Chapter 587: Bidding On The Gloves

And then there was Amazonia.

Seated at the southwestern arc of the Grand Table, High Marshal-President Valeria Da Silva sat completely motionless with her booted feet planted wide and her calloused hands resting flat on the table while her dark olive uniform was adorned with the bleached fangs of river leviathans.

A combat scar ran from her left ear straight down into her collar, framing a face that had seen years of brutal uncompromising warfare.

She didn’t raise a finger and she didn’t give her aides an order.

’Heh, these fools will bleed their treasuries dry,’ Valeria mused with a dangerous smirk playing behind her dark eyes.

She had known Aki since the First Princess was a small quiet girl shivering in the grand corridors of the palace, and more importantly, Amazonia had just signed a formal coalition treaty with Blessed Land before the tournament through Aki.

If Blessed Land ever intended to distribute this technology, or if the schematics were ever released to an ally, Amazonia would receive them through private back-channel courier before the World Council even finished ratifying the paperwork.

Bidding against Columbia right now was nothing more than lighting credits on fire...

"Twelve billion!" Grand Tsar Nikolai Volkov boomed, shattering the silence like an artillery shell.

The seven-foot ruler of Borealis slammed an iron-plated fist onto the table, his white dire-wolf mantle shaking violently with his ice-frosted beard bristling.

"Borealis opens the bidding! Twelve billion credits in unrefined platinum bullion, cleared through the northern exchanges within three business cycles!"

"Fourteen billion," Sir Arthur Pendelton countered instantly with his voice sounding smooth and dry as he tapped his star-iron cane against the stone. "Along with full maritime passage exemptions for any merchant fleet bearing Blessed Land’s standard through the Albion Narrows for the next twenty years..."

’How does that fleet thing even work for me?’

"Sixteen billion!" Chancellor Henri de Montmirail barked from the Europa Directorate, his guild arbiters frantically adjusting their projections. "Plus three manufacturing licenses for heavy industrial atmospheric condensers!"

"Twenty billion," Pharaoh-President Menes Al-Mansur spoke, his liquid-gold eyes flashing with intense desperate hunger. "And eighty crates of second-grade solar-jade marrow from the royal reserves of Khemet..."

The bids escalated with terrifying reckless momentum.

It was an grotesque display of global wealth... numbers that could rebuild entire ruined provinces or feed three nations for a decade being hurled across the marble like copper coins in a tavern brawl.

Vanderbilt’s breath was coming in short ragged gasps with the veins along his neck standing out like cords of blue steel, as he watched his rivals reach deeper and deeper into their national reserves.

If Albion got their hands on this, their dueling academies would become untouchable.

If the Directorate took it, their mechanized divisions would dominate the western front.

’No,’ Vanderbilt thought, his vision tinged with red. ’Columbia will have it... Even if I have to mortgage the entire southern rail network.’

"FORTY BILLION!" Vanderbilt roared, rising half an inch from his seat, slamming both palms onto the table with a bang.

The Great Assembly Chamber fell dead silent.

Tsar Volkov let out a low rumbling growl in the back of his throat with his thick eyebrows knitting together as his financial ministers frantically tapped his shoulder, waving red-flagged deficit projections in front of his face.

He cursed in northern dialect and waved them off, slumping back into his furs.

Sir Arthur Pendelton’s lips tightened into a thin bloodless line as he slowly closed his eyes, leaning back against his cane, signaling his withdrawal.

Menes Al-Mansur stared at the table, his knuckles whitening before he let out a bitter exhausted exhale.

Forty billion credits was a simply incomprehensible sum of liquid capital... Enough to cause currency inflation across three continents.

Vanderbilt stood breathing heavily with his chest heaving and his iron-gray hair disheveled while his bloodshot eyes fixed on Kara.

"Forty billion Spirit credits," Vanderbilt panted, his raspy voice shaking with adrenaline. "Direct transfer. Liquid reserves backed by the Columbia Central Treasury... There are loans and no bonds either. Do we have an agreement, Lord White?!"

Kara didn’t flinch as she picked up her crystal flute, took a slow refreshing sip of cold pear cider, and gently set the glass back onto its coaster.

