Chapter 542: Cheating On Silas...?

Chapter 542: Cheating On Silas...? [Bonus Chapter]

The barista from sector two who looked like a twig and cried when the espresso machine jammed?

Or the corporate pencil-pusher from the trade guild who spent forty minutes talking about his index funds before asking if she had an Awakened core?

’Ah... I really am a loser.’

If she were to go on a date with anyone, it would be Silas but Evelyn herself didn’t know how that would end up.

She looked down at herself.

The red cotton of the hoodie hung like a tent over her frame while her legs on the other hand were pale and joined in a pair of beat-up canvas sneakers with torn laces.

’I have so much money and I still prefer to look like this...’

Perhaps this was one of her flaws but it was good with her, sure she looked like a tired runaway who had crawled out of a storm drain and not an elite Lord who was in the top hundred of the Classic Leaderboard.

People in this city liked tall statuesque women with long legs, curved hips, and tailored silk jackets... women who looked like they belonged on billboards for cosmetic mana-enhancement clinics.

Nobody was looking twice at a twenty-two-year-old chain-smoker who looked like she hadn’t slept at all, even if she was quite pretty.

’Whatever,’ she muttered, taking another long drag until the paper crackled. ’At the very least, I managed to dodge that godforsaken World Council meeting...’

The mere thought of that summit made her stomach knot up with cold acid.

She had actually intended to go.

For about ten minutes yesterday morning, she had stood in the armory of her territory staring at the heavy mythril plate and the translucent blue crystal rapier that made up her registered persona as Lord Sky.

But the entire cover was built on a lie.

Her helmet was sturdy enough to stay on her head through Lord wars, sure, but what about in a room where the King of the World was sitting ten paces away?

A fucking helmet! That was her disguise!

If the King released his spiritual pressure, the shockwave alone could have blown the latch clean off her head, sending the helmet rolling across the marble floor like a kicked bucket.

What then?

’Oh, hello, Your Majesty! The stoic mysterious Lord Sky is actually a depressed, foul-mouthed twenty-two-year-old girl who looks like she lives on instant ramen and stress smokes!’

They would have clapped her in anti-mana cuffs before she could even summon a water barrier.

Silas, on the other hand, had that ridiculous ring he’d gotten from Thora.

The spatial warping was bound directly to the band’s internal enchantment... It was completely portable, didn’t slip off, and turned him into a one-armed woman with glowing purple eyes who could throw hands with a lot of people.

’And the idiot didn’t even care,’ Evelyn thought, her teeth grinding down hard on the cigarette filter.

When she had shoved him out the door of the room this morning, waving her hand and blabbing about having a lunch date just to get out of the summit, she had secretly waited to see his reaction.

’I just wanted a tiny flicker...’

Maybe a pause or a raised eyebrow... Hell she would have taken a single irritated question like, "Who are you going with?" or "Since when do you date people?"

Instead?

The big idiot had just given her a cheerful thumbs-up, told her not to spend all her cash on more cigarettes to stink up the building, and stepped straight back to the Keep.

"Dense one-track-minded bastard," Evelyn grumbled under her breath, dropping the butt to the concrete and grinding it flat with the heel of her sneaker.

Her stomach gave a violent hollow growl that vibrated straight through her ribs.

GRRRRR!

"Ugh, fuck..." she winced, pressing a palm against her stomach. "I’m starving."

She looked up at the polished mahogany facade of the restaurant directly in front of her.

It was an upscale glass-fronted establishment called Le Jardin Doré... all polished brass, white marble tiling, and velvet banquettes visible through the tinted floor-to-ceiling windows.

She took two steps toward the polished brass doors, reaching into her pocket out of habit to pull out another cigarette, when her eyes caught the small silver plaque mounted beside the handle.

[STRICTLY NO SMOKING — VIOLATORS SUBJECT TO IMMEDIATE FINE]

Evelyn stopped dead.

She stared at the sign for three agonizing seconds, her left eyelid giving an involuntary violent twitch.

