Free Web NovelChapter 107: "Answer the question,"
The white fox messenger’s eyebrows arched slightly, a flicker of genuine disbelief breaking through his aristocratic mask.
It was as if he couldn’t grasp how a human—a creature from the lower flats—could be so entirely ignorant of the bloodline dynamics governing the continent’s elite.
Well, of course, she was ignorant. She wasn’t from around here.
"Who?" the messenger repeated, his voice dropping into a smooth, reverent cadence that felt entirely performative yet deeply rooted in ancestral pride.
He adjusted the high silk collar of his robes, his three bright-red tails curling tightly behind him.
"You truly are a creature of the outer wilderness if that name does not already make your knees buckle, human. His Imperial Excellency, Lord Kaelen of the Crimson Line. The High Sovereign of the Crimson Court, Master of the Eleven Spires, and the direct progenitor of the truest, purest fox lineage left in this world."
The messenger’s eyes flicked to Raiden, his gaze sharpening into a cold, transactional stare.
"And this rogue standing before you is the only living male descendant of the Sovereign’s direct daughter. The last bearer of our unbroken core."
Hana didn’t flinch. Her expression remained flat, her dark eyes absorbing the data with the detached chill of a hard drive logging a new directory.
High Sovereign. Lord Kaelen. Eleven Spires. She didn’t care about the grand, bloated titles, but her internal tactical mapping instantly registered the keyword: Last male descendant.
In a primitive, bloodline-driven society with advanced capabilities, a pure-blooded male heir wasn’t just a family member; he was a strategic resource. A biological asset.
The Crimson Court hadn’t sent a messenger out of familial affection or grief for a long-lost daughter. They had sent a retrieval unit because their asset ledger was running a deficit, and Raiden was the missing balance.
Her gaze drifted past the messenger’s silk sleeves, looking down into the excavation trench.
Below, Raiden’s father was still on his knees, his shoulders shaking as he forced himself to haul another jagged boulder under the watchful eyes of the boar guards.
He looked smaller now, pathetic and fragile, completely crushed beneath the weight of Hana’s labor chains.
Hana’s mind ran a quick simulation. If this ’High Sovereign’ possessed an energetic sense strong enough to detect a single feral spike across an entire valley network, he undoubtedly possessed the resources to calculate exactly what had happened to his daughter.
The moment the Crimson Court’s main faction arrived at these coordinates and saw the former Chief of the fox tribe serving as a common construction slave, the political fallout would be immediate.
But that was his cross to carry.
"A Sovereign," Hana murmured, her voice smooth and entirely empty of fear as she leaned slightly forward in her mechanical chair. freewebnøvel.coɱ
She didn’t look at Raiden, though she could feel the rigid, suffocating tension radiating from his posture beside her.
"That’s an impressive title. But your Sovereign’s tracking grid seems to have a massive latency issue. If your line is so pure, and your core is so unbroken... Why did it take a feral spike for you to realize his location? Where was this Court when his mother was being hunted down in a mud village by the very peasants currently digging my trenches?"
The question was a direct, clinical strike.
The white fox messenger’s face flushed a sudden, angry crimson, his three red tails snapping upright as his pristine fur bristled.
The haughty composure he had been trying so hard to maintain cracked wide open, his fingers clamping tightly around the jade medallion in his sleeve until his knuckles turned white.
"You dare question the logistics of the inner sanctum?!" the messenger hissed, stepping forward, entirely forgetting Caspian’s low, orange-glowing throat for a fraction of a second. "The Court does not explain its movements to an outer-ridge—"
"Answer the question," Hana cut him off, her tone dropping into a freezing, authoritative register that completely dominated his outburst.
She tapped the glass of her tablet, her dark eyes locking onto his face like a vise. "You traced the signature. You delivered the summons. Now give me the rest of the data parameters. Why now?"
The messenger’s mouth worked silently for a moment, his chest heaving with suppressed fury under his fine silk robes.