"Forty billion," she repeated slowly, tasting the weight of the number. "Not bad, Mr. President... Not bad at all for an old pair of leather gloves..."

She sat up straight, sliding her boots off the celestial marble and resting her forearms against the table as her dark eyes locked onto Vanderbilt with chilling clarity.

"Two conditions before you touch them," Kara said, her voice dropping into a clean professional tone. "First... payment cleared upfront. I don’t do ninety-day commercial notes, and I sure as hell don’t accept paper IOUs signed by a Columbia trade minister."

Vanderbilt nodded violently.

"Agreed."

"Second," Kara continued, her smirk returning coldly. "You sign a binding legal waiver right here in front of the World Council, the Nine Powers, and every floating tab watching... You explicitly acknowledge that these gloves are highly experimental and volatile military prototypes. If your researchers blow their hands off, if the internal pathways destabilize and vaporize an entire wing of your research lab, or if the user suffers catastrophic meridian blowout... you will not sue, you will not seek council arbitration, and you will not levy trade sanctions against Blessed Land... You buy them as-is. Take it or leave it."

Vanderbilt let out a harsh arrogant snort through his nose.

’She thinks she can frighten me with operational hazards?’ Vanderbilt scoffed in his mind.

Columbia had the finest magical-engineering labs in the modern world.

They’d reverse-engineered ancient Pre-Apocalypse engines so whatever crude fail-safes Blessed Land had cobbled together in their mountain forge would be unraveled by his alchemists within a week.

"The Republic accepts all terms," Vanderbilt stated firmly, his voice ringing with confidence. "Provide your financial routing details, Lord White."

Kara reached into the deep inner breast pocket of her dark coat and around the chamber, ministers, aides, as well as the others leaned forward slightly with their breath held.

’I don’t really know what I’m expecting...’

Well since it was Kara and she was that scary, most expected her to produce a phone with a cruel back or perhaps a tablet or something else...

SLIP!

Kara pulled out a mobile phone.

It was sleek and remarkably thin... encased in an eye-searing vibrant pastel-pink silicone cover patterned with tiny grinning white cartoon kittens batting at balls of yellow yarn.

A cosmic silence descended upon the five tiers of the room.

Across the table, Sir Arthur Pendelton’s spectacles slipped down the bridge of his nose, resting crookedly against his cheek.

Tsar Volkov blinked three times in rapid succession with his mouth slightly agape while

Chancellor Montmirail froze, his hand hovering over his stylus as if his brain had completely stalled.

Even upon the royal dais, Kiera’s golden eyes widened by a fraction with her lips parting in silent bewilderment.

This was the terrifying single-armed monster who had torn an Indus champion into ribbons, threatened to execute a Ruler Of The World over dinner, and insulted the King as well... and she was casually unlocking a phone that looked like it had been stolen from a twelve-year-old schoolgirl in the lower commercial wards.

Kara didn’t care in the slightest as she swiped her thumb across the screen with her cartoon kitten wallpaper disappearing as she brought up a standard mobile banking interface.

’Fuck Evelyn for this though.’

"Minister," Vanderbilt barked, clearing his throat loudly to drown out the sheer absurdity of the moment.

A trembling financial minister in a gray three-piece suit scrambled forward from the Columbia delegation, holding a glowing terminal with shaking hands.

"R-Routing details, Lord White," the minister stammered, his stylus hovering over the input plate.

Kara recited the numbers without looking up from her screen.

"Routing code, 0-9-4-4-B-L. Account number, 7-8-8-9-1-2-0-4. Valoria City Bank..."

The minister froze.

He stared at the numbers then he looked up at Kara with his face turning into an expression of professional horror.

"V-Valoria City Bank?!" the minister squeaked, his voice cracking into a high pitched squeak. "Lord White... that’s a regular savings bank in the city! Their maximum liquid transaction ceiling is one billion Spirit credits! If we attempt to route forty billion credits through their clearance servers, their physical infrastructure will literally explode and their data-coils will melt through the floor too. May I strongly plead that you establish an account with the World Bank instead? The World Bank maintains universal clearance channels across all major powers—"

Kara’s dark eyes slowly lifted from her screen, locking onto the minister with a flat deadpan stare that made the man’s knees violently knock together.