"Fuck," she said out loud to the empty street. "I’m too hungry for this shit."

With a sharp irritated flick of her wrist, she banished the half-empty pack of Silver-Leafs and her metal lighter straight into her Lord Inventory, the items popping out of physical space and vanishing into the dimensional pocket tied to her soul.

She pushed the heavy brass door open and stepped inside.

CHIME!

The cool lavender-scented air conditioning hit her like a bucket of iced water which was a welcome relief from the baking heat outside.

Inside, soft jazz was humming through concealed ceiling speakers, and the gentle clinking of silver cutlery against fine china filled the room.

Several wealthy patrons in tailored business suits and silk day-dresses turned their heads with their eyebrows arching in sharp collective disapproval as a girl in an oversized red hoodie and gym shorts shuffled past the maître d’ podium.

Evelyn ignored them completely.

She spotted a small secluded two-seater booth near the back of the dining room, walked over, and flopped down into the velvet seat with a heavy exhausted groan.

A nervous-looking young waiter in a crisp white shirt rushed over, clutching an embossed leather menu against his chest like armor.

"Uh... welcome to Le Jardin, miss," the waiter stammered, his eyes darting down to her scuffed sneakers. "Are you... waiting for a party, or—"

"Garlic butter pasta," Evelyn said immediately, not even opening the menu. "The largest portion you have... Side of roasted potatoes, a basket of sourdough bread with extra butter, and an iced lemon water. Bring the water right now or I’m going to pass out on this table."

"R-Right away, ma’am!"

The waiter practically sprinted toward the kitchen.

Evelyn leaned her head back against the plush velvet, closing her eyes and letting out a long shuddering breath.

Without a cigarette between her fingers, her hands felt restless with her nerves jumping under her skin.

’Hope Silas isn’t getting his ass handed to him,’ she mused silently with a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. ’Knowing that idiot, he probably tried to punch one of the Presidents in the face already.’

Hopefully he wouldn’t do something as dumb enough as challenging the King Of The World...

Right?

She opened her eyes, letting her gaze drift lazily across the dining room to pass the time.

And then, her breath caught in her throat.

Across the dining floor, seated at an exclusive corner booth framed by large potted palms and a panoramic view of the courtyard fountain, sat a woman.

She had long magnificent hair that fell in rich, heavy waves of deep, vibrant purple, cascading down the back of an immaculate ivory-white pantsuit cut from expensive silk.

Even from across the restaurant, her profile was unmistakable.

’Isn’t that the billionaire...?’ Evelyn’s eyes narrowed into sharp, dangerous slits. ’Harper, right? Harper Whitmore.’

That woman that owned almost all of the LAB buildings in Valoria City..

And more importantly, the very same woman Evelyn had seen standing inside Silas’s apartment not too long ago, leaning against his door and looking at Evelyn like she was an annoying stray pest that had crawled in through the window.

’What the hell is she doing in Valoria City?’ Evelyn wondered, her tactical mind immediately spinning up.

She leaned slightly to the side, peering past the marble pillar to see who was sitting across from the purple-haired CEO.

It was a young man, perhaps twenty-four or twenty-five, wearing an elaborate high-collared tunic of gold-embroidered linen and deep lapis-lazuli silk.

Around his neck hung heavy chains of solid gold and raw turquoise, and his dark kohl-lined eyes carried the distinct insufferable arrogance of eastern royalty.

’The crest on his collar...’ Evelyn analyzed, her brow furrowing. ’That’s the royal house of Khemet... The Third Prince of Khemet, isn’t it? What is this, a private contract?’

A sudden wicked realization struck her like a lightning bolt.

’Wait a second...’ she thought, her shoulders shaking with silent stifled laughter. ’Is she cheating on Silas with an Egyptian Prince?!’

The thought was ridiculous and immensely satisfying.

Silas was out in the World Council meeting sweating through a summit with the King of the World, and his billionaire sugar-mommy was up here sipping imported sparkling water with a foreign prince in broad daylight.

