2025-06-23 16:59:04The crowd went dead quiet, not a single sound could be heard... Except for the snickering sounds made by Seth, credit had to be given to him, it really was growing harder to keep a straight face. People began to whisper.
“What?!”
“You mean… it really was fake?!”
Eyes darted from Gabriel's gaze, even the security men straightened up, everyone was as tense as they could be. Except, of course, for Seth who popped another candied grape into his mouth and watched the man's arrival.
Master Gabriel’s gaze slid to him sharply.
"You," he said smoothly. "You’ve been quite the... entertainer tonight."
Seth raised an eyebrow, staring the man down, popped another candy in his mouth then looked away from Mr. Gabriel with disinterest.
"I try," Seth said, voice casual. "Some of us were born to be beautiful, others to be funny. I’m both, tragically."
The guests gasped loudly, someone actually dropped their glass of wine, even the floor staff nearly passed out. But Mr. Gabriel didn’t react. He wasn’t some petty man who easily fell for the provocation of words. He was a man who took whatever corners were available to get results, good or bad it simply didn't matter.
"You’re causing unrest at a sacred event held in honor of the GOLDMASTER," Mr. Gabriel said coldly. “Out of respect for him, I won’t have you dragged out by force… yet. But I will ask you, leave. Now!”
The crowd exhaled. Finally, someone with authority.
Seth stretched his neck, cracked his knuckles, and sighed like someone had forced him to be here when he in fact hadn't wanted to be here. Which was true.
“I would,” Seth said. “But then I’d miss the fun part.”
He reached under the seat and pulled out the auction catalog and began going through the pages of things on the auction list.
“Item 17. Frost Gem,” he said aloud. “Supposedly recovered from the Glacier Caverns of Northern mountains.”
He held it up for the room. “That gem has been on permanent display in the National Ice Museum since 1937. I saw it myself last year. They let tourists even see it for just a small f*e.”
Gabriel’s eye twitched.
But Seth didn't stop and flipped to page four.
“Item 31. Sunset ring. Marketed as one of a kind, correct?” Seth tapped the picture. “Too bad it’s currently embedded in the statue of Prince Ron in the Royal Museum. That piece has never left its case. Ever!”
Now the murmurs turned dangerous. Even the guards looked at one another.
Collector Harry, who was previously red with embarrassment from William's disgraceful display, quickly snatched the catalog and pulled out his tablet like a man possessed.
“Wait... he’s… he’s telling the truth?” Harry muttered. “He’s not just right… he’s painfully right. These items are stolen, forged, or misrepresented. This catalog is...”
“Suspicious as hell?” Seth finished for him, casually leaning back in his chair. “But hey, what do I know? I’m just a poor entertainer with good eyes.”
Mr. Gabriel’s smile twitched. His voice dropped in cadence. “Security. Detain him.”
Ten armed men immediately stepped forward, weapons held in their arms, cuffs ready to lock Seth's wrists. Some guests gasped and shouted, even Rose who had watched everything with a deep frown on her face stood up in surprise. She couldn't stop Seth from being arrested. Not from this man.
But even after all this was happening, Seth didn’t move, he didn't blink or even flinch in the slightest.
Instead, he glanced lazily at the hallway and sighed in relief.
“Ah. He’s here.”
The doors swung open.
A gust of cold air rolled in, followed by a man dressed in the darkest shade of black that was possible. It was a simple but well tailored fit and it was...
Mr. Lucas Eden.
Mr. Eden was young, yet looked well beyond his age. His steps were calm, calculated, and easy. Many didn't know who he was but few did and those few quickly stood up sharply. No one had seen him in public in years. This was no ordinary man.
This was the hidden ruler of Velkor City.
The security halted mid-step as they recognized who it was.
“Stop,” Mr. Eden commanded. A single word was all it took and all obeyed, even Mr. Gabriel. No one was above his authority.
Mr. Gabriel quickly bowed, face full of righteous fury and a fake face of humility. “Mr. Eden! Thank heavens you’ve come. This man, he’s been causing chaos. Lying and disrupting the sacred auction. Spreading wild accusations. He even dared insult the GOLDMASTER’s name!”
The crowd nodded along. Of course they would, they would rather take favour in Mr. Gabriel than some nobody they knew nothing about.
Mr. Eden’s eyes narrowed.
“This auction… was meant to honor the GOLDMASTER.”
“Yes!” Mr. Gabriel said, hopeful. “And it’s being blemished by that nobody!”
Mr. Eden exhaled slowly. He turned, looking about and searching for who was responsible for this madness. And then, he saw him.
Seth tilted his head and smiled lazily, but Eden’s entire body froze instantly. His eyes widened ever so slightly. His fists slowly clenched at his sides, his lips trembled, for a brief moment.
Then without anyone expecting it, Mr. Eden dropped to his knees instantly, confusing everyone at the auction.
“My lord,” he said reverently.
