Radagon looked deeply into the weathered features of the paladin standing proudly before the mahogany table, his amber eyes narrowing. "Articulate your inquiry freely, Sir Knight."
Knight Moongrum shifted his posture, his hand un-clasping from his side to extend an open palm toward the silently coiled, massive fra of Radahn. "Prince Radahn drew his baseline breath within the walls of Caria Manor. However, the Full Moon has been heavily compromised by her illness for many winters, aning the absolute responsibility of instructing the Prince's vanguard fell entirely upon our office."
He paused, a low, gravelly chuckle escaping his chest as his eyes locked onto the throne, violently shattering the court's silent taboo by naming his forr partner before the entire gallery. "Since receiving that executive command, my office, alongside the master mages and scholars of the Liurnia spires, has not dared to relax our operational matrices for a solitary watch, paranoid that our limited finesse and shallow virtues might mis-align the Prince's progression. Unconsciously, over ten winters have bled off the calendar."
He tilted his skull, his smile razor-thin and razor-sharp. "Your Majesty... does your own engine register satisfaction when auditing Prince Radahn as he stands before your throne today?"
Hearing the historical record of his mother's house laid bare, Radahn straightened his massive chest, his dark eyes burning with an intense, brilliant glare as he tracked his father's lips, clearly anticipating an un-varnished evaluation.
At the ntion of his forr wife, a heavy, suffocating shadow involuntarily flickered across Radagon's divine mask. However, mapping the clear, compelling desperation burning within his first-born son's gaze, he ultimately liquidated Moongrum's diplomatic offense. He delivered a slow, sincere nod. "My office registers an absolute satisfaction."
A soft, heavy sigh escaped the Elden Lord's chest, his voice lowering. "Remaining insulated from his developnt across these winters comprises a profound, permanent failure of my duty as a father. That Radahn has conford his fra into such an outstanding champion today is an asset class built entirely upon the rits of Sir Moongrum and the loyalty of the Carian aristocracy."
The words struck the boy like a kinetic incantation. Radahn's massive fra trembled slightly. He had possessed a colossal physical mass since his hatching, his spirit far eclipsing the common heroes of the capital; his features had long borne the heroic, commanding aura of a seasoned battlefield warlord. Yet here, hearing the un-varnished, sincere validation from the father he hadn't seen in seven winters, a faint glimr of moisture violently flashed across his pupils.
Throughout the grueling years of non-stop drilling under the gaze of Liurnia's premier royal tutors—across those countless watches where he swung his monolithic blades through freezing blizzards and scorching desert camps—how could his soul not have fantasized about this exact watch? To stand proudly before the author of his bloodline, proving openly and honorably that he, born of the Carian Moon, was more outstanding than any demigod nurtured within Leyndell—and that his mother's lineage was not inferior to the Eternal Queen ruling the world!
Knight Moongrum monitored his disciple, a sharp, questioning glint catching his red pupils, as if executing a final, diagnostic check on the boy's psychological alignnt.
Radahn registered his teacher's look, his facial muscles instantly snapping into a solemn, un-yielding mask. He brutally wiped the corner of his eye with his leather gauntlet, forcing his posture into an even more rigid, commanding alignnt than before.
Sitting directly opposite their bench, Lucia suddenly felt a sharp, stabbing neurological pain detonate between his silver eyebrows. His hyper-refined spiritual tracking network had hand-delivered an imdiate, visceral warning. He didn't rely sense the blinding, martial fighting spirit detonating from Radahn's core; his system realized a terrifying physical tric: the red-haired youth currently possessed a raw combat voltage sufficient to threaten his life.
At that exact juncture, Knight Moongrum took a step through the turf, his expression completely composed. "Since the old retainers of the Moon have instructed the Prince to a tier of sufficient excellence, can we deliver an objective display to prove to His Majesty Radagon that the proposal outlined in your previous dispatches—inviting the three Highnesses to Leyndell to attend the private royal academy—is actually an entirely redundant allocation of resources?"
The words dropped like an iron portcullis. Radagon's face turned instantly pale and cold. "Clarify your aning, Sir Moongrum. And na the tric by which your office intends to deliver such a display."
Moongrum smiled softly, his posture neither submissive nor overbearing as he t the King Consort's glare. "My office has long processed the historical records stating that across every era, whichever champion wears the title of Elden Lord must function as the absolute mightiest, most terrifying entity of their calendar. Whether it was the ancient Dragonlord Placidusax or the First Golden King Godfrey, the rule was absolute. My engine calculates Your Majesty comprises no exception to that parater. Concurrently, His Highness Miquella is celebrated as a peerless prodigy of natural talent, personally drilled by Your Majesty since his hatching, his command over the Fundantalist incantations considered unparalleled among the contemporary demigods. Therefore... I humbly petition Your Majesty's authorization to execute two discrete duels."
"The initial clash shall be a duel between my own steel and Your Majesty's divinity. The secondary bracket shall be a duel between His Highness Radahn and His Highness Miquella. If your nation claims a solitary victory across these two trials, it will serve as sufficient proof that Your Majesty and the heroes of the Erdtree outclass our thods; the three Highnesses shall naturally remain within the capital gates to receive your curriculum. Conversely..."
His gauntlet dropped casually onto the hilt of his starlight blade, ignoring the catastrophic, suffocating killing intent suddenly exploding from the throne with a faint, indifferent smile.
"...that will manifest as sufficient proof that the educational architecture of the Carian Royal Family is not inferior to the Golden Order. My outriders shall naturally escort the three Highnesses back to the western court within the watch."
