Chapter 433: The Princess Threatens [Bonus - ]

Chapter 433: The Princess Threatens [Bonus Chapter]

Silas blinked while waiting for her to continue. When several seconds of silence passed, he tilted his head in mild confusion.

"And... do you have a name?" Silas asked.

The Princess offered a self-deprecating smile that carried a touch of bittersweet sorrow.

"It appears you do not have a complete understanding of how the Supreme Royal Family operates, Lord..." she paused first as she did not know his name.

"Silas."

"Lord Silas..." The Princess continued in a calm musical voice. "In our lineage, those born under the Royal bloodline are granted the title of Prince or Princess of the World at birth. However... If a scion fails to awaken a Lord Core upon their sixteenth to eighteenth year, the law dictates that they are left permanently nameless by their parents. Furthermore, we are strictly forbidden by law from bestowing a name upon ourselves."

She paused, gesturing lightly to herself.

"I fall under that exact category. While I carry the royal blood in my veins and enjoy the boundless material wealth of a Royal princess... I failed to awaken. In the eyes of the High Empire, I am merely an unawakened pawn. Nameless, and waiting to be traded."

Silas listened quietly, a flicker of deep understanding empathy passing through his blue eyes.

Beside him, Aurelia’s expression softened, the Saintess recognizing the familiar tragic scent of someone discarded by their own realm.

The Princess’s azure eyes suddenly sharpened as an incredibly dangerous glint danced beneath her noble composure.

She leaned forward slightly, resting her chin on her fingers as she looked Silas dead in the eye.

"Now then, Lord of Blessed Land..." the Princess began, her tone shifting into that of a razor-sharp prosecutor. "I hope you are fully aware of the legal magnitude of what has transpired in this room."

Silas raised an eyebrow, gesturing for her to continue.

"According to the Central Governance Accord of the Sovereign Realm," the Princess recited flawlessly, "forging an official sovereign identity... Specifically, making this domain known under the false name of a female warlord named ’Vespera’ while you are, in fact, a man constitutes a Class-A Fraud Violation. Furthermore, fabricating identification documents and deceiving the Central Guild’s regulatory committee carries a mandatory sentence of sixty years in the deep penitentiary mines of the outer rim."

Silas didn’t flinch as an amused smirk played on his lips. "Is that so?"

"Indeed," the Princess smiled, snapping her silk fan open and fluttering it gently against her collarbone. "If I were to dispatch a single encrypted communication to the High Court right now, three grand inquisitor fleets would descend upon the Umbral Basin before nightfall to strip your territorial core..."

’That’s if they managed to find it...’ The Princess thought, she had no way of dispatching anything and that was if they even took her seriously which they would not. ’I’m not the Gold core after all.’

She paused, letting the dramatic silence hang in the air for two seconds before her lips curved into a warm unapologetic grin.

"However..." the Princess continued, her azure eyes sparkling with genuine adventurous delight, "...I am willing to overlook all seventeen counts of fraud, permanently seal the investigation dossiers, and maintain your secret from the world."

Silas tilted his head, thoroughly entertained by the royal negotiation. "And what, exactly, is the price of your silence, Princess?"

The Princess snapped her fan shut with a crisp clack, pointing the gilded tip directly at Silas’s chest.

"I want you to let me stay here," the Princess declared boldly with her smile widening. "Show me what it truly means to be a part of Blessed Land for one full week."

The silence in the office was thick, broken only by the sound of the newly reconstructed runic glass sealing the room against the morning breeze.

Silas sat back in his heavy dark-oak chair, his fingers loosely laced together over the polished mahogany surface.

He studied the blue-haired royal maiden seated across from him, his clear blue eyes unmoved by her noble posture.

"Stay in Blessed Land for an entire week?" Silas repeated then he frowned. "No."

The Princess blinked.

The delicate practiced smile on her porcelain face remained intact, though the slight twitch at the corner of her azure eyes betrayed her sudden disbelief.

She snapped her silk fan open with a soft clack, resting the ribs against her palm.

