Elora leaned forward over the table, smoothly dropping the political hook.

"In exactly three months, the Sovereign Realm will host the Inter-City Lord Tournament," Elora revealed with her eyes locked on Silas. "It is a massive publicized, globally instanced war-game where allied cities pit their absolute best newly Awakened Lords against each other in open territorial combat."

She looked at the three of them.

"My father wants the four of us to form a united legally binding alliance. He wants us to be the official, state-sponsored Lords for Valoria City."

Jaxon’s bloodshot eyes widened in genuine panic.

"The Inter-City Tournament?" Jaxon stammered with his hands shaking again. "But... we barely survived a single week in the dirt! The Lords representing the capital cities are heavily backed by multi-billionaire corporate syndicates... They have private trainers...They have artifacts... We would get completely slaughtered."

"Not if we are legally funded," Elora countered smoothly, entirely unfazed by his panic.

She pulled her designer coat tighter around her shoulders.

"If we agree to form this alliance and sign the official city charter tonight, my father will bypass the local guilds and immediately grant us a Country-level Sponsorship."

Maya gasped incredibly loudly with her hands flying directly to her mouth in pure shock.

A Country-level Sponsorship was the absolute, uncontested holy grail for independent Lords.

It meant an endless overflowing river of logistical resources.

It meant free shipments of refined iron and quarried stone delivered directly to their staging zones.

It meant access to top-tier magical architectural blueprints, advanced spell tomes, and massive inflated monthly stipends of liquid Spirit Credits.

The government would essentially pay out of pocket to build their defensive walls and arm their recruited troops.

"Billions of credits in pure backing," Elora promised, carefully watching the blinding greed instantly ignite in Jaxon and Maya’s exhausted eyes. "We won’t have to scavenge the dirt for scrap metal... We won’t have to worry about our palisade walls breaking under a beast wave...The state will literally forge our empires for us from the ground up."

Elora tapped her manicured fingernail against the table.

"All we have to do is fly the Valoria City banner over our Keeps."

Elora turned her icy blue gaze entirely to Silas.

She fully expected to see the exact same starving desperate ambition currently burning in Jaxon’s eyes.

She expected the quiet slum kid who had hauled heavy scrap metal for a living to leap enthusiastically across the table and beg for a pen to sign the lucrative contract.

Silas was casually leaning back against the plush velvet cushions, staring boredly at the acoustic crystals embedded in the ceiling.

"That will be a no for me." Silas said.

The single sentence dropped heavily onto the center of the dark wooden table like a solid lead weight.

Jaxon snapped his head toward Silas violently with his eyes practically bulging completely out of his skull.

"Are you insane?!" Jaxon shrieked, entirely abandoning his volume control. "Graves, did you physically hit your head during the descent process?! She is offering us a blank unlimited check from the central government! We will never have to fight for resources again!"

"She is offering us a leash..." Silas corrected him brutally. "Didn’t you do your research?"

He lowered his gaze from the ceiling, looking directly into Elora’s icy blue eyes.

Silas sat forward heavily, resting his thick muscular forearms on the table.

He stopped actively suppressing his physical pressure.

The gravity of his aura immediately pressed down forcefully on the entire booth.

The air pressure shifted.

Jaxon’s frantic protests were instantly silenced with the words dying in his throat.

Two booths down, Silas heard the undercover corporate spy’s breath completely hitch as the pressure hit her location.

"A Country-level Sponsorship is not a humanitarian charity... I thought we were all aware of that." Silas stated coldlyz "Read the actual fine print of the legal charter, Jaxon. Yoj just have to do research."

Silas stared the terrified rookie down.

"If you blindly sign your name on that paper, you are legally required to hand over exactly eighty percent of your territory’s total operational control directly to the politicians and bureaucrats sitting safely in the capital."

Maya frowned, looking entirely confused by his logic.

Her greed was blinding her.

"What does that matter if they pay to build our walls?" Maya argued defensively. "They give us the money, we let them take credit. It’s a fair trade."

"It matters because you entirely stop being a Lord," Silas told her bluntly, dismantling her naive logic. "The state decides exactly where you build your barracks and the state decides what zones you are legally permitted to hunt. You lose your autonomy."

’Of course Elora won’t since she’s the City Lord’s daughter but that’s beside the point...’

He leaned in closer.

"And most importantly, the state legally gains the absolute authority to draft your personal troops into their conflicts."

Silas’s jaw tightened visibly.

The burning golden rings inside his blue irises flared dangerously in the dim lighting of the cafe as his mind flashed to his loyal girls.

He thought of Brida... He thought of Tamsin diving into a fight... He thought of Eluned holding his hand....

"If the central government gets into a petty, territorial border war with a rival corporate guild over a mana crystal mine," Silas continued. "they can legally force you to march your summoned Heroes and your local militia directly into a meat grinder just to protect their offshore financial interests."

He stared at Elora.

"You completely lose the right to say no... You become a glorified expendable middle-management commander for the politicians. You become cannon fodder."

He pushed his ceramic coffee mug completely away from him.

"I did not carve my territory out of the freezing mud just to hand the operational keys over to a soft suit sitting in an air-conditioned office..." Silas finalized his verdict. "I am not sharing my troops and I am not sharing my walls so I completely refuse."

