Chapter 82 82: State Banquet
The following morning, the exact watch the administrative dispatches verified Princess Malenia's metabolic recovery had cleared its crisis, the long-delayed Imperial State Banquet was finally formalized across the grand marble columns of the Golden Temple.
Across the previous months of the calendar, both the Sovereigns of Farum Azula and the Carian Royal Court had received formal state convocations from the ministries of the Golden Dynasty. If the Carian delegation hadn't systematically delayed their highway timeline to execute their diplomatic leverage plays, the four demigod heirs should have cleared the capital gates at an identical microsecond. This administrative offset comprised the exact baseline logic explaining why the inner palace had merely held a localized family banquet when Lucia's vanguard initial dropped anchor within Leyndell.
Consequently, the parameters of this grand gala were engineered to celebrate not merely the formal arrival of the three Carian siblings, but also the rapid, terrifying rise of Lucia—the Ancient Dragon Prince whose personal combat metrics had just violently shattered the capital's expectations across the waters of Lake Leyndell. As a direct byproduct of that status, the current assembly completely out-scoped the dimensions of the two previous family-style dinners; practically every heavy-duty director governing the internal arithmetic of the Golden Dynasty across the Altus Plateau region had crated their retinues into the venue.
First and foremost anchoring the high tables were, naturally, Queen Marika and her King Consort, operating as the supreme hosts of the realm. Following her return from auditing the Eastern Expeditionary Legion at Roderia Town, the Eternal Queen had immediately dispatched a train of high-ranking messengers to clear the thresholds of the three Carian estates, hand-delivering magnificent state gifts and articulating her sovereign concern for their line.
Her hand had allocated to Prince Radahn the identical Crucible Regimen of the Warlord bath formula and rare botanical asset crates she had hand-delivered to Lucia's warehouse, backed by a massive treasury of masterwork vanguard armaments and restricted military strategy scrolls compiled across the Unification Wars. Prince Rykard's libraries received thousands of volumes of raw historical codices and dense sociological research notes meticulously bound by the premier scholars of the capital archives. Princess Ranni's chambers were enriched by hundreds of cedar boxes packed with precious, high-density glintstone compounds and starlight crystal elements—including several rare, ancient treasures clutched strictly within the private vaults of the Golden Royal Lineage.
Parsing the meticulous, absolute perfection of the Queen's material distribution, Lucia's internal engine finalized an absolute certainty: even if his own scales had desisted from lunging into the breach during that lakeside standoff, the Queen's hidden processors would have undeniably deployed a secondary, airtight contingency plan to guarantee the survival of the three Carian siblings—but since his own arbitrage play had already successfully liquidated the crisis, given the terrifying tactical finesse clutched within the Queen's palm, that backup blueprint would remain permanently un-mapped by any intelligence network in the world.
Beyond the divine presence of the Eternal Queen and the Elden Lord, the benches were occupied by more than ten Grand Dukes, over fifty Marquises, and nearly three hundred high-ranking barons and land-grant counts representing the core administrative framework of the Golden Dynasty currently nesting within the capital boundaries. This massive orchestration was engineered both to broadcast the state's absolute respect for the four incoming demigod heirs, and because the upper nobility desperately desired to secure an elite enrollment slot for their own school-age descendants before the gates of the soon-to-be-reopened Royal Private School clicked open.
Across the near-fifty-winter chronology following the foundational dawn of the Golden Dynasty, the doors of the Royal Private School had been authorized to open but a solitary time—specifically during the green, adolescent development cycle of Prince Godwyn. The students who had legally cleared those elite entry gates back then included strictly the first-generation heirs of the realm's founding heroes, alongside the direct descendants of the ancient royal families whose crowns had systematically surrendered to the Erdtree's authority at the terminal conclusion of the War of the Gods. Those children had matured under the direct, un-monitored instruction of the apex Golden Heroes, backed by the personal lectures of the Queen and the First Elden Lord; the absolute majority of that cohort had evolved into the un-yielding structural backbone governing the modern offices of the Golden Dynasty today.
