Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System!
Chapter 499 - 499: Va

"Val?" Parker and Tessa ask at once, their voices overlapping like synchronized surprise that hits the air with enough force to make everyone in the ballroom lean forward.

For Tessa, the name hits like a fucking freight train of childhood memories.

She knows exactly who Val is. Damn, how many times had the old man told her that story? For eighteen years he'd told her that story like it was scripture, still celebrating the way he'd been saved by Val like it happened yesterday instead of decades ago.

So, she was surprised as hell to hear him say that name while looking at Helena like he'd found something he'd been searching for his entire fucking life.

Only problem? Tessa knew Helena. She was far from about as far from the heroine type as you can get without actively being a villain.

Even if Grandpa Wilder was being chased by an army of trigger-happy assassins, Helena would just walk through the shooting like it was another Tuesday, stepping over bodies with the same expression most people reserve for avoiding puddles. She wouldn't give less of a shit if she tried.

Something doesn't add up here.

Parker was completely surprised for an entirely different reason. No—surprise would be a fucking understatement. Why the hell was this old man crying looking at his aunt? What's with all this sentimentality that's making the air thick enough to choke on?

The old man looks like someone just handed him the Holy Grail wrapped in childhood Christmas morning.

He looked at Helena with a questioning expression that screamed "what the fuck is happening", but his aunt didn't say anything. She just held the pendant out for the old man like she was presenting evidence that's going to rewrite history.

"Val..." he says again, and the entire Wilder family is staring like they're watching their patriarch have a religious experience in real time.

They look like Tessa—they've heard this story for decades, especially Thomas, his son, who probably knows it word for fucking word.

"Grandpa, what is it? Are you okay?" Tessa asked, her voice carrying the kind of concern that makes everyone else in the ballroom feel like intruders at a family moment.

The old man's hands are shaking like leaves in a hurricane.

He held the pendant with trembling fingers, his weathered hands treating it like it might disintegrate if he breathes on it wrong.

"How... How did you get this?" he asks Helena, his voice cracking with decades of accumulated emotion.

Helena's response was delivered with the kind of nonchalant tone she'd use to discuss the weather or quarterly projections. "It was left behind by 'Val'—my sister and Parker's mother. She said if we ever wanted a favor, we could cash it in. I hope that offer still stands, considering it's the offer that saved your life."

The casual way she drops this bombshell makes everyone else feel like they just got hit by cosmic revelation delivered through interdepartmental memo.

"Helena! Language!" Parker reprimanded her like she was a teenager who just swore in church. "Also, how the hell? What are you talking about? Why would we need a favor, and how is this related to the old man?"

His confusion was so genuine it's almost painful to watch.

The old man straightened up like someone just plugged him into a power source and began narrating the story of how Val saved his life in New York. His voice carried the weight of decades, every word polished by countless retellings but somehow fresh with new understanding.

The Morellos looked away uncomfortably like they were being reminded of homework they forgot to do.

It had been their job. The assassination attempt that should have ended the Wilder bloodline permanently. They'd failed, and now they're learning exactly why in a way that makes their professional pride shrivel up and die.

The family was touched by the 'reunion'—the old man finally having one of his deepest wishes come true.

They listened even though they've grown up hearing this story, but this time it feels different. Fresh. Like they were hearing it for the first time instead of the thousandth.

Five hundred plus pairs of eyes are listened like they're witnessing history being rewritten in real time.

The most powerful people in the room knew about the assassination attempt but never knew how he'd survived. The mystery that had haunted their curious world for decades was finally getting answered.

Turns out the old man had crossed paths with supernatural beings that other supernaturals respected so deeply they practically genuflected.

He'd been saved by a woman who'd birthed this devastatingly handsome young man they called the Prince of Existence. The connection hit the room like a revelation delivered through cosmic sledgehammer.

The Nyxliths.

"It makes sense now," the old man whispered, his voice carrying wonder that makes the air itself seem to shimmer. "It makes sense how she saved me through all that shooting without anyone dying or getting wounded."

'Oh, old man,' Parker thought, fighting back a smile that would probably crack his face in half. 'My mother fooled you big time. There's no way the creator of Existence herself stepped in to save a mundane human without any ulterior motives.'

His mother doesn't do charity work. She does cosmic chess, and every move is calculated three hundred dimensions ahead of everyone else's understanding.

"Our paths were connected this whole time from the past..." Tessa whispered as she hugged Parker, her voice filled with the kind of wonder that makes cynics believe in destiny.

"Yeah," Parker replied internally, fighting the urge to tell her the truth: "No, our paths were forcefully connected by my overcalculative and overprotective mother from the get-go."

Another piece in his mother's grand scheme clicks into place in this puzzle that's apparently been decades in the making. Part from helping with his awakening, she'd also helped engineer his meeting with Tessa. His big sister had only woven the strings of Fate to make sure everything aligned perfectly.

"The cosmic manipulation is so elegant it's almost artistic."

If Luciano Wilder had died that night, the Wilder bloodline would have ended permanently. No Tessa would have been born, which means no human would have been able to crack the shell her son would be hiding behind in the future, exactly year 2025. His awakening would have taken even longer, maybe never happened at all.

So, she'd stepped in to save the old man. Not out of kindness, but out of necessity.

If there's one thing Parker knew about their lives as Nyxliths, it's that some things are fixed and can never be changed to happen any other way. Cosmic constants that even beings of their power have to work with instead of through.

Perhaps this unknown force is the only thing that compels his mother and big sister to step in and "naturally" change the course of events to ensure the "fixed" events happen the way they're meant to.

His entire relationship, his awakening, this moment—all of it orchestrated by forces that plan moves across decades like grandmasters playing chess with reality itself.

And here they were. Exactly where they were always meant to be.