Everyone seemed to be comatose at the scene before then, was Mr. Eden… the underground ruler… was he kneeling?
To whom? Surely it had to be some sort of mistake.
Seth sighed dramatically and crawled to the ground as well, joining him, then slowly whispering into Eden's ears.
“Get up, Lucas. You're causing a scene. Don't be a wuss and copy the things I do,” he said with a light tone.
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Chapter 206: Structural Weakness.
Alex's POV Alex returned to the executive layers the way a ghost returns to a house that’s been renovated in his absence, the shape is familiar, the corridors still curve the same way, the access points still breathe open when he approaches, but the furniture has moved and the air smells like other people’s decisions.He had not been here since before the war ended.Not truly.Back then the place had been frantic, reactive, command rooms blooming like infections across the administrative floors, people running on caffeine and threat projections, emergency authority being stamped onto anything that could carry ink, now it was different, quieter, smoother, the panic had fossilized into protocol, every hallway padded with procedure, every door protected by three layers of justification before you ever reached a lock.This was where wars went when they were finished.Not to peace.To paperwork.Alex didn’t go to his old office.He went lower.To the infrastructural decks, where budgets w
Chapter 205: What Noel Sees.
Noel's POV Noel had followed convoys before.Government ones with polished armor and predictable escorts, corporate ones wrapped in false branding and private security, underground ones that pretended to be waste management while hauling sealed lives in reinforced containers, he knew the rhythms, the feints, the habits of men who believed movement itself was secrecy.This convoy was different, they had no insignia, no visible escort, no routes that made sense.Three vehicles, matte gray, unmarked, not armored enough to be military, not civilian enough to be ignored, they left a distribution depot that had been condemned eight years ago, one of those urban corpses that cities keep around because tearing them down costs more than pretending they’re dead, the depot sat at the edge of a reclaimed district where glass towers rose out of what used to be tenements, where parks were layered over old slums like green apologies.Noel had been tracking a minor evolved intake lead when the movem
Chapter 204: The Aide’s Office.
Seth's POVThe summons did not arrive through command channels.It did not pass through Alex, it did not appear on his operational board, it did not carry the formatting of military priority or executive urgency, it came quietly, threaded into a system notification that had nothing to do with meetings, a maintenance acknowledgment, a routine authorization update, a single embedded line that didn’t blink or escalate or demand attention, it simply stated that the President’s aide would see him at sixteen hundred, location attached, attendance expected.Seth read it once, then again, then closed the display without responding, already feeling the shift it created in the air around him, the faint sense that something had stepped closer without moving, he had ended a war, dismantled a revolutionary army, been elevated to a position most people never even saw from the outside, and yet this message carried mor
Chapter 203: The Weight of Old Men.
Seth's POVThe decision to go to General Cane did not arrive like inspiration, it arrived like pressure, subtle, constant, the kind that did not hurt at first but slowly reshaped whatever it rested against, Seth had spent the night after the confrontation with Virek pacing rooms that were designed to keep people seated, reviewing structures that were meant to be trusted, watching feeds that only showed what they were allowed to show, and through all of it ran the same awareness, power without anchoring corrodes into spectacle, momentum without counterweight becomes noise, and if he intended to take a country apart without letting it collapse inward, he would need someone who had already watched empires pretend they were permanent.Cane was not part of the new machine.That was exactly why he mattered.Arranging the meeting required layers of misdirection that would have once amused Seth, logist
Chapter 202: White Rooms and Quiet Wars.
Seth's POVThe room Seth chose was not underground.That mattered.Most of the spaces he used now were buried beneath layers of reinforced earth and dead signal zones, rooms designed for secrecy, for containment, for things that were not meant to be found again, but after leaving Virek, after feeling steel fade back into skin and the echo of that man’s pulse still lingering in his palm, Seth did not want another bunker, he wanted height, glass, distance from the illusion that depth meant safety.The conference room sat near the top of a private government tower, not one of the public ones, not the kind tourists took pictures of, but one built for people who preferred the city to look small, its walls wide and curved, windows stretching from floor to ceiling, sunlight pouring in without asking permission.He stood near the glass when the summons went out.
Chapter 201: Two Architects.
Seth's POV The invitation arrived disguised as protocol.Not marked urgent, not flagged hostile, not even routed through any of the newly militarized channels that had begun shadowing Seth’s movements over the past weeks, it came the way institutional traps always came, polite, reasonable, wearing the language of necessity instead of threat, a request for strategic consultation from a senior oversight director whose name carried just enough historical weight to make refusal noticeable.Virek.Seth read it once, then again, not because he needed clarity, but because he wanted to appreciate the audacity, the assumption still threaded through the phrasing that this was a conversation between administrators, not adversaries, that the world was still made of offices instead of fault lines.He accepted without modification.The room they gave him was not a briefing chamber, not a council hall, not one of the sealed operational theaters buried beneath the capital, it was smaller, circular,
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