Chapter 98: A Deal In The Dark
Chapter 98: A Deal In The Dark
Silas stared at the fiercely jealous competitive Pirate Queen.
’Well she’s not wrong though... Kissing Eluned for this will be unfair to her too.’ Silas thought with a sigh.
He didn’t hesitate.
Silas simply leaned forward and placed a firm affectionate kiss directly onto Morwenna’s cold pale cheek.
"Huh..."
Morwenna’s feral aura completely vanished.
The Dread Queen brightened like a supernova.
An utterly lovestruck smile stretched entirely across her face.
She reached up, gently touching her own cheek, completely entirely pacified by the validation of her Sovereign.
However, the fallout was instantaneous.
Eluned finally recovered from her own romantic short-circuit.
Her green eyes locked onto Morwenna’s completely satisfied smile, and her mind violently snapped.
"You filthy opportunistic pirate!" Eluned shrieked at the top of her lungs, aggressively pointing an accusing finger at the Dread Queen. "How dare you actively extort physical affection from my man! I earned that kiss through architectural logistics! You simply begged for it like a stray mutt!"
Morwenna’s lovestruck smile vanished, instantly replaced by a terrifying sneer.
"I earned my loot through violence, you overgrown weed!" Morwenna roared back, stepping aggressively toward the Goddess. "And weren’t you the one that let the vines go in an attempt to kill me?!"
She didn’t hesitate.
With a sharp metallic ring, Morwenna violently drew the Astral Corsair from its scabbard, the Tier 3 cosmic blade glowing with intent.
Eluned completely matched her aggression.
The Goddess raised her hand, summoning the World Tree Branch that Silas had given her..
The two SSS-Rank entities raised their mythic weapons directly at each other.
The atmospheric pressure in the clearing violently plummeted with the air warping under the overwhelming weight of their clashing killing intents.
Silas aggressively pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling the massive migraine returning with a vengeance.
From her perch on Silas’s shoulder, Thora didn’t attempt to de-escalate the situation.
The Dwarven blacksmith enthusiastically added pure volatile gas to the fire.
"Hell yeah!" Thora cackled loudly, completely egging them on. "You guys want to get some wrestling on?! Oh, I’m on! The absolute loser has to completely surrender their bra to the forge!"
Morwenna and Eluned completely, simultaneously froze.
They slowly turned their heads with their glowing eyes locked entirely onto the half-naked Dwarf sitting comfortably on their Sovereign’s shoulders.
The concentrated killing intent of two angry mythic entities slammed directly into Thora.
"You know what?" Morwenna whispered mechanically. "I think the Dwarf should die first."
"I completely agree," Eluned nodded coldly. "A smite is in order."
They completely turned their mythic weapons entirely away from each other and pointed them directly, lethally at Thora’s chest.
Thora completely paled.
Her arrogant degenerate smile vanished instantly.
"Woah, woah, woah!" Thora yelped frantically, holding her hands up in terrified surrender. "It was just a joke! That was just a piece of Dwarven banter! Put the weapons away!"
Silas let out an exhausted groan. He aggressively pushed the flat of Morwenna’s sword down and stepped between them.
"Enough," Silas ordered with his deep voice rumbling with authority. "Put the weapons away... The mission is officially over."
Morwenna and Eluned both reluctantly lowered their gear, though they continued to aggressively glare at each other and the terrified Dwarf.
"We need to head back to the Blessed Land immediately," Silas stated, turning to face the dense ironwood forest. "Before Aeliana completely destroys the entire territory out of sheer panic."
Eluned scoffed politely, waving a dismissive hand.
"Aeliana?" Eluned smiled. "She can surely handle sitting in a fortified fortress for two hours my Lord... It wasn’t much work anyway, I have confidence in her."
"You never know," Silas intervened. "The Sovereign Realm is very unpredictable... A stray monster could have breached the perimeter."
He didn’t wait for further debate.
"Double-time sprint..." Silas ordered his army. "Let’s move."
