Chapter 551: Partnering With Amazon [Bonus - ]

Chapter 551: Partnering With Amazon [Bonus Chapter]

Aki reached across the low table, taking Da Silva’s calloused battle-hardened hand between her two small soft palms, squeezing gently.

"You came here because you’re my friend, right? Because you wanted to help me? You didn’t come here just to use me as a bridge to get to Blessed Land, did you, Valeria? I know you would never do that to me..."

Da Silva’s mouth slowly closed.

She sat there, looking down at Aki’s wide earnest blue eyes, feeling the warm innocent squeeze of the girl’s hands.

Every single diplomatic counter-argument in her arsenal died a silent, agonizing death in her throat.

If she pushed the issue of a Blessed Land partnership now, she would be explicitly admitting that their entire friendship had been a calculated political sham.

She would be confirming that she had only ever answered Aki’s late-night messages because she wanted leverage over the court.

In front of her own attendees, in front of the Lord of Blessed Land, she was completely boxed into a corner.

’She played me,’ Da Silva thought, her head slowly dropping by a fraction of an inch with a quiet hollow defeat settling into her chest. ’The little bird didn’t just grow wings... She grew fangs as well.’

Throughout the entire exchange, Da Silva had been forced to maintain the role of the devoted protective older sister.

And because she couldn’t break character without shattering her own image, the opportunity of a lifetime... an exclusive binding charter with humanity’s newest Gold Core had slipped through her fingers like dry sand.

Across the room, Kara let out a long sigh, resting her head against the high backrest of the sofa.

"Man," Kara drawled, her voice cutting through the heavy tension like a dull cleaver. "You guys talk too much. My head is spinning."

Da Silva turned her head, her amber eyes carrying a desperate flicker of hope.

Kara waved her single right hand dismissively, looking at the Amazonian High Marshal with lazy half-lidded eyes.

"Look," Kara said, "as long as you and your girls actually pull your weight and help Aki during the Tournament, we can sit down and talk about a formal alliance with Blessed Land later... After the dust settles."

Da Silva’s eyes flared wide.

The hope wasn’t dead and the door was still open.

"Truly, Lord Vespera?" Da Silva asked, her voice steadying as she stood up, dipping her head in a sharp respectful bow. "You have my personal oath... The warriors of Amazon will not falter."

"Yeah, yeah, don’t write the press release yet," Kara muttered, waving her off. "You do your job in the dirt, and we’ll see how generous I feel over drinks."

Kara leaned back, her mind quietly categorizing the trade balance.

’All of this is fine,’ Kara thought.

An alliance with Amazon wouldn’t just be an administrative shield for Aki... it was an open conduit for Blessed Land to siphon resources directly from the southern continent.

If Da Silva wanted to sit at the high table with Silas, she was going to supply construction crews, heavy agricultural conduits, and deep-sea mineral convoys.

And that was before Kara began stripping constant assets from the World Council once this succession circus was over.

’I need some investments for myself after all too, don’t I?’

"Alright," Kara said, clapping her single hand against her thigh. "Since we’re doing this joint squad nonsense, why don’t you show me what we’re working with? Present your people and their kits so I can build a loose formation that doesn’t end with them stepping on my boots..."

Da Silva hesitated for half a heartbeat.

In high-tier martial circles, revealing the exact elemental parameters, core thresholds, and masteries of your elite retainers was a massive security risk.

Information was the difference between life and death in a tournament but she looked at Kara and knew instantly that withholding information from someone who could atomize their squad with a sneeze was pointless.

Da Silva turned toward the two female attendees standing rigidly behind her couch.

"Step forward," Da Silva commanded.

The two women immediately snapped their heels together with a crisp clack, stepping out from behind the sofa and moving to the center of the Persian rug.

The first woman was tall, with broad powerful shoulders, dark mahogany skin, and short-cropped black hair cut into a sharp military fade.

Her features carried a striking unmistakable resemblance to Da Silva’s own sharp cheekbones, though her amber-brown eyes were younger and burning with barely suppressed combat adrenaline.

"This is my younger sister," Da Silva introduced with a flicker of genuine familial pride touching her voice. "Lieutenant Maya Da Silva... She’s Twenty-two years old and she holds a Purple Core, refined to the peak of the Second Stage, specializing in Earth."

