BOOOOOOOOOOM!

The explosion that erupted from the Mythic Relic was unlike anything that area of sky had ever seen, the shockwaves carrying properties of thunder spread outward in every direction, the clouds several meters above shaking visibly from the force of it, the Relic’s self-destruction at the center of it all releasing every unit of Spirit it had absorbed in a single instant.

Both Gidion and Yussac were already falling when it hit them, and the explosion caught their bodies and threw them backward with a force that carried them through the air and then down through the treeline below, crashing through branches, trunks, mud and stone, bones fracturing with each impact, their heads snapping into unnatural angles, blood flowing from their noses and ears as their bodies bounced and broke against everything they hit until finally they stopped.

Gidion’s fractured head came to rest against Yussac’s bent right hand, Yussac’s head slowly lowered beside him, and neither of them moved again.

Two people who had spent years making the same weekly run on the same route, arguing about gold coins and laughing about it thirty seconds before the end, were gone.

On the other side of the explosion, at the position closest to the detonation where the monster had been floating while holding Gidion, the smoke and shockwaves slowly receded and the monster surfaced from within them completely unscathed, the strange pressure mixed with Spirit that had been sitting around its body since it stepped out of the Crucible and it acted as a barrier through the entire explosion, absorbing and dispersing the force without the monster needing to actively respond to it, which meant the intelligence behind what it was doing extended even to its passive defenses.

It turned toward the place where both bodies had stopped.

And seeing that...it smiled, the jagged sharp teeth inside its mouth visible as it grinned at the two still figures lying among the broken trees and stones below.

Then it turned toward the route stretching toward Lumivale, its hollow red eyes fixing on that direction as its senses reached outward and found the concentration of life signatures sitting inside the city, many of them, the same city both of the traders had come from, and the same place where...Atlas was, though it had no way of knowing that.

It flew toward Lumivale at a speed that left a displaced trail in the air behind it... the vicious grin still remained on its face.

- - -

Inside the Rosaria Household, in the same room where everything had escalated earlier.

Atlas sat on the couch with his eyes moving between the three of them, Dravenson across from him in what appeared to be deep thought, his eyes were fixed on Atlas as if he was still measuring something.

Maristella sitting silently beside her husband with that same unsettled quality in her gaze that had been there since she used her ability, and Seraphiel at the right end looking between her parents and Atlas with an expression that said she had given up trying to understand what was happening in their heads and had decided to ask them when Atlas wasn’t present.

What she didn’t know, and couldn’t know from her current cultivation level, was that the Unique Abilities both her parents had used were not visible or even sensible to anyone below S-rank who hadn’t already developed a connection to the Fundamental Forces of Nature, because those Unique Abilities were derivations of those very Forces and only someone with that specific understanding could perceive them, which meant Seraphiel had watched her parents react to Atlas with horror and fascination without having any way to understand what they had actually seen.

Atlas had noticed all of it, the curiosity from one and what seemed like fear from the other, though the fear part made no sense to him, she was an SS-rank and he, only a Peak A-rank was sitting in her living room, there was nothing about his visible situation that should have produced fear in someone at that level, but he couldn’t work out the reason so he set it aside.

He was about to bring up the contract nullification when he sensed the Butler named Horliax’s presence again, and a moment later the butler appeared in the doorway carrying a box, black with carvings across its surface and two golden Angel wings at the front, the Rosaria Household’s symbol rendered in the most expensive looking version of itself Atlas had seen yet on any of their belongings.

Horliax placed the box on the glass table between Atlas and Dravenson, bowed slightly and excused himself to the Patriarch, Matriarch and Lady Seraphiel in sequence, then left without a sound in his steps.

Atlas looked at the box and immediately noticed its size, it was much smaller than he had expected, he had assumed something that carried S-rank Spirit density in the quantities Harleks had described would need to be large, roughly the size of his head at minimum if he thought about it logically, but the box in front of him wasn’t even close to that, it was compact enough to sit on the glass table without dominating it.

He thought, ’What if it’s a Relic so high in rank that I can’t sense its Spirit at all?...and the cores are as big as I imagined?...only way to know is to open it.’

Seraphiel stood, took the box from the table and held it in front of her as she spoke, "Mr. Atlas, I didn’t know you were already at the edge of climbing to S-rank, I would like to congratulate you in advance because it’s a feat many Explorers and especially commoners fail to achieve, and you seem to be somewhat special among them, or rather abnormal, I’m not sure which word fits better but congratulations regardless."

She continued, "Now, let me compensate you with these cores for my father’s rudeness, though I think it still doesn’t fully match what happened here, I would like to introduce you to something later that I think would interest you, as per our contract it would stay between our household and you, so I would ask you to decide after hearing it."

She sat back down and placed the box on the table in front of her, then slid the two golden wing pieces apart and opened it.

Atlas’s senses flared the instant the box opened, the Spirit density leaking from inside hitting him with an intensity that made his own reserves, which surpassed any peak A-rank by a significant margin, feel small in comparison, and when he looked inside he saw them, five cores the approximate size of a cricket ball each, fitted neatly into individual hollows in the box’s interior, radiating a white Spirit glow that pulsed steadily and filled the immediate area around the box with a density that anyone in the room with cultivation awareness could feel.

He stared at them and kept his reaction contained, though internally he was processing several things at once, the contract nullification was still sitting in the back of his mind, but Seraphiel’s mention of something she wanted to introduce later had pulled at his curiosity in a way he hadn’t fully dismissed yet, and alongside that a separate concern had surfaced:

’What if I nullify the contract here and Dravenson decides to kill me right now?...He and she already seems to have seen my Hatred, I don’t know how that’s possible but...I have to do this somewhere they aren’t present...the central city is the better option, Seraphiel said she was already planning to move there.’

He turned to the cores and spoke, "Alright, I will take these as compensation, thank you for the congratulations, also Lady Seraphiel, I will be leaving Lumivale as soon as I reach S-rank, so I would like your people in the central city to be ready to continue our information trade or Relics trade arrangement to be ready as you can’t be there right now."

Seraphiel nodded and closed the box, sliding it across the table toward him, Atlas took it with a nod and then looked toward Dravenson and Maristella, both of whom had settled somewhat but still had that quality of attention on him that felt more like assessment than conversation.

Dravenson spoke, his expression shifting as he remembered what he had originally brought Atlas here to discuss, "I had called you here to speak about something important, as you are connected to my daughter and as it seems you are heading toward the Central City anyway, I would like you to deliver something from our household, it would be compensated of course, we have our own workers but this particular delivery needs to go directly to the Queen herself and we need someone capable enough to ensure it reaches her Majesty safely."

"All our A-ranks and S-ranks are tied up in other work at the moment, so I thought you were the most capable available option, so, would you be willing to deliver a Relic directly to her Majesty?" Dravenson finished.

Atlas stood with his eyes narrowed and slightly wider than usual, something in the back of his mind pulling at him as if he was supposed to remember something connected to this, though whatever it was didn’t surface clearly enough for now.

What hit him first and most clearly was something else entirely.

This continent had a Queen.

Not a King.

A Queen.

And he was being asked to walk directly into her presence and hand her something.