Chapter 681: Rika’s New Resolve [Bonus - ]
As they ascended the wide sunlit marble staircase toward the residential quarters, Eluned’s icy demeanor vanished instantly.
She closed the distance, wrapping her slender arms around Silas’s bicep, pressing her soft bust firmly against his side as a wicked playful purr rumbled in her throat.
"Oh, my darling..." Eluned whispered, her breath warm against his ear, her voice dripping with shameless perverted delight. "A private matter, you say? Just the two of us behind locked doors before your long journey? Don’t tell me... you simply couldn’t bear to depart for Central City without thoroughly dicking your lawful wife down first...? You want to leave your seed within me so I won’t be lonely, don’t you~?"
Silas sighed, rolling his eyes as he gently nudged her forehead with his knuckles.
"Get your mind out of the gutter, Elu... That’s not what this is about."
Eluned paused, blinking up at him in surprise.
"It isn’t?"
"No," Silas said, his expression sobering as they reached the quiet corridor of the third floor. "I need your help with Rika."
The playful mockery drained from Eluned’s face, replaced instantly by solemn quiet understanding.
"Ah..." Eluned murmured, her gaze dropping toward the closed oak door at the far end of the hallway. "Rika..."
"She hasn’t left her quarters in days, has she?" Silas asked softly, stopping outside the threshold.
"No," Eluned sighed, shaking her head with genuine sorrow. "She takes her meals when Kadi leave them, but she speaks to no one... She sits in the dark for hours. I can feel the resonance of her soul through the air roots, Silas. She... she views herself as less than nothing, a broken relic that brings no honor to your Keep."
Silas looked down at his own hand, his jaw tightening with resolve.
"That’s exactly what we’re going to fix," Silas said firmly. "I have something for her... Something that will change everything..."
Inside the quiet room, the heavy velvet drapes were pulled tight, allowing only a sliver of golden afternoon light to cut across the dark cedar floorboards.
Sitting curled up on a low cushions in the corner was Rika.
The Goddess of Beasts, High Warden of the Primeval Brood, looked devastatingly small.
Her wild midnight-black hair hung in tangled neglected waves over her pale fragile shoulders.
Her vivid emerald eyes, which had once commanded the terrifying legions of the fanged courts, were dull and fixed blankly on an untouched porcelain plate resting on the low table before her.
A thick savory steak of roast dire-boar sat cold on the dish with its juices looking congealed as it had been ignored.
’I’m just freeloading...’
The bitter suffocating thought turned in Rika’s chest like a rusty dagger.
Every single bite of food she took in this magnificent Keep felt like stolen bread.
Every breath of pristine air from the territory felt like an unearned luxury.
’Lord Silas is far too kind...’ she thought, her small porcelain-pale hands gripping the fabric of her skirt until her knuckles turned bone-white. ’He is too noble, too generous for a useless pathetic wretch like me...’
She remembered the grand sweeping promises she had made when he had first arrived to save her, how she had spoken of forging invincible divine mounts, of weaving beast contracts that would allow his armies to tear down the gates of empires.
She had stood tall, claiming the authority of the fanged courts, promising him the dominance of the wild blood.
And what had she delivered?
...Nothing... Absolutely nothing...
Her vitality was drained to the dregs, a single clumsy kick from a common soldier would bruise her ribs and leave her bedridden for days.
Her core had a massive ceiling, but without an active bonded beast to anchor her pathways, every single one of her divine authorities, her Fang Authority, her Beast Contract Weaving, and everything else, was completely sealed.
She was an empty vessel, a weapon without an edge.
’So useless,’ she tortured herself with tears welling hot and silent at the corners of her green eyes. ’He summons soldiers, heroes, builders, craftspeople... people who can bleed for him, fight for him, build his dominion with their own hands but he never summons for me... He never calls my name... Because he knows...’
Her throat tightened with raw agonizing shame.
’What can I even offer him?’
Did he want her body? Was that what she had been reduced to? If she stripped her robes and offered herself to his bed, would that be enough to pay for her keep?
’What makes me any different from a common prostitute then...?’ she cried internally, burying her face into her knees with her frame shaking in quiet suppressed sobs.
