Chapter 66: The Lord Commander
The bustling lobby of the Bastion Seven Hunter Guild was exactly as Draven rembered it. It was loud, crowded, and slled strongly of cheap ale and ozone.
The mont the squad walked through the heavy front doors, the noise in the imdiate vicinity died down. The veteran Hunters parted like the Red Sea.
They all recognized the crimson-eyed spearman who had defended the comrcial district, and the dark-haired boy who had previously blasted a two-hundred-pound man through the reinforced glass window.
Draven walked straight up to the main reception desk. The sa receptionist from his first visit was on duty. She took one look at Draven’s blank, emotionless face and instantly went pale, standing rigidly at attention.
"W-Welco back, Sir!" she stamred, gripping her datapad tightly.
"How may the Guild assist you today?"
Draven didn’t say a word. He simply raised his left wrist and tapped the screen of his Nexus-Band.
He projected the encrypted coordinates Sharika had sent him directly onto the receptionist’s desk.
The receptionist’s eyes widened to the size of saucers. She swallowed hard and quickly scrambled out from behind her desk.
"Understood. Please, follow imdiately. Right this way."
She led the squad past the crowded quest boards and through a restricted security checkpoint, guiding them to a private, gilded elevator at the very back of the hall.
She swiped a black keycard, and the heavy tal doors slid open.
"This elevator will take you directly to the pinnacle floor," she bowed respectfully.
"I am not authorized to go any further. They are expecting you."
Draven nodded once. The squad stepped inside, and the doors closed. The elevator shot upward with a smooth, magical hum.
"They?" Aegon muttered, gripping his spear.
"Who else is up there besides Sharika’s contact?"
"We are about to find out," Reina said, cracking her knuckles.
DING.
The elevator ca to a halt. The doors slid open to reveal a dimly lit, luxurious corridor ending in a set of massive, intricately carved oak doors.
Aegon took the lead. He placed his hands on the heavy wood and pushed the doors open.
The instant the seal broke, a terrifying, suffocating pressure flooded out of the room. It hit the squad like a physical tidal wave.
The ambient gravity in the corridor felt like it had instantly multiplied by fifty.
Inside the vast, circular war room, a man sat at the head of a massive obsidian table. He was built like a fortress, wearing a dark military uniform decorated with countless dals of valor. He possessed piercing silver eyes, the exact sa eyes as Sharika, and an aura so dense it distorted the air around him.
This was the Bastion Commander. The strongest living human in the city.
"Ugh!"
Aegon gritted his teeth. The marble floor beneath his boots cracked under the sheer pressure as he forced himself to stay standing.
His Asura’s Crucible instinctively flared, fighting back against the crushing weight.
Estella gripped her silver staff with both hands, a sheen of sweat breaking out on her forehead, but she did not drop to her knees.
Reina planted her feet wide, letting out a low grunt as she fought the imnse, biting pressure.
Draven stood perfectly still in the center of the formation.
His Blank Canvas skill was dormant. He purposely kept it off. He could feel the agonizing weight bearing down on his lungs, threatening to crush his organs.
The Lord Commander was in an entirely different league. Draven was genuinely weaker than the man sitting at the table, but he was far from fragile.
Draven anchored his boots to the floor using a minimal, defensive layer of kinetic force. He kept his spine completely straight and t the Lord Commander’s piercing silver eyes with a cold, unflinching stare.
’If I use a trick to hide my power, he will instantly sense the deception,’ Draven calculated rapidly.
’I need the military on my side. I need to show him a shield he can actually trust.’
For ten agonizing seconds, the squad endured the silent, crushing crucible. They did not bow. They did not buckle.
Suddenly, the suffocating pressure vanished entirely. The air returned to normal.
A booming, thunderous laugh echoed through the war room.
"HAHAHAHA! Excellent! Absolutely excellent!"
The Lord Commander slamd his massive hand onto the obsidian table, a fierce, approving smirk spreading across his hardened face.
"You didn’t break. You didn’t even flinch!" the Commander praised loudly.
"I expected nothing less from the brave heroes who held the line in the comrcial district. Co in, kids. Have a seat."
As the squad caught their breath and stepped into the room, Reina suddenly froze.
Sitting in a plush chair off to the side, casually swirling a glass of glowing blue wine, was a beautifully elegant woman in a pristine white coat.
"Mom?" Reina blurted out, her jaw dropping. "What are you doing here?"
Guildmaster Seraphina Vance took a sip of her wine and offered her daughter an amused smile.
"Just having a private drink with an old war buddy, sweetie. Though I must say, your squad’s entrance was quite dramatic."
"Have a seat, all of you," the Lord Commander ordered, gesturing to the empty chairs.
Draven pulled out a chair and sat directly across from the Commander. Aegon, Estella, and Reina took the flanking seats.
"I assu you are wondering why I bypassed the Academy Instructors to summon four first-year students to a secure Guild location," the Commander began, his boisterous deanor fading into sharp, military seriousness.
"Sharika sent us," Draven stated flatly.
"She gave us a scouting mission."
"Because I asked her to," the Commander corrected him. He leaned forward, resting his heavy arms on the table.
"My daughter is the Student Council President, and I am the head of the Bastion’s military. Every single faction in this city, from the Hennessey Clan to the Cult spies, is watching our every move. If I deploy a Vanguard Knight battalion into the Wildlands, alarms will ring across the entire underground. But a group of first-year prodigies going out for a ’training exercise’? It is the perfect cover."
The Commander’s silver eyes narrowed dangerously.
"For weeks, my border patrols have noticed a disturbing anomaly. The high-level monsters that usually roam deep in the Wildlands are slowly migrating closer to the Great Wall. That is unnatural. They are territorial beasts. Sothing is pulling them toward our gates. What did you find out there?"
Draven didn’t hesitate. He took the lead on the debriefing.
"We found the ruins of the industrial sector," Draven reported efficiently.
"It wasn’t a natural monster nest. It was a Cult operation. They had over twenty mutated, castrated acolytes guarding the center of a crater."
Seraphina frowned, setting her wine glass down.
"Mutated acolytes? A ritual site?"
"Worse," Aegon chid in, his voice hard.
"There was a Priest of the Eternal Eclipse. He wasn’t playing around.. He was performing a spatial incantation."
"Humans believe monsters randomly pour out of dinsional rifts," Draven continued, looking directly at the Commander.
"They don’t. The higher-tier beasts on the other side possess intelligence. They are actively brainwashing the Cult’s priests, manipulating them into building artificial spatial arrays to tear the doors open from our side. They are trying to orchestrate a localized Beast Wave."
The war room went completely silent. The Lord Commander and Seraphina exchanged a deeply disturbed look. The implications were catastrophic. It ant the monsters weren’t just feral animals; they were an organized invading force.
"A spatial array of that magnitude requires an imnse, highly corrupted power source," the Commander said, his voice grave. "Did you manage to destroy it before it activated?"
Draven smirked faintly.
He didn’t answer with words. He raised his hand and tapped his spatial storage ring.
THUD!
A massive, heavy mana stone, covered entirely in complex, glowing red runes and pulsing with sickening, dense energy, materialized out of thin air and slamd onto the center of the obsidian war table.
"We didn’t destroy it," Draven said calmly, leaning back in his chair.
"We brought you the battery."
The Lord Commander stared at the massive array core sitting on his table. His eyes widened in absolute shock, and for the first ti, a look of profound, genuine respect crossed his hardened features.
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