Chương 445: The Art of Being Insufferable

Stepping through the Spire gate into Sector M-09, I had a single operational directive: act like the most entitled, unhinged, and unbearable Young Master the High Courts had ever spawned. The world beneath us — a rigid, hyper-hierarchical planet governed by a slave-syndicate known as the Steel-Scepter Dominion — was built entirely on groveling obedience. Here, societal status was everything. The lower classes bowed to the merchants, the merchants bowed to the warlords, and the warlords bowed to the "Gods".

Which meant when I stepped off the Spire platform dressed in obnoxious, golden-trimmed silk robes, radiating a blinding aura of fake High Court starlight-mana, the local lords nearly broke their own knees rushing to bow before me.

"Welcome! Thrice welcome, noble Scion!" The local Planetary Governor — a rotund, heavily ringed man named Lord Rafalor — pressed his forehead directly against the red carpet he had hastily rolled out.

"The Steel-Scepter Dominion is honored by your divine presence!" I didn't tell him to stand up. I didn't even look at him. Instead, I pulled a silk handkerchief from my sleeve, ostentatiously dabbing my nose, and let out a loud, theatrical scoff that echoed across the arrival hall.

"You dare?!" I screamed suddenly, leaning into classic cultivation tropes I read back on Old Earth as I pointed a finger at the kneeling governor.

"How dare a mere frog at the bottom of a well look at my left boot without my explicit permission?! What is this dreadful smell? Is this air, or did someone spill an unrefined pig's manure across your platform? I am Kalador of the Arch-House of the Sunless Gold, and I demand to know why my nostrils are being subjected to such low-tier filth!" Lord Rafalor's face turned white with absolute terror. He began violently slapping his own cheeks, bowing his head repeatedly to the floor.

"Forgive us, Noble Scion! We shall execute the atmospheric technicians immediately! Please, spare our humble lives!" Beside me, Anna — dressed as my aloof, silver-robed bodyguard — let out a microscopic, near-imperceptible twitch of her lips, desperately trying not to burst out laughing. Behind us, Nyx stood silently in the shadows, her eyes gleaming with sharp, dark amusement. For the next two days, I turned being a jerk into a fine art form.

Lord Rafalor and his council of noble slavers rolled out the red carpet, offering us access to their finest private cultivation chambers, grand dining halls, and high-tier dungeons. And at every single step, I went out of my way to completely sour the High Courts' reputation. When they served us a fifteen-course feast of roasted magma-drake and rare fruits, I took one bite, spat it onto the polished marble floor, and demanded they beat the chef for "offending my divine palate."

When they showed us their grandest cultivation chamber, I looked at their ancient quartz arrays, called them "primitive stone-age toys," and threatened to burn the building down if they didn't double the ambient mana density within ten minutes. To make our false-flag campaign truly catastrophic for the Courts' reputation, Nyx deployed an entire network of her [Lattice-Clones] as fake local servants across the capital.

While my main proxy put on a loud, arrogant show in the upper galleries, Nyx's shadow-clones executed stealth espionage in the lower taverns and trade hubs, whispering terrifying rumors to the local merchant guilds. They leaked fake High Court documents claiming that 'Young Master Kalador' had been dispatched to completely crash the Dominion's currency, seize all local slave-sinks, and transform the planetary lords into low-tier mining laborers. The local lords were utterly terrified.

They were cruel, vile people who routinely tortured their own lower-tier slaves, yet they groveled before me, terrified of my backers, because my Young Master persona was even more psychotic, unpredictable, and bloodthirsty than they were. However, the most critical part of our campaign required a public demonstration of High Court cruelty — without me actually harming a single innocent local. To solve this, we used Nyx's shapeshifting [Lattice-Clones] as public targets.

On the third afternoon, we arrived at the entrance of the city's primary elite dungeon. A long line of local warlords and noble cultivators were waiting outside the grand quartz doors, waiting for their scheduled entry slots. I walked up to the front of the line, flanked by my "servants" — three of Nyx's [Lattice-Clones] shapeshifted to look like local, low-tier human attendants carrying my luggage. As we stood before the grand doors, I suddenly stopped, turning around to face one of the fake attendants.

"Did you just breathe in my direction, slave?" I yelled loudly, ensuring my voice boomed across the entire crowded plaza. The fake attendant cowered, bowing frantically.

"P-pardon, Noble Scion! It was an accident!" If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Insolence!" I roared theatrically. Before the horrified eyes of fifty local warlords, I pulled a glowing, golden starlight-lance from my sleeve and drove it straight through the fake attendant's chest. The clone erupted into a blinding nova of divine starlight, dissolving into a cloud of gold-and-silver sparks. The plaza went dead silent. The local warlords pressed themselves against the stone walls, trembling in absolute horror.

I had just executed my own servant in broad daylight for the crime of breathing, and nobody dared to utter a single word of protest. I calmly wiped my hands with my silk handkerchief, tossing it onto the ash pile.

"Clean up this mess. The smell of poor people ruins my concentration." The local dungeon master practically threw the doors open, bowing so low his nose scraped the slate.

