Free Web NovelChapter 25: Gearing Up!
Her voice was barely above a breath, yet it carried the freezing weight of an executioner’s descending axe.
Vance glared at her. His solitary, slate-gray eye locked onto her exposed skin.
He opened his mouth, fully prepared to yell at her to cover herself up and completely disgusted that a penal recruit would try to use seduction in a warzone but the veteran’s breath hitched violently in his throat.
The words died on his tongue.
His vocal cords completely paralyzed as etched perfectly into the pale skin just above her left collarbone was a mark.
It wasn’t a tattoo carved with standard ink... It wasn’t a brand of scarred burned flesh applied by a slaver.
It was a genetic magical manifestation of undeniable authority.
It was a glowing intricate golden Sunburst mandala. ƒгeewebnovёl.com
The geometric lines of the sigil slowly, perfectly rotated against her skin.
It radiated a faint divine light that completely banished the shadows from their corner of the room.
It was the undeniable impossible-to-forge genetic mark of the Solis Imperial Bloodline as the ambient mana in the room immediately bowed to its presence.
Only the direct, legitimate descendants of the Emperor possessed the Sunburst.
The narrative suddenly revealed a heavily guarded well-kept secret of the Carrion Front.
The question had lingered in the air since they arrived.
Why hadn’t Sergeant Vance recognized the "Mad Sun"?
Despite her cascading, brilliant blonde hair, her flawless features, and her apocalyptic world-ending fire magic, the veteran commander had treated her like common trash.
The reason was fundamentally biological.
Sergeant Vance was entirely colorblind.
To his heavily scarred, slate-gray eye, the entire world was a bleak, miserable wash of muted grays, dull browns, and flat blacks.
He hadn’t seen the vibrant unmistakable golden hue of her holy fire when she vaporized the Blight-Fiends; he had only seen blinding, white-hot light.
He hadn’t seen the terrifying crimson of her eyes.
He hadn’t seen the brilliant gold of her hair so to him, she was just another pale, powerful rogue mage dumped into the trenches to die.
But the geometric undeniable shape of the Solis Imperial Bloodline mark... that was universally recognized.
Color didn’t matter.
The flawless symmetry of the rotating Sunburst was etched into the mind of every single soldier in the Empire.
From the lowest, dirt-covered penal grunt to the highest, mythril-clad General, they were drilled relentlessly on the exact proportions of the royal sigil.
To strike a bearer of the mark was to invite the wrath of the Gods...
Vance stared at the glowing mark on her collarbone.
His mind violently shattered into a million irreparable pieces.
The woman he had violently shoved into the freezing mud on her first day.
The woman he had ordered to hold a doomed flank with rusted iron.
The woman he had just called "penal trash."
The woman he had just referred to as a "wench."
She wasn’t a disgraced noble... She wasn’t a rogue mage either. She was the Imperial Princess of the Solis Empire.
All the blood instantly drained from Vance’s heavily scarred face. He went paler than a week-old corpse as his skin took on a sickly, translucent gray hue.
The unyielding iron-clad grit of the hardened veteran completely evaporated in a single microsecond.
It was replaced by an existential terror. To insult a member of the Royal Family wasn’t just standard treason.
It was a guaranteed generational death sentence. The Inquisition wouldn’t just execute him... they would hunt down every single person he had ever spoken to and burn them alive.
Vance’s knees completely gave out.
THUD!
The heavy concussive sound of the massive, towering Sergeant violently slamming his knees into the freezing black mud of the dugout floor echoed in the small room.
He didn’t just kneel.
He collapsed forward.
He released the hilt of his broadsword as his calloused right hand slammed into the slop to brace his fall, and he pressed his forehead directly into the filthy blood-stained dirt. freewёbnoνel.com
Vance prostrated himself entirely, fundamentally submitting his life before the exposed collarbone of the Mad Sun.
"Y-Your Highness..." Vance choked out.
His gravelly voice was trembling so violently he could barely form the syllables.
The panic entirely dwarfed the physical agony of his severed arm.
"Mercy..." Vance gasped with his broad shoulders shaking as his forehead ground into the mud. "I beg you... mercy... I did not know... I swear to the Gods I did not know..."
Aurelia stood perfectly still in the dim light.
She looked down at the trembling prostrate veteran with uncompromising apathy.
She didn’t feel a single ounce of pity for the crippled soldier begging for his life at her boots.
He had insulted her beloved and he had offered him garbage.
She slowly pulled the frayed collar of her dark crimson tunic back up, sliding the fabric securely over her skin, completely hiding the glowing royal mark from view.
"The vault keys, Sergeant," Aurelia commanded coldly.
She completely ignored his pathetic pleas for mercy as she didn’t pardon him nor did she condemn him.
Aurelia simply reiterated her demand with the freezing finality of a monarch.
"Now."
Vance didn’t hesitate for a microscopic fraction of a second.
