Chapter 585: The Holy Grail Of A New Age

Her torso was wrapped in tight medical-grade compression linen that carried the sharp tang of restorative spirit-salve.

The massive gash Gareth’s broadsword had carved into her side was completely sealed, held together by a translucent alchemical membrane.

Even so, every single muscle fiber in her body felt like it had been shredded and re-stitched with star-iron wire.

She turned her head and glared at Valerius with a look that practically screamed... What the hell do you even want?

"If you’re here to gloat about missing the final fight, gold-boy," Maya rasped with her throat rough as dry bark, "give me five minutes to catch my breath and I’ll break that pretty jaw of yours."

Valerius offered a remarkably polite smile, shaking his head.

"That won’t be necessary," Valerius replied smoothly. "While Kara stabilized your internal channels before the extraction was engaged, your body remains severely compromised. Given the sheer load you forced through your marrow... it will take at least three days of total core inactivity before your channels regain standard elasticity."

Maya didn’t answer as she kept her amber eyes locked on his face with her guard fully raised.

Valerius shifted on his chair, his gaze dropping to his hands for a fraction of a second as a subtle flicker of hesitation crossed his features.

"I remained here," Valerius said slowly, "because I was... profoundly fascinated by the sequence you displayed in the lower canyon."

Maya’s eyes narrowed into alarmed dangerous slits.

’Fascinated?’

"The technique you utilized," Valerius continued, his analytical cadence picking up speed like a scholar dissecting a rare manuscript. "You call it [Earthborn], correct? You’ve been muttering it for a while in your sleep... that aside... You didn’t merely circulate earth-mana through your body as a way to strengthen yourself, instead you altered the harmonic frequency of your Second Stage core to synchronize directly with the movement of the ground."

Maya’s jaw locked rigid with a cold prickly sensation crept down her spine.

’How does he know that?’ she thought, her pulse spiking. ’Nobody outside my sister has ever seen the circulation pattern!’

"By anchoring yourself to the tectonic bedrock," Valerius murmured, his eyes gleaming with genuine excitement, "you bypassed the physical limitations of your body and you harnessed the natural inertia of the ground’s rotation and discharged it through your strikes. However..."

He leaned forward slightly, gesturing with two slender fingers.

"...the drawback is immense, is it not? The overwhelming static of that power completely overwhelms your mana pathways so I can guess while the state is active, you are functionally incapable of executing complex earth magic... You cannot raise walls, you cannot transmute distant sand or Earth, and you cannot command silica threads."

Maya stared at him in utter chilled disbelief.

’Was this bastard stalking me through the relays?!’ Maya raged internally, her fists clenching under the linen sheet. ’To deduce the internal flaws and mechanics of my art just by watching a broadcast feed?!’

Valerius caught the hostile murderous glare in her eyes and abruptly paused.

He cleared his throat softly.

"I... apologize if that sounded overly presumptuous," Valerius said, his voice suddenly losing its confidence as he looked away toward the curtained exit.

A distinct undeniable shade of crimson began creeping up the back of his neck, spreading all the way to the tips of his ears.

"I only investigated it because... well," Valerius stammered slightly, the composure of House Sterling crumbling into awkward embarrassment. "I was planning on developing a technique similar to that utilizing atmospheric pressure and wind... which is why I, uh..."

He locked eyes with her again for half a second, saw her intense unblinking amber stare, and his face turned red.

CLATTER!

He stood up so violently his golden armor chimed loudly against the metal chair!

"In any case!" Valerius blurted out, stiffening his posture and pulling his formal cape straight. "I should not intrude upon your recovery any longer. Please... get better soon, Da Silva."

Without waiting for a response, he turned on his polished boots and practically marched out of the room with his cape swishing behind him in a blur of golden fabric.

Maya sat frozen on the cot, staring at the empty doorway in complete utter bafflement.

"What a weird guy," Maya muttered aloud, scratching her tangled dark hair with an exasperated scowl. "What was his face turning all red for anyway? Did the sun fry his noble brain?"

Her eyes drifted down to the small side table beside her bed and resting on a clean linen cloth was a brass flask with a threaded silver lid sealing the top with wisps of steam venting from the seam.

Maya leaned over, wincing as her ribs pulled, and unscrewed the lid with a dull pop.

"Fuck..."

A rich savory aroma immediately filled the room... It was a thick steaming stew packed with shredded mountain pheasant, roasted root tubers, and crushed high-tier spirit-ginseng.

’Does this belong to him...?’ Maya thought, her brow furrowing. ’Did he leave this here for me, or...?’

