Chapter 88 Gift from the Ancients

An unassuming gallery led into an equally unassuming hall, utterly devoid of ornament or ostentatious embellishment. Were it not for the ancient suits of armor arranged along its perimeter, it would have been nearly impossible to believe that this was the very heart of the City of Heaven, a sacred shrine holding a status even more exalted than the imperial palace itself.

Yet after pacing around the hall and beholding those ancient armors with his own eyes, Richie understood completely.

This place had no need for decorative grandeur; any ornament here would have been mere vulgar excess.

The dozen-odd suits of armor arrayed before him stood as unassailable proof of the empire’s ancient supremacy and glory.

None of these relics appeared particularly intimidating at first glance. Had Richie not studied their configurations within archival folios, he would scarcely have believed that these were the mythical relics spoken of in continental lore.

Enshrined within this grand subterranean hall were genuine God Armors of antiquity. They varied in scale, yet even the largest stood no taller than two and a half meters. Modern battle armor, with the rare exception of compact scouts like Yaksha, averaged roughly four meters in height, with heavy assault variants exceeding five meters. Compared to contemporary steel titans, these ancient God Armors appeared remarkably compact, sleek, and closely fitted.

Every single God Armor bore scars of physical damage. Though the majority had been restored across successive centuries by generations of Grandmaster Artificers whose craftsmanship bordered on perfection, Richie could still discern the subtle, microscopic seams separating original ancient metallurgy from later imperial repairs.

Standing prominently at the center of the hall were two preeminent God Armors.

The first was remarkably intact, with the vast majority of its ancient plating preserved intact; subsequent restorations had replaced only a single leg and forearm, alongside minor patchings scattered over its chassis.

Richie was thoroughly familiar with its lore: a millennium ago, the continent’s very first operational battle armor had been reverse-engineered from its design, and the long row of Spirit Armors lining the outer gallery were all reproductions derived from its blueprints.

This legendary God Armor bore a chilling designation—Destroyer.

The title had been bestowed personally by the First Saint Emperor. At the time, imperial scholars had proposed numerous magnificent and resounding titles, all far more poetic and heroic than Destroyer, yet His Imperial Majesty had dismissed them all, declaring that no matter how melodious the name, it could never alter the stark reality that this machine was an instrument conceived solely for slaughter and ruin.

Legend also recorded that when the very first operational battle armor was unveiled to the court, while ministers and generals rejoiced in ecstasy, the First Saint Emperor alone stood in somber grief, sighing with heavy lamentation: "With the advent of such a machine, war across our world shall become exponentially more brutal. A day will surely come when our entire civilization is consumed and obliterated beneath weapons of this make."

Gently grazing his fingertips across Destroyer’s weathered, pitted surface, Richie felt as though he could resonate with the imperial monarch’s tragic foresight.

Because of its exceptional preservation, subsequent restorers had altered very little, allowing Destroyer to retain the raw authenticity of its antiquity. Its plating was dented, scarred, and crossed by countless deep gashes.

A veteran combat knight like Richie recognized immediately that every single blemish had been carved by the violent fury of real battle.

"You may try it on if you wish," Princess Mithra murmured gently beside him.

"Is that permitted?" Richie asked aloud, though his pulse quickened with eager anticipation.

"Armor is forged to be worn by men," the princess answered serenely. On the formal day of the Festival of Heaven, under the scrutinizing gaze of high dignitaries, she would never dare permit such liberties; here in private seclusion, however, there was no need to bind themselves with courtly protocol.

Moreover, Her Imperial Majesty had explicitly instructed her to spare no effort in winning over this rare prodigy. Permitting him to try on a sacred relic was a trifling indulgence. In truth, given his present stature among the continent's artificers, a single request from him would suffice to secure formal research access to the God Armors.

For over a thousand years, those who interacted most intimately with these holy relics were neither imperial royals nor sovereign Sword Saints, but successive generations of Grandmaster Artificers. While others were granted at most the privilege of donning them, master craftsmen were authorized to dismantle their sacred components piece by piece.

Richie remained ignorant of these traditions, feeling a touch self-conscious about taking such monumental liberties.

Hesitating for a heartbeat, he turned toward the second central display and lifted down the other ancient artifact.

This relic was easily the most ruined specimen in the entire hall. Only half of its helmet and a fractured section of its upper chest carapace remained intact; across centuries, master artificers had found it impossible to reconstruct its missing chassis, managing only to fill and stabilize the fractured perimeter. Consequently, rather than a suit of armor, it resembled an elaborate, heavy helmet.

