Chapter 631: Blessed Land Figurines [Bonus - ]

Chapter 631: Blessed Land Figurines [Bonus Chapter]

’Please,’ he prayed silently, ’let it be a week... Let them have a spare engine sitting in a warehouse somewhere and let them say three days.’

Number 5 adjusted her silver cuff.

"Under standard mobilization protocols, assuming all secondary Sub-Engines maintain their structural integrity, and assuming Number 9’s continental containment barrier holds the northern perimeter without collapse..."

She paused, tapping her chin thoughtfully.

"...it will require at least three weeks to align space and create a temporary change however... With our best currently operating within Iunu... meaning you, your summoned champions, and this delightfully noisy storm-woman continue to purge the rift clusters at our current operational tempo... we might be able to compress that timeline down to fourteen days or perhaps twelve. There’s no guarantee we’ll be able to stop it so I say focus on rescuing citizens which is still two to three weeks."

Kara stood completely still as her eyes blinked once and twice.

’Three... weeks?’

’FOURTEEN DAYS OF DIGGING DITCHES IN A FOUR-THOUSAND-DEGREE DESERT CHOKING ON DRIFTING BONE-DUST AND SLEEPING ON CRACKED CONCRETE?!’

Kara’s knees gave out.

Her physical eyes rolled back into her head with her spine turning to overcooked gelatin as she unceremoniously collapsed backward off Talira’s neck.

"Whoa—!"

Number 5 lunged forward, her silk robes fluttering frantically as she caught Kara’s falling upper body by the armpits, staggering under the dead-weight of the single-armed Lord.

"Kara White!" Number 5 shrieked, violently shaking Kara’s limp shoulders as Kara’s head lolled from side to side like a broken doll’s. "Do not faint on me! Wake up! Do not die from exhaustion! Come back to life, you ridiculous woman!"

Thor hovered five feet above them, resting her heavy chin against the flat of Mjolnir, letting out a soft booming chuckle that shook her braids.

’Ah...’ Thor thought, her bright blue eyes twinkling with warm amusement as she watched Silas’s female persona dramatically play dead in the woman’s arms. ’Silas really is so delightfully adorable whenever he overreacts to basic duty.’

...

[A Week And Five Days Later.]

Twelve hundred miles to the northeast, across the deep azure waters of the inner maritime corridor.

The afternoon sun over Rhyx City was a pale polished gold, glinting off the tiered glass domes and soaring white-granite sky-bridges that connected the spires of the city.

A cool coastal breeze blew off the bay, carrying the clean sharp scent of cedarwood, salt spray, and blooming mountain citrus.

On the high private terrace of the royal residential pavilion, sixty stories above the tranquil streets, a young woman stood with both hands resting lightly upon the carved marble balustrade.

Her long magnificent hair... a vibrant crystalline shade of deep aquatic blue whipped gently in the ocean draft, catching the sunlight like strands of spun lapis lazuli.

She wore a sleeveless, high-collared gown of flowing sea-foam silk that accentuated her slender athletic frame with her pale, porcelain features set in an expression of quiet distant contemplation.

Princess Aki.

Her large brilliant sapphire eyes looked out across the shimmering skyline of the city, but her thoughts were thousands of miles away, wandering through the scorched, lightless ruins of the southern continent.

’I hope Silas is doing well...’

It had been nearly two weeks since the catastrophic blowout in Northern Khemet.

For the past twelve days, the global news networks had spoken of nothing else.

The total vaporization of Pharaoh-President Menes Al-Mansur and the fleet... the mysterious total erasure of the White Citadel; and the unprecedented, terrifying collapse of the Northern Suppression Engine had sent shockwaves through every stock exchange, sovereign court, and military command from Europa to the Yamato Archipelago.

Refugee encampments in the southern territories of Khemet were already swelling with hundreds of thousands of displaced citizens, while neighboring nations were receiving an endless influx of commercial charters and civilian transports.

The World Council had issued three separate emergency communiqués, promising the international community that the northern sector would be completely stabilized and re-anchored "within four to six weeks."

Aki let out a soft wry breath through her teeth with her lips curving into a knowing smile.

’Four to six weeks...’

