Chapter 548: Gift From Thora [II / Bonus - ]

Chapter 548: Gift From Thora [II / Bonus Chapter]

FZZZZZZT... CRASH!

The volcanic plume of searing superheated crimson mana detonated outward from the palm socket of the blue glove in an expanding deafening cone of combustion.

The air inside the private chamber violently vaporized into an eye-watering shockwave of dry heat and pressurized ozone, slamming the heavy brocade drapes against the ceiling and rattling the lead-glass windowpanes until they vibrated with high-pitched screams.

BOOOOOOOM!

The fire crashed head-on into the reinforced stone wall on the far side of the room.

Yet, contrary to the terrifying roar that had preceded it, the masonry of the Citadel did not collapse.

The wall shuddered, groaning beneath the impact as a three-yard-wide circle of bubbling black vitrification seared into the plaster.

Sheets of persistent clinging red fire writhed across the charred mortar like hungry liquid parasites, spitting fat droplets of incandescent slag onto the edge of the Persian rug where the wool instantly smoked and blackened to ash.

Aki flinched violently, staggering backward on her velvet slippers with her hands flying up to shield her face from the boiling wash of air.

Her blue hair whipped across her cheeks with her knuckles pale and her chest heaving as she pressed her spine flat against the side of the sofa, staring at the still-burning stone in paralyzed wide-eyed horror.

Kara on the other hand didn’t flinch.

She stood with her single right hand buried casually in her trouser pocket, leaning back on her heels, letting out a long low whistle that carried cleanly over the hiss of dying embers.

"Damn," Kara murmured, tilting her head to inspect the black smoking crater. "Didn’t even crack the exterior mortar... Say what you want about the old man’s taste in interior decorating, but the stone in this fortress is basically unbreakable. You could park an artillery battery in here and the neighbors down the hall wouldn’t hear a damn thing."

She turned her chin with her violet eyes glinting behind her clear wire-rimmed lenses and looking down at the First Princess.

Aki had frozen completely.

Her right arm remained stiffly outstretched with the midnight-blue leather glove now cooling down releasing thin tendrils of gray smoke that curled lazily from the runic silver circuits etched across the knuckles.

Her jaw hung slightly loose with her blue eyes darting frantically between the scorched wall and the palm of her hand and she stared at her own fingers as if they had suddenly grown claws.

"I-I..." Aki stammered, her voice catching high in her throat.

She blinked rapidly, her breath coming in shallow disbelieving gasps.

"I... I just... I used..."

"Magic," Kara finished for her, a smug satisfied grin stretching across her face. "You cast a flame lance and a pretty damn dense one, too."

THUD! THUD! THUD!

The violent hammering of iron gauntlets against the exterior oak door shattered the quiet.

"Your Highness! Lord Vespera!" the guard sergeant’s muffled, terrified voice shouted from the corridor, followed by the clatter of halberds and drawn sidearms. "We registered a catastrophic spike within your antechamber! Are you under assault?! Open the hatch immediately! We are authorized to breach—"

Kara rolled her eyes, turned toward the sealed oak door, and shouted at the top of her lungs.

"Go away! We’re doing breathing exercises! If one of you touches that brass handle, I’m turning this entire hallway into an ashtray!"

The hallway instantly went dead silent.

A frantic scuffle of boots retreating at top speed echoed through the floorboards, followed by the sound of two guards whispering in panicked hushed tones as they established a cordon thirty paces away from the door, terrified of provoking the one-armed Gold Core.

Kara snorted, shaking her head.

"Idiots."

She walked over to Aki, stopping right in front of the princess.

Reaching down with her single right hand, she tapped the back of the midnight-blue glove with her fingernail.

CLINK!

The metal scale socket in the center of the palm flickered once with a crimson ember fading out of the rune as it cooled down to temperature.

"You can use magic now," Kara said, her voice dropping into a matter-of-fact tone. "Though, before you start thinking you’re about to solo the nine royal houses, let’s manage your expectations... It’s strictly temporary, and the capacity is pretty damn small. Each glove can only store and convert one elemental type at a time. For that right one, it’s dialed into Fire and with the internal compression rune Thora slapped into it, you’ve got maybe five, six of those burst shots before the mana cells burn out and need a recharge..."

Aki blinked, staring at her glove as if it were an alien organism grafted onto her wrist.

She flexed her slender fingers inside the supple beast leather, feeling the soft inner lining shift against her skin.

"That tingly feeling you got earlier?" Kara continued, crossing her single arm over her chest and nodding toward Aki’s shoulder. "That’s because the array doesn’t just hold mana like a battery... The moment it detects a neural command from your brain, it sends a pressurized micro-current backward through your wrist, artificially carving out temporary mana pathways through your muscle tissue. It tricks your physical nervous system into acting like an Awakened conduit."

Aki’s eyes widened, her mouth parting in pure fascination. "It... it creates mana pathways in my body...?"

"Temporary ones," Kara clarified, reaching up to adjust the bridge of her glasses with a finger. "Emphasis on temporary... The second you strip those gloves off, the simulated pathways collapse and your channels go completely dormant again. Every time you lace them up, it has to burn those temporary bridges all over from scratch."

Kara paused with her violet eyes lingering on Aki’s flushed earnest face.

Beneath her casual exterior, a familiar quiet ache settled into Silas’s chest.

’I really wish I could help her awaken properly,’ Silas thought, looking at the delicate woman who had spent twenty-five years being treated like dirt by her own bloodline. ’It would be unbelievable to see the look on the King’s face if she actually unlocked a real core... To watch her stand in front of that arrogant prick Alexander, ignite her own pathways, and prove every single one of those court parasites dead wrong.’

Yet the reality of this world was brutal.

In modern human history, a failed awakening was an immutable medical sentence.