Maya snapped a heavy clenched fist across her left breastplate, her knuckles thudding against the olive wool.

"A pleasure to stand before the Lord of Blessed Land," she barked, her voice carrying the rigid discipline of an Amazonian strike officer.

The second woman was slightly shorter, lean, with pale, olive-toned skin, sharp hazel eyes, and long dark hair braided tightly against her scalp in cornrows.

Her forearms were bound in thick leather bracers studded with small glowing quartz conduits.

"And this is Captain Leona," Da Silva continued. "Twenty-three years old and she’s a Blue Core, mid-Second Stage, possessing a dual affinity for Wind and Water."

Leona bowed her head with equal precision, her posture coiled like a hunting cat.

"Standing ready for deployment, My Lord."

"These two are the finest combatants within the age limitation that Amazon can field," Da Silva stated with her tone firm. "They have survived forty-two suppression campaigns before so they will not crack under pressure."

Kara sat with her chin resting on her palm, her violet eyes sweeping over the two young women.

"Cool," Kara said casually. "I’m Kara White and I’m nineteen."

Silence!

The entire room seemed to stall out.

Maya’s clenched fist froze against her breastplate.

Leona’s hazel eyes dilated to the size of coins, her breath catching so hard in her throat that she nearly choked and even Da Silva looked as though someone had struck her across the nose with a wooden plank.

’Nineteen?!’

The thought screamed through the minds of both Amazonian warriors with violent intensity.

They were twenty-two and twenty-three and they were hailed across the entire southern hemisphere as once-in-a-generation martial geniuses... prodigies who had broken through to the second stage and were almost to their third stage before their twenty-fifth birthdays, a feat that usually took seasoned veterans decades of blood and near-fatal trauma to achieve.

They had bled in freezing mud, spent their teenage years locked in gravity chambers, and considered themselves the apex of their generation.

And sitting right in front of them, wearing an oversized suit, lounging like a delinquent on a velvet couch with an empty sleeve, was a nineteen-year-old girl who had already achieved a Second Phase Gold Core.

A wave of pure suffocating jealousy, accompanied by the crushing, bitter realization of cosmic unfairness, washed over both soldiers.

Why were the heavens so absurdly biased? What was the point of twenty years of agonizing training when a nineteen-year-old stray could casually shatter barriers with a flick of her wrist?

Kara watched their faces contort with suppressed existential dread, thoroughly enjoying every second of it.

"Look," Kara said, shifting her weight, "your performance today is going to decide whether this alliance actually goes anywhere... If you drag your feet, get sloppy, or fold the second someone throws high-tier mana in your face, the deal’s off."

Maya’s jaw clenched, her pride rushing back to the surface.

"We are Amazonian warriors, Lord Vespera! We will throw our bodies into the fire to ensure the Prince... to ensure Aki is kept safe at all costs!"

"Yeah, screw that," Kara cut her off immediately, waving her single hand with utter disgust.

Maya blinked, stunned. "What?"

"Screw that," Kara repeated, leaning forward, her eyes narrowing. "Aki can protect herself. Right, Aki?"

Aki sat up straight, puffing her chest out with her hands resting firmly on her knees.

The midnight-blue and black gloves on her wrists were hidden beneath her skirts, but the heat of Silas’s trust was still burning in her veins.

"Yes!" Aki said with fierce adorable determination. "I can protect myself!"

"See?" Kara pointed out, looking back at the two soldiers. "You aren’t her bodyguards... You’re our flank supervision. Your job is to keep the minor trash from crowding our airspace so I don’t have to waste time clearing out unranked pests. Understood?"

Maya and Leona exchanged a brief, bewildered glance before saluting again.

"Understood, Lord Vespera!"

Kara turned her head toward Da Silva. "How much time until the gates open?"

Da Silva checked the glowing digital clock on her wrist slate.

"Fifty-two minutes. The Council arbiters are finishing the stabilization anchors within the transitional corridor as we speak."

"Good," Kara nodded, standing up smoothly from the sofa. "An hour is plenty of time to get our gear sorted... Da Silva, you can go. As combatants, we need to make sure our kits are locked in without high-command brass hovering over our shoulders."

Da Silva didn’t argue as she recognized when a unit needed isolation so she offered a final respectful bow to her attendees while stepping back toward the entrance.

"I leave my vanguard in your hands, Lord Vespera," Da Silva said, meeting Kara’s gaze. "Aki... fight well."

