Chapter 700: Drown [Bonus - ]

Chapter 700: Drown [Bonus Chapter]

Solenne’s brain short-circuited. Her golden eyes widened into massive saucers with her mouth hanging open in total shock.

The voice made it clear that Lord Vespera was a woman, however she said she was a man... Solenne’s brain refused to file the two facts together.

Before she could even process the revelation, Kara pulled back slightly, offering her a charming conspiratorial wink.

"Now then, my brilliant Chief Artificer... do you happen to know where in this city we can get some proper dwarven smiths?"

...

The heavy double doors of the penthouse suite at The Celestial Reach Hotel slid open with a soft hiss with the chime of seventh-tier privacy wards harmonizing with the click of the lock.

Aeliana stepped over the polished marble threshold, her pale green traveling cloak swaying around her ankles.

Behind her, a small mountain of reinforced wooden crates, velvet-lined component chests, and banded iron lockboxes drifted silently through the air.

They were tethered to a pale emerald ring of spatial levitation mana humming from the tips of her slender fingers, gliding forward like an obedient school of river fish before settling against the foyer wall with a sequence of dull heavy thuds.

Bringing up the rear was Morwenna.

The pirate queen marched in with two massive iron-reinforced crates of high-density mythril ingots balanced effortlessly on her broad, leather-clad shoulders.

With a grunt that rattled her breastplate, she dumped the crates down beside the doorway, the weight of the refined ore making the floorboards groan beneath the carpet.

"That’s the last of the loads from the Fourth Ring," Morwenna muttered, wiping a line of soot and sweat from her brow with the back of a calloused fingerless leather glove. "If Aki complains about the grade of this mythril, I’m personally throwing her into the mouth of a beast... We practically held that dwarven foundry master by his beard until he gave us the military-grade reserve batches."

Aeliana didn’t answer immediately.

She was leaning against the mahogany console in the foyer, her silver-green eyes glowing with girlish delight as she flipped through a thick stack of glossy developed photographs clutched in her hands.

"We captured magnificent sights today, Morwenna," Aeliana murmured, a dreamy smile gracing her porcelain lips as she tapped the top photograph with a manicured nail. "The architectural look of the Upper Tier, the floating crystalline transit-barges against the azure sky, the singing light-sculptures of the Grand Arc... and especially this one."

She held up a particular snapshot, her pointed ears trembling with suppressed giggles.

The image had caught Morwenna mid-bite at an open-air street stall in the commercial promenade.

The pirate queen was hunched over a steaming ceramic bowl of rich broth and wheat noodles called ramen, a pair of wooden chopsticks gripped in her fist like a boarding dagger.

Her stormy gray eyes were wide in shock as a red pepper flake was stuck to her upper lip, and her mouth was opened in a hilariously ungraceful expression of confusion as if she couldn’t decide whether to devour the bowl whole or smash it against the curb for witchcraft. ℴℴ𝘮

"Burn that," Morwenna snarled instantly, her tanned face flushing a furious defensive pink as she lunged forward to snatch the photograph. "Burn that cursed photo right now, Aeli, or by the depths, I’ll feed it to your precious smut books!"

Aeliana deftly spun on her heel, tucking the photograph into the inner lining of her silk robe with the practiced agility of a royal courtier.

"Never... This sacred chronicle belongs in Lady Eluned’s permanent archive. Your raw, unrefined expressions are an asset to the household’s history."

Morwenna scowled, clicking her tongue in profound irritation, but as she looked toward the floor-to-ceiling panoramic windows flanking the corridor, her posture stiffened.

Outside, the golden daylight had completely faded from the skyline of Central City.

The sky had turned a deep bruised violet, punctured by constellations of floating neon lanterns and the glowing serpentine trails of magnetic sky-carriages.

It was already late evening.

A sudden sharp spike of confusion knitted Morwenna’s scarred brow together.

"Wait a damn second," Morwenna grumbled, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. "Look at the sky... The sun’s been down for nearly an hour. Captain said that Valerius bastard was coming later so we’re probably late."

Aeliana tilted her head, her smile faltering as she checked the gilded clock mounted on the foyer wall.

"Indeed... Lord Sy said that Valerius would arrive later, and later has come and gone. Did something delay the summit?"

