2026-06-24 09:22:42Chapter 13
Valmont First National was not a bank for the working class. There were no teller windows, no lines of people depositing paychecks, and certainly no complimentary lollipops. It was a fortress of white marble, brass accents, and hushed voices, catering strictly to corporate titans and generational wealth.
Arthur walked through the towering bronze doors with Vera trailing one step behind him. The white-haired assassin had traded her blood-red silk for a sharp, charcoal-gray tailored suit that somehow made her look even more dangerous.
"Target acquired, sir," Vera murmured, her crimson eyes sweeping the VIP lounge area.
Arthur followed her gaze. Sitting on a plush leather sofa, nervously bouncing his leg, was Julian Sterling. He looked terrible. The bespoke suits and arrogant swagger were gone. He wore a rumpled blazer, had dark circles under his eyes, and was furiously texting on his phone.
Sitting across from Julian was Winston Montgomery, the bank’s president. Winston was a plump, balding man who usually kissed the ground the Sterlings walked on. Right now, however, Winston looked uncomfortable.
"Julian, please," Winston sighed, rubbing his temples. "I understand your father is in a panic, but you’re asking for a two-hundred-million-dollar emergency liquidity bridge. Your family's commercial real estate portfolio is highly leveraged. I can't just authorize that without a board vote."
"Winston, you owe my father!" Julian hissed, leaning forward. "We have a cash flow issue because some... some lunatic is messing with our assets! Just approve the bridge loan. When we crush him, I'll make sure you get a massive bonus."
"I'm afraid Winston won't be authorizing any bonuses today, Julian," a cold, smooth voice interrupted.
Julian snapped his head around. When he saw Arthur standing there, looking like a sovereign lord in his midnight-blue suit, all the blood drained from Julian’s face. He scrambled backward on the leather sofa like a cornered rat.
"You!" Julian choked out, pointing a trembling finger. "Winston, call security! This is the man who assaulted me! He’s a terrorist!"
Winston frowned, standing up and adjusting his tie. He didn't know who Arthur was, but the man reeked of absolute, undeniable power. And the terrifying, white-haired woman standing behind him made Winston's survival instincts scream.
"Excuse me, sir," Winston said cautiously. "This is a private banking sector. Do you have an account with us?"
"Not yet," Arthur said lightly. He pulled his smartphone from his pocket. "System. Give me the valuation of Valmont First National."
[Target Asset: Valmont First National Bank]
[Market Value: $3.2 Billion]
[Hostile Buyout Price (Instant Digital Liquidation & Proxy Transfer): $5 Billion]
[Proceed? Y/N]
Arthur smiled. Five billion dollars. It was an astronomical sum to anyone on earth, but to the System, it was a drop in an ocean of infinite nines.
Y.
[Transaction Complete. Funds deducted. 50,000 SP generated.]
[You are now the majority shareholder and Chairman of the Board of Valmont First National.]
Arthur pocketed his phone and looked at Winston. "I don't have an account, Winston. I have the deed. As of thirty seconds ago, I bought this bank through a proxy holding firm."
Winston let out a boisterous, mocking laugh. It was a nervous sound. "Bought the bank? Sir, Valmont First National is a publicly traded, multi-billion-dollar institution! You can't just walk in and buy it with an app on your phone!"
Suddenly, the heavy mahogany doors of Winston’s private office slammed open. His chief financial officer sprinted out, holding a tablet like it was a live grenade. He was hyperventilating.
"Mr. Montgomery!" the CFO shrieked. "A ghost holding company just executed a hyper-aggressive buyout of 65% of our voting shares! It bypassed the SEC waiting periods! The board just got the notifications. The new chairman is... is..."
The CFO looked up, making eye contact with Arthur. He swallowed hard. "...Mr. Arthur Vance."
Winston’s knees buckled. He collapsed back into his chair, his jaw hanging open as he stared at Arthur in sheer, unadulterated horror.
Julian stopped breathing. His eyes darted frantically between Arthur and the CFO. "No. No, that's a lie. He's a delivery driver! My dad said he's just a proxy for the Castellano family!"
"Your dad is an idiot," Arthur said, stepping forward. He rested his hands on the glass table, looming over Julian. The Aura of the Sovereign bore down on the lawyer, suffocating him. "I'm not a proxy, Julian. I am the mountain your family just crashed into."
Arthur turned his gaze to Winston. "Winston. You are fired. Clean out your desk."
Winston opened his mouth to protest, but Vera took a single, silent step forward. Winston clamped his mouth shut and scurried away like a frightened rabbit.
Arthur looked back at Julian. "As the new Chairman of Valmont First National, I have been reviewing the Sterling family's commercial mortgages. Clause 8-B of your contract states that the bank reserves the right to call in all debts immediately if the borrower's primary collateral is deemed unstable."
Julian’s eyes widened in sheer panic. "You can't do that. We owe over four hundred million dollars! We don't have that in liquid cash! It would bankrupt us! It would liquidate our entire real estate empire!"
"I know," Arthur smiled a cold, ruthless expression that didn't reach his eyes. "You have twenty-four hours to pay me, Julian. Or I take your family's properties. I take your cars. I take the Sterling Manor. I'm going to leave you and your father with nothing but the lint in your pockets."
Julian let out a pathetic, broken sob. He fell to his knees on the marble floor right in front of Arthur.
"Arthur, please!" Julian begged, tears streaming down his face. "I'm sorry! I'll give Eleanor back! You can have her! Just don't do this to my family!"
Arthur looked down at the weeping billionaire with absolute disgust. He didn't say a word. He just turned his back, signaling Vera to follow, and walked out of the bank.