If your soul didn’t ignite during the Awakening ceremony at 18 or rather 16 for nobles, you were inert forever.

Even Thor... the first daughter of Asgard, a bona fide deity who had spent the last week lounging on the chairs of Blessed Land didn’t know of a clean reproducible way for a regular human who had failed their trial to ignite a core after the fact.

’Well...’ Kara corrected herself, her mouth twitching as a vivid memory from yesterday afternoon flashed behind her eyes. ’Thor did technically mention one method...’

Silas had cornered the goddess in the courtyard of Blessed Land while she was chewing her way through an entire roasted wild boar, asking her directly if Asgardian divinity had any rites for dormant mortals.

Thor had paused, wiped grease from her jaw with the back of her wrist, burped loudly enough to shake the leaves off the cherry trees, and casually said.

"Oh, that’s easy, Silas~ Just take a direct bolt of pure divine lightning from the highest terrace of Asgard, slam it straight into their spinal column, and hope their soul doesn’t explode into pink mist before the pathways fuse. Works about twenty percent of the time...!"

’Yeah... no,’ Kara thought grimly, shivering slightly at the memory. ’We are definitely not trying that. I’m trying to keep Aki alive, not vaporize her into a smear on the carpet.’

Kara cleared her throat, pushing the dark thought aside, and pointed at the glove again.

"Thora wasn’t the only one who worked on this, by the way," Kara explained. "Her sister helped tune the frequencies, and that dwarven smith Thor dragged down from Asgard spent three days hammering the void-steel scales on the knuckles to make sure the recoil wouldn’t shatter your wrist when the spell fired..."

Aki blinked, overwhelmed by the names of craftsmen being tossed around as if they were neighborhood tailors.

"O-Okay..."

"And here’s the best part," Kara added, stepping in and tapping the collar of Aki’s gown. "The gloves don’t just rely on their internal cells... The temporary neural pathways they carve through your arms connect directly to the Star-Iron necklace around your neck. The mana diamonds I set into that pendant act as a reservoir so as long as the necklace has juice, you can siphon power into the gloves without needing a native core in your chest. You’re set..."

Aki looked up, her blue eyes shining with overwhelming emotion.

"Silas... I... I don’t even know what to say," she whispered with her hands coming up to clutch the midnight-blue leather against her heart. "Thank you. Truly, thank you so much! I never thought I’d ever feel magic with my own hands. I never thought I’d be able to—"

"Alright, alright, stop, please," Kara groaned, reaching up with her single hand to vigorously rub the side of her face, wincing as Aki’s breathless rapid-fire gratitude began to make her ears ring. "My ears are going to bleed if you keep thanking me like that. If you actually want to look grateful, you can do it on the battlefield. You just have to win this damn tournament today..."

She lowered her hand, her expression turning serious as her violet eyes narrowed with clarity.

"I’m going to be in the ring with you," Kara said firmly. "I’ll handle the heavy hitters but you heard what the King said out there... The moment we step into the Sovereign Realm, my presence is going to be monitored, and I’m going to be suppressed most probably. I can draw their fire, but I can’t be in two places at once... You’re going to have to rely on yourself, Aki."

Kara reached out, taking Aki’s gloved right hand in hers.

"What about the times I’m not right beside you?" Kara asked, her voice dropping into a deep, steady cadence that brooked no argument. "You can’t spend your life hiding behind other people’s backs. You have to be able to stand up for yourself. You have to be able to back yourself up when the room turns ugly..."

She squeezed Aki’s fingers, stepping closer until their boots were barely inches apart.

"So what if you don’t have an Awakened core in your chest? Who gives a damn? You spent time in Blessed Land... You watched how we fight, you learned how to move, you absorbed every scrap of training we threw at you and you have the tools now. Go into that ring and prove everybody in this building wrong."

Aki looked directly into Kara’s eyes.

Beneath the wire-rimmed glasses, the dark bangs, and the feminine features of the disguise, the burning passion behind those violet irises was unmistakable.

Silas wasn’t just handing her weapons... he was handing her his unshakable trust.

He truly believed without an ounce of pity or condescension that she could stand in a ring against the greatest prodigies of humanity and hold her ground.

’He believes in me this much,’ Aki thought, her chest tightening with an emotion so fierce it made her head spin. ’Silas has so much trust in me... I can’t disappoint him. I won’t. I’d rather die in that dirt than let him look at me and see a failure...’

Then, she realized how close they were standing.

Kara was leaning forward with her breath warm against Aki’s cheek and her single hand firmly clutching Aki’s fingers with her slightly taller frame casted a dark shadow over the First Princess’s petite silhouette.

FLUSH!

Aki’s face turned the color of a ripe bursting tomato.

"Y-You’re..." Aki squeaked, blinking frantically, her words tumbling out in a hurried embarrassed rush. "You’re... t-too close!"

Kara blinked.

She looked down at their tangled hands, looked at Aki’s glowing red face, and immediately took a step backward, clearing her throat with an awkward chuckle.

"Right. My bad," Kara muttered, letting go of her hand. "Got a little carried away with the coach speech... Anyway."

Kara reached into her inner jacket pocket, pulling out a second, folded bundle of leather, and held it up.

It was the left glove crafted from midnight-black beast leather, studded with identical void-steel scales, but completely inert with its runic channels waiting for a charge.

Kara held it out, tilting her head.

"So, what element do you want for the off-hand? We did Fire for the right. What do you want in the black one?"

Aki blinked, taking a deep breath to steady her hammering heart as she looked at the second glove.

"How many elements can you actually put in it?"

Kara didn’t hesitate.

She raised her single right hand, counting off on her fingers. "Fire, Water, Earth, Lightning, Wind—"

She stopped.