The executive office on the sixty-eighth floor of the Roy Conglomerate Headquarters was enclosed by high-grade sound-dampening fields and had bulletproof spirit-crystal glass. Outside, the rain fell in a constant rhythm on the large windows, which looked out over the extensive expanse of Lock Night City with its glowing transit tubes and flickering neon billboards.
I was sitting behind a large desk made from polished abyssal ironwood and slowly went through the holographic ledger files by making a single swipe of my finger.
Standing opposite me was Elder Thorne, having arrived ten minutes before, together with three of our main financial analysts; their eyes were completely focused on the polished tiles under their leather shoes, because they were afraid to make eye contact with mine.
To them I was not just the teenage heir of the late-war heroes. I was the silent top predator in the city's credit markets—the boy whose handwriting determined whether or not half of the mid-ranking martial clans could afford spirit ore for their workshops or food for their disciples.
Thorne started off by saying, "Master Ryuk," his throat feeling as dry as usual as he raised between us a shimmering azure balance sheet. "The Vance family have officially submitted their formal complaint to the Imperial Board of Trustees. Just forty minutes ago Grandmaster Vance affixed his military seal to the petition and has invoked the Martial Preparedness Clause, on the grounds that the cancellation of Grade-2 Blood Condensation Grass puts imperial border security at risk."
I didn't look up from the tablet that was in my hands. "As for the board's reaction?"
According to Thorne, who said this with caution, two of the old noble families—the House of Castille and the Ironfang Clan—had at first shown sympathy towards the Vance petition, since they occupy the fourth and fifth positions on the board and had suggested that it would be inappropriate for the Roy estate's legacy to take away a border hero's family from their training facilities before an academy survival trial.
A weak and cold laugh escaped my lips.
I told them that the House of Castille has a debt of two point four million star coins to the Central Bank relating to its southern copper mines, that the notes come due in twelve days, and that the Ironfang Clan has recently put forty percent of their spirit beast armory up as collateral in order to secure funding for their third elder's breakthrough pills.
I raised my eyes slowly and fixed them on Thorne.
The elderly administrator shivered and, without intending to, pulled his collar more tightly as it appeared that the temperature in the room had dropped by three degrees.
I quietly ordered that personal reports be sent to Lord Castille and Patriarch Ironfang, telling them that should they cast even a single vote in support of Grandmaster Vance's petition, the Central Bank would call in both loans right before the trading bell rings tomorrow morning, and that we would seize the copper mines, liquidate the armory, and auction off their family ancestral wards to foreign syndicates.
Thorne hard, a drop of cold sweat running down his wrinkled temple. "All right, Master; that will completely break up Vance's coalition. He'll have not a single ally on the council."
I whispered to Thorne, "The barking of a dog at the gate is dealt with by using a stick, and a rabid wolf in the courtyard is handled by starving its pack. The message must be delivered by midnight," as I leaned back into the leather executive chair.
"It shall be done at once," Thorne bowed so that his nose was almost in contact with the grain of the mahogany and then quickly pushed the trembling analysts out of the office.
The heavy double doors closed with a quiet magnetic hiss.
With the office all to myself, I closed my eyes and let my consciousness drop down, once again entering the microscopic labyrinth of my own body.
Plaintext
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SWARM STATUS PANEL
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[User]: Amar Roy
[Physical Realm]: Martial Adept (Stage 1)
[Main Form]: Human
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[CLONE SWARM MATRIX]:
- Active Bacteriophage Clones: 171,840,000 / 1,000,000,000
- Colony Tier: Primary Swarm (Tier 1 - High Density)
- Integrated Pathogens:
* Terrestrial Streptococcus (Baseline)
* Necrotic Blood Rot (Stage 3 Rift Strain)
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[BIOLOGICAL ADAPTATION]:
- Cellular Mesh Density: Stabilized at Stage 4 Adept Level
- Passive Kinetic Absorption: 50%
- Toxic/Corrosive Immunity: 100% (Class-3 Rift Level)
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[TARGET TELEMETRY: ARTHUR VANCE]:
- Active Parasitic Clones: 84,000 Units
- Infestation Site: Left Pulmonary Artery & Primary Bronchi
- Status: Latent Micro-Spore Web (Synchronized with Host Qi)
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Eighty-four thousand clones.