Now that the Royal Private School was on the literal precipice of reopening its gates—with even the most exalted, high-voltage demigod heirs conformed to register within its classes—neither the New Faction bureaucrats nor the Old Party conservatives possessed any intention of permitting their school-age scions to miss a once-in-a-century progression premium. After all, the internal culture of the Golden Dynasty had permanently valued raw physical strength and operational efficiency above decorative titles; regardless of how immense an aristocratic house's ancestral legacy scored, relying strictly on an inherited coat of arms was mathematically insufficient to guarantee long-term survival across the eras. Only the generation-by-generation cultivation of outstanding, competitive descendants could secure the permanent continuation of a family line under the Erdtree's shade.
In the sectors assigned to Caria and the Ancient Dragon factions, both Knight Moongrum and High Priestess Lansseax had cleared their schedules to attend the state tables.
Exactly as Lansseax had hand-delivered across her warnings to Lucia's ear not long past, champions occupying their specific tier of operational capability were permanently monitored by the public eye as living reflections of their respective dynasties' foreign policies. Consequently, although Knight Moongrum and Radagon had literally cleared their leather to execute a near-fatal cloud duel a handful of suns past, both experts maintained a magnificent level of mutual, un-broken professional respect across the floorboards. Their friendly, resonant conversation betrayed not a solitary fraction of the fourteen-winter martial grudge separating the two apex grandmasters of the continent.
Concurrently, after Lucia and Ranni had completed their joints diagnostic audit over Malenia's metabolic readiness as was their daily protocol, their boots cleared the upper streets to approach Triumph Hall and Liurnia Palace to harvest Radahn and Rykard, the six young demigods formatting a single royal column to lunge toward the banquet hall.
Following the lapse of several suns since their lakeside cross of steel, the red-haired prince—having completely mended his structural trauma—harbored zero adolescent resentment toward Lucia for breaking his defensive line. The exact microsecond the outriders dropped anchor, his massive frame cleared his porch to board the private carriage belonging to Valeria Hall, violently pulling Lucia into a corner to launch into an aggressive, un-interrupted tactical debate regarding the specific sword matrices they had deployed during that cataclysmic collision at the basin.
Lucia's internal engine registered a similar, genuine delight at the interaction. Unlike the Carian prince, his modern interface had enabled his consciousness to execute over a dozen high-voltage extraction bouts against Radahn's virtual projection inside the quiet sandboxes of the Memory Battlefield across the past week. His processors had already logged a vastly deeper, algorithmic comprehension of their respective strengths, technical deficits, and kinetic blind spots. This current transit comprised the absolute most optimized window to verify the data face-to-face, enabling his muscle memory to execute a secondary progression leap across his swordsmanship tracks.
The two young warlords hit an immediate, flawless compatibility upon the first cross of data, remaining completely engrossed in a lively, fast-paced martial discussion until the iron wheels of the convoy ground to a halt before the palace steps.
Monitoring their dense mechanical focus, little Malenia simply scooped Shirley's white mass up against her chest silks, giggling as she sprinted ahead across the rugs to play with the handmaids. Princess Ranni, who had initial intended to deploy her own conversational threads to lock Lucia's attention, was left with zero remaining openings; a small sigh escaped her lips as her blue cloak shifted to track Malenia's slipstream alongside Miquella, her eyes maintaining a protective watch over the white fox and the little girl as they laughed and played through the pillars.
Prince Rykard committed the absolute majority of his transit to hovering at his brother's shoulder, his ears tracking the dense stream of sword mechanics passing between Radahn and the Dragon Prince. Occasionally, his jaw would part to pretend his intellect processed the equations, spouting a sequence of un-vouched, highly irregular martial nonsense to assert his presence. He executed a brief strategic separation to cross the marble floor, approaching his sister's flank to query her regarding the girl's metabolic markers. He dropped a handful of curt, rigid phrases of princely comfort with a stern, un-bending mask, before extending his long fingers to playfully tease Shirley, who was currently nested beside the princess's velvet cushions, eating an alchemical pastry with hearty enthusiasm.
A minute later, after Ranni delivered a flat, quiet reminder stating that the silver fox clutched within his fingers comprised strictly Lucia's bound Shadow Beast, Rykard went completely stone-still, his torso stiffening as if hit by a direct lightning miracle from Farum Azula. He slowly turned his skull to evaluate the fierce, dangerous, leather-clad frame of the half-wolf youth, Blaidd, who was maintaining a silent guard behind Ranni's shoulder, before his gaze frantically snapped back to the fox, his fingers continuing to pet the fur while his mouth muttered a rapid, incoherent sequence of protective prayers under his breath.