The girls didn’t question the command.
They instantly fell into formation behind him, and all of the girls immediately started running at a high-speed sprint directly into the dark ash-choked direction of the Blessed Land.
The journey back was grueling.
They tore through the thick mud, bypassed massive, jagged ravines, and navigated the dense ironwood canopy with efficiency.
Silas ran at the front, his heavy Midnight Carapace armor easily absorbing the friction of the sprint.
His thoughts were rapidly calculating every single possible disaster scenario that could have occurred while he was away.
’Did the Valoria City scouts track our coordinates?’ Silas worried aggressively. ’Did a monster get through or something by climbing over the Steel-weave Pallisade...’
They finally breached the edge of the forest.
The towering, black, impenetrable steel-weave plates of the territory wall came completely into view.
Silas didn’t slow down.
He sprinted directly through the heavy iron gates as they magically opened for his authorized mana signature.
He slid violently into the front courtyard of the Blessed Land.
His heavy boots completely tore through the ground as he dropped heavily to one knee, exhausted by the paranoid sprint.
He knelt on the tiles with his wet dark hair falling forward and covering his golden-ringed eyes.
He braced himself, completely dreading the sight of a ruined base.
He slowly raised his head.
The courtyard was normal.
There were no burning buildings and there were no breached walls. The Warlord Barracks stood tall and completely untouched.
And standing directly on the pristine marble steps of the Keep, waiting for him, was Aeliana.
The Starlight Arcanist was dressed in her flawless clean enchanted spider-silk robes.
She stood with a completely serene beautiful smile resting on her delicate face.
She looked down at her Sovereign kneeling on the ground.
"My Lord," Aeliana asked softly, tilting her head with genuine curiosity. "What’s wrong? Why are you kneeling?"
Silas blinked.
He stared at the completely intact, highly fortified walls of his base as he let out a shuddering breath of pure relief.
"It’s okay..." Silas muttered, slowly pushing himself up to his feet. "The territory’s actually okay... Nothing burned down..."
Aeliana’s serene perfectly polite smile violently instantly twitched.
The pristine high-elven grace entirely vanished from her posture as her glowing luminous eyes instantly darkened.
A shadow completely fell over the upper half of her face.
She stared down at him.
"Why wouldn’t it be?" Aeliana muttered. "My Lord didn’t even have absolute trust in my logistical capabilities in the first place..."
Aeliana whispered to herself, her fingernails aggressively digging entirely into the wood of her clipboard.
"He thought I would fail him... He thought the pirate or the weed would have done a better job... I must aggressively double my efforts to prove my worth..."
She was rapidly spiraling into a massive meltdown.
Before Aeliana could fully vocalize her deep insecurities, the heavy iron gates behind Silas violently slammed open.
Morwenna marched completely into the courtyard.
The SSS-Rank Pirate Queen was absolutely covered head-to-toe in dark, corrosive monster blood and thick wet mud.
She completely shattered the tense atmosphere.
"CAPTAIN!" Morwenna yelled at the top of her lungs, throwing her free arm high into the rainy sky.
She didn’t care about Aeliana’s dark aura nor did she care about the rain.
"After a battle like that, I absolutely need a drink!" Morwenna demanded with a feral, wildly enthusiastic grin. "A good strong barrel of rum and an entire, massive mountain of roasted food!"
"Sure... let’s call Kaelia."
...
The evening shadows had completely fallen over the Blessed Land, casting long dark silhouettes across the muddy courtyard.
The heavy monsoon rain had finally tapered off into a light freezing drizzle, leaving the territory bathed in the silvery glow of the Umbral Basin’s moon.
Clara, the territory’s primary tailor and designated seamstress, was currently pressing her back completely flat against the cold stone wall of the Warlord Barracks.
She wasn’t on a military operation and she wasn’t carrying a weapon either but her heart was currently hammering against her ribs with the adrenaline of a high-stakes stealth mission.
Clara peeked around the jagged corner of the stone architecture with her eyes entirely locked onto the heavily reinforced iron doors of the Foundry exactly fifty yards away.
