Chapter 715: Hell-Mode Quest Complete
Two months passed, and the middle plane learned to say the name Ananta Regalon with a certain weight.
Nine top-tier resource planets fell in those two months. Nine of the ten the Hell-Mode quest demanded, taken one after another, some by force and some by the simple threat of it, until the sector had reshaped itself around a kingdom that had not existed a year ago.
And beneath the nine, dozens of lower-tier worlds fell too, most of them cleared by the Asura Executives, who no longer needed the X-rankers to hold a planet against a mid-sized power.
The kingdom that had climbed up from the bottom plane as slaves was now a landlord across a whole sector of the sky.
The leadership met in the Regalon Network to take stock, each of them a world apart and all of them in the same room at once.
It was Natalia’s web at its finest. The meeting-space existed nowhere and everywhere, a shared projection that pulled a dozen cities on a dozen planets into a single quiet room, so that a person overseeing ore extraction on one world sat across the table from a person running a trade hub on another.
Aryan sat with his boots up, running the tactical map of the whole sector. Big D worked the flow of resources into Mystery Coins. Kayla oversaw the growing-worlds, Rudra the mining fronts, the wives the production lines, and around the table a hundred small reports became one clear picture.
"Distribution is holding," Aryan said, flicking through the map. "Nine top-tier worlds feeding the network. The Coins are pouring in faster than we can spend them, which is a nice problem to have."
"Spend them on the army," Rudra said. "And the new towns. We hold what we take, or taking it was pointless."
"Already doing it," Big D said. "Every world we hold is a factory now. We are not just richer. We are stronger every single day we sit here."
Almond listened to all of it and felt the shape of what they had built. Nine worlds. One to go.
"Nine down," Lily said, reading his face across the shared room. "One left, and then the whole kingdom reaches Tier-50."
"One left," Almond agreed. "The tenth."
And that was when John Wicked walked into the meeting.
He stepped into the shared space the way he stepped into everything, hands in his pockets, and dropped into a seat that had not been there a second before.
"Found your tenth," he said. "A good one. Top-tier, rich, a little out of the way, held by two kingdoms who have spent years splitting it down the middle."
He flicked a location onto the shared map, a bright world glowing at the far edge of the sector.
"I can open a road there whenever you four are ready," John went on. "No rush. Finish your meeting, sort your Coins, kiss your spouses." He grinned. "Then say the word, and I will drop you on their doorstep."
Almond looked at the glowing world, then at the three others who had taken nine planets at his side.
"Give us the hour," he said. "Then open the road. Let us finish this."
The meeting ran its course, and the reports were good, and when it ended the four of them stood at the edge of a portal John had opened onto the tenth world.
Almond had expected the usual. A fortified line. A defiant king. A battle, or the tense hour before one.
He did not expect the flag.
They stepped out of John’s road onto the tenth planet, and the first thing they saw was a white flag the size of a warship, raised over the open plain, snapping in the wind.
Beneath it waited an entourage.
Two full delegations stood in the open, no army behind them, no defenses raised, only banners lowered and hands visibly empty. Two kingdoms, arranged side by side, waiting for the four X-rankers with the careful stillness of people who had decided their next words very carefully.
An older woman stepped forward from the center of them, robed and crowned, and she did not reach for a weapon. She reached for words.
"You are Ananta Regalon," she said. It was not a question. "We have watched you take nine worlds. We have heard how you took them, and how you left the ones who yielded alive and whole." She inclined her head. "We would very much like to be a world you left alive and whole."
Almond stopped a few paces from her, the other three at his sides, and said nothing for a moment, letting her continue.
"I am Queen Ilvane," she said. "My neighbor is King Torsald. We have split this world between us for a long time, and we have quarreled over it more than we should have." A thin, tired smile. "But we agree on one thing completely. We cannot beat you. We have run the numbers as many ways as there are ways to run them, and every single one ends with our people dead and you holding the world anyway."
King Torsald, broad and grey, spoke for the first time. "So we would rather skip to the end. The part where you win. And keep our people breathing on the way there."
Almond studied the two of them, and the white flag snapping over the empty plain, and he understood that he was being offered something he had spent this whole campaign trying to teach the sector to offer.
"You want to negotiate," he said.
"We want to surrender," Queen Ilvane corrected gently. "And then negotiate the terms of it. The world is yours. We know that already. We only ask for a small piece of it to remain ours. A corner. Enough for our people to keep living, under your banner if that is your price. You take the majority, the rich veins, the crystal heart, all of it. We keep a home." She spread her empty hands. "That is the whole of our request."
Ainen glanced at Almond, one eyebrow raised, quietly amused. Rudra stood impassive. Lily watched the two rulers with her reading eyes and found, apparently, nothing but the truth in them, because she gave Almond the smallest nod.
Almond let the silence hold one moment longer, and then he did the thing that would echo across the whole sector faster than any battle could.
He smiled, and he offered the Queen his hand.
"You have run better numbers than every king who fought us," he said. "You understood the ending before it started, and you chose your people over your pride. That is worth something to me. That is worth a great deal."
Queen Ilvane took his hand, cautiously, like a woman who had expected a blade and found a handshake.
"You keep your corner," Almond said. "A real one, not a scrap. Your people live, under our banner, and they prosper, because a world that joins us willingly does better than a world we take. We hold the majority, the veins, the heart. And in exchange, you become part of what we are building, instead of a cautionary tale about what happens to those who did not."
Torsald let out a slow breath, the tension of years going out of him. "That is more than we came prepared to ask for."
"It costs me less to be generous to the ones who are wise," Almond said. "Remember that, both of you. And tell the others who are still deciding whether to fight us. The ones who kneel keep more than the ones who die."
He turned to the glowing horizon of the tenth world, the last of the ten, taken without a single life spent.
"Ten planets," Lily said quietly beside him, and there was something almost like wonder under her usual calm.
The notice reached all four of them at once, and it reached the whole kingdom across every world at the same instant.
[Hell-Mode Quest complete. Ananta Regalon Kingdom has become a Dominant Force on 10 Top-Tier resource planets of the Middle-Plane.]
[Reward: All members of the Ananta Regalon Kingdom ascend to Tier-50 lifeform.]
It rolled through them all at once, from the four X-rankers standing on the tenth world to the newest slave-born Asura Executive on the lowest planet they held. Tier-50. The whole kingdom, lifted together, in a single breath.
Almond felt his own existence settle onto a new floor, higher than any of them had stood before, and around the shared network he could feel the others feeling it too, a whole family rising at once.
Two months ago they had been a rumor. Now they were a Tier-50 kingdom holding ten top-tier worlds and a sector full of tribute.
Almond looked up, past the tenth world’s sky, toward the distant frontline where John Wicked spent his days and waited for them to climb high enough to stand beside him.
"Closer," he said quietly, to no one and to all of them.
The middle plane was theirs.
Now they would start looking up.
