Chapter 249: The Obsidian Loom. (Kofi Donation Bonus)

The digital clock projected across the crystalline ceiling of Villa 1139 blinked in glowing emerald runes: 13:42. Wednesday.

In less than six hours, the grand gates of the Astral Promenade would swing wide for the Starlight Banquet.

In less than six hours, the Four Houses would claim their freshmen, the Starlight Realm would tear open its dimensional gates for a fourteen-day free-for-all, and Creed Walden had to stand beside Amara—the proud, sharp-tongued heiress of the Great Frost Bastion lineage—in front of the entire student body, the academy instructors, and the watching world.

And Creed Walden currently possessed an existential crisis hanging in his walk-in wardrobe.

"No," Creed muttered, violently shoving a hanger aside. "Absolutely not. This is a combat hazard."

He was standing in the center of his massive bedroom suite, stripped to his trousers, his hands on his hips, glaring into the mechanized wardrobe system that had come standard with the top-ranked student villa.

The wardrobe was spacious enough to park a small hover-car, lined with polished mahogany panels and glowing energy rails. But the contents?

A tragic, repetitive wasteland.

There were six identical sets of the dark blue and orange Ambassadors Academy casual uniform.

There was the shredded, blood-crusted combat tunic he had worn through Varien’s Gravity Basin trial.

There was a plain grey hoodie he had bought for twenty credits from a street vendor back in Infernal Ice Bastion, smelling faintly of old instant noodles.

And, nestled in the very corner, was the "sleek black number" he had worn weeks ago to cash in his tournament loot at Empire Enterprise—an outfit currently missing two buttons and sporting a permanent burn mark near the left collarbone from a stray spark of Lilith’s lightning.

"I told her I had a suit," Creed whispered, his voice trembling with the fragile, crumbling pride of a man realizing his bluff was about to be called in front of a thousand aristocrats.

"I literally looked her in the eyes and said, ’I clean up decently well.’ Why did I say that? Who was I trying to impress?!"

Back in Azure Sky Bastion, he had strutted into the grand auction in a cream-colored three-piece suit with a crisp blue tie, shamelessly admiring his reflection while flanked by two literal primordial goddesses.

But that suit was in Azure Sky Bastion. Here, in the floating heavens of the Ambassadors Academy, he was a glorified peasant living in an emperor’s penthouse.

"If I show up in a patched combat tunic, she won’t just reject me," Creed mumbled, rubbing his temples beneath the edge of his navy headband.

"She’ll skewer me with a glacier spike, hand my corpse to Pascal, and attend the banquet with Nicholas out of spite."

DING-DONG.

The villa’s front chime chimed with the cheerful, obnoxious melody of a cartoon duck.

Creed threw on a simple grey shirt, marched down the grand floating staircase, and tapped the foyer sensor.

The sleek doors hissed open.

Standing on the floating stone porch, framed by the bright afternoon sun and the shimmering bonsai trees, was Pascal.

The round, potato-shaped boy looked like a walking, breathing optical hazard. He was wearing a floor-length, bright golden silk robe embroidered with swirling crimson dragons whose eyes were literally encrusted with low-grade fire crystals.

The collar stood three inches tall, brushing against his jawline, and his bald head was polished to such a blinding, mirror-like gloss that the sunlight reflecting off his scalp cast an actual golden halo onto Creed’s ceiling.

Creed froze. He squinted. He raised a hand to shield his retinas.

"What," Creed said flatly, "in the name of the ancient ancestors, are you wearing?"

Pascal didn’t answer right away. He slowly raised his arms, letting the massive, billowy golden sleeves flutter in the mountain breeze like the majestic wings of an overweight duck.

He tilted his head upward at a forty-five-degree angle, closed his eyes, and exhaled with profound, celestial arrogance.

"Behold," Pascal declared, his voice echoing off the villa’s walls like a bronze bell. "The Golden Sovereign of the Nine Heavens! The Uncrowned Dragon of the Starlight Festival! The mortal vessel through which the divine radiance of romance shall descend upon this forsaken academy!"

Creed stared at him for four unbroken seconds. "You look like a stick of butter that got blessed by a temple priest."

Pascal’s eyes snapped open, his majestic pose collapsing instantly as he scowled. "You have no taste, Elder Brother! None! This is pure starlight-spun dragon silk, imported directly from the eastern textile sanctums of the Tier 1 bastions!

It cost me three months of allowance and two high-grade beast cores I stole from my uncle’s desk!"

"You don’t even have a date, Pascal."

"Irrelevant!" Pascal scoffed, waving a golden sleeve dismissively as he waddled past Creed into the foyer, his robes rustling with every step.

"A true dragon does not need a mate to soar! I shall enter the ballroom as an individual entity of overwhelming aesthetic dominance! Maidens shall weep, rivals shall shield their eyes, and the House of Diamonds will beg me to grace their high table!"