It possessed an illustrious name as well: the Crown of Wisdom.

Richie was equally conversant with its reputation. For such a battered relic to stand alongside Destroyer testified to its monumental significance. The long-range tactical communicators and omnidirectional reconnaissance scanners currently employed by modern armies had all originated from research conducted upon this single shattered relic.

Richie gingerly lifted the Crown of Wisdom and placed it over his head.

The apparatus was surprisingly hefty, weighing dozens of kilograms. Its lower breastplate hung like a broad gorget over his chest, with both pauldrons partially reconstructed from modern alloy. Its facial visor was distinctly narrow, reminding Richie of an archaeological treatise he had read long ago. Based upon skeletal remains recovered from prehistoric ruins, scholars hypothesized that ancient humans possessed substantially larger craniums and shorter, narrower, more pointed facial structures compared to contemporary mankind. Seeing the helmet's proportions now, he found himself inclined to believe the theory.

After wearing it for a few moments, Richie prepared to lift it off and return it to its pedestal.

Yet while sliding the apparatus on had been effortless, removing it proved unexpectedly stubborn, the chinstrap mechanism catching firmly against his jaw.

Richie exerted a fraction more physical force. At that precise instant, an agonizing jolt of sharp pain pierced the exact center of his forehead.

It was a piercing agony that seemed to drill directly into the marrow of his brain, eliciting an involuntary grunt of pain from his throat.

Simultaneously, a bizarre, vivid projection flared directly across his visual consciousness.

Through impenetrable darkness, a swaying beam of lantern light flickered, gradually brightening to reveal human silhouettes gathered around. The perspective jerked rapidly, settling moments later upon a strange, eerie human face illuminated by torchlight; judging by the primitive garb, it belonged to a scholar of the distant past. Before Richie could process the sight, the scene shifted, placing him within an ancient palace hall where archaic courtiers crowded around in intense scrutiny.

Visions flashed past at breakneck speed, parading face after face as fashions and attire advanced through successive historical epochs.

Richie grasped the reality at once: this God Armor contained an internal data-recording mechanism, and his consciousness was perceiving its chronological historical logs.

Judging by the archaic tools of the earliest excavators, this relic had been unearthed from prehistoric ruins four to five thousand years ago, yet generations had failed to decipher its functions. Across millennia it had traded hands repeatedly, even suffering re-burial beneath dust and ruins multiple times.

After an indeterminate span of flashing scenes, the visual projection shifted dramatically. Someone had evidently succeeded in activating the relic: sharp geometric vectors and foreign glyphs surged across the visual display.

Those geometric vectors looked strikingly familiar to Richie. Having scrutinized operational flight logs countless times, he recognized the telemetry diagrams instantly. The accompanying glyphs, however, were entirely indecipherable; he could say with certainty that they belonged neither to any contemporary continental language nor to any known classical script.

Watching for mere moments left Richie dizzy. The lines and scripts proliferated in dizzying complexity, culminating in anatomical cross-sections and structural schematics of battle armor.

There was no need to guess: the figure who had successfully awakened the Crown of Wisdom was none other than the First Saint Emperor himself. The ancient enigma of how His Majesty had pioneered the continent's very first operational battle armor was finally laid bare before his eyes.

Yet rather than an illuminating epiphany, Richie felt only deepening confusion.

In the chronological logs that followed, those intricate vectors and arcane scripts vanished once more. This left only two plausible explanations: either none of the subsequent imperial heirs possessed the neural aptitude to awaken the apparatus, or the secret technique had been lost to time, forgotten even by the direct descendants of the Saint Emperor.

This remained mere conjecture; he was an artificer, not an imperial chronicler, knowing little of Parkington’s ancient history and even less regarding the inner lore of the imperial lineage.

Unraveling ancient enigmas held little appeal for Richie; what consumed his thoughts was how to exploit this once-in-a-lifetime miracle for practical gain.

This apparatus undeniably possessed extraordinary utility for armor engineering. Richie strongly suspected that the prehistoric civilization had encoded their complete methodologies for crafting God Armor within this very mechanism.

One fact stood beyond dispute: the advent of modern Spirit Armor was entirely indebted to this relic.

The fabrication protocols for Spirit Armor were mind-bogglingly intricate, relying upon metallurgy and spiritual resonance methods that contemporary craftsmen could scarcely conceive of, let alone artisans a thousand years ago. Such revolutionary engineering could only have been bestowed by this machine.