"I will, Valeria," Aki smiled softly.

Da Silva stepped out into the vaulted hallway, her heavy boots fading into the distance, and the thick oak door clicked shut once more.

SLAM!

The moment the latch locked, Kara turned back toward the center of the Persian rug, her eyes sweeping over Maya, Leona, and Aki.

"Alright," Kara said, rolling her shoulders back. "Since we’re technically in a temporary truce with Blessed Land... I’m going to let you two wear our newest uniform. Consider it a field test."

She raised her single right hand.

VUUUUUUUUUM!

A brilliant pulsing sphere of cerulean mana flared over her open palm as she reached into her Lord Inventory.

From the spatial ripple emerged two complete sets of pristine combat armor, hovering lightly in the air before descending onto the low coffee table with soft metallic clinks.

The armor was breathtaking.

It was composed of layered, razor-thin plates of treated void-ivory, polished to a dull pearl-like sheen that absorbed light rather than reflecting it.

Delicate filigree of beaten gold was etched along the chest plates and pauldrons, tracing stabilization runes that hummed with power.

The crest of Blessed Land was noticeably absent from the center breastplate... leaving the design clean and unaligned.

"It isn’t completely finished," Kara noted, tilting her head to inspect the pieces. "The full production models will have active barriers, but these prototypes will do... The void-ivory plates offer sixty percent higher durability than standard mythril, and my Dwarves personally imbued wind runes into the knee joints and spinal linkages to boost your sprint speed by thirty percent."

Maya stepped forward, her dark eyes wide and practically glued to the gold-etched plating.

Her gaze was sweeping frantically over the runic conduits with her lips moving silently as she attempted to memorize the intricate overlapping patterns of the runes etched into the metal.

An armament like this... which was lightweight, highly durable, pre-enchanted with passive acceleration runes would fetch a fortune in the southern military academies.

If she could replicate even ten percent of the design for the Amazonian—

"Don’t bother," Kara’s voice broke through the silence sounding dry and mocking.

Maya flinched, looking up with a guilty start.

Kara was watching her with an amused half-lidded smirk.

"You can’t copy it. It was made by an Asgardian and even if your engineers somehow managed to reverse-engineer the thread... I’d slap your entire government with an intellectual property lawsuit for copyright infringement and drain your national treasury dry before the first batch cleared the foundry."

Maya cleared her throat, stepping back with a sheepish embarrassed cough.

Kara, however, stopped dead.

Her violet eyes blinked behind her glasses as she stared down at the floorboards with her jaw tightening as an agonizing realization struck her like a freight train.

’Wait...’ Kara thought. ’Shit... I should have just kept my mouth shut!’

A wave of agonizing regret washed over Silas’s soul.

’If I had let them copy it... if I had let the Amazonian military forge three thousand counterfeit suits... I could have waited until all this ended, pulled out the registered patent papers, and sued their entire republic for patent infringement... I could have settled for billions of credits in industrial royalties and three deep-sea mining anchors! Why the hell did I warn them?! I’m an idiot!’

Kara cursed her own big mouth internally, but before she could dwell on her lost fortune, a sudden rustle of fabric snapped her back to reality.

SHLICK!

Kara’s eyes flicked forward and her brain stalled.

Lieutenant Maya Da Silva had reached down, grabbed the hem of her olive service blouse, and cleanly pulled it over her head, tossing the tailored military wool onto the sofa.

She didn’t stop there.

With the brisk utilitarian efficiency of a soldier who had changed uniforms in frontline trenches hundreds of times, her hands went to the brass buckle of her tactical trousers.

CLACK.

The belt unfastened and the trousers slid down her muscular chocolate-skinned thighs, kicked aside to join her boots, leaving the twenty-two-year-old Amazonian officer standing in the center of the lavish drawing room wearing nothing but a utilitarian black sports bra and low-cut athletic briefs.

Her physique was terrifyingly gorgeous... tall, lean, packed with functional corded muscle across her abdomen and obliques with her dark skin unbroken save for three pale jagged shrapnel scars running along her left ribcage.

Kara’s single right hand froze in her trouser pocket.

’Is she...’ Silas’s thoughts stumbled with a cold sweat breaking out across his neck beneath the female disguise. ’Is she trying to seduce me?! Right now?!’