Lucia caught a sudden surge of low laughter erupting from the rear flank of his carriage; his torso turned to audit the line, tracking the half-wolf boy anchoring his fingers to the wire-wrapped hilt of his greatsword, his fangs bared in an absolute, raw fury as his deep baritone growled across the marble, desperately demanding authorization to drag Rykard out into the courtyard to resolve their differences in a one-on-one extraction bout.
"By the way, Lucia," Radahn spoke, his massive skull tilting curiously as his dark eyes scanned the sprawling layout of the high tables. "Before my saddle cleared the northern highway to enter the capital, the provincial chronicles consistently stated that Prince Godwyn's eldest scion, Godrick, commanded an exceptionally terrifying, world-class personal combat voltage. Why has my vision failed to log his coordinates across the pavilions all day?"
Lucia cast a casual look across the aristocratic clusters, his shoulders shrugging under his mantle. "My own engine shares zero familiarity with that specific operator, big brother. But tracking the standard rules of capital courtcraft, so long as his name remains on the active roster inside the city walls, his ego would mathematically never forfeit a pristine opportunity to flaunt his presence before the outer ministries. His carriage is likely just delaying its anchor watch to guarantee his entrance harvests the maximum percentage of public attention."
Before the syllables had fully cleared his teeth, the voice of the high court herald at the palace gates violently announced across the architecture: "His Imperial Highness, Prince Godrick of the Golden Lineage, cleared for entrance—!!!!!"
Prince Godrick, encased within an extraordinarily luxurious, gold-embroidered silk tuxedo backed by a magnificent, jewel-encrusted ceremonial sword tucked tightly against his satin waist-belt, strode through the grand archway like a victorious general returning from a multi-year border crusade.
He initial directed his retinue of personal house-servants toward the absolute front of the banquet floor, executing a sequence of flawless, highly stylized bows before the thrones of Marika and Radagon in strict order of precedence, before marching to deliver duplicate courtly greetings to Knight Moongrum, Commander Ordovis, and High Priestess Lansseax. Following the termination of his bureaucratic protocols, he marched straight toward his assigned high bench, dropping his mass onto the cushions without permitting his eyes to drop a single microsecond of attention toward the sector where the young demigods had gathered.
Verifying the choreography, Lucia offered a faint, dry smirk, his silver eyes shifting to audit Radahn's face. "See the ledger? My calculus hit the absolute center of the target, did it not?"
Radahn's heavy brow furrowed into a sharp, irritated knot as he monitored the prince's gold-trimmed silks. "Does his house permanently project that tier of un-blinking arrogance across the court?"
"Highly probable," Lucia thought for a microsecond, his tone turning dead-serious as he delivered the explanation. "After all... the boy is still exceptionally young."
Hearing the phrase, Radahn cast a highly suspicious, squinting look across the gap to evaluate Godrick—who chronologically out-aged his own red-haired frame by a full two winters—before snapping his vision back to check Lucia, whose physical morphology scored roughly identical to his own development. He calculated within his own processors that the Dragon Prince was simply taking an illegal advantage of his seniority and age accumulated during his multi-millennial stasis cycle inside the dragon egg.
But what his Carian intellect lacked was the simple data file stating that Lucia's vocabulary was emerging from the absolute, un-varnished basements of his heart.
As the direct, legitimate scion born to the Golden Prince Godwyn, Godrick comprised an impeccable, absolute demigod across every manual of imperial law. Distinct from the shattered, pathetic predicament awaiting his name across the dark watches of the future Shattering War—where his broken frame would be systematically trampled into the dirt by every apex warlord on the continent—the current version of Godrick nesting within the pre-Shattering capital was universally recognized by the outer ministries as a brilliant, young prodigy who commanded an unparalleled genetic talent.
The arithmetic governing his arrogance was exceptionally entry-level. In the final accounting, Godrick had inherited the direct, un-diluted genetic data of First King Godfrey and Eternal Queen Marika. In the sector of pure sovereign bloodline purity, deleting Lucia—whose ancestral authors were the literal Dragon King and Dragon God of Farum Azula—even the three incoming siblings of the Carian House scored inferior to his lineage. After all, the absolute Law that administered every square mile of the modern cosmos was the Gold of the Erdtree, not the fading starlight of the Full Moon.
