Chapter 550 - The Cadrian Council II

  Beatrice continued to chat with the group for the better part of three hours. They discussed many of the events that had happened in Claire’s youth. The stories, told in part by the maid, and in part by Claire herself, entertained them through two rounds of tea and a full plate of scones, with Lana consuming most of them despite claiming that she was full.

  Only as there was a knock on the door did storytime come to an end. Another one of the maids, a cottontail-elf halfbreed dressed like a butler, entered the room with an oversized clipboard held between her paws. She was accompanied by a younger centaurian butler clearly too muscular for his suit, a satyr dressed like a chef, and an old lamian maid with glimmering black scales.

  “Good morning, everyone. I’m sorry to interrupt your tea party, but the king has called for a discussion regarding the war and its outcome. We plan to start in exactly one hour and seven minutes. Lunch will be served at the venue,” said the half-cottontail. “We would like to get a headcount so that we can size the meal appropriately. Could you please confirm the number of attendees?”

  “I am of the understanding that all of us shall be attending,” said Arciel, before looking around the room. “Have any of you any objections or additions?”

  “My sister wants to come,” said Lana.

  “Would it be alright if I joined the crowd?” asked Beatrice.

  “Of course,” said the other maid. She turned to Claire and briefly looked at Boris, who was napping on the pillow floating beside her. “Will your weapon require a special diet?”

  The snoose shook her head. “You can serve him the standard amount of the standard fare. Just expect him to eat the cutlery as well. You should be more worried about the fox. She’s likely to eat enough for ten.”

  “We will take that into account, thank you.” The maid scribbled a few more things into her notepad before handing the page to the cook. “Cicero, could you please deliver this to the kitchen?”

  “Right away.” Bowing, the satyr gently accepted the slip between his fingers and marched away.

  “Would you like to be escorted to the site immediately, or would you prefer to wait? We should be on time so long as you depart within the next half hour.”

  “I would prefer if we left immediately,” said Arciel.

  “Excellent. Right after me then. I’ll lead the way.”

  Smiling, she escorted the party through the castle’s halls. The path they took was convoluted as ever. They went down a staircase hidden beneath a seat in a large atrium, asked a tree to unblock a hallway, and swam through a hundred-metre pipe before finally arriving in the castle’s southern wing.

  Serving as the military’s headquarters, the southernmost section was also one of the busiest. Half the people marching through the halls were dressed in soldiers’ uniforms and decorated in medals and another third were in either training gear or full armour. The better equipped group was in the middle of moving between training halls. Every single one of the southernmost courtyards was custom built to test a very specific subset of skills and endure an equally specific subset of damages. The archery range, for example, had its walls made of high-level golems. Every single one of the level seven hundred creatures had 4 different monk classes specialized in projectile deflection. They were reinforced by a single magically-attuned golem tasked with protecting the rest from spell-laced arrows.

  Of course, not all of the training grounds were quite so focused on a single activity. If anything, the more generic ones were more common. They simply had terraformers built in and preloaded with popular maps so that the soldiers could train and spar.

  The room they eventually entered was a large, wide-open hall almost reminiscent of a miniature colosseum. There were six rows of seats positioned along the edges of an ovular atrium, roughly a third of which were already filled with spectators. The centerpiece itself consisted of a trio of longer tables arranged in a triangular shape. The two on the left and right featured exactly seven seats each, while the one in the middle had five.

  All of the furniture was made of stone, specifically a dark, veiny marble polished enough to reflect the sun, which somehow brightly lit the room despite a lack of windows.

  “Winners on the left, losers on the right, special guests in the middle,” said Claire.

  “What about me?” asked Jules.

  Claire paused. “Ephesus is dead, so you might as well go to the winner’s table.”

  “Doesn’t feel like I deserve it, but sure.”

  Two of the non-spectators seats were already populated. There was a young, cottontail boy sitting smack in the middle of the special guest area with his feet up on the table, one hand toying with a pen, and the other cushioning his head. He didn’t seem to notice the delegation even as it entered; his attention was focused on the rock floating in front of him.