She knew the council’s bureaucratic double-speak.

As a daughter of the Supreme Royal Family, she understood the brutal realities of high-tier infrastructure better than most.

The World Council didn’t possess a spare Terrestrial Suppression Engine sitting on a warehouse shelf.

Those machines were ancient relics... masterpieces of lost Pre-Apocalypse geometry forged from extinct alloys and to rebuild an anchor of that magnitude from scratch would take months... Perhaps half a year.

In the meantime, the northern half of Khemet remained a brutal, cordoned-off kill-box, sealed beneath Number 9’s continental barrier, where the beasts of the Sovereign Realm were being relentlessly ground to pieces by an isolated garrison of Lords and their people.

’And at the center of that meat-grinder...’ Aki’s heart fluttered with a strange warm ache, ’...is Silas, walking under the name of Kara White.’

CLICK!

The heavy mahogany door leading onto the private terrace swung open with a quiet, oiled whisper.

"Princess?"

Mira, her personal chief maid, stepped onto the sunlit marble.

The older woman was, as always, immaculate in her starched navy dress and crisp white lace apron, but her composed formal posture was slightly compromised by the massive brightly colored cardboard shipping carton balanced carefully in her arms.

"The international courier cleared customs barely twenty minutes ago," Mira reported, stepping across the terrace and setting the parcel down upon the low glass coffee table beside the rattan loungers. "Priority sovereign routing from the Central City commercial logistics hub and stamped with the high-tier wax seal of the Apex Manufactory."

Mira offered a polite knowing curtsy, her lips twitching with faint amusement as she turned and slipped back into the interior suite, pulling the door shut behind her.

Aki stood motionless for a bare half-second.

Then... her royal regal composure completely evaporated.

"It’s here!" Aki squealed, dropping her hands from the balustrade, practically skipping across the marble tiles on her bare feet!

She dropped to her knees upon the plush Persian rug beside the low table with her sapphire eyes sparkling like diamonds as she grabbed the cardboard box, eagerly inspecting the glossy high-definition printing across the packaging.

Across the front of the collector’s box, embossed in shimmering, raised gold foil and high-gloss lacquer, was a title that had completely dominated global commercial markets for the past seven days.

[HEROES OF THE DUST: THE BLESSED LAND CHRONICLES — OFFICIAL COMMEMORATIVE EDITION.]

Aki let out another tiny breathless squeal, pressing her hands against her cheeks with her face flushing with pure unadulterated fangirl delight.

It was madness.

...An unprecedented commercial madness.

In the wake of the initial incursion... after the international syndicate’s live helicopter feed had captured Aeliana vaporizing forty bone-gryphons with starlight arrows, followed by the leaked military telemetry showing the champions of Blessed Land holding four entire sectors without yielding an inch of ground, the world had gone completely insane.

To the eight billion people watching the disaster unfold from their living rooms, Kara White wasn’t merely an Awakened lord... she was like a living breathing myth.

A single-armed dark-haired woman who stood upon the snout of an ancient red dragon, laughed in the face of falling rifts, and commanded an army of terrifyingly beautiful women who saved children with blooming flowers and severed monster limbs with single strokes of gold steel.

The global demand for memorabilia had been instantaneous and ravenous.

The Apex Manufactory... the most prestigious high-end arcane collectible firm on the planet, renowned for its museum-grade hand-sculpted porcelain and enchanted resin figures had moved with terrifying speed.

Securing emergency licensing directly from the World Council with a signed digital authorization rushed through by Kara White herself, who had reportedly demanded a twenty-five percent gross royalty on all international sales, they had launched pre-orders four days ago.

The result had broken the global network.

The commercial servers of seven major continental retailers had crashed within forty-five seconds of the launch.

Secondary market pre-orders were already trading on sovereign dark-nets for three hundred times their retail value...

Every teenager, every Awakened mercenary, and every royal scion from Europa to Yamato had thrown their allowances and corporate credit accounts at the screens, desperate to claim a piece of the legend.

’They’re the single best-selling collectible in the history of the modern world...!’ Aki thought, her fingers trembling slightly as she grabbed the pull-tab on the packaging.

