Chapter 499: Postponed Rewards [Bonus - ]

Chapter 499: Postponed Rewards [Bonus Chapter]

Silas let out a long defeated groan, running a calloused hand through his dark hair.

He looked down at the Princess, pointing a stern finger directly at her nose.

"If you step so much as three inches out of the formation," Silas sighed, "I am having Thor throw you five miles back to the palisades. Understood?"

The Princess’s azure eyes expanded, lighting up with a blinding, ecstatic brilliance that rivaled the finest diamonds of KB-22.

"Yes, my Lord!" she gasped, bowing deeply as she was practically vibrating with uncontainable joy. "I swear it upon my life! Thank you!"

Silas shook his head, picking up the heavy mining ledger from the desk and tucking it securely beneath his arm.

He turned, walking toward the mahogany door.

Eluned tilted her head, watching his retreating back with a slow mischievous smirk.

"Where are you off to now, my Lord?" Eluned purred.

Silas paused with his hand on the brass latch, looking back over his shoulder.

"I’m going to... uh..."

Silas stopped.

Catching the intensely lewd expectant smile spreading across the World Spirit’s porcelain lips... remembering her breathless feverish whispers from earlier about filling her womb with divine sprouts, Silas aggressively cleared his throat to keep his face deadpan.

"I’m going to dismiss the rewards giving until we get back from the northern trenches," Silas declared firmly.

Eluned’s face fell for a fraction of a second, her radiant smile withering into a comical disappointed pout.

"Aww... Silas, that’s so cruel," she whined softly.

Then, she perked right back up, her emerald eyes sparkling with renewed, shameless heat as she swayed her hips toward the desk.

"Doesn’t matter~" Eluned purred, licking her lips with sweet divine anticipation. "We can just do it tonight when you return~ With interest~"

"Sure, sure," Silas muttered dryly, rolling his eyes as he pulled the door open.

CLICK!

The heavy ironwood door clicked shut behind him.

The moment Silas stepped into the quiet corridor, the dry teasing smirk vanished from his face.

His features hardened, settling into an intensely serious burdened one as he looked down at the leather-bound ledger clutched in his hands.

He took a slow heavy breath with his fingers tightening against the binding.

’A dead tie between Brida and Tasmin,’ Silas thought, his boots carrying him toward the lower eastern wing. ’And all these girls who worked their fingers to the bone, waiting for a decree. I really don’t want to disappoint them but I have to, what can I give as a bigger reward?’

...

Down in the lower eastern wing of the Keep, the grand Barracks was practically bursting at its stone seams with deafening noise, roaring heat, and unrestrained celebration.on

The hall flanked by three roaring hearths and lined with long polished wooden trestle tables was packed to capacity.

Over a hundred freshly bathed women.

Their damp hair smelled of floral bath oils and lavender soap, their bruised muscles completely relaxed in loose linen tunics, leather vests, and comfortable breeches.

The atmosphere was an joyful riot.

"DRINK! DRINK! DRINK! DRINK!"

A chorus of thirty screaming recruits banged their heavy wooden tankards against the tabletops in a deafening synchronized rhythm.

THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD!

At the head of the central table, standing proudly atop a heavy wooden bench, was Brida.

The woman was dressed in an unbuttoned leather vest that showed off her chiseled abdominal muscles and broad powerful shoulders.

She held a massive two-gallon iron pitcher of dark dwarven stout high overhead, tipping the vessel back and pouring a continuous frothing cascade of ale straight down her throat.

Ale splashed across her cheeks, dripping down her strong corded neck as she chugged the entire pitcher in five terrifying seconds.

SLAM!

Brida slammed the empty iron pitcher onto the oak table with concussive force, threw her head back, and let out a deafening earth-shaking burp that echoed off the high rafters like a siege cannon.

BURRRRRRRRR-URP!

"GWAHAHAHAHAHA!" Brida roared, wiping the foam from her chin with the back of her forearm. "THAT’S HOW A VANGUARD HYDRATES! FILL IT UP AGAIN, YOU LAZY WENCHES!"

The girls screamed with laughter, banging their cups as fresh pitchers were passed down the line.

Across the room, sitting cross-legged atop an overturned supply crate near the roaring hearth, was Thor.

The God of Thunder was in a glorious state of divine bliss.

’This is how you reward one for work...’

Clutched in her massive hands was an entire roasted suckling pig, glistening with crispy skin and fragrant spices.

She tore into the succulent meat with joyous abandon, alternating between massive, three-pound bites of pork and draining entire wooden flagons of cold stout in single gulps with her booming laughter shaking the stone foundation.

"Gwahahaha! More meat! Bring more ale to the fire!" Thor bellowed merrily, her wild blonde locks swaying as she threw an empty bone over her shoulder. "This is a true hall of warriors! A grand feast for a glorious harvest!"

Nearby, Tasmin sat quietly on the edge of a bench, sipping a cup of spiced tea.

Her dark hair was neatly braided, her amber eyes watching Brida’s drunken theatricals with a mixture of dry disdain and subtle amusement.

CREAK!

At the far end of the barracks hall, the heavy iron-reinforced double doors slowly swung inward.

Silas stepped through the threshold and in his right hand, he held the leather-bound logistical ledger.

"The Lord is here..."

He didn’t need to announce his presence, everyone was already calm.

Silas simply took two steps onto the polished stone floorboards and gently pulled the heavy double doors shut behind him.

THUD!

The latch snapped into place with a crisp click and in that single, imperceptible fraction of a second... the entire room died.

The roaring cheers abruptly choked in their throats, the rhythmic banging of wooden tankards against the tabletops froze mid-strike and Brida’s wild laughter hitched with her pitcher freezing three inches from her lips.