Lucia stared dumbfounded at the theater unfolding before his bench, his tactical processors realizing that his previous analytical deductions were far too simplistic. The absolute trump card clutched within the Carian fist wasn't restricted to Moongrum's legendary, world-shattering personal combat finesse; it included the three demigods who shared Radagon's own bloodline.
They had cleared the Lift fully prepared to rebel against their father. Now that the mont of truth had detonated, the raw military mass clutched by Radagon and Commander Ordovis was mathematically irrelevant. So long as Radahn himself stood firm alongside his paladin, what counter-move could even Queen Marika execute if she descended to the grass in person?
"The paraters of this proposal are entirely inappropriate!" Crucible Knight Ordovis roared, his ancient face twisting in fury. "His Majesty Radagon is the consecrated Elden Lord of this realm! Your actions, sir, carry the absolute signature of high insubordination!"
"Your calculation is flawed, First Knight," Moongrum countered, his tone flat and icy. By this stage, he had completely shredded his courtly mask, an internal, absolute cold radiating outward from his silver armor. "Though I register my office as a foreign minister, Caria has permanently existed as a sovereign ally of the Golden Dynasty—never a vassal barony. Naturally, the ledger contains zero room for insubordination."
He looked directly through Radagon's eyes, his voice dropping into a low, historic challenge. "Fourteen winters have bled away since our steel last t upon the Liurnia lakes. My engine calculates that with the absolute empowernt of the Elden Ring's matrix backing your veins, Your Majesty is no longer the sa entity I broke on that water. Could it be that today... your divinity lacks the stomach to grant my blade instruction?"
Upon the granite platform, Radagon drew a long, explosive breath. He stood tall, his massive silhouette blocking the sun. "The custody of the children can undergo a secondary audit later down the tiline. Since your office insistently petitions for an offensive display, if my crown delivers a refusal, it would paint the throne as narrow-minded."
He un-clasped his palm, gesturing toward the weapon racks lining the far colonnade. The Golden Order Greatsword resting against the iron fras dissolved instantly into a streaming river of pure golden light, shooting across the clearing to lock steadily into his grip. He tilted the geotric blade, his voice resonant. "Sir Moongrum... clear your leather."
Twelve paces away, the First Knight of Caria delivered a sharp, silent nod.
The next millisecond, the two entities simultaneously detonated from the turf, transmuting into two blinding streaks of light that shot skyward, punching straight through the heavy cloud layers five miles above the basin!
BOOM—
The initial collision of their steel rattled the teeth of every operator remaining at the tables like a sudden, localized thunderclap. The entire pavilion looked up in absolute shock at the rafters of the sky. Violent shockwaves of deep azure starlight and blinding golden grace intertwined, tearing millions of drifting clouds to bleeding shreds in the depths of the upper heavens. Even straining their demigod focus to the absolute limit, Lucia's pupils could barely track the two figures as they collided like hyper-velocity teors.
Within a handful of breaths, the duelists had clashed their way miles across the horizon. Colossal, hundreds-of-ters-long Magical Glintblade Arrays materialized from the ether, screaming through the thin air to shred the sky to pieces. The dazzling golden law light transford in response—now shifting into an impregnable, geotric barrier grid, now condensing into sharp, irresistible spears of pure radiance. High-tier sorcery and cosmic divine power continuously mutated into techniques of world-surpassing might, only to violently explode and annihilate each other the millisecond their trics crossed.
Lucia deployed the maximum threshold of his spiritual energy to perceive the movents above, but his processors were entirely outmatched. This wasn't the sterile, isolated void of his mory battlefield; the sheer energetic density of this clash far outpaced his current observational trics.
Knight Moongrum and Radagon were operating like a full moon and a blazing sun pouring their entire planetary mass against each other's boundaries. Lucia could only 'see' them as two celestial bodies of extre, blinding voltage detonating in a non-stop chain, utterly incapable of grasping the specific technical finesse of the blade-work at every microsecond.
Among those remaining on the grass, only Crucible Commander Ordovis possessed the data tracking required to continuously discern the flow of the battle. Yet at this watch, the battle-hardened First Knight of the Crucible could not maintain his martial composure. The profound, un-blinking gaze he pinned to the heavens revealed nothing but a heavy, difficult-to-conceal anxiety.
Fourteen winters had passed since their last encounter. He could read the ledger clearly: although His Majesty Radagon now possessed the absolute structural backing of the Elden Ring's cosmic empowernt, facing Knight Moongrum fourteen years later... his divinity still lacked the chanical margin to claim a victory.
Following a final, cataclysmic collision that shook the bedrock of the entire basin, Radagon and Knight Moongrum simultaneously dropped from the sky, their boots striking their original turf markers with a heavy thud.
The paladin's silver shoulder plate was completely shattered, revealing a deep, bone-exposing laceration that wept dark crimson across his gems. The Elden Lord's face was dangerously pale, a slow trickle of dark gold-hued blood overflowing from the left corner of his mouth to stain his golden gorget.
Knight Moongrum vented a deep, ragged cloud of hot mist into the autumn air, his voice a hoarse, exhausted rasp. "Does Your Majesty calculate... how this battle should be entered into the ledger?"
Radagon slowly calibrated his breathing, his amber eyes staring fixedly at his old rival across the grass, as if intending to physically burn the man's form into his own mory banks.
After a long, suffocating watch, his voice erged, matching the hoarse, bloody pitch of the knight.
"Stalemate."
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