In Arthur's chest my small army of viruses was thriving; after the family council the boy had gone back to his private training pavilion and had been desperately carrying out his fiery Blazing Sun Art in an attempt to stabilise his foundation without using the medicinal grass.
Each time his crimson qi surged, it caused a certain amount of local micro-friction in his pulmonary capillaries, and to Arthur it simply seemed to be the ordinary kind of burning discomfort associated with intensive cultivation.
For my microscopic clones, that local heat acted as an incubator.
They softly secured their tail fibers in the microscopic crevices of his respiratory tract and took small amounts of his fire-elemental qi to enable their quiet division. He was actually paying the energy bill for the infection he had.
I thought to myself, young master Vance, keep going with your sword, a slow and predatory smile spreading across my face. When we reach the Black Crag, my seeds will have made a net so tight around your lungs that trying to cast a single fireball will cause your chest to collapse into ash.
My desk communicator suddenly flashed a high-priority symbol in azure.
That was the special line leading to Golden Star Academy's private cultivation vault.
I tapped the rune, whereupon a holographic feed came to life and the scene inside Chamber 301 showed Lina still sitting on the white jade dais.
She never went to sleep.
She was instead sitting in a full lotus position with her pink hair floating freely in the air while thin streams of pure, dazzling celestial gold spun violently around her thin shoulders.
At the base of the platform two crates of Blood Condensation Grass were open, the stalks drying out at a clearly noticeable rate as her awakened dragon veins greedily sucked the medicinal essence dry.
Beneath her collar the ancient dragon core pendant was shining with a strong and bright sapphire and gold brilliance.
Within the projection, her sea of consciousness seemed to ripple, carrying the faint, distorted spiritual echo of the Sovereign Dragon Empress lecturing her in a harsh, demanding rhythm:
Concentrate on your dantian! Pack the celestial vapor into the bone marrow! The boy who supplied you with these herbs moves in a shadow deeper than the Nine Hells, you know! Unless you enter the Stage 2 Adept realm before the spatial rift opens, you'll be no more than a delicate petal trampled beneath the massive force of his passage!
I saw Lina clench her teeth through the screen, her forehead drawing together with total and unbreakable stubbornness.
In the empty chamber Lina whispered aloud that she wouldn't be crushed; her voice sounded strained and shaken by physical pain, yet it was harder than celestial steel. He had wept for her when no one else in this empire had cared whether she lived or died, and she didn't mind what sort of void he had. She would stand by his side.
CRACK.
A sharp, draconic resonance issued from her spine when her newly formed dragon tendons locked into her skeleton and the air within Chamber 301 shimmered with the faint, phantom image of an ancient golden dragon soaring through thunderclouds.
Her cultivation advanced once again as she steadily moved from Stage 1 Martial Adept towards Stage 2.
From my high-rise office, miles away, as I looked at the hologram of the girl forcing herself to the very limit for my benefit, the cold, emotionless mask that I had worn in the outside world broke apart.
The pain in my chest was so intense, so pleasant, and yet so painful that for a moment my two states of consciousness became indistinct.
Lina...
When she was back on Earth in that dark warehouse in Manhattan, she stood in front of Stalin's armed henchmen, her knees shaking as she cried that she would die with me before ever leaving my side; on that wet street in New York she had attempted to push me away from the speeding truck using her bare hands.
And in this harsh world of martial gods and alien beasts she was breaking her own bones on a jade platform merely so that she wouldn't fall behind.
"You needn't carry the sky, you silly girl," I whispered gently to the empty room, my voice rough and my fingers lightly resting on the flickering edge of the holographic screen, "for as I have already said, so long as I am alive you will never have to fear the dark again."
I cut the communication feed and the azure light faded, leaving the executive office surrounded by the deep, stormy shadows of night.
I got up, went to the large glass window, and looked down on the extensive city.
I will be back at Apex Biomolecular within forty-eight hours to collect the Abyssal Chitin Parasite and advance my swarm to five hundred million clones.
The spatial gates of the Black Crag Trial Realm will open for three hundred elite academy students after twelve days.
Within that unwatched wilderness of blood, beasts, and rifts... the Vance family, Vice Principal Rosette, and all the factions who had believed themselves to be able to treat us as prey would at last learn their lesson, they will learn what happens when you try to scheme against me and Lina.