"I don’t know," Morwenna growled, her pirate instincts flaring with sharp, restless suspicion. "And I don’t like it... If we aren’t meeting Valerius tonight, what the hell has he been doing all afternoon?"

She led the way down the wide, illuminated hallway of the sprawling suite, her heavy leather boots sinking into the thick plush crimson carpets.

The penthouse was vast, featuring five separate master bedchambers, a private alchemical bath, a salon, and a vast central living lounge surrounded by transparent quartz glass that overlooked the entire sparkling expanse of the metropolis below.

As they reached the grand archway of the central living room, Morwenna opened her mouth to call out for her Lord...

The words disintegrated in her throat as her boots froze mid-stride.

Her jaw slacked open so violently it nearly detached from her skull, her stormy gray eyes bulging in pure disbelief.

’FUCK!’

The single curse echoed through Morwenna’s mind like an erupting naval battery.

’Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!’

She had spent the entire afternoon tearing her hair out in public plazas, hyper-fixating on the nonexistent threat of this mysterious Valerius guy.

She had convinced herself that Valerius was secretly an undercover vixen disguised as a man, scheming to slip between Silas’s sheets under the guise of trade negotiations...

She had been on high alert, watching every shadow, scrutinizing every male noble with blond hair they passed on the street to protect her territory.

Because she had been so hopelessly blinded by her paranoia over Valerius... she had completely forgotten to guard the rear perimeter.

And now... an entirely different woman had breached the defenses.

A woman had snuck straight past the battlelines, infiltrated the high command, and occupied the primary objective right under her goddamn nose as sitting comfortably in the center of the massive, curved velvet sofa was a stranger.

She was a breathtaking fox beastkin woman clad in a clean, soft linen tunic and dark breeches, her wild tangled silver hair spilling over her shoulders like moonlight.

Resting on the low glass coffee table in front of her were scattered sheets of paper covered in intricate blueprints, mechanical formulas, and pencil sketches of gear-assemblies.

The woman was holding a charcoal stylus, humming happily to herself, letting out soft musical giggles as she drafted a new hydraulic valve.

And trailing behind her back, taking up nearly the entire breadth of the oversized couch, were nine enormous impossibly fluffy silver fox tails.

The tails were swaying and lashing in slow luxurious waves across the velvet upholstery and lying right in the middle of them, completely buried beneath a sea of shimmering pristine silver fur, was Silas.

He had completely discarded the Disguise Artifact ring as the tailored suit and the sharp facade of Kara were gone as well...

Silas was back in his true natural form, clad in his dark charcoal linen trousers and the oversized thick-knit hoodie Evelyn had gifted him earlier that day.

His head was pillowed comfortably against the base of two massive, silver-furred tails, while two more were draped over his torso like a living breathing royal comforter.

Silas had his eyes closed, his breathing going slow and steady with his hands casually resting behind his head in an expression of bliss plastered across his handsome face.

"Hehe... Lord Silas, you really have quite the weakness for my tails, don’t you?" Solenne commented, pausing her sketching to glance over her shoulder with an amused affectionate grin with her pointed silver ears giving a playful twitch.

When Kara had dropped the illusion and revealed that she was actually a man back at the restaurant, Solenne hadn’t cared in the slightest.

Male or female, Lord or Adventurer, Silas was the savior who had recognized her genius, rescued her from bankruptcy, fed her until her belly bulged, and given her a home in Blessed Land but what she hadn’t anticipated... was just how ridiculously adorable her new Lord could be.

For all his terrifying Gold Core power and authority, the moment they had returned to the private suite and he had seen her clean tails, he had practically melted into the fur like a spoiled housecat.

Silas didn’t even bother opening his eyes.

He merely shifted his head, burying his cheek half an inch deeper into the ridiculously plush silver coat.

"Don’t flatter yourself, Solenne," Silas murmured smoothly, a relaxed shameless smirk tugging at his lips. "I am merely conducting a vital inspection of our new Chief Artificer’s tails... The material is exceptional and the spring-coil softness is divine."

He took a deep breath.

"I’m just doing rigorous research."

"Right, ’research’..." Solenne giggled, shaking her head.

"He’s telling the truth! It’s the softest thing in the world!"