’Stop it,’ she scolded herself, scrubbing her cheek with the heel of her hand. ’Lord Silas has never once looked at me like that. He tucked a blanket around me and fed me stew with his own hands. He’s kind... he’s just kinder than I deserve.’
And the terror ran deeper still.
Even if a beast were brought before her, the cold paralyzing dread in her marrow screamed at her to run.
What if she failed the bond? What if the beast rejected her broken soul? What if the same catastrophic severance that had shattered her divine court in the ancient era happened all over again?
’Would I just be weak forever...? A laughingstock who drags his name into the mud...?’
CREAK!
The heavy oak door swung open with a soft gentle click and Rika flinched violently.
She scrambled off the cushion, her knees hitting the hard wood as she dropped flat onto the floor, pressing her forehead against the cedar planks in desperate trembling submission.
"L-Lord Silas!" she cried, her voice cracking with hysterical terror, hot tears spilling freely across her pale cheeks onto the wood. "P-Please! Please don’t cast me out! I know... I know I am useless! I know I eat your food and provide nothing in return! I will scrub the stables! I will wash the armor in the courtyards! I will serve the lowest scullery maids! J-Just please... don’t discard me into the rifts... I have nowhere else to go...!"
"Rika, Stop..."
The voice wasn’t cold or harsh.
Before she could beg again, a pair of warm strong hands slipped beneath her arms, gently but firmly lifting her off the cold wood.
Silas knelt down directly on the floor in front of her, ignoring the dust with his gold-ringed blue eyes level with hers.
Behind him, Eluned stepped into the room, softly closing the door, her emerald eyes watching the broken beast goddess with infinite maternal sorrow.
Silas reached up with his thumb, gently wiping the tears from beneath Rika’s emerald eyes.
"Take a breath," Silas said softly, his voice carrying a comforting warmth that cut straight through her panic. "Look at me... Nobody is casting you out. Nobody is making you scrub stables... You are a Hero of Blessed Land, Rika. My Hero and I don’t abandon my people."
’His hands are so warm...’ Rika thought, hardly daring to breathe. ’He said I’m his Hero. He said it like it was simple, like it was true.’
Rika trembled, her small chest hitching as she looked into his steady, unblinking blue eyes.
"B-But... my Lord... I have no beasts. Without a bond, my authorities are dead. I am just... dead weight..."
"Then we get you a beast," Silas said simply.
Rika blinked through her tears, sniffing pathetically.
"W-What kind...? The wild drakes in the basin... my soul cannot bond with such low-tier vermin, It would fracture my meridians..."
Silas smiled... it was a slow confident grin.
"Have you ever heard of a Phoenix before?"
Rika froze as the air in the room seemed to vanish.
’A... Phoenix...?’ Rika’s thoughts stalled out, her dazed mind struggling to process the word. ’The Primordial Phoenix? The legendary apex avian of the higher celestial seas? The supreme guardian of ancient civilizations, whose very feathers cycle physical annihilation into immortal rebirth...?’
She let out a faint disbelieving whimper.
"My Lord... those are mythic legends from the Old Era. Their line was extinguished in the celestial wars. Where... where in all the infinite realms could you ever find a—"
FWIP!
Silas reached into his primary spatial inventory.
With a soft metallic thud, a massive object materialized between them, resting upon a folded cloth of velvet.
Rika’s breath stopped... It was an egg.
Standing fourteen inches tall, the size of a massive ostrich egg, it was fashioned entirely of solid unrefined gold.
Rough, overlapping scale-like ridges covered its surface, cold and lifeless to the touch.
It carried no glowing runes and emitted no humming mana, looking for all the world like an ancient piece of unrefined slag, the very "auric slag" the World Council’s foolish alchemists had failed to crack for three decades.
"This is a Phoenix’s Egg," Silas said, resting his hand gently against the golden shell. "The embryonic soul fell into suspended pseudo-death from prolonged starvation of natural power... It cannot hatch in cold lightless places, and it cannot process common elemental fire. It requires a domain saturated with pure concentrated Nature Mana and high-tier vegetative life-force to reignite its embryonic rebirth flame."
He looked straight into Rika’s trembling green eyes, his voice ringing with certainty.
