Chapter 431: "Kidnapped" By Thor [Bonus - ]

Chapter 431: "Kidnapped" By Thor [Bonus Chapter]

The penthouse suite in the upper tier of Rhyx City was quiet, save for the steady drumming of rain against the reinforced glass.

Standing before a floor-to-ceiling mirror framed in polished mahogany, the Princess tilted her head slightly, adjusting the silken fall of her royal-blue hair.

Her locks cascaded over her shoulders in immaculate liquid waves, catching the soft, recessed lighting of the vanity.

She hummed a light delicate melody beneath her breath, a courtly tune from the central provinces that felt far removed from the hum of the metropolis below.

Today was not an ordinary day.

Today was the day she was scheduled to journey into the Sovereign Realm... specifically to the contested land of the Umbral Basin where Blessed Land resided.

She smoothed down the front of her attire with deliberate unhurried grace.

It was a modest gown of pale celestial silk, embroidered along the hem with subtle gold crests that denoted imperial lineage without being overly ostentatious.

There were no heavy ceremonial mantles or ostentatious diadems as she had deliberately chosen an ensemble that walked the fine line between aristocratic dignity and understated refinement.

She turned her head, her clear azure eyes meeting the nervous gaze of her personal maid who stood waiting near the dressing screen with a folded stole over her arms.

"Tell me, Mira," the Princess spoke, her voice measured, calm, and smooth as polished jade. "Do you believe Lord Vespera will find this presentable?"

The maid swallowed hard, fidgeting with the hem of the stole before bowing her head in a hurried flustered stammer.

"Y-Yes, Your Imperial Highness! Without a doubt! It... it is refined, elegant, and perfectly balances your stature with modesty. The Lord of Blessed Land would certainly be honored by your appearance if you met her!"

The Princess offered a faint, amused smile, nodding gently. "Good. That will be all, Mira. You may leave me."

"Understood, Highness."

The maid bowed deeply once more and retreated through the heavy double doors, letting them click shut with a soft, pneumatic hiss.

Left alone in the expansive suite, the Princess walked slowly toward the adjoining private quarters.

It was a simple modest dress.

She wasn’t an idiot... she knew she wasn’t embarking on this clandestine journey to seduce the mysterious female Lord who had crushed the forces of the Unmovable Wall.

’My reasons are very personal.’

She reached her bedchamber, stepping across the plush carpet, and gently closed the interior door behind her.

As the latch locked into place, the serene composed mask she wore for the household staff subtly cracked.

Her right hand, adorned with a delicate ring of suppression quartz, began to tremble. She lowered her gaze to her manicured fingers, watching them shake with cold bitter familiarity.

’This is all I will ever be,’ she thought, a suffocating weight settling over her chest like lead. ’A Princess in name... A Princess in budget... A decorative ornament to be displayed at state galas and imperial banquets...’

In the grand hierarchy of the Supreme Royal Family, bloodline was only the baseline.

True power, true standing, and the right to inherit the stars were dictated entirely by the awakening of a Lord Core.

Her older brother, the Crown Prince, had awakened a Purple Lord Core at the age of sixteen, commanding vast legions across the mid-tier battlefields of the Sovereign Realm.

Even the illegitimate halfling child... the girl her Imperial Father had fathered with a commoner from the lower rim sectors had manifested a Purple core too, instantly elevating the bastard into the inner circle of imperial succession with territorial grants and private war fleets.

And then there was her.

She had stood before the Great Awakening Obelisk on her sixteenth birthday, surrounded by thousands of expectant nobles, high patriarchs, and imperial cameras.

And when her hand had touched the cold celestial stone... nothing had happened.

There was not a flicker of mana...

From that single second onward, her fate had been sealed.

She was not an heir... she was an asset. A political pawn to be maintained with lavish allowances, housed in gilded penthouses, and eventually bartered away into a convenient arranged marriage to cement a treaty with some ancient clan or corporate syndicate.

It was a confusing hollow existence... living in the apex of luxury while having zero agency over her own destiny.

Yet, when reports of the Blessed Land had crossed her weeks ago... when she had read about a powerful territory that then crushed the Unmovable Wall as well... a strange unexplainable tug had pulled at her heart.

