Chapter 720: Temporarily In Blessed Land [Bonus - ]

Chapter 720: Temporarily In Blessed Land [Bonus Chapter]

"Haah... It’s nice to be back."

Gone was the sharp metallic bite of the lower district’s coal fires, the greasy soot of the tram tracks, the sulfur that drifted constantly from the Brassbound Guild’s flues.

Here, five stories above the courtyard of Blessed Land, the draft through the stone archways smelled how it always was.

The silence of the Keep was a bit too much.

’You’d expect Talira or the others to be making at least a bit of a ruckus...’

Kara pushed back a stray lock of ink-black hair with her lone right hand and crossed to the tall arched window overlooking the ground

The iron latch opened with a dull well-oiled click, and she swung the casements wide.

The breeze came in, caught her pinned left sleeve and rustled the midnight-blue cloth against her three-piece suit, while the silver-leaf crest on her lapel flashed in the morning light.

"It works," she murmured, in a smooth quiet voice full of satisfaction.

Behind her, nothing on the office wall marked the place where she’d arrived.

...That was the whole point.

The crossing had been instant and clean, with no turbulence at all. There was no nausea, no disorientation and not even one ripple of dimensional backlash.

The secrecy was absolute... Even if the World Council’s intelligence division somehow found the executive tower, traced the corporate filings and stationed three full regiments of magistrate-guards outside that mahogany wall, they would never set foot in Blessed Land.

If the greatest runemaster on Earth couldn’t decipher Rowenna’s recursive runes, nobody in the Sovereign Realm had a prayer.

Unless Silas personally opened his core to receive a guest, that gate was just wood, and any forced breach would collapse the conduit.

’Nobody’s getting in here,’ Silas thought. ’Not the Council, not their spies, not even Number Five when she gets curious.’

He smiled.

’Especially not Number Five.’

Kara leaned her right hip against the stone sill and looked down at the inner courtyard.

Between the inner bailey and the curtain walls sprawled Eluned’s private gardens... On the lower terrace, beside a grove of flowering plum trees, a patch of freshly cleared dark loam lay open to the sun.

A slender graceful figure knelt in the middle of the damp earth.

Long green-silver hair spilled over her bare shoulders and down the back of a simple white linen sundress, its hem hitched up and tied at her knees to keep it out of the soil.

Her short pointed ears were angled down and twitching with peaceful focus.

Dirt dusted her bare arms to the elbow and her hands were buried in the ground as she was guiding the root-threads of a young sapling into the earth while murmuring soft encouragement that made the pale green leaves shiver.

...Eluned.

The Former Goddess of the World Tree stopped mid-motion as her ears flicked back.

"...Huh? Back so soon...?"

Slowly she raised her head, her luminous emerald eyes climbing the ace of the Keep until they landed squarely on the open fifth-floor window.

When she spotted the tall dark-haired figure in the tailored blue suit, her whole face lit up.

A radiant breathtaking smile broke over her lips and brightened the courtyard like a second dawn as she yanked her hands out of the dirt, wiped her palms quickly on the grass, and scrambled to her feet.

Kara’s lips curved.

’Blink.’

There was no sound of displaced air... In less than a heartbeat Kara vanished from the stone ledge and reappeared on the damp moss of the lower terrace, three paces from the flowerbed.

"Hubby!"

He didn’t even have time to draw breath and answer through Kara’s lips.

A whirlwind of white linen, green hair and fresh floral perfume slammed into his chest.

Oomph!

Eluned’s slender arms locked around his neck with startling effortless divine strength and she hoisted him clean off the turf, swinging him in a wide circle as if his frame weighed no more than a bundle of straw.

"Hehehehe~ Welcome back~"

Her laugh was a bright musical chime that set the nearby rosebuds trembling, her cheek pressed against his jaw with her hair tickling his nose.

A giant sweatdrop formed on the back of Kara’s head.

Silas dangled with his boots a few inches off the moss with his lone right hand patting her shoulder awkwardly while his empty left sleeve flapped against her back.

"Elu, hey," he wheezed, in Kara’s smooth feminine voice. "Easy... Put me down before you split the seam on the shoulder. This suit is tailored for official business in the capital."

"But I missed you!"

"It’s just been a bit."

"About a day and nineteen minutes." Eluned giggled, sounding unrepentant. "Or something like that."

"You counted?"

"I count everything about you." She eased him down until his leather soles touched the grass, then stepped back half a pace with her hands resting lightly on his upper arms and her green eyes dancing with mischief, and looked him up and down.

She took in the midnight-blue tailoring, the aristocratic lapels, the pristine silver-leaf crest.

"Soo~ what did you bring back for me? Or have you not actually come back yet, Lord Vespera?"

Her eyebrow wiggled on Lord Vespera but Silas decided to ignore it.

Kara’s whole posture suggested a woman with a perfectly clear conscience, and he committed to it.

"I was testing something," Kara said, smoothing the crumpled fabric of her vest with her one hand. "Rowenna and I finally finished tuning the Receiver... I set an anchor point in an office I just acquired in the Second Ring of Central City, and I wanted to make sure the link held across all that distance... It worked without a hitch."

Eluned’s eyes went round and sparkling.

She clasped her hands under her chin and bounced on her bare heels like a girl a fraction of her age as Silas fought hard not to smile at it.

"It really worked? The transit link is open? That means you don’t have to spend anytime riding the wind currents just to come home and better still..." Her voice rose with delight. "Now you can take me on dates in the city whenever you want!"

