Chapter 1077 - 881: Seizing the Treasure

Duke withdrew his gaze and slowly finished the wine in his glass.

He didn’t stay long at the banquet; he left with the crowd when the dinner was winding down and disappeared into the night of Crown City once more.

The next morning, the sky over Crown City was cloudless. Sunlight poured down from the end of the plains in the east, bathing the entire Royal Palace Plaza in a flowing golden hue.

The plaza, located directly in front of the Royal Palace, was more expansive and formal than the banquet hall where last night’s feast was held. The ground was paved with large white marble tiles, with the gaps between each tile inlaid with the lion emblem of the Osseron Royal Family in gold leaf.

In the center of the plaza stood an ancient hero statue, its contours long blurred by the erosion of time. Beneath the statue was a square stone platform elevated a few steps above the ground. The platform was covered in deep blue velvet, upon which three transparent treasure boxes carved from whole crystal were placed side by side.

At this moment, the plaza was circled by ceremonial guards holding long spears. Today, the guards were uniformly dressed in brand new blue uniforms edged with gold, and the spear’s tips glinted under the sunlight.

In the inner circle were dozens of nobles and their families dressed in their finest, including Marquis Cavendish, Earl Ashton, and Viscount Blackwood, who painfully donated treasures the previous night.

A few young men stood at the back of the line, faces showing signs of fatigue from lack of sleep, evidently having stayed up late drinking together after the banquet dispersed.

The King stood at the forefront of the high platform. He appeared in better spirits today than he had the previous night, with more brightness in his clouded old eyes, as he turned to his side to softly confirm the details of the ceremony process with the Minister of Internal Affairs.

The Minister of Internal Affairs held a roll of parchment in his hands, densely filled with each step from the timing of the music to the handover gestures, with the recitation of the eulogy alone requiring nearly an hour.

Audric stood to one side of the high platform, his dark red robe with golden edges fluttering slightly in the morning breeze. His pale golden slit pupils gleamed with a cold light in the sun as he listened impatiently to the Minister’s endless confirmation of the process, occasionally tapping his crossed arms with his fingers.

For him, the only significance of this ceremony lay in the treasures themselves; all those elaborate formalities were just the Osseron Royal Family’s way of extravagantly maintaining their last vestige of dignity.

The Minister finally closed the parchment and gestured toward the direction of the band.

The court orchestra began playing a solemn and lengthy ceremonial march, the deep resonance of the brass instruments reverberating over the plaza.

The King cleared his throat and began to read the eulogy, supposedly polished repeatedly by the royal scribes over three generations, talking about the ancient friendship between the Osseron Kingdom and the Wizard Plane, praising the Bloodgold Family’s illustrious reputation on the Golden Continent, and declaring that today’s handover ceremony "will surely become an immortal monument in the history of friendship between two great civilizations."

Just as everyone’s attention was focused on the king delivering the speech, a slight breeze passed over from behind the columns on the southern side of the plaza.

The wind was so gentle that it barely moved the flags atop the guards’ spears, nor did it disturb any elaborately styled hair of the nobles.

It silently skimmed over the marble edge of the plaza, bypassing a few columns, gliding across the shiny greaves of the ceremonial guards, and in that unnoticed moment, swept across the high platform where the treasures were displayed.

Audric’s tapping fingers suddenly paused; his Golden Dragon Bloodline endowed him with perception far beyond the ordinary.

The Dragon Race possessed an innate, genetically encoded vigilance towards any intruders daring to approach their territory.

This breeze carried faint traces of a presence, even if it leaked only the slightest possible hint, to him, it was like a signal flare exploding in the night.

To carry away the three treasures, Duke had to expose a trace of his presence, which Audric keenly sensed.

Audric’s pale golden slit pupils contracted sharply, and his right hand made a swift motion across the air in front of him.

A dark golden dragon-shaped phantom shot up from within him, with the dragon’s wings unfolding powerfully in the air, while the intangible Dragon Might surged outward as though it had a substantial form.

All the nobles on the plaza felt their eardrums resonate with a roar, their chests as if struck by an invisible heavy hammer, and several interior officials closest to him fell to the ground on the spot.

Simultaneously, a semi-transparent dark gold barrier extended outward from the edges of the dragon-shaped phantom’s wings, covering the entire plaza and high platform like an overturned giant bowl.

The dark golden light of the barrier flowed unpredictably under the sunlight, with each beam as sharp as a blade, the aftershock of Dragon Might enough to knock common folk back with merely a touch.

The three crystal treasure boxes on the high platform had already vanished.

The King’s eulogy came to an abrupt halt, the parchment in the Minister of Internal Affairs’ hand slipping to the stone slabs. Several nobles hadn’t yet grasped what occurred, still bewilderedly looking around.

After a few breaths, the dark golden barrier’s light revolving above the plaza twisted slightly in front of the high platform, and Duke’s figure materialized in everyone’s sight as if appearing from nowhere.

Today he was wearing a deep gray traveler’s robe, its hem gently ruffled by the morning breeze. A faint green halo had just faded from his left wrist, and his right hand hung casually at his side, fingertips still holding traces of wind elemental magic not yet fully dissipated.