Chapter 538: Crazy Woman [Bonus - ]

Chapter 538: Crazy Woman [Bonus Chapter]

Her voice was flat like she was mildly inconvenienced, it was the way a person might ask a noisy ceiling fan to stop squeaking.

Vanderbilt managed to drag a wheezing gasp of air into his burning lungs as he coughed violently, wiping a bead of cold sweat from his upper lip with his pride desperately struggling to reassert itself before the assembly.

"I asked a legitimate question, Lord Vespera," Vanderbilt rasped. "If your core is the celestial miracle you claim it to be... why can’t you heal your lost arm? A true sovereign does not sit before the World Council missing half their limbs."

Kara let out a small quiet sigh of relief, leaning back against the violet velvet.

"Ah, that’s good," she murmured, brushing a stray fleck of salt from her tailored lapel. "I thought you were going to ask me why I was eating or something... I didn’t even have breakfast this morning, so I really didn’t want to listen to a fifteen-minute PowerPoint telling me how I shouldn’t eat."

Vanderbilt’s face turned an ugly mottled purple. "You mock this assembly—"

"Who said I couldn’t heal it?" Kara interrupted.

The room went dead silent.

Kara reached up with her single right hand, unpinning the charcoal wool of her left sleeve and with a slow, deliberate motion, she pulled the dark fabric back, exposing her left shoulder.

The arm was severed cleanly three inches below the joint with the stump smooth and completely healed over with old unblemished scar tissue.

Then, she exhaled.

SHNNNNN!

A soft shimmer of pure gold light ignited directly beneath the surface of her skin.

The light wasn’t chaotic as before but it was humming with a frequency that made the hairs on Aki’s arms stand on end.

Before the eyes of more than five hundred people, bone shot forth from the stump like growing coral... Muscle fibers, crimson and dense as steel cables, wove themselves into existence across the newly formed humerus in less than a second.

Arteries pulsed, skin knitted across the tissue like pale silk, and within the span of three heartbeats, a completely flawless left arm extended from her shoulder, terminating in five slender fully formed fingers.

A collective terrified gasp tore through the mezzanine.

"Impossible..." Chancellor Montmirail breathed with his glasses slipping down his nose. "Instantaneous cellular recreation... without an alchemical catalyst..."

Kara held up her newly formed left hand as she flexed the fingers once and then twice.

The knuckles popped with clean healthy clicks.

’If she can do that so easily,’ Vanderbilt thought, his mind reeling with dread, ’then why the hell did she—’

SHING... SHKKK!

A flash of violet mana severed the air!

Before anyone could even register the movement of her right hand, a razor-thin blade of mana flashed across her own shoulder and the left arm detached instantly.

THWACK!

The freshly severed limb landed heavily on the celestial marble table directly in front of Vanderbilt, bouncing once before sliding to a halt beside his digital terminal.

SPLAT!

A shower of hot bright crimson blood sprayed across the white stone with several heavy droplets splashing straight onto Vanderbilt’s silk tie and the lapel of his charcoal jacket.

"AGH!"

Vanderbilt physically leaped backward in his chair with his boots scrambling frantically against the floor and his face drained of every drop of color as he stared at the bloody twitching arm sitting on the table before him with horror.

FZZZZZZT!

At the shoulder, Kara’s wound didn’t even bleed.

The moment the flesh parted, a golden filament of light sealed the stump shut, returning it instantly to that same smooth pale scar tissue she had walked in with.

Then, she pointed her single right forefinger at the severed arm on the table.

WHOOOOOOSH!

A terrifying silent eruption of crimson fire engulfed the flesh.

The flame burned with heat that melted the marble.

It simply consumed the biological matter at an atomic level, turning bone, muscle, and blood into a shower of glittering disintegrating red sparks that vanished into the air like burning embers, leaving the white stone completely bare and unblemished.

Even the blood that had splashed on Vanderbilt was attended to as well.

Kara pulled her sleeve down, pinning the empty charcoal cuff neatly back against her ribs with one hand and a safety pin she took from her pocket.

"Like I said," Kara explained smoothly, leaning back and resting her single elbow on the armrest, "I’ve already built a pretty solid public reputation using just the one arm... Changing my branding now would just confuse the livestream audiences."