He looked like he wanted nothing more than to reduce Hana to ash for her insolence, but the physical weight of Caspian’s towering, orange-glowing presence and Kulu’s unblinking stare from the high ridge forced the haughty white fox to rein in his temper.
"The inner sanctum is shielded by ancient, reality-warping boundaries," the messenger finally bit out, his voice sharp and tightly controlled. "We do not look out into the filth of the lower ridges unless a direct lineage anchor forces a tear in the veil. The rogue’s mother severed her own link when she fled. But his feral spike yesterday was too potent to be ignored. The Sovereign knows he is here. The summons is absolute."
Beside Hana’s chair, Raiden remained entirely frozen. His long fox ears were pinned flat against his head, his knuckles white as he stared at the jade medallion.
Cruel. That was the only word his mother had ever used to describe her home before she died in the mud of his tribe.
She had whispered warnings to him in the dead of night, her voice trembling with a terror he had never understood until now.
’They do not see us as children, Raiden. They only see the potency of the bloodline. If they ever find you, they will lock you in a cage and drain your essence until your core is dry.’
A cold dread coiled tightly in Raiden’s stomach. If he went back, he was walking into a gilded slaughterhouse.
And if Hana came with him... they would tear her apart just to strip him of his attachments. His emerald eyes flicked down to her, a desperate, silent plea forming in his throat.
He wanted to tell her to refuse. He wanted to tell her to let him run, to cut him loose before the viper’s nest descended on her head.
But Hana wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes were fixed on the invisible blue prompt hovering in her peripheral vision.
> [Reward: 500,000 Balance Points / High-Tier Blueprint: Advanced Laboratory Sector.]
Half a million points were just too good to ignore. Plus, a high-tier laboratory.
The numerical payout was far too massive to ignore. She didn’t care how cruel or ancient this Crimson Court claimed to be. In her old world, she had raided heavily armed corporate bunkers and butchered fanatical raider syndicates just for a week’s worth of clean water filters.
A bunch of haughty foxes playing with politics wasn’t going to stop her from collecting her balance.
If they tried to weave their illusions, she had Raiden to cut through the deceit. If they tried to use raw, physical force, Caspian and Kulu would bash their heads into the stone until there was nothing left to bury.
And this time, she wouldn’t be vulnerable.
Her fingers subconsciously traced the edge of the tablet. She was going to wear her nano fiver. The very dress that was indestructible, light-absorbent material that she had spent hours sewing.
If only she hadn’t kept it aside, she wouldn’t have fallen victim to that stupid female fox’s scheme.
She wasn’t going to make that mistake twice. It was time to bring that dress into the battlefield.
However, the logistics of New Eden still required her strict supervision.
Hana glanced toward the excavation trenches. The Health Sector’s foundation was barely set. The miserable Fox Tribe slaves were completely unmanaged without direct supervision, and the rabbit-kin mother and her three kits still needed a stable environment to recover from their internal trauma.
She couldn’t just drop her operations base into a deficit for a sudden regional expansion.
She needed a week. Seven days to finalize the structural grid of the medical bay, stabilize the automated drone patrols, and properly transition the fox slaves out of their chains so they could live as low-tier laborers rather than volatile captives.
This much was already enough to pay for their kin’s sin.
Fortunately, the system notification didn’t display a ticking countdown clock for the quest. The only deficit was her own anatomy.
In seven days, her gestation period would hit Day 15. With only 14 days left until her delivery, her abdomen would be significantly larger, more prominent, and inherently more cumbersome in a high-tier combat environment.
It was a tight, risky variable, but it was entirely manageable.
"We will comply with the summons," Hana said, her flat, clinical voice breaking the silence like a gunshot.
Raiden’s breath hitched, his emerald eyes widening in sharp, unadulterated panic as he looked down at her. "Hana, wait—"
Hana ignored him, her cold gaze locking onto the white fox messenger. "But we will move on my timeline, not your Sovereign’s. I have an infrastructure to finalize on this ridge. Return to your sanctum and inform Lord Kaelen that we will arrive at his gates in exactly seven days."