She picked up the small silver spoon beside the flask, eyeing the broth suspiciously.

’Is it poisoned?’

She let out a short scoffing snort.

’Whatever. My system has processed enough Amazonian swamp venom to kill a dragon... probably so poison would just taste like extra salt at this point.’

GRRRRRR!

Her stomach let out a ferocious roar that shook her ribcage.

"I’ll eat it..."

Discarding the spoon, Maya gripped the hot brass flask with both hands and began swallowing the stew down like a starving hawk with the rich boiling broth burning a warm miraculous path of nourishment down into her aching core.

As she drank, her mind naturally drifted back to the combat data.

’If I alter the third rotational pivot... if I vent the excess static through the soles of my boots instead of letting it bottleneck in my kidneys... could I maintain Earthborn without tearing my own organs apart...?’

SWISH!

The door was thrown open with tremendous force.

"Maya! Oh thank the gods you’re not in pieces!"

Leona marched into the pavilion, her arms loaded with clean wraps and canteens, her face covered in dried grime but beaming with frantic energy.

"I was convinced that Albion bastard had pulverized your spine! Isolde was being a terror, Devan tried to drown the whole arena in lava, but Kara... oh, Maya, you should have seen it! One punch! She dropped him right into the bedrock! We won the entire bracket, Maya!"

Maya set the empty brass flask down, wiped her chin with the back of her wrist, and accepted the water canteen Leona thrust toward her.

GLUG! GLUG! GLUG!

She downed half the cold water in three massive gulps, letting out a satisfied refreshed gasp.

"Good," Maya grunted, leaning back against the pillows. "How’s the grand council meeting going?"

Leona stopped mid-stride with her wild grin instantly collapsing into a grimace of pure exhausted awkwardness.

"Well..." Leona winced, scratching her ear. "...it’s certainly an experience."

...

Inside the Grand Meeting Room, the tension was thick enough to choke a horse.

...Quite literally.

Gathered around the massive conference table were the supreme rulers of the world as well as the Magistrates of the World Council and the members itself.

And seated directly across from them, occupying the primary high-backed leather chair with offensive disrespect, was Kara White.

Kara had both of her boots propped up on the polished wood with her ankles crossed casually over some paper.

Balanced effortlessly across her knees was an enormous, overflowing silver platter of chilled deep-sea tiger shrimp, a bowl of spiced garlic butter, and a tall crystal glass of sparkling iced cider.

With slow deliberate calm, she peeled the shell from a massive shrimp using only her single hand, dipped it deep into the garlic butter, and bit down with a loud crunch. ℯ

"Mm..."

"As I was explaining, Lord White," President Julian Vanderbilt Senior spoke with his voice strained and his knuckles turning white where they gripped the polished armrests of his executive chair.

The ruthless corporate titan of the Republic of Columbia adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles, his iron-gray hair impeccably combed back, though the lenses could barely conceal the smoldering wrath beneath his heavy brow.

His charcoal pinstripe suit was tailored to perfection with heavy signet rings glinting against the obsidian table, yet his jaw remained locked in a tight venomous clench.

"The gloves utilized by the First Princess during her engagements are of astronomical strategic value," Vanderbilt pressed, forcing his domineering voice into a semblance of dignified diplomacy. "The capability to externalize multi-elemental pathways without a core could redefine humanity’s survival percentages against portals to the Sovereign Realm... It has the potential to usher in an entirely new epoch of Awakened military infrastructure. The Republic, alongside the World Council’s executive arm, is prepared to offer Blessed Land full autonomy, three permanent high-tier mining corridors in the southern gulf, and an initial endowment of fifty billion credits for the manufacturing blueprints."

Kara chewed the deep-sea tiger shrimp slowly, savoring the sweet brine and garlic.

’Haah... Such stress...’

She swallowed with an easy deliberate tilt of her chin, took a leisurely sip of sparkling iced cider, and dabbed her mouth with an ornate silk napkin bearing the World Council’s golden crest.

"Not for sale," Kara said flatly.

Vanderbilt’s left eyelid twitched violently with a thick vein pulsing along his temple.

"Miss Kara," Chancellor Henri de Montmirail spoke up from the Europa Directorate’s station, adjusting his thin wire spectacles as his guild arbiters shuffled holographic treaties.

His sharp aristocratic face dripped with polished indignation. "You cannot adopt such an isolationist stance. We are discussing the defense of the Nine Major Powers and the collective security of humanity cannot be held hostage by the stubborn whims of a single territory."

