Chương 446: The Art of Escalation

If being an insufferable Young Master on a single planet was effective, escalating the act across three different star sectors was an absolute masterpiece of chaotic diplomacy. Over the remaining two days on the Steel-Scepter Dominion, I pushed my performance into pure, unhinged theater. I didn't just insult the Planetary Governor; I actively sought out young masters and scions from rival slaver families who had gathered at the capital.

When the eldest son of a prominent slave merchant syndicate walked into the grand cultivation gallery wearing an elaborate silk cloak, I stopped, pointed at him, and let out an ear-splitting gasp of theatrical disgust.

"You dare?!" I screamed, my voice booming across the gallery.

"How dare a mere provincial earthworm wear the color crimson in the presence of my shadow?! Did your father not teach you that red is the color of the High Seats?! Slap yourself fifty times! Right now!" The young scion who was just torturing his own retinue of slaves for pleasure turned pale, looking around in utter confusion.

"N-noble Scion, this is standard silk from my family's—""A hundred times!" I roared, pulling a golden starlight-lance from my sleeve.

"Make it two hundred, or I will burn your family's estate to ash before dinner!" The terrifying part was that he actually did it. The young scion dropped to his knees, violently slapping his own cheeks until his face was bruised and bloody, while fifty surrounding local lords bowed to the floor, completely terrified that my Arch-House would launch an orbital strike on their sector. Nyx and Anna stood behind me, their shoulders slightly shaking with suppressed laughter.

However, beneath the comedy, there were moments where the sheer, revolting cruelty of these slaver syndicates tested my patience to its absolute limit. While inspecting the local slave-sinks beneath the capital, I watched an overseer casually beat a young, chained Dweorg apprentice for stumbling under the weight of an iron ore-cart. A cold, sharp rage flared behind my ribs. My eyes turned pitch black beneath my veil. I didn't break cover, but I used the Young Master persona to deliver instant, brutal justice.

"Insolence!" I yelled, stepping forward and using a localized gravity slope from my [Domain of the Ashen] to slam the overseer flat into the stone floor.

"How dare this filthy overseer create such a loud, unpleasant noise while I am conducting my official inspection?! My ears are bleeding from his coarse shouting!" Before the overseer could even scramble up, I brought my gauntleted boot straight down onto his chest plate, using a concentrated pulse of my [Voidflame] to systematically incinerate his Star-Core. The overseer let out a strangled gasp as his core collapsed into dry glass, leaving him a powerless cripple on the floor.

"Clean up this trash," I snapped to Lord Rafalor, who was trembling beside me.

"And unchain those workers. Their heavy iron chains are making an annoying rattling sound that offends my delicate ears."

"At once, Noble Scion!" Rafalor bowed frantically, ordering his guards to immediately free the chained Dweorgs. As we walked back to our private quarters, Anna leaned close, whispering softly.

"Nice save, Eren. I saw your hand twitching toward your sabre."

"These people are vile," I muttered quietly, adjusting my cloak.

"If I have to play a spoiled Young Master to free a few hundred slaves and ruin their economy, I'm going to enjoy every second of it."

"Next time, may I take the lead?" Nyx whispered from my shadow, her dark eyes flashing with playful mischief.

"I've been practicing my Spoiled High Court Mistress persona. I think I can make a Planetary Governor cry within five minutes."

"I'll hold you to that," I smiled. After completely ruining the Steel-Scepter Dominion's political harmony and securing the corrupt trade slates from Master Zarin, we stepped through the Spire gate back to Bastion to debrief. When we arrived in the war-room, Crysanthe was waiting for us. She had been reviewing the spatial diagnostic feeds from our expedition, her white-gold skin glowing with sharp, excited interest.

"Eren!" Crys stepped forward, pouting slightly as she looked at Anna and Nyx.

"My mother and grandfather are completely locked down in military meetings prepping the House of Opal's fleets. I've been stuck reading trade reports for three days! I heard you three are having an absolute blast playing spoiled High Court nobles off-world!"

"It's a very serious false-flag operation, Crys," Anna said cleanly, though a wide, teasing grin betrayed her tone.

"I don't care!" Crys laughed, folding her arms.

"I'm coming on the next run! Please! I want to play a spoiled Arch-Princess! I've watched my mother deal with arrogant High Court ambassadors for centuries — I know exactly how to throw a terrifying, room-shattering tantrum!" I looked at Crys, then at Anna and Nyx, letting out a warm chuckle. The false-flag campaign was functioning as an incredible, high-yield stress release for all of us, keeping our spirits high while refining our off-world combat synchronization.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

"Alright, Crys," I agreed.

"Pack your gear. You get to lead the act on the next planet." Before departing for our second target, I met privately with Kasian in the Hall of the Chronicle to discuss the mysterious Void System notification I had received earlier. Kasian pulled up ancient pre-Shattering databases, his spectral face carrying a deep, analytical focus.

"Master Eren," Kasian reported, "the system's message carries a unique, ancient resonance. It is possible that the Void System is not merely an automated interface, but a dormant, multi-dimensional entity — perhaps it had been a message from an ancient Void Emperor or a Transcendent Architect who is actively monitoring your uncompiled Voidflame evolution across the sectors."

"An entity watching my progress," I mused, rubbing my chin.

"Indeed," Kasian nodded.