"I beg your pardon, Lord Silas?" she inquired, keeping her tone light and thoroughly composed though she was nervous. "Did you not hear the terms of the proposal? I am offering you complete unconditional immunity from fraud inquiries. The truth regarding ’Lord Vespera’ will never reach the real world, the inquisitorial division will never cast their gaze toward the Umbral Basin, and you will maintain yourself without Royal interference. In exchange, all I ask is seven days within your domain..."

"I heard you perfectly," Silas answered, leaning forward and resting his forearms against the desk. "And the answer is still no."

"May I ask why?"

"Because you’re an Unawakened," Silas stated bluntly, leaving zero room for interpretation. "You don’t possess a Lord Core... You don’t have refined spiritual meridians, you don’t circulate mana, and your physical constitution is that of an ordinary mortal woman. The Sovereign Realm isn’t a royal resort where pampered nobles go on vacation... The atmospheric pressure in this basin alone is dense enough to crush an ordinary human’s lungs over prolonged exposure. The moment you step outside from Thor’s safety, the spiritual gravity will grind your joints to dust. You wouldn’t last forty-eight hours."

A haughty glint danced in the Princess’s azure eyes.

She didn’t look offended... rather, she looked as though she had anticipated this exact objection from the very moment she stepped through the portal.

With an elegant fluid sweep of her silk-embroidered sleeve, she reached toward the neckline of her gown and the small velvet satchel resting at her hip.

"If environmental pressure is the extent of your concern, Lord Silas, you may put your mind entirely at ease," the Princess said smoothly. "Thor, if you will..."

Thor expended her mana and made sure that she would be able to take them off.

She retrieved a series of shimmering crystalline talismans, setting them one by one upon the dark-oak desk with crisp delicate taps.

First was a pendant of deep oceanic blue... a teardrop-shaped gem carved from pure Celestial Anchor Quartz, glowing with a pulsing rhythm that actively smoothed out the ambient mana around her upper body.

Next, she unfastened a slender bracelet forged from interwoven strands of Void-Weave Mithril, etched with thousands of microscopic stabilization arrays designed to neutralize spatial turbulence.

Finally, she produced a pair of polished rings inlaid with Abyssal Null-Gems, which hummed with nullification fields capable of absorbing environmental shockwaves.

"This pendant is a Tier 4 life-tether," she explained with measured pride, gesturing gracefully to the jewels. "It creates a permanent self-regulating atmospheric envelope around my body, replicating the exact gravity, air density, and oxygen saturation of the mortal plane’s biosphere... The mithril band reinforces my cellular integrity against the Sovereign Realm, and the null-rings dissipate high-tier spiritual radiation before it can touch my skin. I am more than equipped to survive within the Sovereign Realm."

Silas glanced down at the glittering array of multi-million-credit relics, then looked back up at her with a deadpan expression.

"And what am I supposed to care about?" Silas asked, his voice sounding dry and unimpressed.

The Princess’s composure hitched for a fraction of a second. "Excuse me?"

"You’re carrying a walking museum of fragile defensive glass," Silas pointed out, tapping his finger against the desk. "Those artifacts work great as long as you’re sitting in a climate-controlled car or sipping tea in a reinforced parlor but what happens if a stray mana-beast charges the outer perimeter? What happens if a shockwave clips your flank and shatters that little quartz pendant into dust? You’ll be crushed into paste by the basin’s gravity before I can even reach out my hand... I am running a territory, not a day-care for fragile royalty."

The Princess’s lips thinned into a sharp rigid line.

The courtly warmth in her expression evaporated, replaced by a cold look.

’No... I won’t go back now...’

She slowly leaned forward across the desk, her azure eyes narrowing to needle points as her voice dropped into a chilling tone.

"You speak as though you hold the luxury of choice, Lord Silas," she said softly, her words carrying the venomous weight of tyranny. "Let us be exceedingly clear about the reality of your situation. If Lady Thor turns around and takes me back to Rhyx City this very morning, I will walk straight into the Grand Inquisitor’s office. I will file an official, unredacted report documenting your true gender, your forged identity, and the deception of the world."

She tilted her chin up.