’The patrol route should be completely clear,’ Clara’s thoughts calculated. ’If I just stick to the blind spots—’
Crunch! Splash!
The heavy sound of iron-plated combat boots completely interrupted her assessment.
Clara violently sucked in her breath, pulling herself entirely back into the deep shadows of the stone wall.
She held her breath, freezing her functions as a scout rounded the corner.
It was Maren.
The heavy-infantry shieldmaiden was currently walking her designated evening perimeter shift with a heavy iron spear resting casually over her shoulder.
Maren didn’t look highly alert.
She didn’t look like a disciplined soldier actively scanning for anything.
The shieldmaiden was entirely distracted, staring longingly up toward the illuminated windows of the main Keep.
"If I finish this perimeter check early..." Maren muttered to herself with her voice completely echoing in the quiet courtyard.
She let out an incredibly down-bad sigh. "I can definitely get a chance to look at my Lord when he comes out to inspect the walls..."
Maren aggressively gripped the shaft of her spear, motivated by the overwhelming degeneracy of her own crush.
With that unprofessional thought, the shieldmaiden broke into a sudden, eager jog, completely sprinting off toward the other side of the base to finish her shift.
Clara let out a shuddering breath of pure relief.
’Everyone in this territory is completely, hopelessly obsessed with him... including me...’ Clara thought, shaking her head. ’But none of them have my connections.’
She didn’t waste another microsecond.
Clara violently broke from the shadows, sprinting entirely across the courtyard on her tiptoes.
She reached the heavy iron doors of the Foundry and stopped.
She didn’t push the door open.
She raised her knuckles and delivered a specific predetermined sequence.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
Three distinct taps against the heavy metal.
For a single second, there was only the ambient crackling of the furnaces burning inside.
And then, a loud confident Dwarven voice echoed entirely through the thick iron.
"Come in."
Clara grabbed the heavy iron handle, pulling the heavy door open and quickly slipping inside before slamming it shut behind her.
The interior of the Foundry was hot.
The heat radiating from the mythril smelting furnaces instantly completely evaporated the freezing drizzle clinging to Clara’s clothes.
The air was thick with the scent of melted star-iron but there was no ringing of a forging hammer.
The anvil was empty.
Clara turned her head toward the back corner of the workshop.
Sitting in a massive, heavy iron chair dragged out from the corner was Thora.
The Dwarven blacksmith was sitting completely still in the dim flickering orange light of the furnaces.
She wasn’t wearing her leather apron.
Thora was leaning forward with her elbows resting heavily on her knees.
Her thick muscled hands were tented together, completely covering the lower half of her face in a flawless dramatic anime villain pose.
The lenses of her welding goggles sat on her forehead, casting an ominous shadow over her eyes.
"Did you agree to my terms, Tailor?" Thora asked seriously.
Clara swallowed hard. The tension in the room was suffocating.
"Yes," Clara confirmed nervously, stepping further into the blistering heat of the forge.
She aggressively twisted the hem of her tunic in her hands. "I agreed. But... do you actually have it?"
Thora didn’t answer verbally.
The half-naked Dwarf slowly unclasped her hands.
She reached entirely under the heavy iron chair and pulled out a long, heavy, cloth-wrapped bundle.
She casually, violently slammed it directly onto the wooden workbench separating them.
Thora pulled the thick canvas fabric away and Clara’s eyes went completely wide.
Resting flawlessly on the table was a massive sculpted silicone dildo.
"I utilized the completely flawless biometric data I obtained while fixing his armor and from the other girls," Thora bragged loudly, dropping the anime villain persona and completely puffing out her chest.
She pointed proudly at the highly degenerate creation.
"That is exactly crafted to possess the precise size and girth that the Lord has," Thora declared with pride. "I used a variant of heated bio-resin so it actively retains warmth... It is also indestructible and it is completely yours."
Clara physically trembled. A hot intense blush violently conquered her entire face.