His ambition flared.

The primary hurdle was not securing permission to borrow the relic.

Having dealt with the supreme monarchs of the Grand Alliance over recent weeks, Richie had learned that negotiating with imperial rulers was neither entirely simple nor insurmountably difficult. One first required their unreserved recognition of your indispensable value, followed by offering strategic incentives substantial enough to command their patronage.

The true dilemma lay in deciphering how to operate this apparatus.

Just as the thought crystallized in his mind, Richie felt his consciousness empty out completely. In the next breath, the visual projection transformed: the full-scale schematic of Wisdom King materialized abruptly before his mind’s eye.

Initially appearing as a unified frame, Wisdom King instantaneously disintegrated into thousands of floating components. As each cog, actuator, and spiritual conduit drifted past his vision, streams of arcane text and bizarre geometric telemetry hovered beside them. Unfortunately, the data flashed past with such bewildering speed that his mortal senses could not assimilate the details.

Within mere minutes, every single component had been cataloged and reassembled into a complete chassis. Yet this time, vast swaths of vibrant red telemetry lines were overlaid upon Wisdom King’s internal framework.

It took Richie several moments to realize the truth: every crimson marking denoted a structural deficiency ripe for optimization.

The areas earmarked for modification were vast, yet the overarching structural architecture remained untouched, preserving the core design he had conceived.

A wave of exhilaration flooded Richie's heart.

The apparatus reacted directly to the operator's conscious thoughts!

Calming his racing pulse, he concentrated his thoughts intently: How could the neurological control bottleneck of Wisdom King be resolved?

Time ticked past, yet the projection before his eyes remained entirely static.

Richie tried again, focusing his intent upon optimizing the synthetic muscle tendons. In his judgment, this ought to be a far simpler engineering puzzle.

Once again, however, he was met with total silence.

After a lengthy pause, he resolved to attempt a far broader, more intuitive inquiry. Allowing his mind to wander, he framed an ambiguous query: How can this armor achieve its supreme potential?

To his utter astonishment, the Crown of Wisdom responded immediately.

Just as before, his mind momentarily blanked, whereupon the holographic form of Wisdom King re-emerged. Yet this time, the armor was not standing motionless; it was moving with fluid, dynamic violence.

The projection was demonstrating a combat martial art—a fighting discipline Richie had never witnessed nor even conceived of.

The holographic Wisdom King moved like an intoxicated brawler, staggering off-balance and weaving erratically from side to side. Yet woven into this apparent instability lay a breathtaking, transcendent subtlety. Just as the frame seemed poised to crash headlong against the stone floor, it smoothly executed a rolling tumble, not merely regaining its footing with impossible elegance but unleashing seven or eight blistering whip-kicks mid-roll; when its footing appeared to slip haphazardly, the momentum transformed instantly into a vicious low-angle slide tackle.

Beyond looking drunken, the machine exhibited an aura of untamed savagery. It did not restrict its offensive arsenal to fist strikes: elbows, knees, shoulders, hips, spine, skull, and heels were all deployed as lethal impact surfaces. Its attack patterns seemed chaotic and formless, yet every transition was executed with consummate perfection.

It appeared bizarre and unorthodox, yet when clash came to clash, it unleashed devastating direct force; it seemed noble and overwhelming, yet its trajectory exploited viciously unorthodox angles, with every finishing blow striking from absolute blind spots.

Richie had never seen such a style, yet every element felt intimately familiar, because every single motion was built upon the foundations of his own personal combat repertoire.

Gradually, comprehension dawned upon him. The Crown of Wisdom did not magically synthesize novel armor designs out of thin air; it analyzed, optimized, and extrapolated upon existing knowledge. In other words, to function effectively, it required either an intact physical prototype to scan—much like how Destroyer had birthed the Spirit Armors—or it had to extract established knowledge directly from the pilot’s brain and recombine it through advanced computation.

Compared to the overwhelming technological complexity of structural modifications, this martial art optimization was infinitely easier for Richie to internalize.

He silently burned every vector, pivot, and weight shift into his memory. Just as he felt his martial understanding deepening, the projection shifted once more: dozens of battle armors materialized out of the void.

A single glance was enough for Richie to recognize them. Every single armor belonged to an adversary he had fought in real life. The crimson-and-gold armor that had handed Unit 105 their bitter defeat was among them, as were the customized armors of the Honor Knight squadron he had encountered during the assassination of Yarno.