She didn’t know why, but whenever she read the dispatches regarding that strange fortified territory, she felt an irrational instinctual pull, as if going there might somehow shatter the suffocating invisible walls that surrounded her life.

She walked to the panoramic floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the rain-slicked towers of Rhyx City.

She unlatched the central pane, pushing the heavy glass outward.

A gust of wet humid wind rushed into the warm room, carrying the cold scent of the storm.

The rain was coming down in thick relentless sheets, drumming against the exterior terrace and blurring the neon skylines of the lower districts into streaks of cyan and magenta.

She looked up into the dark swirling storm clouds, pulling her silk fan from her sash and lightly tapping it against her open palm.

’Will she actually arrive in this downpour?’ the Princess mused silently. ’Even for a deity of Asgard, flying into an urban air-space like this without clearance is—’

KRA-BOOOOOOOOM!

The sky above the penthouse did not simply flash... it tore apart.

A colossal pillar of pure, incandescent golden lightning descended from the upper stratosphere, piercing the storm clouds with apocalyptic speed.

The bolt did not strike the terrace as it detonated directly in mid-air mere inches from the open window, releasing an ear-splitting thunderclap that shattered the surrounding rain into vapor and kicked up a violent concussive shockwave of displaced air that whipped the Princess’s royal-blue hair and silk drapes wildly into the room.

But it did not harm her...

When the blinding golden static dispersed, a towering muscled figure was hovering casually in the open air, completely unbothered by gravity.

Thor stood with wild unkempt blonde hair falling in thick, untamed waves over broad, corded shoulders that possessed the raw power of a battle-hardened god.

Her storm-blue eyes crackled with residual arcs of electricity and clad in her heavy silver battle armor with the ancient short-handled war hammer Mjölnir strapped securely to her hip, she looked like a walking cataclysm.

"GWAHAHAHA!"

Thor’s booming full-chested laughter reverberated through the penthouse, rattling the crystal chandeliers and vibrating right through the floorboards.

"Greetings, little Princess!" Thor bellowed with a grin that showed off her sharp fearless canines. "The weather out here is perfect for a flight! I remember I finished off that six-star roasted drake feast your chefs prepared, so I am a woman of my word! Are you ready to depart for this Blessed Land, or are you still admiring your ribbons?"

The Princess didn’t flinch from the thunder, nor did she cower before the raw divine aura washing over her terrace.

She simply snapped her silk fan shut with a sharp clack, hiding a fond composed smile behind the jade-inlaid ribs.

"I have been ready, Lady Thor," the Princess replied smoothly, stepping up to the edge of the terrace and extending her delicate unblemished hand toward the God of Thunder. "Let us not keep the Sovereign Realm waiting..."

Thor grinned widely, reaching out with her massive calloused hand and taking the Princess’s fingers.

In a single effortless motion, the Daughter of Odin scooped the royal maiden up, cradling her securely in a broad ironclad princess carry against her silver breastplate.

"Highness!"

The interior doors of the suite were suddenly thrown open as three royal security maids rushed onto the terrace, their sidearms drawn in panic.

"Lady Thor, release the Princess at once!" the lead maid cried, though the terror in her eyes betrayed the lack of any real venom in her voice. "Taking an imperial scion without official flight manifests violates seventeen sector treaties!"

"Tell your sector treaties to catch me first! GWAHAHAHA!" Thor roared with delighted mockery, completely ignoring the drawn weapons.

Thor shifted her stance in mid-air, looking down at the blue-haired girl in her arms. "Hold your breath, little one! The air up here gets thin enough to choke a frost giant!"

The Princess immediately closed her lips, drawing in a deep lung-filling breath and pressing her face against the cold silver of Thor’s armor.

VUUUUUUM... BOOM!

A blinding golden corona of pure Asgardian thunder-mana enveloped them like an impenetrable sphere.

With a deafening sonic boom that blew the remaining rain away from the entire penthouse district, Thor shot straight upward into the heavens.

The city of Rhyx shrunk into a microscopic grid of neon specks in less than two seconds as they tore through the cloud layer, ascending with hypersonic acceleration into the upper stratosphere where the blackness of space met the curvature of the planet.

The atmospheric pressure dropped to zero, but inside the golden lightning sphere, the Princess felt neither the crushing G-force nor the freezing void.