A muffled squeaky voice chimed in from the other end of the couch.

Clinging desperately to two of Solenne’s remaining silver tails was Rika.

The petite Beast Goddess was practically swimming in the fur, her face buried straight into the silver coat and her hands aggressively ruffling and massaging the fluff as if she were kneading dough.

Beside her, perched on a plush velvet cushion, the fledgling Primordial Phoenix was preening its tiny golden feathers, letting out soft content trills while sniffing the air.

"And the scent!" Rika gasped, lifting her flushed face from the fur, her emerald eyes practically sparkling. "Master, smell it! It smells like sweet mountain lilies and fresh almond cream! What kind of magic herbs did you wash these in, Solenne?!"

Solenne rubbed the back of her neck with her charcoal-stained fingers, her cheeks warming with a blush.

"Ah... that was from the private bath Lord Silas let me use when we arrived. He gave me a bottle of that celestial essence shampoo from the Keep’s reserve stock. Honestly... it felt ridiculous using it! The label said it cost four hundred thousand Spirit Credits a flagon! I’ve never used something so obscenely expensive on my fur in my entire life... It’s almost criminal for soap to cost that much!"

"Nonsense," Silas sighed contentedly, his fingers absentmindedly stroking the soft fur draped over his ribs. "Blessed Land’s Chief Artificer deserves premium grooming so consider it an operational expense."

Standing in the archway of the living room, Morwenna’s vision turned completely red as her fingers slowly crept downward toward her hip.

SHING!

With a sound like tearing silk, the great curved blade of Tidebringer slid free from its scabbard.

The polished steel of the curved saber caught the neon city lights outside, but the reflection was instantly swallowed by a terrifying glow.

The irises of Morwenna’s stormy gray eyes dissolved, igniting into a chilling luminous shade of cyan.

HUUUUUUUUUUUUUM!

Without warning, the atmospheric pressure inside the penthouse plummeted.

The gentle scent of almond cream and burning hearth embers was violently suffocated by the suffocating stench of brine, crushed seaweed, and the freezing depths of an ocean trench.

The mana in the room curdled, condensing into shimmering invisible waves of crushing hydrostatic gravity that rattled the crystal chandeliers and made the massive glass windows groan under the weight.

Morwenna stepped into the lounge as the heavy tip of Tidebringer scraped along the plush carpet with a low menacing hiss.

Her voice dropped into a gravelly, guttural snarl that sounded like wooden ship-timbers snapping beneath a tidal wave:

"You... silver-tailed, overgrown fox."

Solenne’s sketching stylus froze mid-stroke.

Her silver ears pinned flat against her skull as the terrifying ocean-pressure crashed over her shoulders, sending a violent shudder through her spine.

Morwenna pointed the dripping cyan-glowing blade of Tidebringer straight between Solenne’s eyes.

"Start talking. Right now," Morwenna hissed, her teeth bared in a feral, murderous scowl. "Explain who the fuck you are, how you breached this suite, and why your greasy tails are currently wrapped around my Lord... before I summon an rip-tide that flays every single scrap of fur from your scrawny pelt!"

Beside her, Aeliana merely brought a delicate hand to her mouth, letting out a soft amused gasp as she watched the drama unfold.

On the sofa, Silas finally opened one eye.

"Morwenna," He said calmly, from somewhere inside a tail. "The carpet is rented."

Inside Morwenna’s chest, however, her heart was screaming in weeping agony.

’WHY?!’

The woman’s soul wailed against the cruel mocking heavens.

’WHY IS EVERY SINGLE WOMAN IN THIS CURSED REALM ACTIVELY SABOTAGING MY CHANCE TO LOSE MY VIRGINITY?!’

First it was Eluned’s smug wobbling parade down the Keep steps then it was Aeliana dragging her across the city for dragon-smut...

And now, the very second she hauled two tons of mythril back to the suite so she could finally push Silas onto a bed... a nine-tailed fox beastkin had materialized out of thin air and turned him into an oversized rug-ornament.

’GODDAMMIT ALL TO HELL!’ Morwenna raged with Tidebringer trembling in her white-knuckled grip. ’I AM GOING TO DROWN THIS WHOLE SUITE!’