Chapter 692: Beast Eggs? [Bonus - ]

Chapter 692: Beast Eggs? [Bonus Chapter]

An exasperated chuckle escaped the blue-haired woman’s throat.

"Yeah... that sounds like the old parasite. Still rotting away beneath five miles of granite, pretending he’s a frail scholar."

"Before I departed the vault," Kara continued, tilting her head slightly, "he specifically told me that when I eventually visited Central City, I should pay a visit to the Grand Silver Bazaar. He said I might run into his lovely daughter, who supposedly managed a high-tier trading consortium out here but... you’re here at the World Council Directorate."

The blue-haired woman let out a dry raspy snort, reaching up to twirl a strand of electric-blue hair around her finger.

"Well, he wasn’t lying about the location," she explained, gesturing vaguely toward the soaring marble arches and the distant administrative hallways. "Three hundred years ago, this entire four-block sector was indeed the Grand Silver Bazaar... I owned forty percent of the commercial real estate, three auction houses, and the central void-quay."

She leaned her chin into her palm, a cynical smirk curling her lips.

"Then the World Council decided they wanted a permanent unified headquarters in the Sovereign Realm to oversee everything... They made me an executive buyout offer with enough Spirit Credits, high-tier trade concessions, and administrative immunity to make an arch-deity blush. I sold them the land, let their artificers reconstruct the bazaar into this marble monolith, and took an executive sinecure as the honorary reception director... I sit here, chew gum, watch pompous Lords grovel for audiences, and collect an obscene dividend check every full moon."

She paused, her eyes narrowing with intense searching curiosity as she leaned closer across the counter.

"Did he... say anything else about me?" she asked, her voice dropping into a tense and strangely eager murmur.

Kara observed her sharp sudden interest, amused by the family dynamic.

"As a matter of fact, he did," Kara replied, crossing her arms with a light grin. "He told me you were a wonderful girl. Very sharp and excellent with numbers though, to be fair, he admitted he hadn’t seen you in three centuries. He joked that by now... you probably had six children running around and a fleet of void-caravans to your name."

Clatter!

The blue-haired woman’s hands began to tremble.

Her shoulders shook, her chest heaving as a bizarre, breathless chuckle bubbled past her lips.

Her fingers clutched the edge of the dragon-bone desk so hard that tiny hairline cracks spiderwebbed through the lacquered finish as her eyes sparkled with amusement.

Beside Kara, Rika took half a step backward with her hand tightening around Kara’s coat in genuine alarm.

’What is wrong with this woman...?’ Silas thought, a massive invisible sweatdrop forming at the back of his neck as he watched the receptionist slowly lose her composure. ’Is she laughing or having a nervous breakdown? The family resemblance is definitely there, but the mental stability seems questionable at best...’

"Six children...?" the blue-haired woman wheezed, wiping a tear of mirth from the corner of her eye. "Six?! Aiya! The old fool really has been trapped beneath that granite for too long! His estimates are hilariously off by a massive margin!"

She sniffled her nose, clearing her throat with a loud unladylike snort, before smoothing the front of her dark tunic with proud brazen satisfaction.

"I have a fleet of forty-eight void-caravans operating across three external dimensions," she declared, puffing her chest out. "I own sixteen commercial warehouses, four private sky-estates, and more liquid capital than most of those council seats!"

She paused, leaning forward across the desk with a wide totally shameless grin splitting her face as she casually dropped the rest of her update.

"And as for the children? Six is an insult! I have nineteen of them running around! Sired by twelve different men across three centuries!"

Silence fell over the reception desk and the sound of the distant fountains seemed to vanish.

Kara White stood completely frozen with her jaw slightly slack and her violet eyes staring at the blue-haired woman in pure bewilderment.

’...Twelve different men?!’ Silas screamed inside his own mind, his mental gears grinding to a smoking halt. ’Twelve?! Did she just say twelve baby daddies?!’

Beside her, Rika looked as though she had just been slapped across the face with a frozen sea-bass.

The petite Beast Goddess instinctively pulled the folds of her green cloak tighter around herself, tucking the fledgling phoenix closer against her ribs, her vivid green eyes wide with deep horror.

Even for an ancient deity who had witnessed the wild untamed mating rituals of primeval beast broods in the deep forests, the casual cheerful announcement of twelve different human partners and nineteen children was very uncomfortable.

’Even the Brood kept better count than that,’ she thought faintly.