"When that report is stamped with my seal, no amount of combat prowess or power will save you. Three retribution fleets will descend upon the Umbral Basin before the week is out. Your territory will be incinerated... Your core will be extracted and ground into fuel and before they execute you, the World Court will track down every single member of your bloodline across the mortal world, dragging your family from their homes to be imprisoned."

’Eh?’ Silas thought, now he was even more certain the Princess didn’t know what she was talking about... They would kill him? They would want him more instead, including that Lohan Sterling and nothing would change. ’Why is she so desperate though?’

SCHING!

The temperature dropped.

Standing by the doorway, Morwenna’s stormy gray eyes flared with pure madness.

Her right hand gripped the leather-wrapped hilt of Tidebringer, drawing the curved abyssal steel three inches from its scabbard.

A suffocating pitch-black aura of crushing oceanic pressure erupted from her frame, the ghostly silhouette of a massive, world-devouring Leviathan flashing in her eyes as her canines bared in a feral snarl.

"You arrogant little royal whore," Morwenna hissed, her voice vibrating with murderous intent that made the stone walls crack. "Say one more word about the Captain’s family, and I will sever your head from your shoulders so fast your brain won’t even realize you’re dead until your skull hits the floor."

Beside Silas’s desk, Aurelia had already stepped forward, her pale porcelain face completely devoid of its earlier warmth.

Her golden-amber eyes burned with incandescent fury, and a torrent of pure, blazing white Argent Flame coiled violently around her slender hands.

The air around her ignited with sacred heat, the wood of the floorboards beginning to smoke beneath the soles of her slippers.

After six years of enduring torture at the hands of arrogant royals who viewed human life as disposable currency, the Princess’s threats struck a deep nerve within the Saintess’s soul.

She genuinely wanted to incinerate this blue-haired girl where she sat.

The Princess felt the two killing intents locking onto her neck like physical guillotines. They were enough to kill her but thanks to Thor’s aura, they didn’t.

Her skin prickled, her breath seized, and her heart hammered wildly against her ribs, but before the situation could devolve into an immediate bloodbath...

SLAP!

A massive iron-plated gauntlet struck the Princess across the upper back with the force of a falling oak tree.

"GWAHAHAHA! Knock it off, little Princess!" Thor’s booming voice shattered the murderous tension like a thunderclap.

The God of Thunder leaned forward in her armchair, shaking her head with an amused toothy grin as she wagged a heavy finger in the girl’s face.

"I told you already... I like this boy! He’s got a Gold Core just like my old man, and he runs this fortress like a proper Lord! You don’t come into a strong man’s hall and threaten to murder his kin while I’m sitting in the room! Stop puffing your chest out with threats you don’t even have the stomach to carry out!"

The concussive slap knocked the wind completely out of the Princess’s lungs.

She stumbled forward in her chair, clutching her chest and coughing sharply as the haughty mask shattered completely into pieces.

She lowered her head, looking down at her trembling hands in her lap.

The silence returned to the office, but this time, the venom was gone, replaced by a raw vulnerability.

"I... I apologize," the Princess whispered, her voice cracking as she pressed her forehead down against the polished wood of the desk, bowing before Silas in genuine supplication. "I am sorry, Lord Silas. I spoke out of turn... I was grasping at straws."

Silas didn’t move. He simply watched her with his expression becoming even more unreadable as the blue-haired girl poured her heart onto the wood.

"Please..." she begged, her shoulders trembling beneath her fine silk gown. "I just... I just wanted to see what the world truly looks like on the outside. For my entire life, I have been locked away in gilded towers, surrounded by marble walls, bodyguards, and protocols. I wanted to know what I was missing... what life actually feels like for those who possess the power to forge their own destiny."

Aurelia’s white flames subtly flickered, her golden eyes softening as she watched the girl bow.

"In the eyes of the Supreme Royal Family, I am nothing more than a failure," the Princess continued, her voice muffled against the desk and thick with unshed tears. "I failed to awaken a Lord Core. I have no authority, no military command, and no political weight. If I were to vanish from the face of the mortal world this very second, my Father and my brother would not shed a single tear. They would simply strike my title from the registry and replace me with another asset. I have no power. I have no future... and I have nothing left to lose."