CHAPTER 101: FEAST IN THE MANOR AND SILAS'S LAG

Hot, rich steam carrying aromas of roasted garlic, smoked bacon, and condensed bone broth from rare deep-floor beasts billowed straight toward the ceiling of the spacious, oak-and-basalt kitchen. The steel pot in which Mina had been slowly simmering her signature, high-calorie Tonkotsu Ramen for five hours emitted steady, satisfying sounds. Throughout the entire manor by the forest—for the first time in over two weeks—there was no stench of sulfur, corrosive acid, or stale dust from the depths of the Forgotten Necropolises. The scent of home cooking claimed every hallway, wiping away the stifling darkness of the hundredth floor.

I sat at the massive oak dining table, leaning back against the carved chair. I was wearing a clean black shirt with an unbuttoned collar and simple trousers—no leather coat, no heavy belt harness, no weapons. The sapphire reactor in my chest hummed with stoic, supremely economic tranquility, and the conduits of my energy channels, after a forty-five-day reset and forcing a hundred percent throughput, finally caught an ideal, laminar fluidity. I felt a pure, cool comfort of regeneration throughout my body.

– Dude, I'm telling you, this ramen smells so good my abdomen is shaking! – squeaked Kaede directly from my collar in our private Polish operational code. The spider, clad in a microscopic shell of slime, flexed her antennae in delight. – If they served bowls like this at waypoints in those dungeons, I'd clear the next hundred floors in three days without blinking!

– Common sense first, kiddo—calorie intake comes before poetic praise, – I replied smoothly in Polish with a brazen smirk, stroking her carapace with my thumb. – A brain after rendering will and utilizing a titan with one hundred percent KAI needs glucose and fat, not romantic poetry.

– Boss, drink chilled to ideal temperature. Five degrees Celsius, zero air bubbles in the channel, – a melodious, delightfully clever little voice rang out right beside my ear.

I tilted my head back. Little Ria was standing next to the table. The petite Tiefling with small horns no longer resembled the hunted, terrified child from the slave cage in Oakhaven. Instead, dressed in a spotlessly clean, dark apron, she operated in the dining room with an inhuman, almost terrifying competence. Her small hands rested comfortably at her waist, and in the air above her head, a large clay tray levitated via subtle, light telekinesis. A deep bowl of aromatic broth and a massive goblet of chilled drink settled onto the oak surface by my elbow with microscopic, sub-millimeter precision—without making even a single clink.

Ria flashed me a quiet, feisty little smile, adjusting the bangs over her horns.

– Elena is teaching me spatial optimization, – she offered with a small, proud spark in her eyes, letting me know she controlled the dining room better than any waiter in the Upper City. – And Shnee is currently checking in the hallway for the third time whether her rapier is aligned perfectly straight, because she doesn't know how to approach you after that... hmmm, 'farewell' at the gate. Want me to call her out in front of everyone?

I ran a hand over the back of my neck, feeling amused. My arrogant nonchalance instantly shot up a notch. Ria possessed a sharp, uncompromising sense of observation and a intellect that outpaced half the local aristocrats.

– Leave her be, kiddo. She needs to reset her own elven processor, – I smiled predatorily, tousling her dark hair atop her head. – But for that tactical ramen delivery, you get an extra point in the manor hierarchy.

Beaming with pride, Ria vanished into the back rooms, levitating the empty tray behind her.

At that exact moment, the heavy oak front door of the manor creaked open with a mature, quiet sound. In walked Silas, slowly and with deep respect in his stride. The old fence from Oakhaven's underground, dressed in his usual worn leather coat smelling of tobacco and sour ink, kept a hand on the handle as if expecting the very basalt of our fortress to crush him. His eyes—accustomed to the darkness of Lower City alleys—widened as he crossed the threshold and felt the dense, formidable, yet soothing aura emanating from our family.

– Dave... – Silas rasped, taking off his worn hat and clutching it in trembling fingers. – I came because... because you sent word through Big Guy. I thought something went wrong in the market.

– Come in, old horse, don't stand in the doorway like a beggar outside a temple, – I called out from the dining room with easy, Dante-esque composure, waving a hand. – Take off that dusty coat and sit at the table. Mina cooked something that brings the dead back to life.

Silas swallowed hard, stepping cautiously over the freshly polished oak boards. He glanced left—on the sofa against the wall sat Shnee. The white-haired elf, her diamond eyes gleaming with a cool, predatory glint, emitted a delicate, frosty breeze from her feet as she toyed with her crystalline rapier made of Heavenly Silver. He glanced right—by the window stood Karys, her dark, sharp wolf ears twitching on her head and her supple, whip-like tail brushing against the basalt wall as she sharpened her dark Abyss Claw gauntlets. Elena and Luthia sat a bit further away with ledgers, surrounded by an aura of surgical, distinguished coldness.

The density of power gathered in this single room could easily wipe out an entire city guard garrison from the map. Silas sat on the very edge of the chair across from me with as much reverence as if he were sitting on the rim of an active volcano.

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Ria appeared beside him instantly, setting a steaming bowl of ramen and a large, bulbous mug of cold beer in front of the fence.

– Eat, – I instructed calmly, picking up wooden chopsticks. – Common sense dictates that doing business with a hungry black-marketeer guarantees errors in risk calculation.

Silas didn't need to be told twice. He took his first gulp of the thick, savory broth, and his eyes nearly popped out. The expression of pure culinary bliss on his weathered face dissolved half the tension.

– Well, bloody hell... – Silas sputtered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and taking a deep gulp of beer. – Dave... you and your girls live here like lords. Down in the city, rumors are buzzing like crazy. The artisan guilds in the Upper City are wetting themselves because the Inquisition woke up their first spotters from hibernation. They're searching for the source of an unnatural, azure aura that paralyzed their sensors back in Oakhaven.