Her azure eyes went wide with pure breathless awe as the entire world expanded beneath them... an ocean of clouds painted gold by the rising sun.

"Hold on tight!" Thor’s voice echoed directly into her mind. "We’re breaking the planar seal!"

The golden sphere accelerated, warping the space around them until the physical universe blurred into streaks of liquid starlight.

FLASH!

In less than a heartbeat, their physical presence completely vanished from the mortal planet.

When the Princess opened her eyes, the biting cold of the upper atmosphere was gone, replaced by a warm fragrant breeze that smelled of blooming wildflowers and morning dew.

"Huh...?"

She blinked, taking in her surroundings.

They were standing in an immense tranquil celestial garden that seemed to stretch infinitely in all directions.

Colossal, luminous trees with silver bark and golden leaves arched overhead, shading lush emerald lawns dotted with crystalline ponds.

Scattered throughout this peaceful realm were dozens of colossal, free-standing archways... towering stone portals carved from pristine white marble and ancient runic slate, each one swirling with a different color of concentrated spatial mana.

Some burned with the crimson fire of the infernal planes, others hummed with the deep azure of oceanic rifts, and many stood dormant, their stone surfaces covered in moss.

Resting near the base of a towering, spear-shaped obelisk in the center of the garden was a solitary guardian.

He was a tall, imposing man with a completely bald head, his dark skin etched with intricate glowing white tribal marks that pulsed every few seconds.

In his right hand, he held a massive obsidian-tipped spear that rested against his shoulder.

The bald guardian lowered his spear slightly, his stoic timeless gaze locking onto the God of Thunder as she set the Princess down onto the soft grass.

"Greetings, Executioner of the Deities," the guardian spoke. "I am the Guardian of the Outer Gates. What brings the Daughter of Odin to the crossroads of the realms?"

Thor rested her hands on her hips, her heavy silver armor clanking as she tossed her wild blonde mane back with an easy grin.

"At ease, Gatekeeper! I’m taking a little detour to the lower sovereign basins. I need an active portal... specifically, the one that’s barely being used these days. I think it’s known as the forgotten one."

The guardian’s brow furrowed beneath his glowing markings. "The forgotten gate? You speak of the rift that connects to the jagged hollows of the Umbral Basin?"

"That’s the one!" Thor nodded boisterously. "Point me in the right direction, spear-man!"

The guardian turned, extending his obsidian spear toward the far eastern edge of the garden, where the tranquil atmosphere began to rapidly deteriorate.

"The eastern perimeter," the guardian warned solemnly. "The spatial currents in that sector have suffered extreme degradation due to anomalous dimensional shifts... The weather phenomena beyond that threshold are violent and completely erratic so proceed with caution."

"Erratic weather is my favorite kind of weather! GWAHAHAHA!" Thor laughed, stepping forward and scooping the Princess back into her arms before the girl could even take two steps.

"Hold on to your fan, Princess!" Thor warned with a wicked grin.

WHOOSH!

Thor took to the air in a low-altitude glide, flying across the vast celestial garden toward the eastern boundary.

As they crossed the threshold, the Princess watched in fascination as the serene, sunny garden instantly gave way to a chaotic fractured expanse.

The sky above them turned into a swirling mosaic of contradictory elemental storms.

In one sector, heavy, crystalline snow fell in thick sheets, dropping the temperature to sub-zero levels; mere yards away, a blazing artificial sun shone with searing desert heat; above that, violent purple lightning danced through rainstorms that fell sideways against localized gravity wells.

"This is fascinating..." the Princess murmured, her voice steady despite the apocalyptic elemental clash occurring around them.

She reached out, but her fingers encountered a solid frictionless barrier of golden lightning that Thor maintained around her, completely neutralizing the extreme temperatures and pressure.

Thor hovered to a halt in front of the eastern gate.

"I knew it..." Thor muttered, her storm-blue eyes narrowing with sharp, analytical interest.

The portal before them was colossal... easily fifty yards wide, framed by jagged, dark-iron megaliths covered in frost.

But unlike the stable tranquil portals in the garden, this gate was violently awake.

Swirling currents of thick, frigid snow were actively being sucked into the golden spatial vortex at the center, creating a massive swirling blizzard that howled like a caged beast.