Pascal paused, turning around to take in Creed’s appearance: barefoot, wrinkled grey shirt, and a dark blue headband.

A slow, horrifying smirk spread across the bald boy’s chubby cheeks.

"Wait," Pascal gasped, pointing a stubby, golden-sleeved finger at Creed’s chest. "Don’t tell me... the great Class Captain, the conqueror of Alan Snow, the man who supposedly landed Lady Amara on his front porch at midnight... doesn’t have an outfit?"

Creed’s eye twitched. "I have outfits."

"Name one."

"My uniform."

"A combat jumpsuit to a celestial gala?! Sacrilege!" Pascal fell to his knees on the marble floor, clawing at his chest with theatrical despair.

"The heavens have truly abandoned this house! We are going to the Tailoring Promenade immediately! Move, you destitute spear-demon! I will not allow my sworn brother to embarrass the majesty of my golden aura!"

The Academy Tailoring Promenade occupied the eastern floating terrace of the commercial district—a breathtaking avenue of pristine white marble pavilions, hanging crystal chandeliers, and vaulted glass archways that looked down upon the clouds.

Unlike the rugged weapon dispensaries or the utilitarian serum counters of Empire Enterprise, this district smelled intensely of crushed lavender, synthetic musk, and the intoxicating, arrogant scent of old money.

High-born scions from the second and third years strolled between the boutique porticos, followed by floating measuring drones and anxious personal attendants carrying velvet garment bags.

Creed and Pascal walked down the center of the avenue, drawing looks from every single passerby.

Part of it was because Pascal looked like an escaped circus emperor.

The other part was Creed.

Even dressed in plain grey trousers and a simple fitted tunic, the sheer, subterranean presence rolling off Creed’s frame was impossible to miss.

His posture was relaxed, his hands tucked into his pockets, but beneath that calm exterior was the terrifying stillness of someone who had recently stood before an instructor’s full-power strike and forced the man back three paces.

His blue eyes were half-lidded, his headband pulled down tight, yet every first year who crossed his path instinctively gave him a wide, respectful berth.

"Look at them cower before our radiance," Pascal whispered smugly, strutting with his chin pointed so high he was nearly staring at the ceiling.

"They’re cowering because your robe is reflecting light into their retinas, you idiot," Creed muttered, grabbing the boy by the collar of his golden robe and yanking him toward the entrance of a high-end boutique labeled The Obsidian Loom.

"In here. Quick. Before someone calls the academy fire marshals on your outfit."

The interior of The Obsidian Loom was suffocatingly opulent.

The walls were lined with bolts of iridescent, enchanted fabrics that shifted color depending on the viewer’s emotional state; suits of ceremonial armor rested on velvet pedestals; and floating holographic mannequins modeled intricate, multi-layered noble robes trimmed with fur, feathers, and dangling gemstones.

The moment the chime above the door rang, an elderly man with impeccably groomed gray hair, wearing a high-collared monocle that ticked with microscopic brass gears, glided out from behind a velvet curtain.

His eyes swept over Pascal’s blinding golden robe, twitched once in profound aesthetic agony, and then locked onto Creed.

"Welcome to The Obsidian Loom," the tailor spoke, his voice clipped, cultured, and dripping with generational snootiness.

"I am Master Vane. Am I to understand that... you two are seeking attire for this evening’s Starlight Gala?"

"My humble brother requires transformation!" Pascal declared loudly, puffing his chest out.

"He is a rising dragon who currently resembles an unwashed street merchant! Spare no expense! Clothe him in the glory of the imperial courts!"

Creed slapped a hand over his face, groaning through his fingers. "Ignore the potato, Master Vane. I just need a formal suit. Dark, simple, well-fitted. And most importantly—" Creed pointed a finger at the tailor, his tone dead serious "—it must not restrict my shoulder mobility, and it cannot have anything that catches on a spear strap."

Master Vane’s gray eyebrows shot up into his receding hairline.

"A... spear strap?" Vane repeated, as if Creed had just suggested wearing raw fish around his neck.

"Young man, this is the Starlight Gala. A gathering of the continental elite! You are attending a formal ballroom dance and house sorting ceremony, not storming a beast den in the lower rifts!"

"In my experience," Creed said dryly, leaning his hip against a display counter, "the difference between an aristocratic party and a beast den is that the beasts don’t pretend to be your friend before they try to take a bite out of you. Loose shoulders. No frills. Dark fabric."

Vane sniffed, looking like he had swallowed a lemon, but the gleam of profit in his monocle won out. "Very well. Step onto the pedestal. Let us see what can be salvaged."

What followed was twenty minutes of pure, unadulterated torture.

Master Vane did not simply bring out suits; he unleashed an armada of aristocratic fashion disasters upon Creed’s mortal soul.