’Oh, this is gold,’ Evelyn chuckled under her breath. ’I am taking this video and shoving it in his face the second he steps back in Blessed Land... He is never, ever going to hear the end of this.’

Keeping her posture low and relaxed to avoid drawing attention, Evelyn reached into the deep front pocket of her red hoodie, pulled out her black mobile phone, and rested it flat against the rim of her bread plate.

With a silent flick of her thumb, she activated the high-resolution optical sensor, zooming the feed straight between the palm leaves, locking onto Harper and the Prince of Khemet.

She tapped the record button.

[00:01... 00:02...]

On the screen, Prince Malikar was talking animatedly with a condescending smirk playing across his lips as he leaned forward, gesturing with a gold-ringed hand toward a glowing digital document floating above the table.

Harper sat completely still, her purple hair obscuring her profile with her pale hands resting motionless beside her untouched glass.

Evelyn glanced down for half a second, checking to see if her waiter was bringing the bread rolls.

...Still empty.

"Where the hell is my bread..." she muttered, looking back up toward the window.

Her breath froze solid in her lungs as her pupils contracted into microscopic pinpricks.

Harper had stood up.

Her right arm was extended across the white linen tablecloth, her bare pale hand clamped directly over Prince Malikar’s face!

Her slender fingers covered his eyes, his nose, and his mouth like an iron vice with her thumb digging deep into the soft unprotected hollow behind his ear.

"Hu... Huh...?"

The prince was being lifted bodily out of the velvet booth by his skull with his heavy gold chains swinging wildly as his legs kicked out in spastic circles.

GURRRR-K!

A wet horrific sound tore from behind Harper’s palm and before Evelyn’s horrified eyes, the Prince’s body was collapsing inward.

It was drying out...?

The healthy tanned skin of his forearms wrinkled, blackening into desiccated parchment as the moisture, the blood, and the fat were violently violently ripped from his tissue!

His muscular frame shrank at a terrifying speed with his ribs jutting sharply through his linen tunic like snapped spars and his eyeballs sinking into hollow sockets beneath her grip.

SHSHSHSHSHSH!

The sound of dry rustling sand filled the quiet corner of the dining room as the Prince’s legs stopped kicking.

His knees cracked, turning gray and brittle as dry clay and then... right there beneath the crystal chandelier, his entire body disintegrated.

A torrent of pale-yellow sand poured from beneath his embroidered tunic, spilling down over the edge of the velvet chair and splashing onto the polished hardwood floor like grain bursting from a torn sack.

His arms crumbled into dust with his gold bangles clattering against the parquet with sharp hollow rings, until nothing remained in Harper’s grip except an empty silk tunic and a swirling dry cloud of sand that drifted down into the heap below.

"AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

A woman two tables away shrieked at the top of her lungs with her chair flying backward as she scrambled across the floor.

"HE’S DUST! HE’S TURNING INTO DUST! GUARDS! SOMEONE CALL THE GUARDS!"

The entire restaurant exploded into pandemonium with plates shattering and tables flipping as well as terrified diners lunged for the emergency exits, waiters screamed, and the sound of breaking glass echoed like gunfire across the dining floor.

Harper ignored the screaming crowd as she stood beside the pile of yellow silt, her ivory suit pristine with not a single grain of dust clinging to her silk sleeves.

Slowly... rhythmically... her head turned.

Her thick purple hair parted.

Beneath her bangs, her eyes were glowing with a terrifying green radiance and her gaze locked straight through the palm leaves.

Straight onto Evelyn.

Evelyn didn’t even have time to blink.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The floor beneath Harper’s feet detonated as a deafening eruption of thousands of tons of high-velocity pressurized sand exploded outward in an apocalyptic wave, shattering the reinforced windows into millions of shards, pulping forty tables into kindling, and tearing the plaster clean off the ceiling as the tidal wave of grinding earth roared straight at Evelyn’s booth.

’SHIT!’