Sarah choked on her ale, desperately clapping both hands over her mouth to keep from coughing, while Brenda’s eyes widened to the size of full moons with her back snapping straight as an iron poker.

Even Thor paused.

The God of Thunder froze mid-chew, an entire roasted pork rib hovering an inch from her mouth, her storm-blue eyes snapping toward the entrance.

Total pin-drop silence descended over the Mess hall as the only sound remaining was the soft crackle of the embers in the hearth.

Every single female eye in the room locked directly onto Silas.

They took in his tall imposing silhouette framed against the closed oak doors and they saw the dark intensity in his blue eyes.

And most importantly, they saw the heavy leather-bound folder clutched in his hand... the final stamped extraction manifests of the Umbral Basin.

The tension in the hall soared to a suffocating peak as their hearts began to hammer violently against their ribs.

...It was time.

It was time for him to announce who would get the reward!

For three long, agonizing seconds, the mess hall hung in suspended animation.

The great granite hearths still threw dancing orange light across the long wooden trestles, illuminating over a hundred pairs of eyes that were locked dead-center onto Silas Graves.

Brida stood frozen on her bench, her hand clamped around the handle of her two-gallon iron flagon with a stray globule of dark stout dangling from the tip of her freckled nose.

Three tables over, Tasmin remained perched on the edge of her seat like a primed spring, her fingers coiled around her bone-inlaid dagger hilt with her amber eyes burning through the haze of pipe smoke straight into Brida’s profile.

It was almost like she was daring her to move.

Silas broke the stillness with a slow, deliberate clearing of his throat.

He brought his knuckles to his mouth, coughing softly into his closed fist, before looking up with that calm smirk that always set the girls on edge.

"Ah..." Silas began, letting his boots carry him three paces down the center runner. "Evening, everyone."

The greeting was completely mundane.

It was practically cheerful and that, more than any roaring battle cry, made Brenda swallow her spit with an audible gulp that echoed off the timber rafters.

"I’ve spent the last half-hour reviewing the extraction ledgers with the logistics clerks," Silas continued, tapping the leather-bound folder tucked beneath his forearm. "The tonnage brought in today was unprecedented... The outer perimeter of KB-22 is hollowed out, the Star-Iron seams from BVR Star are secured, and the territory’s reserves look healthier than they have since we drove the first palisade into the shale thanks to all of you."

A collective murmur of breathless anticipation ran through the front ranks.

Brida’s eyebrows twitched upward as her chest puffed out against her loose linen tunic, practically daring Tasmin to contradict her.

"However," Silas’s tone dropped a bit, smoothing out into that unshakeable voice that meant an executive order was hitting the floor, "the territorial reward distribution... will be postponed as a whole."

WHAM!

It was like he had dropped a chunk of deep-basin glacier directly into the central fire pit.

"WHAT?!" Brida’s roar rattled the copper plates hanging from the kitchen racks.

She slammed her tankard down onto the pine table so hard the wood groaned, frothing ale splashing across the knuckles of the recruit sitting beside her.

"Postponed?! My Lord! I literally dug through three miles of solid granite with my bare elbows and a pickaxe! I have rock dust inside my ear canals that the bath couldn’t even reach!"

"Are you serious, Lord Silas?" Sarah whined from the third bench, her hands thrown dramatically into the air. "We’ve been scrubbing the limestone grit out from under our fingernails for an hour just to stand inspection!"

"My Lord, please!" another recruit called out, her cheeks still pink from the hot water. "We took the bet! And we worked for it!"

Even Tasmin’s cool facade cracked.

Her slender shoulders tensed, her dark fringe falling across her eyes as she leaned forward over the table.

"Lord Silas. The extraction criteria were explicitly defined at dawn... If the parameters have shifted, does the original wager between Brida and myself still hold?"

Silas raised both hands, palms flat, waving the room back down to a manageable simmer.

He didn’t raise his voice, but the golden shimmer of his Gold Core rippled across the cuffs of his officer’s coat, pressing down on the hall with just enough gentle weight to remind them who held the deed to the ground beneath their boots.

"Simmer down, all of you," Silas commanded, his lips twitching with suppressed amusement. "Nobody’s ledger is being wiped, your numbers are recorded and your sweat is stamped in ink but something unexpected developed while you were washing the basin out of your hair."

He paused, letting his gaze sweep across the long rows of freshly scrubbed faces.

"A scout familiar reached the Keep an hour ago... We have confirmed intelligence on an uncontracted high-tier entity trapped within the deepest northern trenches of the Umbral Basin... an ancient being who calls herself the Goddess of Beasts. She’s locked beneath a formation of Forever Ice, and her survival window is narrowing."

A hushed silence washed over the hall.

The casual bickering died instantly.

"Retrieving her isn’t an afternoon stroll," Silas continued smoothly, leaning his hip against the corner of the heavy wooden serving sideboard. "It will require an expedition deep into the unmapped dead-zones... It may take several days of high-mobility reconnaissance, heavy breaching, and severe combat. Which means... when we return, the final tally will be settled and that gives every single squad left behind more time to rack up wins under their belts."

He tapped the edge of the ledger against his hip, his blue eyes flashing with a wicked spark.

"And to ensure nobody feels cheated by the delay... I’m sweetening the pot. The specific reward for the ultimate winner won’t just be an audience and a private favor granted by my own hand."

Silas paused, letting the silence stretch until you could hear the fat sizzling on the hearth spit.

"The winner... will be granted the permanent right to move their quarters directly into the Keep."

THUMP!