"I don’t have the patience to sit through three hours of that garbage," Kara said smoothly, her voice making chills run down his spine. "I don’t feel like signing ninety pages of identity disclosures, and I certainly don’t care about your clearance limits... Though—"

She tilted her head with her gaze drifting toward the northern arc of the Grand Table, staring directly at the seven World Council Heads.

Five of them sat cloaked in midnight-silk with their faces completely obscured behind featureless white porcelain masks and their immortal presences feeling vast and immovable.

"—maybe the venerable World Council would be so kind as to open an executive zero-limit black account on my behalf?" Kara mused, her voice dripping with insolent mock-sweetness. "No background checks and no tax deductions too... Surely the rulers of humanity can handle a simple banking task for their newly crowned champion?"

The five masked figures remained completely motionless however a whisper of mana stirred beneath their dark hoods.

"Tch. Useless old mummies," Kara muttered under her breath, loud enough to echo clearly across the first three tiers.

Gasps followed as Ministers, corporate aides, and military retainers physically recoiled.

Vanderbilt looked as if he were about to faint, while Sir Arthur Pendelton gripped his cane so hard his knuckles turned blue.

Insulting the World Council Heads... the same entities who had survived the First Apocalypse and whose true names were struck from every historical record was an act of unfathomable blasphemy.

Before the silence could ignite into violence, Magistrate Bloom, sitting unmasked beside the council arc, cleared his throat.

"The World Council has already anticipated this administrative requirement," Magistrate Bloom stated, his stern severe voice cutting through the tension with his cold gaze fixed forward and his hand firm on his saber. "In light of Blessed Land’s decisive ascension, an executive account has been pre-authorized under the name of Kara White within the World Bank’s database."

The second Magistrate, seated beside him in deep violet robes, raised his hand as a small glowing data-shard detached from his ring, floating smoothly across the thirty yards of open air to land softly on the celestial marble right beside Kara’s iced cider.

"The biometric encryption keys and temporary access codes are encoded within," the second Magistrate added calmly. "There are zero transaction caps and complete immunity from international revenue audits."

"Now that’s what I call efficiency," Kara grinned.

She snatched the data-shard from the table and pressed it against the back of her pink kitten phone case.

’Isn’t that how it’s done...?’

BEEP!

A bright golden rune flared across the screen, replacing her local bank app with the sleek black-and-gold interface of the World Bank.

"Routing updated," Kara told Vanderbilt’s shaking minister. "Dump the cash... Here’s the number."

The minister frantically stabbed his stylus into the terminal with clicking sounds vibrating from the device as massive funds were being transferred over a pair of gloves.

PING!

Kara’s phone chimed with a cheerful high-pitched 8-bit melody as a glowing notification banner dropped down over her screen.

[WORLD BANK PRIME VAULT: +40,000,000,000 SPIRIT CREDITS DEPOSITED.]

[SENDER: REPUBLIC OF COLUMBIA EXECUTIVE TREASURY!]

Kara’s smile widened.

"Pleasure doing business with you, Vanderbilt."

With a casual careless flick of her wrist, she backhanded the midnight-blue gloves across the table.

SWISH!

They slid smoothly over the polished celestial marble, coming to a halt directly in front of Vanderbilt’s chest.

His hands moved like striking vipers, snatching the star-iron fabric from the table before anyone else could even blink.

"Hah..."

His bloodshot eyes shone with feverish triumphant mania as he stroked the conductive leather, his chest swelling with pride, and he quickly tucked the gloves deep into his reinforced inner coat pocket with his breathing finally stabilizing.

"The Republic appreciates your support, Lord White," Vanderbilt managed to say, his voice thick with smug corporate satisfaction. "We will not forget this day."

’You certainly won’t,’ Silas thought behind Kara’s mask, taking another leisurely sip of cold cider. ’Especially when your top five alchemists melt their eyes out trying to read Rowenna’s chicken-scratch runes.’