  It was not suspended with vector magic, but the tiny glowing pack hooked onto its back. He wore a circlet, a pair of bracelets, and an anklet lined with a similar material. Magic was visibly pulsing through the lines, moving in time with the text that appeared atop his floating rock. The only other person present was at the winner’s table. Leutgar Silverthron, the elf that had bested Chloe, had his head on his arms, sound asleep at the desk.

  “Good morning, Canterbell.” Claire walked over to the end of the loser’s table and took the seat closest to the neutral space. The chair warped as she approached it, conforming to her lyrkrian body shape and also raising her so that the desk was at chest level. “I see you are as busy as ever.”

  “Yeah, thanks to you.” He gave his pen a few spins before scribbling a diagram onto his slate. “I’m starting to figure your magic school out. Gravity Resistance seems to work at about 10% efficacy, kind of like how fire resistance sort of works against red magic,” he said. “Oh, and do me a favour and don’t explain. I want to figure it out myself.” His voice was deep for someone who looked as young as he did. He didn’t quite sound ancient, but neither did he sound a day younger than 40.

  Claire nodded.

  “I do want to run one more diagnostic though.” The rabbit reached into his overalls and fished out a rock. “Break that for me, will you?”

  “Shouldn’t you be fussing over the barriers instead?” asked Claire.

  “I already looped in an extra subroutine to account for everything that happened the other night, and the arena’s shielding was a simple fix. The only reason she,” he pointed at Arciel, “was able to break it was because the spell was bugged. Spells with latent but non-explicit divinity were skipping three of the more important defensive layers, and frankly, the shield as a whole was flimsy. I’ve specifically improved its resistance to penetration on top of quintupling its strength. It should be enough to keep even Allegra’s strongest spells contained,” he said with a grumble. “Before you start, I’m not even going to try to do anything about you and your daddy. I doubt anyone can, with what you showed off this morning.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “I can’t do that all the time,” she said. “The system weakens me a lot.”

  “Yeah, but I bet you could still blow up the planet if you really wanted.”

  Claire smiled, but said nothing.

  “Wait, so you’re the guy making all the artifacts?” asked Sylvia.

  “Not exactly,” said the cottontail. “I’m designing them and building the prototypes. Most of the grunt work is outsourced. I’m more interested in figuring out the theory than working through implementation.”

  “Doesn’t that just mean you’re super lazy?” asked Sylvia.

  “Call it smart,” he said, with a snort. “Don’t see why I’d waste my time on the boring stuff when there’s an infinite number of problems to solve.”

  “Ignore him. He’s stubborn and annoying,” said Claire.

  “That almost sounds kind of familiar,” muttered Sylvia, before being subjected to a cheek pinch.

  “I’m almost starting to regret sitting on this side,” muttered Jules. “Feels weird when all you fuckers are over there.”

  “Wow, way to rub it in,” said Sylvia, with a giggle. “It’s not Claire’s fault she got totally destroyed!”

  “I didn’t get totally destroyed. The only one who got totally destroyed is him.”

  Claire pointed an ear at the man in the doorway. Berius, the lazy thoraen spearfighter representing the Vestudian sect, walked right over to the table with more Vel’khanese participants and plopped himself down in his chair. His size led the seat to sink into the ground, just so he was level with everyone else.

  “...Good morning.” Though a little hesitant at first, he eventually spoke in a soft, mouse-like squeak. It was a complete 180 from the confident demeanour he’d worn just a few days prior.

  “Wow uhm, are you okay?” asked Sylvia.

  “Destroyed,” repeated Claire.

  “Oh, come on, Claire! That’s just mean!” whispered Sylvia. “Look how sad he is!”

  “I’m not sad,” said Berius, with a grumble. “Just disappointed in myself for being such an idiot.”

  “I admit, it was rather boorish of me to end the battle as quickly as I did, especially following an express agreement of non-aggression,” said Arciel. “I apologize. It followed a rather rough night.”

  “Nah, you’re fine,” he said, with a shake of the head. “You know, I normally don’t introduce myself. I’m probably the only one in the sect that doesn’t. Probably should’ve put in the reps, since I was dumb enough to let down my guard the one time I did.”

  “She would’ve killed you quickly anyway,” said Claire. “She didn’t have the mana to waste on putting on a show.”

  “What even happened the night before?” he asked. “You never said anything.”

  “Perhaps that is best explained some other time,” said Arciel.