"P-please, Noble Scion! Enter! The private master chamber is yours for as long as you desire!" We stepped through the grand doors, and the heavy lead-alloy blast doors slammed shut behind us, isolating us inside the private dungeon. The moment the doors locked and the privacy arrays engaged, I dropped my insufferable drawl, letting out a long, quiet breath as I adjusted my robes. Anna instantly turned around and punched my shoulder — hard.

"Ow!" I rubbed my arm, looking at her with a dry smile.

"What was that for?"

"That was for making me listen to you complain about pig manure for forty minutes!" Anna laughed, punching my shoulder again, her silver eyes dancing with amusement.

"By the Primes, Eren... how are you so natural at being an absolutely despicable villain?! Did you have a hidden Young Master bloodline back on Earth that I didn't know about? You didn't even need a script!"

"I'm just a very flexible actor," I chuckled, stretching my arms.

"It turns out that being a good bad guy just requires abandoning all common sense and yelling 'You dare?!' every time someone makes eye contact with you."

"Don't get used to it," Anna smirked, shaking her head.

"If you start calling Jeeves a 'frog at the bottom of a well' back in Bastion, I'm shooting you with a decision-arrow." Nyx emerged from my shadow, her dark eyes flashing with quiet approval.

"The performance was flawless, Master. My clones have successfully spread the rumors across all seven trading hubs. The merchant guilds genuinely believe the High Courts are planning to seize their planetary assets by the end of the month."

"Good," I nodded, my tone turning serious as I looked around the private dungeon chamber.

"Now, let's drop the act and get to work. We have training to do." Away from the eyes of the local lords, the Young Master act vanished, replaced by the intense, disciplined momentum of our cultivation. The private dungeon was a high-tier subterranean labyrinth filled with Tier 8 and low Tier 9 obsidian-drakes and spatial stone-golems. It was the perfect, controlled playground for Anna to test her evolved time-affinity. For three hours, Anna, Nyx, and I cleared the dungeon's lower levels.

I deployed two reinforced [Echo of the Ashen] proxies to act as front-line tanks, while Anna demonstrated her terrifying growth. She stood on the high basalt ledges, drawing her Mythic bow, [Final Word], her silver robes rustling as her temporal light flared. She fired instant-hit time-arrows that ignored spatial flight time entirely, pinning high-speed obsidian-drakes to the cavern walls before they could even complete their diving maneuvers.

When a giant spatial-golem launched a surprise kinetic shockwave at her flank, Anna executed a probabilistic micro-rewind, resetting her physical coordinates by one second to dodge the blast before it was even initiated. Her synchronization with Nyx's shadow-clones was seamless, the two of them clearing entire monster rooms in less than forty seconds without taking a single hit.

By the time we reached the dungeon's primary boss chamber, Anna had completely mastered her new temporal recoil control, her soul gate operating with a smooth, expanded throughput that handled her Mythic bow with zero mana-drag. We cleared the boss, harvested its core, and stepped back out through the dungeon's primary exit portal. As we stepped back into the public grand hall of the city, I immediately snapped back into my arrogant Young Master persona, puffing out my chest and looking around with a sneer.

Before we could walk ten yards toward the exit, a tall, heavily dressed man stepped out from behind a line of marble pillars. He wore flowing robes of crushed velvet lined with rare, glowing soul-gems, his fingers covered in thick gold rings. Behind him stood four heavily armored guards carrying locked, iron chest-transports. The man bowed so low his velvet sleeves dragged through the stone dust.

"Noble Scion! Generous Scion of Sunless Gold!" The man groveled, his voice dripping with sycophantic desperation.

"I am Master Zarin, the primary director of House Lendor — the largest mercantile syndicate on this world!" My optical arrays flared beneath my veil. House Lendor was the primary slave-trading cartel on the planet — the exact, vile organization Kasian had flagged on our target list. I paused, pulling my silk handkerchief from my sleeve and looking down at him with utter, cold disdain.

"And why is a filthy, lowly merchant blocking my path? Speak quickly, before I have my guards remove your head." Master Zarin didn't take offense. In fact, he smiled wider, gesturing to the four iron chest-transports behind him.

"I come to offer a private, mutually beneficial trade agreement, Noble Scion!" Zarin whispered, leaning closer.

"We have recently harvested a fresh shipment of rare, young souls from a neighboring sector. We know the High Courts appreciate... unique assets. I wish to give these chests to your Arch-House in exchange for a High Court sector trade permit!" I stared down at the groveling slaver, listening to his corrupt, illegal trade proposal. Beneath my silk handkerchief, a slow, dark, extremely dangerous grin spread across my face.

He was offering me a corrupt bribe, handing me the exact evidence I needed to link the High Courts directly to a major slave-trading scandal while framing them for seizing the Dominion's assets. I looked at Anna, who gave me a faint, imperceptible nod from behind her silver mask. I turned back to the groveling slaver, my nasal drawl dropping into a smooth, dark, and utterly predatory whisper.

"A trade permit, you say?" I smiled, tapping my gauntlet against my sleeve.

"Master Zarin... I think you and I are going to become very good friends." We had found our target. It was time to completely ruin the High Courts' reputation.