Chapter 144: Hitching A Cab
Scholar Vane tallied the items on her screen.
Because printed reference books and agricultural seeds were considered standard civilian educational resources rather than high-tier magical combat catalysts, the price tag was drastically lower than the industrial ironwood and stone bundle...
"For the Guide to Cooking On Earth, the two volumes of Maritime Dominance, the Terrestrial Agricultural Compendium, and ten high-yield seed suites, the total comes to exactly 4,500 Spirit Credits," Vane reported smoothly.
Silas pulled his phone back out and tapped his phone against the scanner a second time.
CHIME!
Four thousand five hundred credits vanished from his account... a literal drop in the bucket compared to the two million he had just secured from Peter downstairs.
"Transaction complete," Scholar Vane smiled, bowing gracefully behind her obsidian counter. "I hope your Archive will be a beacon of intelligence, Lord Graves... I wish you and your soldiers the highest success in your territorial expansion."
"Thanks for the help, Scholar," Silas replied, giving her a brief nod of farewell.
He turned around with his Lord business officially concluded.
He looked down at Lia, who was staring longingly at a display of illuminated floating globes nearby, and clapped his hand onto her shoulder.
"Let’s go, Lia," Silas told her. "We’re done here."
They walked back down the wide thoroughfare of the forty-second floor, stepped into the VIP elevator, and rode it all the way down to the ground level of the Lord Association Building.
They pushed through the massive revolving glass doors of the lobby and stepped back out onto the street.
’Finally...’
The rain had finally stopped while they were upstairs.
The heavy clouds hung low over Valoria City, reflecting the neon glare of the commercial billboards and the cool air smelled of different things.
Though that was to be expected when this was the public.
The streets were still bustling with skiffs buzzing overhead and well-dressed executives hurrying along the sidewalks, but the suffocating pressure of the Association Building was finally gone.
Lia walked two steps ahead of him onto the wet sidewalk, then stopped completely still.
She turned around, her frayed sneakers splashing in a shallow puddle.
She looked up at Silas with her small frame looking fragile and dwarfed inside his massive sagging dark gray t-shirt.
The sleeves hung down past her knuckles, and the hem dragged around her calves like a wet rag.
Her brown eyes were wide, scanning the glowing city skyline and completely overwhelmed by the reality of the last two hours.
She had been healed of a fatal rotting chest wound by a potion... That wound was from when she tried to get into his house a few days ago using another way she had found, apparently there were lasers there.
She had ridden in a noble’s supercar.
She had watched her brother casually generate two million credits out of thin air, and then watched him spend three hundred thousand credits buying an entire library and agricultural infrastructure system like he was buying a loaf of bread at a corner bodega.
Her two years of surviving in the slums, stealing cred-sticks and sleeping in damp alleyways, felt like an entirely different lifetime now.
Her simple brain couldn’t process what came next.
"Big brother," Lia asked softly, her voice trembling slightly as she looked up into his golden-ringed eyes. "What... what are we going to do now?"
Silas looked down at her. The cold persona that had dictated his negotiations with Peter and Scholar Vane completely melted away, replaced entirely by the calm of an older brother.
He looked at the frayed sneakers, the dirty blue jeans, and the comical oversized t-shirt hanging off her shoulders.
"What else?" Silas replied smoothly, a warm, easy grin spreading across his face. "I’m going to get you some new clothes... You look quite small in my oversized shirt."
Lia’s cheeks flushed a brilliant pink.
Her stubborn independent pride immediately flared up in a desperate attempt to defend her dignity and save him money.
"You don’t need to do that!" Lia protested instantly, waving her oversized sleeves wildly in the air. "I’m fine! Truly! This shirt is super comfortable, and it’s practically a dress anyway! We don’t need to waste any more credits on expensive commercial stores! You already spent three hundred thousand up there!"
Silas didn’t argue with her.
He didn’t lecture her on the necessity of hygiene or the fact that he had two million credits burning a hole in his pocket.
Instead, he simply stepped forward, reached out his large right hand, and gently planted it directly onto the crown of her messy brown hair.
He patted her head twice with his palm warm and deeply reassuring against her scalp.
"Leave it all to Big brother, okay?" Silas told her softly.
Lia froze under his touch.
The frantic waving of her arms completely stopped.
Her lower lip trembled once, her stubborn protests melting away instantly under the unshakeable certainty of his voice.
She looked up at his smiling face, felt the warmth of his hand on her head, and gave a small happy nod.
"Okay," Lia whispered, wiping her eyes with her oversized sleeve. "Okay, Big brother..."
The cool damp air of Valoria City felt entirely different now that they were standing outside the towering glass facade of the Lord Association Building. .
Silas stood on the wet pavement, his dark trench coat catching the ambient light of the passing traffic.
Regardless of the fact that he had comforted her, both Silas and Lia could agree that she looked completely ridiculous.
The dark gray t-shirt she was wearing swallowed her small frame entirely with the hem dragging dangerously close to the puddles splashing against her worn-out peeling sneakers.
"So," Silas started, casually sliding his hands into his coat pockets. "What kind of clothes do you want?"
Lia looked down at her waterlogged shoes, her brain immediately going into defensive financial mode.
"I don’t need anything fancy," Lia mumbled with her voice barely audible over the hum of the passing hover-skiffs.