– Let them search, – I smirked brazenly, taking a bite of tender pork belly that melted on my tongue. – Smelly rats from above always start sniffing when someone ruins their monopoly. I pay them in cold indifference.

Silas nodded, though a burning, merchant curiosity still flickered in his eyes. He leaned over the oak table, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

– Dave... here we are talking about food and the Inquisition, but I haven't slept a wink for two days, – the fence began raspy, tapping his fingers on the wood. – Talk common sense to me, how did your grand raid on the Forgotten Necropolises go? Did you go deeper? Black-market Silas needs concrete numbers for valuation. Which floor did you get stuck on? The forty-fifth? Maybe you pushed to the fiftieth, where the acid mazes block the path for ordinary mercenaries?

A quiet, pleasant silence settled over the dining room. Shnee stopped twirling her rapier and glanced at me out of the corner of her diamond eye. Karys smirked roughly under her breath, crossing her arms over her chest, and Luthia set down her quill over the tax ledger.

I took a slow, deep sip of the steaming broth. I wiped my mouth with a napkin, placed the chopsticks on the rim of the bowl, and slid my hands back into the pockets of my simple trousers. I looked at Silas with my signature, Dante-esque, arrogant nonchalance.

– Ah, we cleared the whole thing, – I replied in an extremely light, casual tone, as if talking about picking up bread from the baker. – One hundred floors cleared to the very bottom. The board at the Oathkeeper Guild in Oakhaven should be glowing gold right now, and the entire instance has ceased to exist.

Silas froze with the mug at his lips. The golden brew turned to ice halfway to his mouth.

His old merchant processor suffered a massive analytical lag and a hard blue screen in a fraction of a second. His eyes widened to the size of copper coins, his unlit pipe slipped from the trembling corner of his mouth, hitting the tabletop with a soft clatter, and the mug slid from his numb fingers, spilling the remainder of his beer across the oak planks.

– What... what did you... – the fence choked out, gasping for air like a fish thrown onto hot sand. – What did you say?!

– Common sense, Silas, need me to repeat? – I chuckled softly, tilting my head. – One hundred floors. Speedrun complete. The Monolith Titan on the hundredth floor was decommissioned and broken down into basic components.

– H-hundred... hundred floors?! – Silas bolted up from his chair, but his legs gave way and he collapsed back onto the oak seat with a heavy thud. – Dave! That's pure, insanity-inducing madness! The forty-second floor was walled off by imperial guilds three years ago! Entire elite battalions from the Upper City died there! You did one hundred floors in a couple of months?! That doesn't add up in any ledger! It overturns the entire province's economy!

– I told you back in Oakhaven that my war machine doesn't tolerate makeshift solutions or schedule delays, – I summarized with an easy smile.

– But... but what was at the very bottom?! – Silas choked out, massaging his trembling temple and looking at me like I was a walking, unstoppable cataclysm. – The dungeon core? A mythical weapon? A god?!

I gave a brief yawn, popping my neck.

– Ah, well at the very bottom, in that monumental cathedral made of black basalt, there sat this ancient, bound prisoner, – I began with complete nonchalance, waving a dismissive hand. – Shackled in heavy copper-gold collars and wrapped in Aether chains that stretched all the way from the ceiling.

(Neither I nor the girls had any idea that this figure was actually a bound deity—to us, he was simply a powerful, ancient anomaly).

– And... and what did you do?! Did you kill him?! Drain his Vessel?! – Silas nearly had a heart attack, bracing his hands on the table.

– Why would I kill him? – I retorted with predatory amusement. – The guy had been sitting in solitary confinement for ten thousand years. We tested the impact power of our new Pillars on him, and then out of pure engineering curiosity, I walked up and tried to shatter those copper collars with my sapphire impulse driver. Tough material. My energy channels didn't have the right drill bit for that junk yet. We chatted for a bit about chain stress physics, bumped fists, I apologized for not having time for a longer session, and then we left him in peace and walked out through the portal.

Silas stared at me with absolute, deathly paleness on his face. His mind couldn't comprehend that someone could descend to the bottom of the most dangerous dungeon on the planet, test strikes on a shackled titan, have a casual chat with him, and simply walk out with a smile.

– Dave... – Silas whispered with deep, fanatical awe in his voice, sinking heavily back against his chair. – You aren't human. You are a monster who came here to dictate his own ruthless rules to this world.

– Just common-sense pragmatism and time optimization, Silas. Nothing more, – I replied with arrogant nonchalance, resting my elbows on the table. – Now to business. Tomorrow at dawn, I'll see you at your new, cloaked hideout in the Lower City. We'll dump the first batch of magnetic obsidian and rare S-rank cores on you. Launder it through back channels without making noise. Elena will prepare the exclusivity contracts.

– I'll be waiting, – Silas wheezed, rising shakily from his chair, feeling that his merchant processor needed at least two days to digest this data. – Every copper piece will be accounted for to the last dot.

I raised my goblet of chilled drink toward my family and the sweaty fence.

– To our new home, to the decommissioned dungeon, and to the future we will build on our own hard terms, – I declared with a predatory, confident smile.

– To the Sovereign! – the entire crew responded in unison, their voices cutting through the night silence of the manor with unyielding, lethal loyalty.

As Silas left the manor on trembling legs and vanished into the dark forest, on the horizon of Crossgard—far above the Towers of the Inquisition—a single red spark of an anomaly signal flashed. The predator had returned from the depths, and the city had no idea that its existing rules were about to burn in a fraction of a second.