Legendary Traveler: By Earning Progress Points I will Become Supreme!-Chapter 181: The Thurston Family (3)

Jason's statement set off alarm bells in Aoni's head as his ears began ringing.

"For now, don't speak, just listen," Seeing that his youngest son was about to rattle off questions, even though he seemed a bit shell-shocked, Jason began regaling the story of his past.

"I know there have been a lot of questions on your end, well, all of you have asked at some point, about your grandparents, Aunts, uncles, and so on, and for a while, I suppose a simple, they live far away, or your Mom and I are only children could have sufficed, but when it comes to lying, I was never really good at it."

"For starters, as far as I know, in either the Thurston or Asterson…your Mother's Maiden name, we are all that remains. On my side, I had two brothers and only a mother. My father died in Genovia when I was only 8 years old, and my mother left the world about 15 years ago due to health complications."

"As for my siblings, one died during his initial period in Genovia, as for my second brother…I killed him after he assaulted your Mom. With his death and the passing of my grandparents due to old age, they were both mundanes; I was the sole living member of the Thurston Family."

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"On the Asterson side, Your mother didn't have any siblings, and both her parents died in a car accident when we were teenagers." Without looking over at his wife, Jason calmly reached his arm over to her side and took her hand in his.

"When we started our small family, the two of us only had one thought in mind: we wanted our children to be close. Rivalries are fine, but infighting, greed, selfishness, none of that would ever be allowed because the only people we have to count on are each other."

"And I believe we did succeed in that; watching each of you grow up and take care of one another in our absence fills me with more pride than any of you understand."

Going around the table, Jason met the eyes of each of his children, one by one, until finally landing on Aoni and offering up a soft smile.

But then, his eyes flashed with something, and he took a deep breath before continuing.

"Not long after Anthony was born, we were financially stable enough thanks to the abundance of resources I could obtain through my Territory along with the strength of my summons."

"I'd been extremely lucky from the beginning, with my first summon being a five-star humanoid. Through it, I was able to enter into battles with beings and monsters way over my strength and bring back a significant allotment of different items; however, as it turns out, that wasn't a good thing."

"As each of you knows, my Attribute Physique Manipulation allows me to swap around my stats, temporarily buffing one by reducing the strength of two, and with it, I was able to get scouted by a decent-sized guild and ended up even garnering quite a bit of fame."

"Between the resources I had access to and my combat prowess, I ended up on the radar of a lot of unsavory people, people who coveted what was mine, and in the end, my idiotic obsession with being famous…caused me to lose it all."

Clenching his fist under the table, Jason steadied himself with the support of Lea.

"To this day, I don't know how the coordinates of my Territory got leaked or even how it all went down because when my lands were destroyed and summons slaughtered, I was here instead of in Genovia."

"By the time I was alerted by my Summon's display and arrived, everything had been razed to the ground, and all that was left behind was a bloodied drawing on the ruins of what used to be my Lord's Mansion."

Reaching into the pocket of his jeans, Jason withdrew a piece of paper and passed it across the table to Aoni, who swiftly opened the folded sheet and examined the recreation.

"This…is it…" Instantly recognizing the image, Aoni's eyes darted from the paper to his Dad, who simply nodded with hidden rage.

"It's the original Monarch's Crest, the one from before he took over our continent."

The image depicted on the paper was that of a bloodied tiger, holding a spear in his mouth with a sword stabbed into its back and a shield for armor on its chest.

The elements of the crest were all present; however, upon becoming a Monarch, the leader of Aoni's country swiftly rearranged them into something more presentable, more Royal, instead of what could be viewed as a mercenary squad emblem.

"Apparently, I was growing too fast, and even with my limited potential, the fact that I could single-handedly bring in enough resources to fund a guild seemed to be enough for the Government to take action. Even if that weren't the case, the true reason could be literally anything, but that doesn't change the result: my territory was destroyed by someone with ties to the Government, or at the very least, the Monarch."

"On the remains of my summons and my fallen territory, I made a solemn vow that I would never let the same thing happen to my family, and that is why I've held this meeting with each of your siblings in the past, and now you, because when all is said and done, we only have each other, and even if the entire world turns against us, we must act as a shield for the younger members."

Aoni's mind was a complete mess; sure, it's one thing to be attacked by an outside force since Genovia was untamed and wild at times, but for his very own Government to set its sights on its people because they were getting "Too Strong," no, had the POTENTIAL to get stronger, that was entirely unacceptable.

"I need to know what you told the Bureau Aoni so that we can plan accordingly…" This time, it wasn't Jason who spoke but Anthony, whose image had suddenly grown 10 fold in Aoni's mind.

It all made sense now, the fact that ever since becoming a traveler, Ant had been spending less and less time around the family, how even when he was home, his mind seemed somewhere else.

There was no doubt in the Lad's mind that his eldest brother had been passed the Family torch and was working tirelessly to build a place for them to go if, one day, the Government decided to come knocking on their door.