Chapter 873: Hope
Chapter 873: Hope
Behind Kaiden, Vespera’s composure held.
But the faintest warmth touched her eyes.
Her cub had just played a room full of adults without raising his voice, and the pride she felt was the kind she’d bury under professionalism and save for the drive home.
Kaiden’s ’charity’ regarding the information he was willing to provide sounded generous.
In reality, it cost him nothing substantial.
He’d already streamed the layout of the dungeon for the whole world to see, save for parts of his own home, which of course would be far from the zones any outsider is allowed to access.
It housed his throne, after all. Anyone who sat on it could take away his Dungeon Master status.
There was a second reason why he was so ready to cooperate.
Kaiden’s DMP counter had stopped reading as a number during the Kaiju’s forfeiture and become a blur, twenty consumed dungeons’ worth of resources pouring into his pool in one catastrophic transfer.
The total sat in the hundreds of thousands, untouched.
He hadn’t spent a single point of it because the stream had been live, the countdown of returning to Earth had been tight, and spending dungeon resources on camera would’ve been plain stupid.
But those points were his, deployable the moment he deemed it was time to completely revamp his dungeon. Should he decide, all information anyone gleans before that moment would be for the history books, not relevant data about breaking his dungeon.
And who knew, actual Association researchers with actual instruments and tons of backing might hand him data about his own home that even he didn’t know about.
Then the saintly smile intensified.
It got worse.
Kaiden Grey leaned backward in his chair and radiated such pure, concentrated benevolence that if you squinted hard enough you could almost see a golden halo forming behind his head.
His eyes softened. His posture opened. Every line of his body communicated selfless generosity so aggressively that Grace felt her skin crawl, because the man sitting across from them had built his career on chaos, profanity, and an intense desire for personal growth instead of focusing on the collective’s benefit.
Watching him channel the energy of a saint handing bread to orphans was one of the most unsettling things she had witnessed in her professional life.
The Chairman felt it too as his fingers tightened a fraction against each other on the table.
"Now," Kaiden said, his voice warm and magnanimous, "since Eclipse is being so generous with its cooperation, we do hope the Association hasn’t forgotten about the competition rewards that are still pending formal disbursement. The gear, the Chronos, the dungeon allotments."
He tilted his head, all innocent concern. "We trust that’s being handled? After all, not only did Runewoven, subsidiary of Eclipse, finish in first place in the rankings, but we also solved the mystery of why the monsters were converging in the mountain range to begin with. We completed both requirements to be deemed the winners."
The scribe’s pen stopped.
Her eyes lifted from the ledger to Kaiden’s face and stayed there for one unprofessional second before returning to the page, where she wrote faster.
Grace nodded slowly.
"Prize package for first place. Still pending." She’d flagged this line item herself, and the number wasn’t in dispute.
"Wonderful." The halo practically brightened. "And we would hope, since we’re being so cooperative, that the Association might remind New Dawn to honor their share of that package. Magnus Morvane co-designed and co-sponsored the competition, after all."
He paused, and the saintly warmth stayed perfectly in place while his eyes went cold. "We’re sure New Dawn wouldn’t want to be seen defaulting on obligations they announced to the entire awakened world. That would be terrible for their reputation and that of the United States of America that gave them the ’high-tier’ guild status and its many privileges, especially considering that we, Eclipse, are mere ’low-tier’ hopefuls facing giants in our paths."
The scribe swallowed. Her pen moved, but slower, her thoughts running ahead of the ink: he was talking about his own father.
The Ashborn succession mess was the most recent global drama that was rudely interrupted by the Kaiju.
Magnus Morvane was a certified scumbag by any measure, but Kaiden wasn’t demanding retribution.
He was hoping for fairness, with a smile so holy it could have blessed a cathedral, while using the Association as a lever to grind his father’s guild into the dirt through bureaucratic channels.
The saintly packaging made the clinical efficiency of it worse, somehow.
"Furthermore," Kaiden continued, the warmth in his voice never wavering, "should any legal conflicts arise between our guild and other parties in the future, we would hope the Association remembers our cooperation and extends the kind of institutional courtesy you’d offer anyone working alongside a federal investigation. Expedited proceedings, favorable arbitration channels, that sort of thing."
Every sentence was a hope. Every hope was a condition. He hadn’t demanded a single thing.
Magnus was already loading every chamber his legal team had, preparing lawsuits against Vespera and Kaiden personally, against Eclipse as an entity, against subsidiary accounts and associated parties from the moment the Shadow Monarch had torn his empire apart with her own two hands and handed it all to the son he decreed a failure.
The filings weren’t being sent their way yet, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out Magnus’s reaction. He even screamed it into Vespera’s face multiple times.
Association backing would signal to every judge and arbitrator in the system that Eclipse had federal weight behind it.
And frankly, selfishly, he didn’t want to burn a single Chronos on legal fees related to his bastard of a father.
"That is..." The Chairman paused, visibly recalibrating a conversation he’d thought he was leading. "...a significant number of hopes."
Kaiden spread his hands, palms up, the halo still going strong.
"Hopes, Chairman. In this day and age, all we can do is hope for a better tomorrow. Demanding things from the noble men and women of the Association?"
He looked disgusted at the mere prospect for a moment before pressing a hand to his chest. "We’re simply offering unprecedented access to information that every government on the planet would start a bidding war over, and expressing our sincere hope that the people we’re offering it to remember the gesture."
He let the word ’remember’ sit for exactly as long as it needed to.
"We do hope," he added, the saintly glow never flickering, "that the United States doesn’t spit on charity. Because if it does..."