Silas let out a dry chuckle through Kara’s lips.

"I suppose I can. Once the trade disputes settle and the new foundries are up, I’ll sneak you through the Receiver... We’ll check out the market pavilions on the upper terrace."

"You promised!" She pointed a dirt-smudged finger at his nose. "I’m holding you to that, husband... You owe me an entire afternoon of pastries and sweet wine for leaving me alone with the saplings."

"I promised," he smiled. "I won’t forget."

Eluned turned toward a low stone bench under an arbor, where a wide wicker basket lined with broad damp dock leaves sat in the shade.

Inside, nestled in fresh moss, were several plump exotic fruits from the inner orchards with dew still glistening on their skins, and in the center, three heavy perfectly round golden apples radiating a faint warm aura of vitality.

She lifted it with both hands and held it out to him.

"Here. Take these with you..." Her eyes had gone soft with real tender care. "The trees on the northern terrace loved the mana springs I made yesterday and the fruit is packed with restorative sap... If you’re going to run around Central City arguing with stubborn merchants, you’ll need the nourishment."

Kara took the woven handle in his right hand, and the golden apples settled against his hip, humming faintly as though they were pleased with themselves.

Eluned reached out and patted the wool on his shoulder.

Her touch was warm and patient, with the deep reassurance only an ancient goddess could manage.

"You’re doing a good job out there, Silas... Just don’t push your core too hard and if the Council heads give you trouble, you can always bring them here and let my roots handle them."

"The roots would enjoy that..."

"The roots would enjoy that a lot." She smiled sweetly. "They don’t get many visitors."

"Did you eat breakfast?" Eluned asked suddenly, narrowing her eyes.

"Aeli made a bit of breakfast."

"... Hubby~ Eat more, it’s nearly afternoon~"

"...I’ll eat the apples and the rest of the fruits you grew."

"The trees asked about you, by the way," she said, patting his arm. "They said you looked tired the last time."

’The trees ask about me? What a weird feeling...’

"Thanks, Elu." Kara gave her a soft grateful smile. "I should head back before Solenne has a panic attack in the office... I left her standing by the desk."

"Go on, then." Eluned waved cheerfully. "And eat those apples before anyone else touches them!"

Kara gave her a last nod and stepped back onto the stone pavers of the terrace.

’That hug could crack a regular man’s ribs,’ Silas thought. ’One day I’m going to hug back at the same strength, and then we’ll both be in trouble.’

Silas closed his eyes for a moment and reached toward the Receiver’s frequency.

An emerald-and-silver resonance flickered around the soles of his boots, and without a single gust of wind Kara dissolved into the morning air and vanished back across the threshold toward the Sovereign Realm.

The garden fell into a gentle silence.

The breeze rustled the leaves of the new sapling and carried the sweet scent of plum blossoms across the empty place and Eluned stood alone on the path.

The bright bubbly smile slowly faded, softening into a simple one.

The playful sparkle left her luminous green eyes and they narrowed with a deep focus as she looked at the patch of grass where he’d stood.

She hadn’t said one word about it while he was here.

’Even after he bathed,’ she thought, with a quiet sigh, and walked back to the open trench of dark soil. ’He really thinks water and soap can wash away what happened between them.’

She could smell it.

To mortal senses Silas smelled of clean laundry and cool morning wind and the herbal soap from the Celestial Reach Hote but to the Former Goddess of the World Tree, whose divinity was bound to the sap of life and the roots of the world and the primal circulation of living essence, the truth was as vivid as ink spilled on fresh linen.

Under the bath soap, Silas carried an unmistakable lingering musk.

The heated sweat-slicked skin of a woman who’d spent her life fighting gales on an open quarterdeck and his spiritual foundation had shifted too.

’Heh, so that bastard Pirate managed it...?’

When two beings of great cultivation lay together, their inner pathways opened and traded vital essence like tides crashing against a cliff.

’In essence, I think they called it Dual cultivation...’

Though none of them had the technique but it seemed like Silas grew stronger when he drank their juices.

"Such a perv-erted technique~"

Silas’s Gold Core was humming in a rolling feeling that belonged to the sea, and woven deep into his mana channels was the fierce unyielding soul-signature of Morwenna.

Along with it came the residue of raw intimacy.

’So they’ve finally did it, huh?’ Eluned mused, kneeling in the cool loam.

She let her fingers trail through the soil and felt the steady heartbeat of the earth under her palms.

That ridiculous swaggering pirate had spent centuries strutting across the decks of her flagship, barking at deckhands and swinging her curved cutlass and glaring at the world with stormy gray eyes, all while guarding the secret that she was completely untouched.

She’d played the dangerous worldly pirate queen with the clumsy terrified heart of a maiden who’d never let a man within arm’s reach of her bed...

A genuine twinge of melancholy stirred in Eluned’s chest.

’A pity,’ she sighed, tilting her head back to watch a white cloud drift over the Keep’s battlements. ’I can’t tease her about being an ancient virgin anymore... I had at least a dozen brilliant jokes saved for the next time she came but now I have to retire them all.’

Then she paused.

The melancholy vanished in a heartbeat as a slow triumphant warmth spread through every fiber of her divine being, and a small supremely smug smirk tugged at the corners of her mouth.

’No matter,’ she thought with her emerald eyes gleaming. ’Let the pirate have her little night of romance... Let her enjoy her bruised sheets and her sore thighs since I have something infinitely better.’

She brought both dirt-dusted hands up and rested them flat against her lower abdomen, right on the white linen of her dress.