Chapter 550: All Is Fair In Love And War [Bonus - ]

Chapter 550: All Is Fair In Love And War [Bonus Chapter]

Silas knew the First Princess was socially isolated, but seeing her embrace the supreme military commander of Amazon like an older sister was unexpected.

Aki was adorably naive, emotionally transparent, and ridiculously cute ninety percent of the time, but underneath that sheltered exterior, she was still a princess who had spent twenty-five years navigating the predatory waters of the Citadel.

She had the strategic instincts of a survivor.

For Aki and Da Silva to share a bond this intimate meant this wasn’t some sudden political calculation... they were genuine friends... or were they?

The two women broke the hug.

Da Silva looked down at Aki with her amber eyes scanning the girl’s face, immediately noticing the puffiness around her lashes and the lingering redness along her cheekbones.

"How are you holding up, little bird?" Da Silva asked. "I saw what happened at the Grand Table. When your father singled you out... I wanted to draw my saber and sever Julian’s tongue myself."

Aki smiled gently, stepping back and smoothing down the front of her navy skirts.

"I’m okay, Valeria. Truly. Kara... she protected me."

Da Silva’s eyes flicked toward Aki’s hands.

The two gloves were resting quietly on Aki’s wrists and now the glowing runic circuits had faded as the leather looked completely normal.

’Interesting,’ Da Silva noted silently. ’These are such weird gloves and she wasn’t wearing them before...’

She didn’t pry. Instead, Da Silva turned her attention back to the First Princess, gesturing toward the long velvet sofas.

"May I sit?" Da Silva asked politely.

"Of course," Aki replied, walking over and taking a seat on the smaller divan opposite the main couch.

Da Silva moved to the long velvet sofa, unbuttoning her olive trench coat before sitting down, resting her calloused hands flat against her knees.

Her two attendees stationed themselves rigidly behind her backrest, silent as statues.

Kara remained standing near the windows with her single right arm crossed over her chest, watching the interaction with an amused observant smirk.

Aki leaned forward, her expression turning curious.

"Valeria... why did you come here? The summons for the Exhibition’s bracket drawing should be starting in less than an hour. Shouldn’t you be with the Amazonian people preparing your representatives?"

Da Silva looked at Aki across the low coffee table.

For the first time since she had walked into the room, the fierce battle-hardened High Marshal looked slightly off-balance as an almost imperceptible warmth rose beneath the dark scarred skin of Da Silva’s high cheekbones with her gaze dropping for a fraction of a second as though she were experiencing an uncharacteristic wave of personal shyness.

She cleared her throat, squaring her broad shoulders, and looked directly into Aki’s eyes.

"I came here to make a formal request, Aki," Da Silva said, her voice dropping into a solemn look that carried throughout the quiet room. "On behalf of the sovereign nation of Amazon and my personal household... I would like to ask if you would permit my faction to form an official alliance with yours for the Tournament of Succession."

Aki’s jaw parted slightly.

She blinked, looking puzzled with her head tilting in complete bewilderment.

’An alliance... with me?’ Aki thought with a stunned look on her face. ’The strongest military republic in the southern hemisphere wants to align their bracket with an unawakened princess?’

Over by the lancet windows, Kara didn’t look puzzled at all.

Her violet eyes flared with brilliant clarity behind her clear lenses and a slow smile curled across Kara’s lips as she tapped her single right index finger against her collarbone.

’Jackpot,’ Kara thought, her grin widening until her teeth caught the midday light.

’The tournament bracket just got a hell of a lot more interesting.’

She went to one of the many couches after that as the silence stretched between them.

Kara leaned back into the corner of her sofa, crossing her long legs and letting her gaze drift toward the vaulted ceiling beams.

Her right arm rested flat along the back cushions with her fingers tapping a lazy irregular rhythm against the velvet.

Internally, the gears were turning cleanly.

’Of course we can win the whole damn tournament,’ she thought with the trace of an unbothered smirk touching the corner of her lips.

Even if the World Council’s arbiters slapped high-grade suppression arrays on her pathways, even if the Sovereign Realm’s rules choked her down to match the base of the other factions, it didn’t really matter.

