Chapter 68: The Traitor’s Ledger and the Boom Squad
The Cult of the Eternal Eclipse was paranoid, and rightfully so. Their primary safe house in the deep slums of District Four was rigged to be an absolute death trap.
The corridor leading to the underground office was laced with pressure-sensitive floor tiles connected to corrosive acid sprayers.
Invisible tripwires hovered at ankle and neck height, designed to trigger a localized collapse of the ceiling.
For a normal Vanguard Knight, infiltrating this hallway would require a team of master thieves and hours of delicate rune-breaking.
For Draven Mordis, it required a casual stroll.
Draven walked directly down the center of the hallway.
He did not duck. He did not tiptoe.
His hands were stuffed lazily into the pockets of his dark jacket.
Blank Canvas was active.
To the physical world, to the magical sensors, and to the lethal traps, Draven simply did not exist.
The tripwires passed straight through his shins without snapping.
The pressure plates did not register a single ounce of his kinetic weight.
He was a ghost walking through a machine.
He reached the heavy iron door at the end of the hall, manipulated the internal tumblers with a micro-burst of kinetic force, and stepped inside the empty office.
Sitting on the desk, right where the original novel described it, was a thick, black leather-bound book.
Draven picked it up. He flipped through the pages.
His pitch-black eyes scanned the long, ticulous lists of nas, dates, and astronomical credit transfers.
It was the Cult’s extortion and bribery ledger.
It listed every single corrupt noble, wealthy rchant, and compromised Guild official in Bastion Seven who had secretly funded the Eclipse to secure their own safety.
Draven closed the book.
A cold, predatory smirk ford on his lips.
"Checkmate," Draven whispered to the empty room.
He dropped the ledger into his spatial ring, turned around, and walked back through the death trap as easily as he had entered.
---
Later that night, the obsidian floor of the Astral Server glead under the nonexistent light.
Sirius Statanham, the undisputed Don of the Underworld, knelt before the shifting, faceless void of darkness that Draven projected as his avatar.
THWACK.
The heavy black ledger materialized out of the void and dropped directly in front of Sirius’s knees.
"Read it," the layered, godly voice echoed through the endless dark.
Sirius picked up the book. He opened it.
Within ten seconds, the color completely drained from his scarred face. His eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated terror.
"My Lord," Sirius breathed, his hands trembling as he turned the pages.
"These nas... Half of the Bastion’s aristocracy is in this book. Senior Vanguard officials. Trading magnates. They have been funding the Cult’s operations for years. This is treason of the highest order."
Sirius looked up at the towering shadow. His underworld instincts imdiately flared, violently misinterpreting the god’s intentions.
"I understand," Sirius said, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper.
"Shall I dispatch my assassins? Do you wish for to eliminate these traitors to cleanse the city?"
"No," Draven’s voice vibrated directly inside Sirius’s skull, dripping with absolute, calculating authority.
"Any fool can prune a rotten branch, Sirius. But a true gardener knows that a rotten branch can be used to harvest the roots. If you kill them, their wealth is seized by the Bastion’s central bank. We gain nothing."
Draven leaned forward, his terrifying aura pressing down on the Don.
"We will not kill them. We will exploit them. Absolute leverage is the purest form of slavery. You will make copies of those pages. Send a single page to every noble listed. Tell them the Embracing Hands hold their lives, their reputations, and their families hostage."
Sirius’s jaw dropped. The sheer scale of the extortion was astronomical. Draven was not just playing the underworld; he was putting a leash around the neck of the entire Bastion elite.
"Bleed their coffers dry, Sirius," Draven commanded.
"Filter their millions of credits and their hoarded A-Rank tals through your black markets. Send every single ounce of it to the blacksmith."
"It is a stroke of absolute genius, My Lord," Sirius bowed so low his forehead touched the obsidian floor.
"They will fund our war against the Beast Wave without ever knowing it."
"See to it," Draven said.
VWOOM.
Sirius vanished. Draven dismissed the server, returning to his dark dorm room. The funds were secured. Now, he needed to hire the artillery.
---
The next morning, the Academy courtyard was bustling with students preparing for the upcoming Wildlands expedition.
Draven spotted his target sitting cross-legged under a large oak tree.
