Chapter 79 79: Honesty
Throughout the remainder of the sun's transit across the plateau, Lucia's reception hall processed a secondary, massive influx of imperial visitors.
Less than half a watch after Viscount Shabriri's carriage had cleared the outer arches, a high-ranking Female Official representing the personal household of Queen Marika dropped anchor before the gates of Valeria Hall. After articulating a flawless, highly stylized courtly summary of the Queen's profound affirmation and absolute encouragement regarding Lucia's tactical actions at the lakeside pavilion yesterday, the official oversaw the unloading of an immense treasury of rare, pristine alchemical assets. The shipment centered around an ancient, restricted medicinal bath formula left behind by the vanguard hands of First Elden Lord Godfrey, backed by a colossal mountain of rare, high-purity raw botanical ingredients.
Relying on the explanations hand-delivered by the Female Official, so long as an operator consistently conformed their training cycles to the parameters written across this specific blueprint, even a demigod who already possessed an exceptional baseline genetic talent would harvest a massive premium across their physical defense and skeletal metrics. The Eternal Queen had issued an explicit, private rider commanding that he integrate the regimen into his schedule without delay, adding the assurance that a secondary column of outriders would transport a duplicate supply of the herbs the exact watch his treasury recorded a deficit.
In absolute, structural contrast to Radagon—who had consistently evaluated Lucia as a highly irregular, volatile obstacle blocking the linear progression of his Golden Order—Queen Marika had openly, flawlessly broadcast her sovereign goodwill toward his position from the absolute opening of the calendar. Lucia smoothly accepted this secondary deployment of divine charity into his ledger, requesting that the Female Official transport his formal expression of gratitude back to the Queen's private apartments.
Before the envoy cleared the threshold, Lucia executed a casual, calculated movement, letting the heavy gold weight of the Erdtree Signet Token Radagon had bestowed clear the silks of his gown to catch the light. The Female Official monitored the geometric seals etched into the gold; her expression remained perfectly stable, a polite, knowing smile breaking across her features as she executed her departure curtsy. Every operator standing within the upper ring of the capital bureaucracy was sufficiently intelligent to compute the raw political calculus of the board: given the absolute geometric friction of their respective factions, Lucia's scale could never truly tilt to align with Radagon's interest. This small, deliberate display of the gold was engineered strictly to project an un-varnished image of Sovereign Honesty to the Queen's network—proving he harbored zero intent to construct a hidden conspiracy behind her back.
However, precisely because it comprised a manufactured performance of "showing" honesty, Lucia's internal engine maintained an extraordinary, hyper-paranoid vigilance against the Queen—a divinity whose deepest computational goals remained entirely un-mapped by his meta-knowledge. Consequently, when Sovereign Sister Lansseax cleared his gates an hour down the watch to execute a private inspection, he immediately dragged her white robes down into the subterranean vaults, directing her senses to run a diagnostic sweep over every runic formula and botanical asset the Queen's servants had crated into his warehouse.
"My engine suggests that even if Her Majesty Marika genuinely harbored a calculated desire to liquidate your life ledger, her intellect would be legally conformed to isolate a vastly more sophisticated vector," Lansseax murmured, a look of profound, affectionate helplessness mapping her human features as she was dragged through the rows of cedar crates to audit the gifts. "Does your consciousness truly calculate she would attempt to poison the Prince of Farum Azula through an official state delivery?"
"Heh... the old chronicles dictate a clean axiom, sister: while your soul should lack the malice to engineer the harm of an external house, your shield must never exist without the absolute parameters to guard against their blades!" Lucia countered, his features showing zero remorse for his paranoia. "Moreover... let us parse the data of yesterday's watches. Her Majesty explicitly commanded your white robes to clear the capital boundaries for Roderia, leaving my juvenile scales completely isolated against Radagon's entire bureaucratic vanguard. Did that configuration not manifest as an absolute, pre-planned setup to test my limits?"