’I mean...’ Silas reasoned desperately in his head, trying to apply basic logic to the revelation, ’...I can understand one relationship not working out... People grow apart, ambitions clash, life happens... I can even understand a second relationship failing down the line as sometimes things just aren’t meant to be, and nobody is entirely to blame for a clean break but TWELVE?! Across three centuries?!’

And she was standing there, grinning like she had just won a championship trophy.

Silas’s nose wrinkled behind Kara’s polite smile, and his stomach lurched in disgust.

’Wonderful girl,’ Musvi had said.

...The old man had left out a lot.

Kara and Rika exchanged a single horrified glance, their shared thought screaming across their eyes without them needing to say anything.

’This woman has mental health issues.’

Not just a single issue... she had an entire catalog of them, bound in leather and indexed by volume!

Kara’s mouth opened slightly.

She felt an overwhelming morbid urge to ask about the twelve fathers.

Were they adventurers? Merchant princes? Did they all know about each other? Were they paying child support through the World Council’s bank?!

Then, common sense violently slammed the brakes on her curiosity.

’No,’ Kara firmly told herself, swallowing the question before it could escape her tongue. ’Don’t ask... If you open that door, she is going to subject you to an hour-long breakdown of twelve disastrous romances, and you will leave this building wanting to bleach your own eardrums so keep your mouth shut.’

The blue-haired woman, oblivious to the existential horror she had just inflicted upon her guests, reached deep into the hidden drawer beneath the counter.

Rustle!

She pulled out a thick folded sheet of paper.

The paper was aged, woven from high-grade celestial mulberry fiber, and sealed with a dollop of deep violet wax stamped with a stylized crescent moon.

Written across the front in sharp elegant calligraphy was a single name "Selvane"... it was her personal true name.

She slid the sealed letter across the dragon-bone desk, stopping it right before Kara’s fingertips.

"Keep this," the woman said, her voice dropping into a rare solemn tone that carried zero trace of her earlier manic laughter. "Do not open it... If your travels ever take you back beneath that five miles of granite... if you ever lay eyes on my ridiculous father again... hand this directly to him. Tell him it’s from his daughter, and give him the name on the wax."

Kara looked down at the violet-sealed parchment.

She could sense the subtle incredibly complex defensive weaves laced through the fibers...

"I understand," Kara nodded solemnly.

She reached out, picking up the letter and smoothly slipped it into her primary spatial inventory.

"I give you my word. If I cross paths with Musvi again, this letter will be placed directly into his hands."

The woman let out a long satisfied breath, offering a crisp surprisingly firm handshake across the counter.

"Appreciate it, Lord White," she said, leaning back into her chair and popping another bubble of gum. "Now... what did you actually come to this bureaucratic nightmare for...? I doubt you navigated the commercial ring just to play courier for a broken family."

Kara’s posture straightened.

"I need an audience," Kara stated clearly. "I would like to speak with whichever members of the World Council are currently present in the Directorate... Preferably today."

In truth, Silas was desperately hoping for Number Five.

The short, perpetually furious, flat-chested Council Head was easily his favorite target in the entire administration.

Sure, she was terrifyingly powerful, but she was also hopelessly easy to bait, ridiculously fun to tease, and deep down, their bizarre dynamic had evolved into an unspoken mutual understanding.

More importantly... Silas had an enormous debt to collect.

During the Evacuation of North Khemet, he had spent nearly two full weeks on the front lines as Kara White.

He had held the extraction rifts, anchored the defensive wards against the descending swarm, coordinated the civilian transports, and saved hundreds of thousands of lives that the Council had essentially written off as acceptable casualties.

He had been an indispensable asset and in exchange...? Kara had submitted an extensive demanding list of concessions.

’I don’t work for free after all.’

Yet, so far, the only demand the council had actually processed was the eight-billion Spirit Credit fortress for Evelyn, a brand-new territory vessel waiting at the Council Dockyards.

That was a wonderful start, of course, but it was nowhere near enough to balance the ledger!

’I bled for almost two weeks in those sandstorms!’ Silas thought, her violet eyes gleaming with greed. ’Evelyn’s fortress was just the appetizer! I have an entire laundry list of demands waiting! I want a lot of things and most importantly... I want another unrestricted pass into the World Vault!’

There were still countless First Era relics, ancient blueprints, and divine treasures gathering dust.

If he could just corner Number Five in a private conference room, apply a bit of strategic leverage, and bully her with the threat of going public with the Council’s logistical blunders in Khemet, he could easily squeeze another three mythic artifacts out of her.

