Chapter 450 --450
Chapter 450: Chapter-450
Unlike the sterile, quiet, and heavily perfumed halls of the palace, the capital city was a chaotic explosion of sound and color. Street vendors shouted their prices, children ran through the narrow alleys chasing stray dogs, and the thick, heavy scent of grilled meats, spiced wine, and woodsmoke hung in the brisk autumn air.Ken and Mahir instantly shifted into predator mode.
Despite wearing loose linen shirts that made them look like local blacksmiths, their posture was rigid, their eyes scanning the rooftops and alleyways for assassins. Whenever a commoner accidentally walked within a three-foot radius of Elara, Ken would emit a low, rumbling growl from the back of his throat, causing the poor citizen to pale and scramble away in sheer terror.
Julian abruptly stopped, spinning around and pointing at the two commanders.
"Stop growling at the citizens!" Julian hissed, keeping his voice down. "You look like two rabid dogs about to bite someone! Relax your shoulders. Slouch a little. Look bored!"
Mahir stared at Julian, his golden eyes narrowing. "If an undisciplined civilian collides with the Regent, it is my duty to neutralize the threat."
"She is not the Regent right now!" Julian whispered frantically, waving his hands. "She is... she is ’El’, my very quiet, slightly awkward cousin from the countryside. And you two are her overbearing brothers. Just... look at the market stalls. Pretend you care about cabbages!"
Ken looked at a nearby wooden cart overflowing with leafy green cabbages. He glared at it as if the vegetable had personally insulted his ancestors.
Elara, meanwhile, was entirely focused on a nearby bread stall. Her eyes darted from the baker’s hands to the line of customers, her mind rapidly processing the transaction times.
"The economic throughput of this sector is highly inefficient," Elara murmured, her voice falling into its familiar, flat cadence. "The baker is losing approximately twelve percent of his potential copper revenue due to a bottleneck in his cooling racks. If I draft a localized spatial ordinance—"
Julian immediately slapped his hand over her mouth.
Elara blinked, her glass-bead eyes looking at him over his fingers.
"What did I just say?" Julian asked, his voice strained. "Simple. Words. Normal. Human. Speak."
He slowly pulled his hand away, watching her intently like a hawk waiting for a mouse to make a wrong move.
Elara paused, running the linguistic constraint through her mind. She looked at the bread stall again, then back at Julian.
"The bread... is slow," Elara said stiffly. "The man is... losing coins. Bad."
Julian stared at her for a long second, his lips twitching as he fought back a sudden urge to laugh at how painful it clearly was for her to speak like a toddler. "Better. It hurts your brain to speak like that, doesn’t it?"
Elara gave a single, rigid nod. "Yes. It feels structurally degrading."
"Too many syllables!" Julian scolded instantly, though a bright, genuine grin had broken out across his face. He grabbed her wrist again—less aggressively this time—and pulled her deeper into the market. "Come on, ’El’. We are going to buy something entirely useless, and you are going to eat it without analyzing its nutritional value."
They stopped in front of a brightly painted cart where an old man was boiling a massive copper pot of hardened sugar, spinning it onto small wooden sticks until it formed fluffy, translucent red clouds.
Julian flipped a silver coin to the vendor, taking two large sticks of the spun sugar. He handed one to Elara.
Elara held the stick up to her face, examining the red, cotton-like substance from three different angles.
"What is the designated purpose of this?" Elara asked, her eyes narrowing slightly. "It possesses no structural integrity. It appears to be colored air."