Lansseax listened to his un-courtly rhetoric regarding the mechanics of harm and structural preservation. Following a briefwatch of internal confusion, her intellect processed the underlying logic of his vocabulary, a soft sigh escaping her lips. "My processors lack the data stating where your mind harvested so many strange, wonderful turns of phrase... yet the arithmetic carries an undeniable weight."
Tracking the smug, satisfied smirk breaking across Lucia's face, she dropped a heavy, grounding palm onto his shoulder plate. "My office has already executed a high-vantage audit with Queen Marika regarding the exact boundaries of your deployment inside Leyndell. For the immediate watch, her consciousness still registers Farum Azula as an indispensable, non-negotiable ally of the crown—a position driven primarily by the rapidly escalating, systemic friction dividing her throne from the ministries of His Majesty Radagon."
"According to her own lips, this lakeside crisis functioned simultaneously as an administrative mechanism to use your mass to lock Caria's three exceptionally talented demigods inside the capital academies, and as an active, un-varnished stress test targeting your personal metrics."
Lucia's posture went instantly rigid, his silver eyes widening. "Her? Executing a stress test targeting my system?"
The primitive, baseline reaction of his modern ego was to bark: I am not a product of her womb; by what manual of authority is her divinity meddling across my progression tree to execute a test?
To be entirely objective, the three incoming siblings of Caria shared zero genetic markers with her own line, yet her executive office had demonstrated a fanatical, bizarre enthusiasm to drag their saddles to Leyndell to enforce a compulsory state curriculum.
However... as his processors systematically replayed the Queen's calculated maneuvers since his egg had cracked within the capital walls, and as his mind stretched forward to track the apocalyptic future where this exact woman would violently smash the Elden Ring, rebel against the supreme decree of the Greater Will, and eventually be pierced through the ribs by a spear that mirrored Destined Death to hang suspended across the Stone Stage... his consciousness suddenly, inexplicably validated this awkward explanation to a certain extent.
He hesitated for a long watch, his silver eyelashes dropping as he met Lansseax's gaze. "Sister Lansseax... did her vocabulary ever disclose the underlying purpose behind this desperate cultivation of our demigod generation? And crucially... does the intellect of the Sky Temple genuinely validate her statements?"
"My own position?" Lansseax pondered the inquiry, her eyes turning distant as she tracked the stone vaults. "Do your processors preserve the memory of the watch my lips spoke to your saddle above the Great Lift of Dectus? My words stated that my soul hoped your scales would mature into the New King capable of leading the Ancient Dragon Dynasty into the next epoch."
"Naturally. The data is secure within my memory."
"My office wove that exact phrase into our discussions with Queen Marika before your carriage was initial dispatched to the capital highway. During our last chamber meeting inside Leyndell, her lips returned to that identical coordinate—she stated that what her own throne required were countless world-class Heroes capable of leading this entire era across the coming precipice."
Lucia's breath caught in his throat.
"Evaluating her strictly through the lens of personal charisma, Queen Marika undeniably commands the absolute capacity to harvest the un-fused trust, lifelong loyalty, and even the suicidal deaths of millions of exceptional champions. That gravity does not emerge from the symmetry of her features or the cataclysmic voltage of her power; it flows directly from a cosmic vision that entirely transcends nationality, race, and ancestral faith—and a magnificent, abyssal heart that possesses the structural width to embrace every living thing under the sun."
The High Priestess of the Sky Temple let out a soft, emotionally weighted sigh. "When His Majesty Radagon transformed our ancient civilizational hatred into an aristocratic alliance with the Carian Dynasty within Liurnia... though he operated merely as a red-haired hero of the lines back then, my engine once calculated he possessed the same magnanimity as the Queen. But every operational file logged across the subsequent winters has proved that his soul remains mathematically distant from the standard she sets."
Lucia turned the ledger over in his thoughts before prompting her flank. "So... Sister Lansseax's statement implies your house validates her words?"
Unexpectedly, the High Priestess shook her head, her white robes shifting as she delivered a slow negative. "My heart is entirely willing to validate her words, Lucia—just as Fortissax is willing to throw his entire life into the dirt to validate Prince Godwyn's honor. But that parameter does not imply my office can believe her without an absolute, structural reservation."