She looked directly at Vanderbilt, her violet eyes glinting behind her glasses with amused chilling contempt.

"Besides... I really haven’t run into a challenge in this world that was worth using two hands for anyway so why bother?"

She tapped the glass again.

CLINK!

"More wine, please. Still dry."

One of the masked World Council Magistrates at the northern bench leaned forward, his voice muffled behind his heavy linen cowl.

"Lord Vespera! You sit within the Grand Assembly of humanity! This is not a tavern for you to consume alcohol while mutilating yourself for theatrical amusement! Why are you demanding wine at an emergency summit?!"

Kara tilted her head back toward the Council bench, looking at the Magistrate through her lenses with a deadpan expression.

"Well," Kara said reasonably, "do you have a menu? If you’re serving tea, coffee, or maybe some sparkling cider, I’m completely open to alternatives but right now, you people have only put out stale water and fermented grapes... Bring me a menu, and I’ll order something else. Who the hell doesn’t serve food at events?"

The Magistrate’s mouth clamped shut beneath his cowl.

He sat back, his robes rustling with tightly suppressed rage, completely incapable of formulating a response to someone who treated the highest judicial bench on Earth like a cheap roadside diner.

A terrified attendant scrambled forward with an open bottle of aged vintage, frantically filling Kara’s crystal flute before scurrying backward like a frightened crab.

Across the amphitheater, a single horrifying realization settled over every living soul in the room...

This woman wasn’t just powerful... She was completely out of her mind!

She had severed her own limb and burned it to ash in front of the heads of state simply because she didn’t want to change her internet brand.

She operated with a level of carefree casualness that made the King’s cold tyranny look orderly by comparison.

You couldn’t threaten her and you couldn’t bribe her with polite etiquette.

She did whatever the hell she wanted because she possessed the violent capacity to back it up.

Kara took a slow appreciative sip of the wine, smacking her lips lightly before turning her attention back toward the dais.

"Anyway," Kara said, swirling the glass. "What about my negotiations? The diplomatic summons explicitly relayed the fact that Blessed Land had a seat at this table to settle ourselves so I’m here and ready to talk business."

The King did not flinch.

He looked down at her from the high throne with his eyes cold.

"Your business is noted, Lord Vespera," the King said flatly. "However... because you chose to arrive nearly an hour past the bell, the scheduled docket has shifted. The formal discussions regarding the sovereignty of Blessed Land and your terms are hereby postponed until the conclusion of the Exhibition of Succession."

Kara blinked behind her glasses as she paused with the glass halfway to her mouth.

"Exhibition of... what?"

"A martial tournament," the King stated, his tone carrying the grand immovable weight of a decree. "To resolve the contested drilling rights of the northern transitional corridor. A bracket held directly within a stabilized sector of the Sovereign Realm, featuring the youth of the Nine Powers..."

Kara blinked once more.

She lowered the glass, an expression of boredom washing over her features.

"A tournament," she muttered under her breath, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling. "Great... Another gladiatorial pit. How original."

The King’s lips twitched slightly.

"The Crown does not restrict the arena strictly to the sovereign houses," the King added, leaning forward as his gaze locked onto Kara with a sharp edge. "Although you hold citizenship within the administrative districts of Europa, Lord Vespera, your status grants you total autonomy. Should you wish to expedite your diplomatic standing, you are formally permitted to enter the Exhibition... You may align yourself with any nation, noble house, or faction currently seated at this table, lending your blade to their cause."

Kara let out a flat dry snort, looking at the King as if he had just asked her to fetch his slippers.

"Oh, please," Kara said, waving her single hand dismissively. "You just want to put a Gold Core on the billboard so you can juice your live viewer numbers for the stream... You’re using me for free exposure."

CREAK!

The King’s fingers dug into the armrest, the metal groaning audibly under his grip and his jaw tightened with a microscopic vein throbbing at his temple.

’This insolent, arrogant...’ he thought, swallowing down the sudden urge to blast the entire western quadrant of the table into atoms.

She was infuriating!

She treated the Throne like an annoying corporate promoter trying to book a guest appearance on a local broadcast.

The King cleared his throat, deliberately drawing his presence back and refusing to let her drag him into a public spat.

He turned his head away from Kara.

