Chapter 623: The Peace as Outcome
Mikhailis peeled his cheek from the table with a faint, tacky pop. The surface still thrummed with residual mana, warm enough to fog the edge of his vision. He blinked hard. First came blurred light—soft blues, mossy greens—then the outlines of glass tanks, copper coils, and that ever-present tangle of hummingbird-thin conduit that wove through every ceiling beam like a spiderweb of living veins.
The lab smelled of hot crystal and dried thyme. Someone—probably himself—had left a herb sachet under a cooling vent "for ambience." Now it perfumed the whole chamber with sleepy comfort. He inhaled once, slowly, feeling the dust of realization gather behind his eyes.
A second later the room’s central holoscreen brightened, bright white digits hovering in the half-dark.
01:03 AM.
Rodion’s voice slid into being, crisp and polite as always.
<Current time: 01:03 AM. You’ve been unconscious for approximately three hours and thirteen minutes. Not that I’m judging.>
Mikhailis massaged the bridge of his nose. "Elowen’s going to kill me," he muttered, and immediately pictured his wife’s deceptively calm smile—one she wore right before breaking a general’s morale with three sentences. He looked instinctively toward the ceiling, as though he might see through oak planks to the royal chamber above.
The lab monitors flickered, each screen halfway between night-mode indigo and neon lime. On one panel a wireframe of the Verdant Canopy glowed, leyline currents pulsing like slow lightning beneath stylised roots. Another showed a swarm of dots—chimera-ant scouts—moving in tidy spirals along the kingdom’s northern border. Statistical overlays claimed 80 percent territory mapping complete. A drowsy sense of pride tugged at him.
He reached out, brushing fingertips across a rotating model of dungeon instability. The projection rippled under his touch, recalculating. Numbers jumped; threat markers fell from crimson to amber. "Huh... not bad for a nap-hardened genius."
He let out a shaky laugh, half relief, half disbelief that Rodion hadn’t triggered the root-shaker alarm while he slept.
Should’ve fallen asleep in the lab more often, he mused, rolling his shoulders until vertebrae crackled in protest.
That was when a sliver of silver caught his peripheral vision.