Lucia's processors mapped a minor confusion, but Lansseax pushed the line forward before he could interrupt. "If High Priest Gransax were still drawing breath within our spires today, my person might have genuinely followed Fortissax's example, transmuting my identity into her closest companion without a single defensive wall between our minds. But the High Priest's ledger was closed across the fields of ash."
"For the past ten winters, every syllable clearing my teeth and every executive decision generated by my palm has been entered into the continental logs as the absolute choice of Farum Azula—the sovereign interest of the Ancient Dragon race." A common mortal girl could easily throw her un-vouched trust into another champion's hand; the High Priestess of the Sky Temple lacked that luxury.
She locked her clear, ancient gaze squarely into Lucia's pupils, her hand lifting to drop its weight onto his shoulder plate. "Lucia... the exact microsecond your shoulders assume the structural weight of an entire empire's rise and fall, your system loses the legal right to judge right and wrong based on your personal likes, dislikes, or emotional comfort. It may sound like a suffocating, unpleasant iron shackle across your freedom... but that comprises the absolute, non-negotiable mission of a King."
"Across the past ten winters, my own hands have temporarily managed your mission. Now that your scales have cleared their adolescent cycles—" Her fingers suddenly reached out to gently, playfully pinch the skin of his cheek, before dropping back to rest against his gold-threaded mantle. "—from this watch forward, your own intellect must take absolute, un-vouched responsibility for these calculations. Do your processors comprehend the layout?"
"My engine registers the directive. It is simply that your fingers pinched with such a high kinetic payload, Sister Lansseax, that my memory channels almost experienced a total wipe," Lucia answered, a look of mock, utter despair mapping his face as he rubbed his jaw.
"Oh?" Lansseax's eyes narrowed into two beautiful, dangerous slits as a soft laugh escaped her teeth. "It appears your vaunted Dragon King's Body still lacks the defensive metrics to absorb a low-voltage execution of my Claw of Ruin. Your system preserves a massive roster of training hours to clear before the winter!"
"."
"Very well, the theatricals are concluded," she said, her head shaking as her smile smoothed back into a professional calm. "The un-varnished answer my office hand-delivers to your prompt is this: Banish the absolute belief. Or, at the absolute minimum threshold, refuse to validate her ledger completely without independent verification."
"It tracks exactly with the paradox your mouth cited at the opening of the watch—if her administration were genuinely conformed to an absolute, pristine honesty, what logical variable prompted her office to keep your shield blind before our vanguards cleared the highway?"
"My own engine tracks along that identical coordinate," Lucia murmured thoughtfully, his silver eyelashes lifting as his focus sank into the stone patterns of the vault. "In any event... our line must maintain an increasingly cautious, double-tiered defensive perimeter."
He clutched a massive library of strategic considerations that his lips could never disclose to Lansseax's ear. Evaluating the macro-historical data from the future timeline behind the screen, the Eternal Queen did indeed commit an immense, non-stop percentage of her processing power to cultivating the apex metrics of the next generation of demigods during this specific pre-Shattering epoch; otherwise, the explosive flourishing of so many terrifying, world-class champions across the active lists of the Shattering War would have been mathematically impossible.
However... zero operators drawing breath under the sun could answer the ultimate, terrifying riddle: was her true, underlying purpose genuinely directed toward forging heroes capable of leading the era across the precipice... or was she systematically nurturing a cohort of high-voltage pawns engineered strictly to help her hammer shatter the constraints of the Greater Will?
After all, Godwyn—the most flawless, pristine, and universally loved "Golden" champion birthed of her own womb—would have his life ledger closed so mysteriously across the dark watches of the Night of the Black Knives, and the seemingly glorious, majestic Queen Marika would leave behind an permanent, bone-chilling proverb echoing within the stone arches of the outer churches—
"Demigods, my lovely children."
"Your frames possess the metrics to become anything your will desires—your steel can become a King, or your divinity can become a God."
"But if your line fails to achieve a sovereign state of being, your name will be systematically abandoned."
"And, they became sacrifices."
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