boy began to bully Lanter incessantly whenever he approached, laughing at him and trying to impress the girl with his jokes.

Lanter did his best to ignore this. He was terrified of being severely punished if he made a scene. After all, he was only a servant. It didn’t matter that his father was the butler of the entire household. He would not hold back in punishing Lanter if he failed to perform his duties.

Eventually, the noble boy stuck out his leg and tripped Lanter while he was carrying a platter of chicken, sending him to the ground.

The noble boy laughed boisterously and pointed down at him. “Look at that stupid idiot, Calliope! Look at how he cringes and won’t even stand up to defend himself like a man! I wonder if they chopped his balls off to make him a good little servant boy? It’s so hilarious the difference between nobles and commoners. One day, I’ll be advisor to the Emperor, and everyone will have to bow and scrape to me like this stupid servant does!”

The girl’s face went very white, and for a horrible moment, Lanter thought she was trying to hold in a laugh out of politeness.

He wanted to die. He thought about what his father had said about running away, and in that moment, was sure that he would do so tonight.

But then the girl, Calliope, began to speak, and her tone was full of hot anger.

“Even if that boy is a commoner, he is more of a gentleman than you will ever be. He’s done nothing all night but make your dinner as pleasant as possible, and for that, you bully him. How dare you? You’re nothing but an animal. Being noble has nothing to do with how you are born. True nobility is being the best you can be at whatever you are. To be a perfect servant is far better than to be a pig-hearted noble like you.”

For the rest of the night, she refused so much as to acknowledge the noble boy’s existence.

Lanter picked himself up and cleaned himself before returning to serving. His head and heart swam with a strange warm feeling for the rest of the night, and the next morning, he suddenly realized that he wanted to be a butler, just like his father.

Eventually, he got his wish, and was the first human in history to awaken the Butler class.

LANTER’S POV—PRESENT DAY

The butler emerged from the doorway of the vault beneath Sir Azarah’s mansion. The space around him seemed to distort.

The dwarf who was the boss of the burglars who had invaded the mansion realized that, though he had been frozen in place for a moment, he was slowly regaining the use of his body. “Don’t come any further!” he said, his words coming out slow and warbling, as though he were speaking into a deep well. “One step further, and I kill him!”

There was a sudden flicker of movement, and Achilles vanished from the dwarf’s grasp.

Lanter seemed to have teleported a few meters away from the dwarf, and was holding the unconscious boy in his arms.

“What is going on?” the butler repeated back. His voice was perfectly calm. “You and your people have activated three conditions. First, you have caused great property damage to the master’s estate. Second, you have laid hands on the master’s belongings, with intent to steal them. Third, you have attempted physical, bodily harm to the master. That extends to any guests he has invited into his home.”

“Conditions?” the dwarf snarled. “You don’t mean—”

Lanter smiled. “Ultimate Art: Remains of the Day!”

His Ultimate Art, which had gently begun to engage a few moments ago to keep Achilles from being killed, now rushed to full activation.

Reality splintered. Versions of the estate, anchored in the slightly different ways it had existed over the many years of the butler’s service, overlapped with one another. Rooms reshuffled themselves and corridors twisted about. New doorways opened on the floors, walls, and ceilings, and the dwarf fell through one of these that appeared underneath his feet.

Lanter’s ability to accelerate time inside his master’s estate allowed him to speed through the house and appear next to the spot the dwarf would land as he fell.

From the dwarf’s perspective, time was slower than normal, and his brain would have a difficult time reacting. He fell to the ground—which was actually the ceiling of the kitchen—and could not dodge in time as Lanter casually put his shoe on the dwarf’s throat.

Now that the dwarf knew where Lanter was, the sensation of slowed time would vanish, but he didn’t know how Remains of the Day worked, so he would be unable to exploit it.

“I gave Gebbo the opportunity to surrender,” said Lanter, “since he was still on staff. You have no such advantage. However, if you will give us information about your master—there is the stink of dark magic on you, and I have no doubt you are working for someone else—then I promise to spare your life.”

The dwarf lashed out and struck Lanter on the shin, then rolled out of the way as the butler took a pained step back. The invader, breathing hard, reached into his pocket and pulled out a huge beetle the size of his hand. “I’ve had it with all of you!” he growled, and opened his mouth to crunch on the beetle.

In a fraction of an instant, Lanter was beside him, his fork all the way through the dwarf’s throat.

The butler said nothing but only held the fork in place as the dwarf thrashed a few times, fell unconscious, and then died.

Lanter stepped back, allowing the corpse to slide to the ground. “Very unfortunate,” he said with a sigh. “It will take years of stored time to return everything to how it should be. Well, a butler does not complain.”

The house began to warp back into its original form. Blown apart walls, shattered vases, blood splatters, and even dirty boot prints on the carpets faded back to the state they had been in that evening, before the break-in.

However, even Remains of the Day could not heal living creatures. At the end of it all, Achilles still lay unconscious on the ground, and corpses of the invaders still lay, now bloodless, in the secret passage and upon the kitchen floor.

Lanter disposed of the bodies first, burying them in the back garden. They would provide a wonderful fertilizer for the coming season.

Then the butler carried Achilles up to his bed and tucked him in. Lanter eyed the unconscious boy, then smiled. “Your mother raised you well, Achilles. I wonder, did she ever teach you the same lesson she taught me? Do you carry that same passion in your blood, to be the best you can be, no matter where Fate places you?”

Through all this, the other servants of the mansion remained locked in their rooms.

They knew very well that it was a butler’s business to tend to matters in the middle of the night.