"This is going to be your first contracted beast, Rika and this afternoon, you’re coming with me to Central City... We are going to scour the high markets, the beast sanctuaries, and the exchanges. I am going to ensure that every single beast you bind to your soul from this day forward is state-of-the-art and worthy of the Goddess of Beasts."
A fresh torrential wave of tears broke from Rika’s eyes, but this time, they weren’t tears of terror.
Her hands flew to her mouth with her shoulders shaking violently as a sob of pure overwhelming gratitude tore from her chest.
’He didn’t forget me...’ her soul wept, every broken, neglected corner of her heart flooding with incandescent warmth. ’He didn’t think I was useless... he was waiting. He was searching for something worthy of me...’
Silas picked up the heavy golden egg and turned, offering it to Eluned.
"Elu. Do it."
Eluned stepped forward, her divine emerald eyes glowing with radiant majesty.
She knelt beside them, placing both of her delicate pale palms against the golden ridges of the egg.
Rika watched Eluned’s hands on the shell, her nails digging into her palms.
’What if it hatches, takes one look at me, and just... turns away?’ she thought. ’What if my soul is too cracked for even a newborn to trust?’
Silas’s hand settled on her shoulder feeling warm and steady. He said nothing, and he didn’t need to.
’...No. Lord Silas believes in this and I believe in him.’
VUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM!
The world answered her call.
Beneath the floorboards of the Keep, lines of emerald mana thrummed with a deep heartbeat and a crystalline torrent of emerald-green Nature Mana surged through Eluned’s arms, pouring directly into the inert golden shell.
Seconds became a minute, then two, then five...
Sweat beaded on Eluned’s brow and her silver-emerald hair lifted around her in the rising green glow, but her hands never wavered.
"Come on, little one," she whispered to the shell. "Wake up... She needs you!"
The cold metal began to warm.
The dull lifeless gold suddenly ignited with brilliant inner luminescence.
CRACK!
A hair-thin fissure appeared along the central ridge.
From within the fracture, a blinding razor-sharp ray of pure golden flame shot outward, illuminating the shadowed room in a sea of warm celestial light.
CRACK-CRACK-SHATTER!
The shell fractured like a blooming lotus.
The ancient golden shards dissolved into pure molten light, and from the heart of the radiance, a magnificent creature emerged.
It was small... scarcely larger than a falcon, but its presence was colossal.
Its feathers were woven from pure, liquid solar fire, shifting between incandescent gold and deep, radiant ruby.
Its eyes were two gleaming specks of starlight, and its long elegant tail feathers trailed ribbons of living embers that drifted through the air without burning the cedar floor.
The newborn Phoenix tilted its head, letting out a crystalline bell-like trill that washed over the room like a divine blessing.
"Creeeee~"
It didn’t look at Silas and it didn’t look at Eluned either.
...Its starlit eyes locked squarely onto Rika.
’Ah...’
Rika gasped, her chest seizing.
Deep within her dormant soul-seat, an instinctual authority broke free from its chains.
’My authority...’
Three shimmering translucent chains woven from emerald light and wild primeval blood burst from Rika’s chest...
They didn’t strike with violent force, they drifted through the air like ribbons of silk, wrapping softly and tenderly around the Phoenix’s wings and chest.
BZZZZZZZZT!
The moment the bond locked into place, the embryonic phoenix let out a joyful soaring cry.
It unfolded its blazing wings and glided forward, dissolving into a stream of pure golden celestial energy that poured directly into Rika’s open heart!
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
A cataclysmic eruption of golden divine mana detonated from Rika’s frame.
The stagnant drained weakness in her marrow was violently swept away, replaced by the roaring infinite vitality of a Primordial Beast.
Her pale skin flushed with radiant divine color as her tangled black hair lifted, floating in the mana storm like silk threads, and her emerald eyes ignited with the majesty of the Primeval Brood.
She fell forward, burying her face into Silas’s knees while clutching the fabric of his trousers with trembling reverent hands.
"Thank you..." she wept, her voice trembling with a devotion that transcended life and death. "Thank you... thank you so much, my Master... my Lord... my everything..."
The golden light surged, swallowing her vision and the room around her.