From solo kata, the Crown of Wisdom had transitioned into live combat simulations.

If the solo forms had inspired him, these simulated duels left him utterly awe-struck.

Wisdom King’s raw speed and kinetic output far eclipsed ordinary machines, and under the optimal control algorithms of the Crown of Wisdom, this structural superiority became devastatingly pronounced.

The simulation began with one-on-one engagements. The vast majority of enemy frames were obliterated within two or three devastating exchanges. Only when clashing with the machines piloted by veteran Honor Knights did Wisdom King face protracted resistance.

Across the entire roster of adversaries, only that single crimson-and-gold machine succeeded in suppressing Wisdom King, finally culminating after over a thousand ferocious clashes with Wisdom King’s cockpit crushed. In every other duel, Wisdom King emerged triumphant—though securing victory against Honor Knights invariably demanded severe systemic damage, ending in pyrrhic triumphs.

Following the individual duels came complex multi-target skirmishes.

The scenarios modeled by the Crown of Wisdom depicted worst-case tactical encirclements, with enemy units coordinating in seamless tactical formations. Even mediocre battle armors, when locked into disciplined battle arrays, exhibited exponentially multiplied combat lethality.

Deprived of effortless dominance, Wisdom King was forced to rely upon its explosive speed to sever the formation and destroy targets in detail. Yet executing such maneuvers was brutally costly; even under ideal trajectories, taking down an isolated foe required sustaining retaliatory hits, and failure to shatter the line in a single rush resulted in immediate tactical entrapment.

At this moment, Richie's attention was captivated not by Wisdom King’s evasive maneuvers, but by the devastating group tactics simulated by the Crown of Wisdom.

With the veteran sisters serving in Unit 105, Richie was intimately familiar with combined squad tactics.

Yet the rudimentary coordination practiced by the sisters paled into utter insignificance against the flawless battlefield formations unfolding before his eyes.

Richie recognized that this idealized mathematical simulation could never be fully replicated in flesh and blood. Mortal brains could never match the processing speed of the Crown of Wisdom; in solo combat, executing forty percent of the simulation’s precision would already constitute a miracle. In collective squad tactics, the gulf was wider still; human coordination could never achieve such flawless synchronicity, rarely reaching even twenty percent of the simulated efficacy.

Nevertheless, this limitation did not deter him from etching every combined formation maneuver into his memory. He was no longer the lowly grease monkey and rookie recruit of Unit 105; he was now the sovereign commander of an entire elite company.

Taking these tactical principles back to study and drill his subordinates would yield immense dividends; even achieving twenty percent of their simulated potency would establish an invincible battlefield vanguard.

Utterly mesmerized by the simulation, Richie lost all awareness of passing time. Suddenly, a gentle hand nudged his shoulder, and the visual tapestry dissolved into blackness.

A surge of intense frustration washed through Richie's chest. Just as he had reached the critical juncture where insights regarding Wisdom King’s controls and formation drills were crystallizing, the trance was shattered.

Yet frustrated though he was, he dared not voice complaint. There was no one else present in the hall; the one who had touched him could only be the imperial princess.

"Are you alright? Is everything well?" Princess Mithra inquired, her hands rising to steady the Crown of Wisdom.

Though the Parkington royal house were officially titled Mind Masters, they were accomplished knights in their own right. Mithra was an advanced-tier knight nearing her bottleneck, while Her Imperial Majesty Annielia stood as a formidable mid-tier Honor Knight. Thus, with practiced ease, the princess assisted Richie in lifting the Crown of Wisdom clear of his brow.

"The mechanism caught on my jaw earlier," Richie offered as a casual excuse, carefully returning the Crown of Wisdom to its display stand.

"Did we linger here too long? Will this cause an inconvenience?" Richie inquired apologetically.

To his surprise, Mithra smiled dismissively. "Not at all. Barely a dozen minutes have passed. When Mother brought Grandmaster Espol or Madam Shar down here in the past, remaining sequestered for an entire day was entirely routine."

Richie's expression froze for a split second.

Barely a dozen minutes?

The simulations he had witnessed felt as though they had spanned several continuous hours, to say nothing of the vast historical chronicle he had viewed prior.

Yet within heartbeats, his composure returned.