Lyra Voltaire, the Rank Ten alchemist, was aggressively scribbling explosive rune formulas onto a stack of red paper tags.
Her fingers were stained with dark ink, and she had a smudge of soot on her cheek.
Draven walked over and stood in front of her, blocking her sunlight.
"You’re in my light, Mordis," Lyra pouted, not even looking up from her explosive tag. "I’m busy. Go practice throwing people with Lucien."
"I have a job for you," Draven said flatly.
"No thanks," Lyra replied instantly.
"The Student Council already asked to help fortify the outer walls. I don’t do fetch quests, and I don’t do guard duty. I like making things go boom. Now shoo."
"I am not asking you to do guard duty," Draven said, crossing his arms.
"I am offering you a blank check."
Lyra’s hand stopped moving. She slowly looked up, her bright, chaotic eyes narrowing in suspicion.
"A what?"
"A blank check," Draven repeated smoothly.
"I have secured an unlimited supply of high-grade alchemical powder and A-Rank tals. Furthermore, I have a private, underground forge outside the Academy’s jurisdiction. Which ans zero safety regulations, and zero instructors breathing down your neck telling you your blasts are ’too dangerous.’"
Lyra’s jaw dropped. The idea of unregulated, infinitely funded explosive research was literally her ultimate fantasy.
"I need you to build the biggest, most devastating bombs physically possible to wipe out the incoming Beast Wave," Draven offered.
"Are you in, or should I ask the second-year alchemists?"
Lyra scrambled to her feet so fast she dropped her ink pen.
"I’m in! I’m so in!" Lyra grabbed Draven’s arm, her eyes shining with manic excitent.
"Take to this forge right now! Let’s blow sothing up!"
---
Half an hour later, Draven pushed open the heavy iron doors of the slum workshop. The roaring heat of the forge washed over them.
Cole Rust was standing over his anvil, rhythmically hamring a piece of glowing steel. He didn’t look up as they entered.
"I need quiet, boss," Cole grunted, slamming the hamr down.
"I’m tempering the kinetic cores for your arrows."
"You’re tempering them too hot!" Lyra suddenly blurted out, stepping around Draven to inspect Cole’s work.
Cole stopped hamring. He slowly turned around, glaring at the chaotic, ink-stained noble girl who had just invaded his sacred workspace.
"Excuse ?" Cole growled, insulted to his core.
"Who the hell is this?"
"If you temper the casing at that heat, the steel becos too brittle!" Lyra argued, completely ignoring his anger. She pointed an ink-stained finger at the glowing tal.
"When you pack the explosive powder inside, the initial shockwave will shatter the casing prematurely. You lose half the blast radius!"
Cole’s eyes widened slightly. He looked down at the tal, his Blacksmith’s intuition realizing she was actually right. But his pride wouldn’t let him admit it imdiately.
"And your powder burns too slow!" Cole shot back, pointing at the red tags hanging from her belt.
"If you pack that generic sulfur mix into a steel shell, it won’t generate enough internal pressure to fragnt the casing. It’ll just fizzle out like a cheap firecracker!"
"My powder is perfect! You just don’t know how to forge proper shrapnel grooves!"
"I’ll show you shrapnel grooves, you crazy witch!"
Within ten seconds, they were yelling at each other, aggressively pointing out structural and chemical flaws in each other’s work.
Draven leaned casually against the stone wall near the entrance. He didn’t intervene. He just watched.
Because beneath the screaming and the insults, they had already pulled out a massive blueprint scroll.
Cole was furiously sketching a new aerodynamic steel shell, and Lyra was aggressively calculating the chemical expansion rate of a compressed mana-powder core.
They were arguing, but they were flawlessly designing a weapon of mass destruction together.
A quiet, highly amused smirk touched Draven’s lips.
’In the original novel, these two were top-tier heroes in the later arcs,’ Draven thought, watching the sparks fly between them.
’The readers used to ship them constantly in the comnt sections. The classic Grumpy Craftsman and the Sunshine Bomber dynamic.’
Draven turned around and quietly slipped out of the forge, leaving them to their chaotic genius.
’Let’s see if the ship sails in this tiline too,’ Draven mused as he stepped into the sunlight.
’Either they fall in love, or they accidentally blow up the entire district. Either way... the Beast Wave won’t know what hit it.’
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