He didn’t dare lift his head from the mud.
His trembling calloused right hand frantically fumbled at his heavy leather belt. He unclipped a heavy ring of thick, runic-forged iron keys as he held the heavy keyring up blindly toward her with his arm shaking violently and his forehead still pressed firmly into the freezing dirt.
’Good...’
Aurelia didn’t take them.
She didn’t want to touch the filthy, mud-stained iron that had been hanging off a peasant’s belt so Caius reached out.
His large hand smoothly plucked the heavy iron keyring from the Sergeant’s trembling fingers as the metal clinked softly as he secured them.
"Thank you, Sergeant," Caius murmured smoothly.
His deep voice carried a highly amused edge that he successfully kept off his stoic face.
He looked down at the broken veteran.
He respected Vance, but the ridiculous efficiency of having the Crown Princess act as his personal VIP pass was undeniably satisfying.
Aurelia turned on her heel.
Her golden hair swished cleanly through the air as she marched right back out of the command post, entirely satisfied with her absolute subjugation of the local military authority.
Caius followed closely behind her, sweeping the heavy oak door shut.
They left the heavily scarred one-armed veteran of the Carrion Front trembling uncontrollably in the mud, weeping quiet tears of relief that he hadn’t been immediately incinerated into a pile of white ash.
Ten minutes later, Caius and Aurelia were standing deep within the restricted heavily reinforced subterranean bunker known as the Officer’s Armory.
The heavy iron door, thick with defensive holy runes, had been easily unlocked by the Sergeant’s keys.
The air inside the vault was entirely different from the rest of the trench.
It was completely dry, preserved by ambient magical crystals embedded in the stone ceiling.
It smelled like weapon oil, polished cured leather, and the metallic smell of expensive high-density alloys.
Unlike the pathetic, rusted penal crates left in their dugout, the racks lining the walls of this vault were pristine.
They were lined with perfectly forged, master-crafted imperial weaponry designed specifically for the elite Vanguard Captains who occasionally supervised the sector.
Caius stood in the exact center of the room.
He walked past the racks of heavy bulky silver plate mail.
With his agility, strapping seventy pounds of rigid restrictive metal to his body would be a massive error.
He needed defense, but he couldn’t sacrifice his explosive neural pathways.
His crimson eyes locked onto a set of armor resting on a velvet-lined iron mannequin in the back corner.
It was a lightweight master-crafted dark-steel.
The metal was a deep light-absorbing black and it was forged from a highly conductive rare alloy designed explicitly to channel a warrior’s internal kinetic mana without restricting a single degree of mobility.
Caius pulled the heavy linen tunic over his head, standing entirely bare-chested in the cool air of the vault.
He lifted the segmented dark-steel breastplate off the mannequin as he strapped it tightly over his broad muscular chest.
Click! Click!
Caius secured the heavy leather buckles around his ribs.
The fit was undeniably flawless.
The dark-steel securely wrapped around the deep V-taper of his core, emphasizing the terrifying width of his shoulders as he added the matching articulated dark-steel gauntlets and the heavy interlocking greaves.
"Phew..."
He felt the immense satisfying weight of high-tier protection settling intimately over his newly leveled physical vessel.
The metal hummed as it made contact with the residual energy radiating from his pores.
He turned his attention to the weapon racks, instantly bypassing the standard infantry swords and the heavy halberds.
His large gauntleted hand settled firmly on the heavy dark-leather-wrapped hilt of a beautifully forged Imperial broadsword.
The blade was significantly longer and vastly thicker than his previous, pathetic shortsword.
The dark-gray steel had been folded dozens of times by a master smith to create a razor-sharp and nearly unbreakable edge capable of cleaving solid rock.
He drew it smoothly from the scabbard.
SHING!
The metal hissed beautifully in the quiet vault.
Caius gave it a single and slow experimental swing.
He didn’t try to channel any swordsmanship but rather just with his base stats.
WHOOSH!
The heavy blade parted the air effortlessly with a hum following the trajectory.
The balance was absolutely perfect for a fighter wielding a lot of strength like him.
Caius slid the heavy dark-steel broadsword into the reinforced leather scabbard resting comfortably at his hip.
He turned back to look at Aurelia.
The Villainess was standing near the entrance of the vault with her pale hands clasped softly in front of her stomach.
The cold royal mask she had worn to shatter the Sergeant had completely vanished.
She was beaming.
Her glowing crimson eyes were shining with pure overflowing joy as a deep flush of complete satisfaction spread across her pale cheeks.
She looked at his armored imposing frame.
She saw the black steel hugging his chest and she also saw the heavy broadsword at his hip.
She was completely satisfied that her ’beloved’ was finally equipped with the high-tier protection he so undeniably deserved.
She had provided for him.
She had asserted her dominance over the Empire’s military structure to ensure the safety of her anchor.
"You look perfect," Aurelia whispered softly.