"However, as long as the entity merely observes without intervening, our strategic momentum remains unaffected. In fact, our intelligence reports show that your Young Master campaign is yielding staggering results." Kasian projected a series of secret intelligence reports intercepted from outer-sector merchant channels. Due to Young Master Kalador's tyrannical actions, three major trading leagues and twelve planetary syndicates had held emergency summits.

Outraged by the High Courts' apparent plans to seize their local assets and crash their currency, two entire sectors were openly drafting legislation to ban all High Court representatives from their territories.

"They're issuing formal High Court bans?" I asked, a dark, brilliant grin spreading across my face.

"They are phrasing them as temporary quarantine exercises but yes, they are," Kasian confirmed.

"Then that determines our next target," I said.

"We will visit a world that has just issued a High Court ban, so Kalador can blatantly violate the ban, force an entry, and spark an immediate military conflict between their local defense fleets and the Court of Primes." An hour later, Eren, Anna, Nyx, and Crysanthe stepped through the Spire gate toward our second target: Planet M-12, a heavily fortified mining world governed by a ruthless, anti-Court warlord guild. The expedition to Planet M-12 was an absolute comedic goldmine.

True to her word, Crysanthe took the lead as Arch-Princess Crysanthe of the Sunless Citadel. The moment the local warlord guards attempted to enforce their High Court ban at the Spire platform, Crysanthe unleashed a magnificent, room-shattering tantrum. She used her [Obsidian Ribbon] and her Tier 9 Crystalline Vibration to shatter three marble tables, screaming at the local warlords for daring to speak to her without first laying golden carpets at her feet.

I stood behind her as her silent, terrifying enforcer, using my [Primordial Shell] and a subtle pulse of my [Domain of the Ashen] under various Essence Humming Veils to radiate a neutron-heavy gravity weight that made the local warlords sweat through their heavy armor. Between her magnificent tantrums, we used Planet M-12's high-gravity subterranean dungeons to train.

Crysanthe practiced weaving her [Obsidian Ribbon] through non-linear gravity-slopes, Anna refined her probabilistic time-slips against heavy kinetic drakes, and Nyx deployed shadow-clones across the planet's mining hubs, leaking documents that proved the High Courts were planning an immediate orbital invasion.

By the time we finished with Planet M-12, the local warlords had mobilized two entire defense fleets, sending desperate, angry declarations to the High Courts' outer outposts and even attempting to cause a few fatal "accidents" involving us that we subtly avoided. Satisfied with our work, we moved directly to our third target: Sector K-08, a dark, heavily fortified necrotic trade hub governed by a paranoid, high-tier cult known as the Obsidian Veil.

We stepped off the Spire platform into the capital city of Sector K-08. The arrival hall was a vast, cold gallery carved from dark slate, illuminated by floating soul-flame lanterns. Crysanthe adjusted her golden-trimmed silk robes, turning to me with a wide, mischievous grin.

"Alright, Eren! For this world, I think I'll demand they execute their entire planetary welcoming committee for wearing ugly robes!"

"Let's keep it under five executions, and only if they really deserve it," I joked dryly, adjusting my robes. Nyx melted into my shadow, while Anna drew her bow, assuming her aloof bodyguard stance. We stepped toward the grand exit doors, ready to launch our third Young Master performance. Suddenly, without a single microsecond of warning, a blinding, white-hot pain exploded inside my optical nerves. My star-cores stalled in my chest.

Floating in my peripheral vision, the jagged purple crystal shards of my Void System didn't just flicker — they erupted into a frantic, blood-red glow that completely obscured my sight. The System displayed a direct, frantic notification that vibrated through my soul gate with the force of a thunderclap. [LEAVE THIS WORLD. IMMEDIATELY.] I froze dead in my tracks, my bottomless black eyes widening in absolute, cold shock. Crysanthe turned back, laughing softly as she adjusted her sleeves.

"Eren? What's wrong? Did you forget your Young Master handkerchief?"

"Eren?" Anna's voice dropped, her playful tone vanishing instantly as she saw the deathly serious, pale expression on my face.

"We're leaving," I commanded, my voice dropping into a subterranean rumble that shook the floor.

"Now." Neither Crysanthe nor Anna questioned me. Seeing the absolute, cold urgency in my eyes, their playful demeanor vanished in a fraction of a millisecond.

"Nyx," I projected mentally through our shadow-link as we turned on our heels and sprinted back toward the Spire gate.

"Leave a high-density shadow-clone behind with one of my [Echo] proxies. Cloak them under [Prime Axiom's Nullifying Veil] in the deep Void layer. I want to see what is coming."

"Understood, Master," Nyx's voice resonated as she dropped a shadow-clone into the slate floor. I pulled the starlight-silver coordinate slate from my armory, slamming it into the Spire console. The portal ignited with a blinding, starlight-blue radiance.

"Step through!" I yelled. Crys, Anna, and Nyx crossed the threshold, stepping into the Spire portal. I stood on the edge of the platform, looking up through the high quartz glass ceiling at the sky of Sector K-08. Through my proxy's optical link high in the void, I saw the clouds part. A gargantuan, three-mile-wide white-gold battle-citadel was stepping out of a deep spatial tear directly over the planet's capital — a flagship carrying the absolute, unyielding authority of a High Court Transcendent Judge.

A cold, sharp grin touched my lips despite the danger. Our false-flag campaign had worked. The High Courts had finally responded to the Young Master rumors, dispatching a Transcendent Judge to crush the rebellious sector that dared impose a ban. I took a deep breath and stepped back into the Spire portal, leaving the world to the coming storm.