The phenomenon was entirely rational. The speed of human thought was inherently near-instantaneous; mortals merely grew accustomed to shackling the cadence of thought to the physical limitations of their bodies. When thought outstripped physical reflexes too drastically, dissonance arose, which over generations had forged a psychological barrier.

Celestial Knights were revered as demigods precisely because they had shattered this mortal constraint. Their consciousness functioned hundreds or thousands of times faster than ordinary men; coupled with absolute neuromuscular control that allowed their physical bodies to keep pace with their hyper-accelerated thoughts, their combat reflexes eclipsed ordinary knights by tens of times.

Back in Balmer, Richie had inadvertently brushed against this state of enlightenment. Though it had lasted only a fleeting instant and left him with zero muscular control, the profound memory remained etched into his soul.

During that moment of breakthrough, he had not felt his mind accelerating; rather, the entire universe around him had seemed to slow to a glacial crawl, stretching a single second into several minutes. By that metric, several hours of perceived simulation would register to the princess as mere fleeting moments.

Naturally, Richie harbored no intention of divulging these secrets.

As he prepared a polite deflection, an acute sense of oddity caught his attention: the imperial princess before him looked subtly different from before.

Suppressing the urge to rub his eyes, Richie confirmed that his vision was playing no tricks: a faint, luminous aura had materialized around Princess Mithra's figure.

It resembled a gentle, translucent haze, like wisps of vapor rising from an ice block under the summer sun, cloaking her form.

He swiftly glanced down at his own hands.

The exact same luminous sheath enveloped his own flesh, though his was far more concentrated and dense—less like a vaporous mist and more like a semi-transparent membrane, dispersing into smoke only when he moved his limbs.

A seismic shock reverberated through Richie's soul.

The Eye of Heaven! The legendary divine vision possessed exclusively by direct heirs of the Saint Emperor!

Richie cast an involuntary backward glance toward the Crown of Wisdom. At last, the grand enigma was solved: why only the direct line of the Parkington imperial house inherited the mystical talents of the Saint Emperor, while collateral branches like Lina's clan remained ordinary knights. It all stemmed from this prehistoric relic.

It followed, then, that the secrets of the Crown of Wisdom were not wholly lost; at least a portion of its heritage endured, intimately tied to the transcendent gifts of the Parkington sovereign line.

Richie had originally contemplated entreating the princess for regular clearance to study within this shrine, but that ambition evaporated instantly. Visiting once was safe enough; should he visit frequently and betray any hint of his awakening, catastrophic consequences would follow.

Though he had little grasp of grand statecraft, he possessed basic survival instincts. This secret underpinned a thousand years of imperial supremacy; the royal house would never permit an outsider to possess it. Were his secret discovered, his life would be forfeited on the spot.

Departing the subterranean shrine, lingering dread gripped Richie's heart, and he silently resolved never to set foot in that sanctuary again.

Yet despite his resolve, thinking upon the miraculous wonders of the Crown of Wisdom left an aching pang of longing within his soul.

By the time he returned to the military compound, it was already past seven in the evening. Richie led the thirty female Honor Knights directly into the reinforced basement beneath the quarters.

Victoria and the female knights of the expeditionary force had already received word of the arrangement. Passing them in the corridors, their teasing yet faintly jealous glances made Richie feel distinctly awkward.

Richie's personal quarters were situated on the topmost floor, yet he rarely spent the night there; the reinforced basement served as his regular nocturnal sanctum.

Originally an equipment storage vault, it had been thoroughly scrubbed and refurbished.

"I am not certain whether you are fully briefed on what we are about to undertake," Richie said, addressing the thirty female knights with slight self-consciousness.

The vast majority of them understood no Monstoke. Richie had invented flight technology barely a year ago, and Monstoke was merely a second- or third-tier republic; citizens of the Three Empires rarely studied such an obscure regional tongue. The few who could comprehend him were those who had recently served as military liaisons or field observers attached to the Republic during the early campaigns, having picked up rudimentary conversational phrases in crash courses.

Those who understood translated his words softly to their peers.

A chorus of delicate whispers rippled through the ranks, followed by stifled feminine giggles. Moments later, the female knights of the Rosotto Empire took the lead, laughing softly as they began unfastening the brass buttons of their tunics. Their movements were brisk and uninhibited, stripping down to complete nudity within moments.

The Rosotto Empire lay across the frozen northern tundra, where survival against bitter cold demanded substantial natural insulation; consequently, the voluptuous fullness of Rosotto women was famed across the continent.