Kara didn’t even bother to take her boots off the polished celestial marble.

Her dark trousers were dusty, her boots resting square across the papers.

With slow precision, she reached out her single working hand, picking up another massive chilled shrimp from the overflowing silver platter perched across her knees.

CRACK!

She snapped the chitinous shell off with a wet crisp pop.

"I don’t care," Kara replied, her voice dropping into a dry deadpan tone that carried less warmth than a frozen tombstone.

Vanderbilt took a sharp trembling breath, his signet rings clicking hard against the conference table as he leaned forward, tapping a holographic ledger into the air between them.

"Every creation has an evaluation, Lord White," Vanderbilt growled, the predatory corporate tyrant bleeding through his diplomatic veneer. "If fifty billion is insufficient, Columbia can negotiate exclusive maritime shipping exemptions across the entirety of the southern sea lanes... We can grant Blessed Land unfettered access to our deep-vault refinement refineries—"

Kara’s half-lidded eyes slowly lifted.

WHOOOSH!

An invisible suffocating hammer of power slammed down upon the circular pavilion.

CREAK... CRUNCH!

Once again, the massive table groaned under the pressure of the Gold core Lord as the crystal water carafes shattered into thousands of microscopic shards with liquid hissing as it was flattened into a paper-thin film against the floor tiles.

"Ah..."

The sparkling cider in Kara’s glass vibrated with violent rings, while the air in the chamber grew so heavy that drawing a single breath felt like inhaling liquid mercury.

Kara tilted her head, her dark eyes igniting with a cold terrifying luminescence that seemed to drink in the light of the room.

"Listen to me very carefully, Vanderbilt," Kara murmured softly, each syllable landing like an iron mace swung into an open chest. "The more you flap your gums about those gloves... the more enticed I feel to blow your head off your shoulders and paint this pretty little table with your brain matter."

A gasp ran across the room.

Vanderbilt physically recoiled, slamming hard against the high back of his executive leather chair, col with sweat instantly drenching his tailored collar.

The blood drained from his face until his skin resembled spoiled milk.

Across the circular table, every single leader, prime minister, and director flinched in raw terror.

Pharaoh-President Menes Al-Mansur of Khemet stiffened, his liquid-gold eyes narrowing in dead silence...

Sir Arthur Pendelton of Albion gripped his star-iron cane until his knuckles turned gray, even Grand Tsar Nikolai Volkov of Borealis let his hand hover over the white wolf-pelt on his shoulder, his massive jaw tightening.

Their elite personal bodyguards instinctively dropped their hands toward their weapons, but not a single sentinel dared to do anything.

They were completely paralyzed.

The bloodlust radiating from the single-armed woman eating shrimp felt like a divine guillotine resting against their collective necks.

’When in the hell did this woman become so vocal about executing global rulers?!’ Vanderbilt screamed in the trembling humiliated silence of his mind with his heart hammering against his ribs like a panicked beast. ’She is threatening to butcher the head of a superpower right across the summit floor...!’

Kara didn’t spare the shivering corporate tycoon another glance.

SNAP!

The suffocating gravity vanished as abruptly as it had arrived, leaving the room’s occupants gasping for air like drowning men breaching the surface of a frozen lake.

Kara dipped another shrimp into the spiced garlic butter, chewing with quiet, leisurely satisfaction.

’Idiots,’ Silas thought beneath Kara’s placid unreadable mask.

He had known from the exact second he forged those midnight-blue gloves that they would trigger an international storm.

To power-hungry scions, corporate warmongers, and bureaucratic scavengers, the concept of externalizing elemental pathways without cores was the ultimate holy grail.

They saw a weapon that could turn common foot-soldiers into walking artillery batteries.

’They think it’s a universal tool anyone can slip on,’ Silas mused internally with a small mocking scoff echoing in the privacy of his soul. ’They have zero comprehension of the prerequisites...’

They made new Spirit pathways, Aki could handle that because her veins carried the pure concentrated royal bloodline of her royal ancestors.

If any ordinary person slipped those gloves on and tried to draw from the reservoir, the foreign mana would violently backfire through their meridians, blowing their hands, forearms, and chest into a fine red mist before they could finish an incantation.

’Sell it?’ Silas thought, taking a slow refreshing sip of cold cider as the trembling ministers frantically gathered their scattered papers and broken crystal.

’Not a chance in hell. Those gloves were forged for my Princess, and nobody else in this world is ever putting a hand inside them.’

Then he paused.

’Or maybe I should let them...?’

If it killed someone, would they blame Kara?