She began listing her requirements off on her small fingers, completely covered by the oversized sleeves.
"Just a thick sweater. Maybe two pairs of jeans that don’t have holes in the knees and some boots that actually keep the water out. We can go down to the lower wards and buy them used from the surplus stalls. It’s way cheaper."
Silas raised an eyebrow. "Used clothes? I literally just walked out of a vault with a lot of credite, Lia. I’m not dressing you in surplus rags that smell like industrial run-off."
Lia’s hands tightened into small fists inside her sleeves.
She looked up at him snd her large brown eyes shimmering with a sudden overwhelming intensity.
The sheer guilt of her past actions was still weighing heavily on her narrow shoulders.
"It’s too expensive," Lia insisted, her lower lip trembling slightly.
She took a step closer to him, her voice filled with a desperate crushing sincerity.
"Big Bro... I promise I’m going to pay you back. For everything... For the healing potion, for the food, for the clothes... Once I’m old enough to get a proper job at one of the guild foundries, I’ll pay you back every single credit. And... and I promise I won’t ever try to steal again. I’ll earn your trust back. I swear."
Silas looked down at her.
He saw the exhaustion in her eyes.
Silas let out a slow, quiet breath as He pulled his right hand out of his trench coat pocket, reached down, and gently, firmly patted the top of her messy brown hair once again.
"I’ll hold you to it," Silas told her. "But until then, we aren’t buying used clothes. I have a supplier in the upper districts that’s pretty good... We’re going there."
Lia froze under his hand. The emotional weight of her confession instantly evaporated, replaced entirely by a sharp suspicious glare.
Her instincts flared back to life with a vengeance.
"A supplier?" Lia asked, her eyes narrowing into judgmental slits as she peered up at him. "Is it another woman?"
Silas paused. "What?"
"First, there was that icy rich lady waiting for you in the fancy car..." Lia listed off, crossing her arms over her chest. "Then, there was that pretty lady with the glasses upstairs who gave you all the books and now we’re going to see a ’supplier’."
Lia huffed, puffing her cheeks out in profound annoyance.
"Why are all these women trying to drag my big brother around? Are you running some kind of weird racket, Big bro?"
Silas actually chuckled.
The absurdity of an eleven-year-old interrogating him about his non-existent love life was the exact kind of reality check he needed after a week of dealing with territory work.
"Trust me, it’s strictly business," Silas laughed, shaking his head.
He reached into his pocket, fully intending to pull out his phone and ping a corporate taxi from the transit app.
Before his thumb even hit the screen, a standard slightly beat-up yellow combustion taxi pulled up to the curb directly in front of them.
The tires splashed through a shallow puddle, and the back door swung open as a tired-looking corporate clerk stepped out onto the sidewalk, completely ignoring them as he rushed toward the LAB entrance.
Silas didn’t waste the opportunity.
He grabbed Lia’s small hand, pulling her away from the puddle, and walked directly over to the open door.
He leaned down, looking through the partition at the grizzled older driver sitting behind the wheel.
The man looked like he had been driving for twelve hours straigh with a half-empty cup of coffee resting in the center console.
"Silverleaf Commercial District!" Silas instructed the driver. "You’ll be taking us to a boutique known as Weaver’s Spire."
The driver looked at Silas’s broad muscled frame, the expensive dark trench coat, and the piercing golden-ringed blue eyes that screamed of high noble.
The driver swallowed hard, instantly sitting up straighter in his seat.
"I know it, sir," the driver nodded quickly, tapping the destination into his glowing dashboard meter. "That’s a high-end zone. It’ll be a flat rate of five Spirit Credits."
Silas didn’t bother pulling out his digital phone to transfer the funds.
He reached into his trouser pocket, pulled out a physical crisp ten-credit note he kept for emergencies, and tossed it through the partition onto the passenger seat.
"Keep the change," Silas told him.
"Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!" the driver replied enthusiastically with his exhaustion completely vanishing at the sight of a 100% tip.
Silas opened the back door wider, ushering Lia into the cab before sliding in right behind her.
The heavy door slammed shut, cutting off the noise of the rainy commercial district.
The interior of the taxi smelled like stale air freshener but it was warm.
The heating vents were blowing steadily which was a massive relief against the biting chill of the Valoria night.
As the driver pulled away from the curb and merged into the glowing traffic, Lia shifted awkwardly on the cracked leather seat.
The oversized t-shirt was bunching up around her waist, and she looked exhausted.
Her adrenaline crash from the healing potion and the overload of the Association Building was finally catching up to her.
"Big brother?" Lia asked softly "Can I... can I lie down?"
Silas looked over at her. "Yeah. Go ahead."
Lia didn’t hesitate.
She unbuckled her seatbelt, slid across the cracked leather and curled up into a small ball, resting her head gently on Silas’s lap.
Silas rested his hand lightly on her back with his thumb tracing the fabric of the oversized shirt right over where the massive scar used to be.
He let out a quiet steady breath, leaning his head back against the window as the taxi navigated the sprawling metropolis.
’She’s so small,’ Silas thought, staring out at the glowing neon towers blurring past the rain-streaked glass. ’Two years... She spent two years out there by herself because she thought she was ruining my life?’
He watched the city roll by.
They crossed the massive glowing suspension bridge that separated the grimy, industrial commercial wards from the pristine, hyper-wealthy residential sectors.
The transition was immediate.