Beholding those bountiful, alabaster curves, Richie was momentarily at a loss for words.

With a precedent set, the others followed suit without hesitation. Omore’s women were renowned for passionate abandon, while Parkington’s maidens were celebrated for romantic liberty.

In the blink of an eye, discarded garments accumulated in towering piles against the wall, bathing the basement in an overwhelming display of feminine beauty.

Naturally, cleansing was the indispensable prelude. Adjacent to the vault lay a spacious communal bathhouse, into which the unclothed women rushed with playful laughter.

Richie felt a stir of restless warmth in his veins, tempted to join them yet restrained by gentlemanly hesitation; in the end, he disciplined his impulses, reminding himself that there would be ample opportunity in the days ahead.

Just as he turned to prepare the training mats, the bathhouse door creaked open, and several maidens poked their heads out. One of them, waving an oiled leather enema pouch with a cheeky smirk, inquired: "Do our inner channels require thorough cleansing as well?"

Her accent was stiff and heavily inflected, her grammar clumsy, instantly marking her as a foreigner.

Looking at the apparatus in her hand, Richie felt a flush of heat rise to his cheeks. That equipment was meant for intimate intestinal cleansing, a practice he typically explored only after developing deep trust with a partner. Those pouches had been concealed inside the lowest drawers beneath the linen wardrobes, yet these bold women had unearthed them without the slightest hesitation.

Faced with such candid boldness, Monstoke maidens would have discreetly replaced the pouches; Omore’s reputation for uninhibited passion was evidently no exaggeration.

Richie could only nod in acknowledgment.

The maidens withdrew with peeling laughter, and the bathhouse echoed with splashing water and cheerful banter.

Though unable to see within, Richie could vividly imagine the scene. His blood surged with rising heat, and his virile pride rose to full mast beneath his trousers.

Women invariably took their time bathing; nearly half an hour elapsed before they emerged from the steam-filled chamber, their skin flushed rosy and radiating intoxicating perfumes.

"Which posture do you prefer?" the Omore knight who had spoken earlier asked in halting Monstoke. She had naturally assumed the role of spokesperson, being the only one capable of conversational exchange.

Richie swept his arms around her waist, lowering her onto the cushioned floor.

The basement was lined with dense mats composed of elastic sponge encased in supple leather.

Lifting her slender legs until her knees rested against her chest, Richie guided his shaft into her delicate channel.

"So you favor the driving rhythm; you truly are a forceful little master," the knight murmured, arching her hips slightly to accommodate his entry to the utmost depth.

Richie drove his length forward in a single decisive plunge.

The knight let out a sharp, trembling gasp, gritting her teeth with a shuddering groan: "You are far too thick... be gentle, or I shall break under you."

Resting against her innermost depth, Richie exerted subtle circular pressure.

The knight’s lips parted in breathless ecstasy, her expression drifting into dazed rapture: "Gently... please, a little gentler... you are far too fierce."

Richie paid little heed to her pleas; with women, his instinct was ever to conquer until their submission was absolute.

Lifting his hips, he initiated a relentless cadence of deep thrusts, rotating at the crest of each stroke. He deployed his full technical mastery from the outset, his hands roaming over her curves to awaken every dormant nerve of sensitivity.

Her initial whimpers escalated into breathless cries, yet her body told a contrary tale, her hips rising and falling in frantic rhythm to match his every stroke.

The Omore Empire was celebrated for slender, lithe beauties, and the knight beneath him was an archetypal exemplar: lithe, elongated, and delightfully buoyant.

Slender women looked magnificent in tailored gowns, though in bed their breasts and hips were somewhat modest. Yet they possessed an unmatched virtue: exceptionally supple waists capable of astonishing fluidity.

Her hips seemed possessed of an independent life, undulating, tilting, and executing serpentine rotations that even Lina and Nora had never displayed.

Her technical responsiveness was remarkable, yet before Richie's seasoned mastery she stood no chance; within short order, her waist grew limp and her gaze lost focus.

With a breathless cry of surrender, her hips arched upward in a final convulsive tremor, collapsing entirely as a copious tide of release flooded forth between their locked bodies.

"I am second," another female knight announced eagerly, stepping forward to pull Richie upright. Hailing from the snowy expanses of Rosotto, she was robust, fearless, and proactive.

Standing face to face with her, Richie felt a twinge of chagrin.

He was noticeably shorter.

Rosotto natives were famously tall, and this warrior maiden was towering, standing nearly two meters in height.