Slowly, his sapphire gaze drifted down toward the lowest tier of the royal guest arc and straight onto the First Princess.

’Ah...’

Aki’s pulse hitched, the rhythm stumbling in her throat like a dying engine.

Her father’s unblinking gaze bore straight through her velvet collar and across the vast, circular expanse of the Grand Assembly pit, the hush returned with a sickening quickness.

The whisper of Kara White’s severed arm dissolving into crimson sparks had faded into the background, yet the air remained fiercely ionized, tasting like copper wire laid across a raw tongue.

The First Princess stayed locked in her low-tier seat.

Under the heavy navy folds of her skirts, her thighs were clamped tight together with her slippers pressed completely flat against the black flagstones to kill the involuntary tremor crawling up her calves.

She did not blink and she did not dare to let her shoulders slump, nor did she glance up toward the mezzanine where hundreds of corporate eyes were watching her like vultures circling a dying animal in the brush.

The King shifted his posture on the high throne.

His star-iron signet ring dragged a slow dull screech across the celestial marble of the Grand Table with a sound like a blade scraping over bone.

"Now," the King spoke, his voice dropping into a tone that vibrated straight through the floorboards and settled into the marrow of everyone present. "Regarding the earlier grievance raised by President Vanderbilt..."

Aki’s fingers curled into tight white-knuckled knots within the folds of her lap.

’No...’ she thought, the breath backing up into her throat turning hot and sour. ’Not this. Please, Father, not this...’

Beside the Throne, Princess Kiera tilted her head slightly from her perch upon the King’s right knee.

Her amber-gold irises flickered with passive porcelain tranquility, watching Aki with the mild detachment of a noble studying a beetle struggling against a sticky floorboard.

Crown Prince Alexander remained frozen three chairs down with his knuckles gray-white against his slate and his bloodshot eyes fixed entirely on the blank glass.

He wouldn’t lift his chin.

For thirty years, he had shared the same cold silence from their progenitor, but now that the executioner’s axe was hovering over his sister’s neck, Alexander looked anywhere else.

The King did not rise as he leaned his broad forearms upon the marble, peering down at his nameless firstborn daughter with chilling neutrality.

"You, too, may participate in this contest," the King decreed.

The air in the mezzanine galleries snapped like dry twigs.

Alexander’s jaw clicked open in unmasked disbelief.

Up in the higher tiers, dozens of junior aides and guild scribes leaned forward against the brass safety bars, muttering frantic questions behind their cuffs.

"Like House Sterling and House Bloom," the King continued, completely unbothered by the collective ripple of shock coursing through the five tiers, "the First Princess shall enter as her own independent faction within the bracket..."

"Majesty!"

The sharp bark came from the western arc.

Prime Minister Sir Arthur Pendelton rose half an inch from his star-iron seat, planting the brass ferrule of his cane into the stone with an audible thud.

"The First Princess is Unawakened!" Pendelton protested, his silver eyebrows drawn in furious incredulous disbelief. "Her core pathways are entirely inert! To send an unawakened civilian into an active transitional sector of the Sovereign Realm is not an exhibition... it is state-sanctioned slaughter! The atmospheric power of the Sovereign Realm will rupture her internal organs before she even clears the gate and the international media will brand this court as butchers!"

The King did not turn his head toward the Albion prime minister.

He didn’t offer a rebuttal, to everyone he didn’t even acknowledge that Pendelton had spoken.

He simply let the warning hang in the freezing air like dead weight, making it unmistakably clear to every ruler in the amphitheater that whether the girl was crushed by spatial gravity or dismembered by a beast was an outcome of zero consequence to the Crown.

"The rules of the Exhibition remain absolute," the King stated, his sapphire eyes pinned exclusively on Aki. "Every recognized faction must field two representatives... You must secure a second combatant to fight under your banner. What you offer them as compensation is entirely your own affair and the Crown will furnish no stipends, no enchanted armaments, and no household retainers to bolster your cause."

He paused, letting the silence hang like an executioner’s noose around her neck.

"Or... on the other hand," the King added. "you may rise from your seat right now. You may walk to the center of the Grand Assembly floor, bow your head, and formally apologize to President Vanderbilt Senior for the injuries sustained by his son. If you do so, perhaps the two of you can find common ground regarding a... suitable punishment."