Even Aki who possessed private vaults filled with real star-sapphires, ancient tapestries, and bespoke mythril jewelry had spent forty-five frantic minutes hunched over her private phone with three different priority clearance relays open, hitting the refresh button with white-knuckled desperation to ensure her pre-order cleared the queue.

...RIP!

The tamper-evident golden tape parted with a satisfying clean tear.

Aki gently folded the heavy cardboard flaps back, peering into the velvet-lined interior of the master carton.

"I got it...!" she gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. "I actually got the complete royal tier!"

Inside the box, nestled within custom-molded velvet compartments, were eleven distinct, hand-painted collector’s figures, each sculpted in a dynamic breathtaking action pose... Their surfaces were treated with microscopic mana-reactive lacquers that caused their clothing and weapons to subtly shimmer in the sunlight.

Aki threw her dignity completely out the window.

"KYAAA!"

She squealed aloud on the empty terrace, kicking her bare heels against the carpet like a schoolgirl on holiday with her blue hair thrashing around her shoulders.

...So what if she was twenty-five years old?

...So what if she was a daughter of the World King’s own bloodline, paraded at state banquets as a decorative ornament of the crown?

Was a grown woman not allowed to enjoy perfection?! Especially if it was of her beloved?!

With reverent, trembling care, Aki reached into the box, gently lifting the figures out one by one, letting them settle softly upon the plush white linen of her daybed.

There was Aeliana, sculpted mid-hover upon a translucent pillar of purple resin starlight with her greatbow drawn taut and her spun-gold hair whipping back as well as the micro-inscribed runes along her star-silver cuirass glowing with a small luminescence.

There was Tasmin, crouched upon a shattered basalt cornice, her silver daggers spinning on thirty-millimeter tungsten chains and her half-mask cast in shadow while her eyes painted with such terrifying precision that they seemed to track the viewer across the room.

There was Brida, depicted mid-roar, resting her eight-foot Titan’s Cleaver across her broad shoulder, with an actual microscopic yellow desert-poppy sculpted carefully behind her left ear.

There was Morwenna, balanced upon the crest of a curling, translucent blue resin wave with Tidebringer held high and her wild black hair flying with her face frozen in that unmistakable pirate sneer and many more.

There was also the special multi-pack variants...

Talira in her breathtaking crimson-winged humanoid form, arms crossed, looking arrogant and untouchable and beside her, a massive sixteen-inch scale model of Talira in her full Ancient Crimson Dragon form with her ruby scales individually layered and her jaw agape as a swirling, light-up LED draconic fire-plume coiled from her throat.

"They’re so cute..." Aki whimpered, her hands hovering over the dragon’s tiny horns, her heart melting into a warm gooey puddle. "They’re so ridiculously detailed..."

And then... her gaze dropped to the center compartment.

The master centerpiece.

Aki held her breath.

...Her fingers moved with gentleness as she lifted the primary figure from its velvet cradle.

It was Kara White.

The eight-inch sculpt was a triumph of the artificer’s craft.

The figure depicted the single-armed woman standing upon the edge of a shattered vitrified black-glass precipice.

Her long, midnight-blue traveler’s mantle was frozen mid-billow, its empty left sleeve pinned neatly across her chest, fluttering in an invisible gale.

Beneath the deep shadow of her traveler’s cowl, her sharp features were captured with breathtaking lifelike accuracy... the high cheekbones, the half-lidded, confident dark eyes, and that effortless slightly condescending smile playing at the corner of her lips.

In her right hand, held casually at her side with the point angled toward the earth, was a microscopic perfect replica of the Dawn Blade with its runes catching the afternoon sun and reflecting a soft warm amber gleam across her knuckles.

Aki held the figure up to eye level with her breath turning soft... The coastal wind blew through the terrace, rustling the sea-foam silk of her gown, carrying the distant chime of Rhyx City’s maritime bells.

Aki looked at the tiny smiling face of Kara White.

She looked at the calm immovable confidence in those painted eyes... the same strength she had felt radiating from Silas when he had stood before the lords of the world and refused to bend his knee.

An innocent smile touched the princess’s lips.

"Really cool..." Aki murmured softly into the warm breeze.

"...you really are so incredibly cool, Silas."