At this specific chronological stage of the calendar, Godrick's ego had not yet collided with the harsh, bone-crushing realities of society that would later ruin his mediocre lineage brother, Godefroy; his center had not lost its wild, desperate ambition to inherit and replicate the golden glory of his father's crusades. In addition, his muscle memory had been continuously trained under the direction of the premier master martial artists anchoring the Rodel guard, his metabolism nurtured by the royal house with an infinite volume of high-purity alchemical resources. Through sheer, non-stop physical hard work, his system had successfully compiled a combat voltage that could easily flatten any ordinary peer across the upper rings.
Perhaps within the private chambers of his analytical engine, Lucia's physical strength was still cataloged as an inferior metric far below his own standard—exactly like the data logged during the court dinner a few moons past, where the dragon youth had barely managed to preserve his footing during their brief cross of auras by relying strictly on his primal draconic presence. Under those operational parameters, what manner of powerful champion could this Radahn boy possibly be if his lines had been broken by a three-moon-old hatchling dragon?
"A collection of impure, un-vouched imposters," Godrick muttered to his wine chalice, sitting at a distant high bench twice removed from the demigods' sector, drinking in isolated splendor as his cold, venomous gaze tracked their laughter, his heart filled with a profound, systemic disdain. "My processors genuinely fail to compute what manner of logic drives Miquella and Malenia to continuously compromise their royal titles, hanging out with that specific tier of outland garbage!"
"Big brother, monitor the asset class my outriders have cleared for your bench!"
Just as his internal irritation was hitting a peak, a familiar, resonant voice suddenly cut through his perimeter from the left flank.
He lifted his eyes with an impatient, sharp jerk, tracking his half-brother, Godefroy, who was currently clearing the tables. Beside Godefroy's plate stood another handsome, broad-shouldered young aristocrat. Following a brief microsecond of structural confusion, Godrick's blue pupils violently dilated with an intense light; he cleared his seat to aggressively lock his gauntlets around the young man's hand, his voice exploding with excitement. "Carlyle! At what microsecond did your outriders clear the northern gates? What variable prompted your vanguard to desist from clearing my palace threshold the moment your boots touched the stone?"
Godefroy let out a hearty laugh, his fist delivering a playful, solid punch into the newcomer's shoulder armor. "See the ledger? My lips explicitly told your saddle—even though our names have logged a multi-winter separation across different theaters of war, my vision possesses the tracking to isolate your true face even if your tongue remains completely bankrupt of syntax!"
Carlyle offered a smooth, disciplined smile, stepping through the space to execute a firm, brotherly embrace with Godrick, before hooking his arm securely through the prince's silk elbow. "My father's vanguard cleared the capital highway from the absolute deep of the North late last night, brother. The absolute initial entity my consciousness resolved to locate across these thoroughfares was your own shield."
"The Duke Duolis has completed his northern recall?!" Godrick's expression brightened exponentially, his ego expanding. "Has his lordship cleared the security checks to attend today's state tables?"
"Monitor that specific coordinate; run the audit," Carlyle murmured, his chin tilting toward the high daises lining the far wall, where a massive, scarred middle-aged aristocrat—whose features shared a seven-tenths structural symmetry with Radagon's profile, yet carried a vastly more imposing, dignified, and battlefield-hardened aura—was currently standing directly at the King Consort's elbow, the two red-haired lords holding silver wine glasses as they engaged in a low, dense political discussion.
"Superb," Godrick exulted, his chest plates rising—but a millisecond later, Carlyle leaned his skull closer to his ear, his lips whispering a rapid, highly restricted sequence of data directly into the prince's auditory channel.
"Confirm the veracity of that metric?"
Godrick's expression suffered a violent, sharp distortion as his ears parsed the whisper. "The asset class harvested from the northern frost wastes... it mathematically out-registers the performance of those weak, pathetic, inbred lines guarding the Limgrave borders, correct?"
"An absolute axiom," Carlyle laughed heartily, his chalice lifting to toast the prince's visor. "Once our trainers finish enforcing the baseline alignment protocols across its nervous system... the product will undeniably satisfy every operational parameter clutched within your hand, big brother."
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