The guillotine had dropped.
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Chapter 57The frozen moment in time shattered.The roaring wind returned with a vengeance. The dying Harvester monolith crashed into the Mediterranean Sea ten miles offshore, sending a massive, three-hundred-foot tidal wave racing toward the island of San Marcos.Arthur didn't even look at the incoming tsunami. He tossed the fading, useless shaft of the Spear of Genesis aside. The magnetic casing dissolved into violet dust before it hit the marble balcony."Vera! Hyperion!" Arthur shouted.Before the tidal wave could strike the newly rebuilt capital, Hyperion shot down from the stratosphere. The plasma-wrapped Vanguard positioned himself directly between the city and the ocean. He didn't build a wall; he simply unleashed a localized burst of thermal radiation.The three-hundred-foot wall of seawater slammed into the thermal barrier and instantly flash-boiled into steam. A dense, blinding fog blanketed the coastline, but the city was saved.Arthur turned back into the ruined boardroom
The Void Market
Chapter 56[10,000,000 SP Deducted. Debt Registered.][Deploying 'The Spear of Genesis'.]The air in the boardroom didn't just warp; it fractured.A rift in physical space tore open directly above the shattered smart-glass table. It looked like a jagged wound in reality, bleeding a deep, terrifying violet light. From the rift, the weapon descended.It wasn't a gun. It didn't have a trigger or a stock. It was a six-foot-long javelin composed entirely of condensed, swirling anti-matter encased in a shifting magnetic field. It hummed with a low, bone-rattling frequency that made the hair on everyone’s arms stand on end.Arthur stepped forward and reached out."Master, do not touch it!" Vera warned, taking a rare step backward, her instincts screaming that the weapon was anathema to biological life.Arthur ignored her. He wrapped his bare hand around the magnetic shaft of the Spear.The moment his skin made contact, a violent surge of violet energy raced up his arm, intertwining with the
The Sky Breakers
Chapter 55High above the Harvester monolith, Hyperion answered his Sovereign’s call.The plasma-wrapped Vanguard had been hovering in the stratosphere, waiting for the exact coordinate lock. He folded his silver-armored arms across his chest and plummeted directly toward the pitch-black surface of the alien ship.As he fell, Hyperion channeled the raw thermal energy of the upper atmosphere, turning himself into a localized, artificial sun. The heat radiating off his body spiked to ten thousand degrees.He slammed into the top of the Harvester vessel.The impact should have melted the alien hull instantly. Instead, a shockwave of blinding white steam erupted across the sky. The alien monolith wasn’t just armored; its hull was maintained at absolute zero. Hyperion’s nuclear heat collided with the ship's freezing perimeter, creating a massive, shrieking explosion of conflicting thermodynamics.Hyperion roared, driving his silver gauntlets into the black metal, trying to physically rip t
The Price of Defiance
Chapter 54The abyssal vault groaned, the ancient metallic walls protesting against the shifting tectonic pressure caused by the massive ships entering Earth's atmosphere.Arthur didn't spare another glance at Host 409. The broken man had surrendered to the cosmic food chain thousands of years ago. Arthur didn't know how to surrender. It wasn't programmed into his biology anymore."Vera," Arthur said, his voice slicing through the stale, ozone-heavy air. "Grab my shoulder. We are leaving."The white-haired assassin instantly sheathed her blade and clamped her gloved hand onto Arthur’s charcoal suit jacket.Arthur’s mind locked onto the golden interface burning in his vision. He needed to cross seven miles of crushing ocean water in zero seconds.System. Level 5 Access. I need instantaneous spatial relocation. Target: Presidential Palace, San Marcos.[Accessing Level 5: The Architect Protocol...][Purchase: 'Quantum Tether' (Spatial Folding). Cost: 50,000 SP.][Description: Folds physi
The Harvesters
Chapter 53The sheer impossibility of the ancient man's words hung in the stale air of the deep-sea vault."Explain," Arthur commanded. He didn't raise his voice. He simply let the Aura of the Sovereign bear down on the broken man.Host 409 let out a rattling laugh, completely unaffected by Arthur’s oppressive willpower. "Your aura doesn't work on me, boy. I bought that same skill twenty thousand years ago, on a planet whose name has already turned to dust."Vera’s grip on her blade tightened. Her crimson eyes darted around the cavernous room, scanning the shadows for a trap."The Infinite Wealth System," Host 409 wheezed, pushing himself up into a sitting position, clutching his shattered chest interface. "You thought you were chosen, didn't you? You thought it was a magical gift given to a desperate man who needed revenge."Arthur’s jaw tightened. "It gave me capital. I built the empire.""It's a filtration tool!" the ancient man spat, his dead gray eyes flaring with sudden, agonizi
The Abyssal Anomaly
Chapter 52The crushing pressure of the Mariana Trench was enough to compress a standard nuclear submarine into the size of a soup can. It was a lightless, frozen void where human ambition went to die.Arthur Vance wasn’t human anymore.He stood on the bridge of the Abyssal Leviathan, a deep-sea exploration vessel he had purchased from the Level 5 System Store for an effortless half-million SP. The ship was constructed from self-repairing dark matter and propelled by a frictionless gravity drive. It descended through the pitch-black water at terrifying speeds.Ares stood like a monolith at the back of the bridge, his red optics cutting through the dim cabin lighting. Nemesis hovered near the navigation console, her shadow-wrapped form completely unbothered by the crushing depths outside the viewport. Vera stood directly beside Arthur, her hand resting on her combat blade out of pure habit."Depth: thirty-five thousand feet," the ship’s automated AI reported in a smooth, synthetic voic
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