If there was any subject Richie loathed discussing, it was his stature. Malnutrition during his youth had stunted his early development; though proper sustenance had followed his awakening, the massive caloric demands of forging mortal flesh into a knight's iron frame had consumed every scrap of nourishment, leaving his height virtually unchanged over the past two years.

Consequently, his crown barely reached her breastline, requiring him to stand on tiptoe to reach her lips.

Annoyed by the disparity, he shoved the towering maiden onto the mats with rough possessiveness.

Lifting her long, statuesque legs as before, he marveled at their shapely fullness and the deep cushion of her hips—precisely the lush proportions he found most intoxicating.

Driving into her flesh, the sensation differed completely from the Omore knight.

Her passage was remarkably deep; had his endowment not been extraordinarily generous, an ordinary man could scarcely have breached her depths, her plush hips cushioning every impact like a spring mattress.

With every thunderous thrust, waves of lush flesh rippled beneath his touch.

Most exquisite were her magnificent breasts, spilling past his fingers in soft, malleable splendor, shifting shape beneath his ardent kneading.

The legendary abundance of Rosotto women was fully demonstrated: within mere moments, her intimate portal was drenched in glistening moisture, coating her thighs in an iridescent sheen.

Her command of Monstoke was rudimentary; unable to articulate words of passion, she cried out in passionate, guttural northern phrases that Richie could not decipher.

While lacking the intricate pelvic agility of her predecessor, her vocal abandon far eclipsed the first, her cries soaring from high-pitched squeals to deep, throaty moans.

As Richie drove forward in enthusiastic abandon, another slender hand reached between his thighs, grasping his shaft with urgent demand.

The surrounding female knights had formed a tight circle around the mats, their patience completely exhausted.

Richie was caught off balance. He had assumed these women viewed this liaison as a grim patriotic duty; never had he anticipated such fervent, uninhibited enthusiasm, utterly unlike the anxious hesitations of Monstoke maidens.

Faced with such eager appetite, Richie never turned a lady away. Having claimed an Omore knight and a Rosotto knight, it was only fitting to welcome a Parkington maiden next.

Sweeping his arm around her waist, he pulled her down into the fray.

A night of unrestrained passion and wild abandon followed. By dawn, the thirty female knights were rendered incapable of straightening their spines; unfortunately for them, they had encountered Richie.

With every woman who shared his bed for the first time, Richie made it a rule to establish absolute dominance.

While the exhausted knights yearned for nothing more than to collapse in sleep, Richie forbade them from lying down. Leather-lined steel fetters bound their wrists firmly to their knees, forcing their bodies into an arched, semi-kneeling posture with chests pressed low and hips raised high.

Their pale derrieres projected upward in an immaculate ring, their delicate portals flushed and swollen, thin metallic conduits trailing from their intimate recesses. Arrayed in a symmetrical circle facing outward, their elevated hips formed the rim of an alabaster crater; at its center stood Richie, embracing the hips of a kneeling maiden as his member remained deeply embedded within her warmth.

During the first half of the night, their union had been purely sensual; throughout the latter half, however, they had engaged in dual cultivation.

Richie had withheld nothing, imparting both dual cultivation methods to the thirty knights. Aside from himself and Randy, no one on the continent possessed the unique capacity to transmute external raw energy into bio-absorbable life essence; thus, fear of his secrets being stolen was entirely groundless.

Just as he had anticipated, the battle qi of Honor Knights was vastly more refined than that of Ace Knights, suffering minimal dissipation during the cultivation of the Vajra art.

Upon advancing from ordinary knight to Ace rank, battle qi condensed from a diffuse mist into a thread; yet threads differed in quality. An Ace Knight’s battle qi thread was fragile as cotton string, snapping under excessive strain, whereas an Honor Knight’s battle qi resembled cured sinew—tough, elastic, and virtually unbreakable.

Even more miraculous was that an Honor Knight’s battle qi circulated automatically throughout the meridians without conscious intent, effectively cultivating during every waking and sleeping hour. It was hardly surprising that upon entering Honor rank, fire-attribute disciplines—notoriously slow in early stages—accelerated exponentially, followed closely by ice and lightning arts.

Kneeling quietly behind the female knight with his form deeply embedded within her, Richie's skin flushed crimson, every muscle fiber across his torso vibrating in harmonic resonance.