  Another group of guests entered the room. Led by Virillius, it was a gaggle of high-ranking military officers, including the spymaster and all the army’s generals. Most of them were noblemen. The link was not coincidental, but neither was it because only noblemen were allowed to become officers. If anything, it was the opposite. The top brass—the best fighters in Cadria—were asked to join the nobility.

  Some had refused because they’d wanted neither the title nor any of the accompanying obligations, but common sense dictated that one ought to accept. Being knighted gave assurances to both the knight and the crown that they served. The freshly minted nobleman would often be presented with some territory alongside a yearly grant that would last until their domain began to generate revenue. In other words, it was assured success for the person in question.

  The crown, on the other hand, found solace in a ritualistic, god-backed oath of loyalty that allowed royals to bind those that served them. That was not to say that nobles could not rebel. After all, Cadrian society was based around the idea that anyone could challenge for the throne at any moment and for any reason. Even if a monarch was to win a duel by leveraging Flitzegarde’s restrictions, they would certainly lose the respect of all and find themselves flooded by challenges aplenty. The real purpose of the binding was to ensure that the nobility was free from conflicts of interest—that everyone placed the country first and foremost, and that they could be readily captured and punished if any schemes counter to Cadria’s interests ever came to light—not that there were too many fools who’d attempted anything of the sort in the past few centuries.

  “Good morning everyone.” Virillius glanced at the clock, which revealed that there were still a few minutes to noon, as he took a seat. Durham joined him at the winner’s table while his remaining tagalongs flooded the stands. “I trust that Claire has already explained the process?” he asked, turning to Arciel.

  “Unfortunately not. She declined when I requested her to.”

  Virillius blinked and looked at his daughter.

  “I got stronger, not more responsible.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” he muttered. “I do apologize. I’m still not quite sure where I went wrong in raising her.”

  “Just about everywhere,” said Claire.

  Virillius shook his head. “Of all the things you inherited from your mother. It had to be her tongue.”

  “I’ve got her face too,” said Claire. “I’m really just missing her chest, her hips, and her colour.”

  “You know that’s not what I meant.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” laughed Claire.

  Heaving a sigh, Virillius scanned the Vel’khanese delegation again. “In that case, I will take this opportunity to explain the process. Not to worry, it’s nothing too complicated. We will simply be hosting a discussion, and each victor will be allowed to voice their opinion on the matter. Two of the five seats on the end table are reserved for the medical professionals attending this event. They will not be stating their opinions, only remaining on standby in case of emergency. The remaining three belong to outside advisors that will also be allowed to weigh in with their opinions. This time around, I’ve taken the liberty of selecting Canterbell, King Ragnar, and the crown princess, as they are least likely to be biased in favour of either country.”

  “If I may,” one of the men in the observers’ section raised a hand. “Why is the princess considered an unbiased party? Did she not side with the Vel’khanese? She is also clearly seated among the defeated. How will she be able to assume both positions simultaneously?”

  “How about you look out the door and figure it out yourself, General Marius?” said Claire, with a smirk.

  Following the instruction, the man found Cadria’s crown princess in a formal gown. She was a petite little thing that stood at roughly 130 centimetres. She had silvery blue hair, arctic blue scales, and a face that looked almost just like a younger Claire’s. She took her steps with grace, allowing her pure white dress and her divinely oversized ears to flutter in the space behind her. It was, undeniably, a royal’s gait—a series of steps that captured all of the gravitas that came with her position.

  “I understand that you can be in mult—”

  “That was a lie.”

  “There’s two of you then?”

  “Not exactly,” said Claire. “Just wait. You’ll see when everyone else gets here.”

  The general seemed hesitant, but eventually nodded and returned to his seat. “I understand.”

  “Good.” Smiling, Claire magically pulled out the non-participant chair closest to hers so that Rubia could be seated.

  And then, she looked into the crowd.

  Everyone was confused.

  But of course they were—so was she.

  Claire had never coordinated with her father. She’d simply planned to make the announcement and demand for Rubia to be treated with respect. But looking at Virillius, and seeing the faint smile on his lips, drove her to twist her lips into a frown.

  He’d figured out her plan and beaten her to the punch.

  Had the amusement in his eyes not irked her, she almost would have been impressed.