Silas was sure he would win against them, that wasn’t hard... After all, winning the bracket wasn’t the hard part.

The real headache came after the trophy was handed over.

What then?

Say Aki’s banner took first place... An independent territory like Blessed Land couldn’t single-handedly process a multi-thousand-square-kilometer zone.

’Especially when I can’t bring the girls to the real world either...’

You needed heavy drilling rigs, ether-filtration pumps, regional supply chains, transport vessels capable of cutting through atmospheric turbulence, and an army of logistics clerks just to catalog the raw mana crystals before they spoiled in open air.

Kara had originally considered cutting a deal with Chancellor Henri de Montmirail of Europa.

The bureaucrat was terrified of his own shadow, easily maneuvered, and Europa had the industrial manufacturing infrastructure to supply the drilling gear.

They would take a fifteen-to-twenty percent cut of the refined crystals as a contractor’s fee, provide the heavy freighters, and call it a day.

’Except Da Silva just walked straight into my lap,’ Kara mused, her violet eyes sliding sideways through her clear lenses to assess the Amazonian High Marshal.

Amazon was a military powerhouse.

Their logistical divisions weren’t soft corporate contractors... They were hardened engineers who built forward operating bases in active combat zones while beasts chewed on their perimeter fences and more importantly, Da Silva was sitting here playing the friend card with Aki.

’Friends give friends discounts,’ Kara reasoned with shameless cheerfulness. ’If she wants to use her bond with Aki to buy a ticket to the big leagues, she’s going to pay for the privilege.’

Down on the smaller divan, Aki sat with her knees together with her head tilted slightly to the side like a curious sparrow.

Her large blue eyes blinked once and then twice, fixed squarely on the High Marshal.

"Valeria..." Aki began, her voice soft, carrying that innocent bewildered lilt that made her seem entirely defenseless. "Why do you want to join us? Wouldn’t Amazon want to claim the northern drilling rights entirely for yourself? If your group wins under your own standard, you wouldn’t have to share anything."

Kara glanced down at the princess with an eyebrow arching behind her glasses.

For half a second, Kara couldn’t tell if the girl was genuinely being an airhead or if the political blood running through her veins had just fired up its defense protocols.

But there was an unmistakable glint in the corner of Aki’s eye... a tiny razor-sharp spark hidden behind those wide moist lashes.

’Oh,’ Kara realized, an amused warmth spreading across her chest. ’She’s fishing.’

Even Da Silva was momentarily thrown off balance.

The High Marshal blinked with her jaw shifting as she processed the blunt, disarming nature of the question.

You didn’t ask someone why they were offering an alliance in court... you danced around mutual prosperity, continental security, and ancestral treaties.

Who the hell blurted out, ’Don’t you want all the money for yourself?’

Da Silva cleared her throat, squaring her broad shoulders and adopting that warm protective elder-sister tone she had used during their private late-night video calls.

"Aki, little bird," Da Silva said smoothly, leaning forward and resting her scarred forearms against her knees, "in an arena of this scale, an isolated faction is an easy target... The Nine Powers will form immediate voting blocs the moment the transit gates open. Columbia and Shogya will coordinate as Borealis will sweep the flanks. I came to ally with you because I want to assist you. I know how isolated you have felt in this court, and I refuse to watch the other houses try to tear you down when you finally have a chance to stand."

Aki kept her face completely still, her lips parted in an expression of pure touched gratitude yet inside her chest, Aki’s pulse remained cold and steady.

’It’s obvious why you’re here, Valeria,’ Aki thought.

It was transparent as glass.

Da Silva hadn’t stepped forward when Julian Vanderbilt had demanded an apology.

She hadn’t raised her voice when the King had ordered Aki to crawl in the dirt.

The woman had sat in her star-iron chair with her fingers flat on the table, calculating the fallout.

She was a High Marshal of a sovereign nation so every breath she drew was an investment.

She was here because Kara was a Second Phase Gold Core, and aligning Amazon’s standard with the Lord of Blessed Land would grant her republic instant diplomatic invulnerability.