...The blue-haired woman stared at Kara for three long seconds then, she blinked, blowing a massive pink bubble.

POP!

"There are no active members of the World Council in the Sovereign Realm right now," she stated flatly.

Kara froze as her hand, which had been resting comfortably on her hip, slowly rose.

Her fingers tangled violently into her black bangs, gripping her hair so tightly she nearly pulled the roots out.

’FUCK!’

The word echoed like a thunderclap inside Silas’s skull.

’FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!’

Every single meticulously planned scheme of diplomatic extortion, every carefully rehearsed line of bullying and every dream of cracking open the World Vault like a ripe melon... completely evaporated into thin air.

’Not a single one?!’ Silas screamed internally, his eye twitching with suppressed rage. ’What kind of useless absentee government leaves their headquarters completely empty during a time like this?! What are they even being paid for?!’

Kara took a slow shuddering breath through her nose, forcing her hand back into her coat pocket as her aristocratic composure barely held together by a thread.

’...Oh well,’ she comforted herself, forcing the anger down into cold, patient calculation. ’I’ll just delay it.’

It wasn’t as though the opportunity was gone forever. In a few days, Aki’s Novice Trial would officially conclude.

As the newly ascended Lord of Aki’s Wonderland, the World King and the Magistrates would inevitably demand a formal audience to talk and when that would happen?

Silas would simply hitch a ride directly to the high chambers as her official sovereign patron... He would stroll straight into the council hall, corner the magistrates on their own gilded thrones, and unleash his entire backlog of extortion all at once.

After all... he had big plans for the future.

Kara was already a multi-billionaire in liquid capital.

She had shattered the currency markets, drained forty billion out of the Republic of Columbia’s coffers when Vanderbilt paid it for a pair of her gloves, and controlled one of the most terrifying territories in the basin.

Money was no longer a limiting factor but what she needed now was influence.

’Eventually...’ Silas’s thoughts turned cold and ambitious, ’...I’m going to replace the World King entirely.’

The current monarch was an arrogant ossified relic who viewed emerging Lords as disposable pawns on a cosmic chessboard.

Once Silas gathered enough administrative leverage, he would simply engineer the political coup, dismantle the King’s authority, and appoint Aki as the new World King.

Aki was pure and completely devoted to him... With Aki sitting upon the supreme throne of the Earth, Blessed Land would effectively hold the entire cosmic order in the palm of its hand.

And from there? He would conduct a ruthless sweeping purge of the World Council.

Every single corrupt obstructive magistrate who had refused to cooperate with him early on would be stripped of their seals, stripped of their titles, and kicked out into the dimensional wastes to fend for themselves.

’Well... except for Number Five,’ Silas admitted with an amused, quiet chuckle. ’She gets to keep her seat... She’s too entertaining to fire, and she still needs to be bullied some more to build character.’

He let out a relaxed sigh.

’That’s still a ways off, though. Plenty of time for the Council to earn my favor before the purge begins.’

Kara smoothed her tailored jacket, brushing off the disappointment and tapped the dragon-bone desk with her knuckles.

"Fine. If the council heads are absent, let’s pivot to commercial business," Kara said, gesturing toward Rika. "My companion here is a Tamer and Beast Master of Blessed Land... Her soul pathways have recently stabilized, and she is in immediate need of a secondary partner beast to forge a contract with... We were informed this sector manages beast procurement."

The blue-haired woman’s eyes lit up with professional enthusiasm.

"Now that," she said, leaning forward and pulling out a thick, leather-bound catalog inlaid with glowing beast-core runes. "is business I can actually facilitate! My consortium maintains private holding pens in the outer rings... We have mature, fully trained apex predators ready for contract weaving,Tier 4 Drakes, Shadow-Stalker Chimeras, Thunder-Horned Behemoths, and even two juvenile Frost Manticores captured from the northern rifts... All of them come with pre-broken spiritual pathways, ready for a master to imprint their soul brand!"

She offered the catalog, but before Rika could even look at the glowing pages, Kara held up a flat dismissive palm.

"We don’t want adult beasts," Kara stated plainly. "Their eggs are much better."

The receptionist’s gum stopped mid-chew.

[Author’s Note]

Thank you for all of the golden tickets and gifts as well, I really appreciate it and we’re just a bit away from Top 3 Golden Tickets as well... However today’s update ends here, once again, I’m feeling a bit sick and since it’s Sunday, I can’t go to the clinic until tomorrow so I’ll go for a check-up tomorrow and the mass release will come afterward since it’s a bit serious, thank you for your patience!