Suddenly, nodules of concentrated energy erupted across his flesh, concentrated most densely along his central meridian from spine to sternum to abdomen. The most prominent nodule, however, surfaced at the center of his forehead—the exact location of the pineal gland, where the Crown of Wisdom had inflicted its piercing agony.

The swelling was immense, bulging outward until his entire brow distended, centered upon a crimson, blood-like stigma.

After an indeterminate span, the nodules gradually subsided, accompanied by a noticeable compression of Richie’s physical frame, appearing as though his physique had shrunk a full size.

Yet while his bulk had condensed, his vitality radiated with terrifying intensity, his eyes flashing with sharp, brilliant glints of power upon every blink.

Snapping his fist forward, a resonant, deep hum echoed through the basement as the displaced air cracked violently.

Following with a knife-hand chop, the edge of his palm emitted a sharp, whistling hiss identical to a tempered blade cleaving the wind.

He had not even achieved initial mastery of the art, yet its kinetic manifestation was already this formidable! What apocalyptic power would unleash once full mastery was attained?

Richie’s ears twitched at the sound of approaching footsteps outside. In his mind’s eye, the image of a woman pausing at the head of the basement stairs materialized with absolute clarity.

It was Victoria; Richie recognized her distinctive stride instantly.

Disengaging from the maiden’s body, Richie walked to the heavy door and pulled it open.

"How did the fine ladies of the Honor rank taste?" Victoria asked with a wry, mocking smirk. Compared to the melancholic gloom of recent months, she appeared distinctly more cheerful.

Her eyes grazed casually toward his manhood.

Having spent the entire night subduing thirty female Honor Knights, Richie was hardly in presentable order, his member glistening with residual fluids that dripped onto the floorboards.

"A courier just delivered word: your mother and aunt have arrived," Victoria announced. "However, they lack clearance to enter the City of Heaven and have been lodged in Cygnus City."

The satellite cities encircling the capital were all christened after celestial constellations. Cygnus City was a second-tier satellite metropolis populated exclusively by aristocrats, scholars, and tenured academics; an ordinary merchant like Richie’s mother possessed zero pedigree to reside there under normal protocol.

Richie had gained a profound appreciation for the bureaucratic rigidity of Parkington society. If imperial authorities intended to grant him face, why not do so comprehensively? A metropolis as titanic as Nakar-Amosdock hardly lacked guest quarters.

"May I request a day of leave?" Richie asked.

"Aren't you perpetually on leave anyway?" Victoria scoffed playfully. Though she was the nominal commander of the expeditionary contingent, Richie was utterly beyond her authority.

Washing himself clean and donning a fresh apprentice uniform, Richie returned to his upper quarters.

The chamber served merely as a repository for his personal effects.

His possessions were sparse, consisting primarily of several decorative boxes resting upon the bed, wrapped in fine silk and bound with gilded ribbons.

Sweeping his boot beneath the bedframe, he kicked out a pair of roller-blades. Snapping the skates onto his waist belt, he gathered the three gift boxes into his hands—presents for his mother and aunt.

Descending to the courtyard, he found an armored utility vehicle idling at the gates, with Victoria seated at the wheel.

Richie tapped the skates at his waist. "I can make my own way there."

"Don't be ridiculous," Victoria said, swinging the passenger door open. "This isn't Penece; people here aren't so casual. Skimming around on those contraptions, you'll be detained at every single intersection by city watchmen. I’ll drive you as far as Cygnus City; after that, you’re on your own. Regulations are far looser there."

Richie conceded without argument, having already experienced the suffocating labyrinth of imperial decorum.

Watching him take his seat obediently, Victoria inquired: "How many days do you plan to stay?"

"I have no urgent business; I thought I might wander around and explore," Richie replied, leaning back into the upholstery with leisurely ease.

"And what of the thirty women sequestered in the basement? Are you simply abandoning them?" Victoria reminded him pointedly.

"I have already imparted the Wind Mastery art to them and stabilized their core circulatory channels. For now, they need only drill the basics independently."

Richie was not shirking responsibility. Following an entire night of dual cultivation, he had discovered that his unique advantage of transmuting external energy offered negligible benefits to Honor Knights.

Because their battle qi already cycled infinitely on its own, the primary virtue of external energy was largely redundant. While its secondary properties remained beneficial, Richie simultaneously drew upon their battle qi to temper his Vajra physique; taking into account the inevitable friction and dissipation of dual cultivation, allowing the knights to cultivate independently proved far more efficient.