Aki felt a tiny pang of guilt in her stomach.

Da Silva was her friend... the only high-ranking woman in the Citadel who had ever answered her messages and the only one who hadn’t treated her like an infectious disease.

...That much.

’I’m sorry, Valeria,’ Aki thought, steeling her nerves until her fingernails dug into the fabric of her navy skirt. ’It’s all fair in love and war... You want to use our friendship to tether yourself to Blessed Land? Fine then I’ll use our friendship to bleed you dry.’

Kara shifted, sliding her feet off the sofa and planting her boots on the rug.

She leaned forward, resting her single elbow on her knee, watching the two women circle each other like sparring partners.

’Alright, Princess,’ Kara thought, thoroughly intrigued. ’Let’s see how you handle this.’

Aki sniffled softly, reaching up with a delicate trembling hand to wipe the moisture from the corner of her eye.

"You’re always so kind to me, Valeria," Aki murmured, her voice thick with fragile emotion. "Every time the court gets cruel, you’re the only one who listens to me but... if we form an official factional alliance, it complicates things, doesn’t it? If we enter under a joint banner, the tournament rules state that the territorial spoils must be divided according to the administrative charter signed before the first round."

Da Silva’s eyes sharpened.

"A standard fifty-fifty partition of the drilling permits is customary for joint combat alliances, Aki... Amazon would provide the heavy vanguard, the supply convoys, and the diplomatic backing to ratify the charter through the World Council’s trade committees."

"Fifty-fifty..." Aki repeated, testing the words on her tongue with an expression of pure naive distress.

She chewed her lower lip, looking down at her hands. "That... that sounds so difficult for you, though. Amazon’s vanguard is going to take all the risk on the flanks and if we take half the crystals, how will your engineers afford the transport freighters? My father already hates me, Valeria... If the World Council sees that I took half the mining profits from Amazon, they’ll say I took advantage of my dearest friend!"

Da Silva blinked.

"Aki, that isn’t—"

"No, I won’t allow it!" Aki insisted, looking up with bright and completely innocent eyes. "I refuse to let our friendship be tainted by greed! If we win, Blessed Land will take the full territorial title and the land rights so that no other nation can build military bases on our borders and Amazon will take the exclusive primary extraction contract but to protect your budget, Amazon won’t have to pay any licensing fees! You will simply provide all the mining equipment, the automated drills, the transport vessels, and the logistical labor at cost and in exchange... we’ll grant your nation an honorary ten percent administrative cut of the raw yield!"

Da Silva froze.

The two military attendees behind the sofa stiffened so violently their shoulder straps creaked.

’Ten percent?!’ Da Silva’s mind screamed behind her calm scarred facade. ’And we provide all the heavy machinery, the freighters, and the workforce at cost?! She just turned the sovereign republic of Amazon into a glorified low-wage mining contractor!’

"Aki," Da Silva said, forcing her voice to remain level, though the muscle along her temple gave an involuntary twitch. "A ten percent administrative yield is... well below standard military contractor margins. An operation of that scale requires billions in ether-batteries and the true value of this partnership, however, is not simply the raw crystals. An alliance between our banners in the Exhibition is meant to lay the groundwork for an official mutual defense and trade treaty between the Sovereign Republic of Amazon and Blessed Land. A direct permanent partnership with Lord Vespera."

There it was, it was the real prize.

Da Silva laid the card on the table, trying to bypass the mining technicalities to secure the existential deterrent of a Gold Core.

Aki tilted her head, her face an unblemished sheet of sweet sorrowful confusion.

"Oh... but Valeria," Aki murmured, her voice dropping into a whisper, "how could I possibly make promises on behalf of Blessed Land? I’m just an unawakened princess while Lord Vespera is an independent sovereign who is a Gold Core. She was kind enough to offer her personal blade to protect me from Julian Vanderbilt... but to drag her entire territory into a binding geopolitical treaty just for a tournament bracket? That would be so presumptuous of me! Wouldn’t that look like I was using her?"