Jaxon looked at Silas like he had completely lost his mind.

Maya bit her lip hard, visibly torn.

She was trapped between the terrifying conviction bleeding from Silas’s voice and the blinding promise of endless effortless wealth offered by the City Lord.

Silas fully expected Elora to aggressively snap.

He expected the highly spoiled woman too throw a loud public tantrum.

He expected her to threaten to revoke his weekly Association stipends or storm furiously out of the cafe in a predictable rage... like any other normal noble did.

Instead, Elora smiled.

It was a genuine smile.

She didn’t look angry in the slightest. In fact Elora looked deeply impressed.

She had purposefully thrown out the highly lucrative bait, fully expecting the other two traumatized rookies to bite instantly but she had watched Silas extremely closely since he sat down.

He wasn’t a starving dog she could lure into a cage with a piece of meat.

He was a fully grown apex tiger.

"I strongly suspected you might say exactly that, Silas," Elora admitted softly.

Her tone entirely shifted in an instant.

She dropped the slimy politician’s pitch completely, adopting a tone of genuine mutual peer respect.

She reached into the deep pockets of her designer winter coat and pulled out three sleek encrypted runic lockboxes.

She placed them carefully on the dark wood of the table and smoothly slid one directly toward each of them.

"The official offer for the alliance remains open until the tournament officially begins in three months..." Elora said smoothly, leaning back. "But whether you sign the legal charter or not, my father specifically instructed me to provide a token of our goodwill."

She gestured to the boxes.

"A gift, entirely free of legal strings, to ensure Valoria Academy’s capable talents survive their next descent into the realm."

Silas looked down at the heavy lockbox resting directly in front of him.

The glowing blue runic seal was already deactivated.

The heavy steel lid was popped slightly ajar.

Resting cleanly on a bed of pristine black velvet was a single, softly glowing silver card.

It was a Hero Summoning Card.

It was the exact same half-million credit artifact the greedy extorting clerk at the LAB armory had tried to overcharge him for just hours ago.

Jaxon and Maya completely gasped.

They practically ripped their individual lockboxes open, staring down at the priceless glowing artifacts in disbelief.

Silas looked away from the card and looked directly at Elora.

He understood the political game she was actively playing perfectly.

It wasn’t a desperate bribe now... instead it was a calculated long-term political investment.

She was actively handing him a massive expensive chunk of direct military power completely for free.

She was banking on the extremely high probability that when he eventually grew into a threat, he would specifically remember exactly who handed him the ammunition when he started out.

’Quite smart if I do say so myself...’

Silas reached out with his thick calloused fingers closing securely over the softly glowing silver card.

He pulled it from the black velvet and slipped it smoothly into the interior pocket of his coat.

"Tell your father I appreciate the gesture," Silas said, his voice sounding neutral.

"Right..." Elora said as she pulled out a tunic pen and paper. "If you want to join the sponsorship then sig—"

Jaxon on the other hand practically snatched the glowing runic pen right out of Elora’s hand before the City Lord’s daughter could even finish explaining the terms of the Country-level Sponsorship.

He didn’t bother reading the fine print.

He didn’t ask a single follow-up question about the territorial taxation rates or the military draft clauses Silas had just warned him about.

Jaxon simply slammed the pen down onto the glowing contract, aggressively signing his sovereignty away with a frantic desperate signature.

’I can be rich...’

Maya was exactly half a second behind him.

She eagerly grabbed the pen next with her purple hair bouncing as she scribbled her name across the digital dotted line.

Her eyes were completely glazed over, practically spinning with animated credit signs as she imagined the billions of free corporate credits flooding into her account.

Silas watched the two of them eagerly shackle themselves to the Valoria City bureaucrats...

He took another slow sip of his horrifically bitter, over-roasted black coffee.

He politely masked his physical grimace with a warm completely casual smile.

’Ah, yes. The classic corporate 9-to-5 even after all of that talk...’ Silas thought, highly amused by the entire situation. ’Nothing quite like surviving a magical death-game just to voluntarily become a glorified middle manager for a politician. I give it two weeks before Jaxon is filling out expense reports for his arrows.’

He set his ceramic mug down gently on the saucer.

He didn’t feel any edgy brooding disappointment in them.

He genuinely understood their perspective.

Not everybody wanted to be an independent warlord.

Some people just wanted a stable paycheck and a sturdy wall they didn’t have to pay for.

"Congratulations, you two," Silas offered sincerely, giving them both a warm encouraging nod. "Seriously. A Country-level Sponsorship is a massive safety net despite all I said... You guys are going to do great out there."

Jaxon looked up from the contract, blinking in genuine surprise.

He fully expected Silas to mock him or judge his decision.

"Thanks, man," Jaxon breathed out with his shoulders visibly relaxing for the first time all night. "I just... I really need the backup."

"I get it," Silas smiled casually, adjusting the collar of his black tactical shirt. "Build a good fortress and stay warm."

He didn’t linger to watch Jaxon and Maya frantically fawn over the City Lord’s daughter.

He had exactly what he needed.

His mind was already racing with complex, rapid-fire calculations regarding exactly what kind of mythic entity he needed to pull from the portal to train his women in heavy melee combat.

’I’d like a sword goddess or something this time...’

Silas stood up smoothly from the plush velvet booth.

The ambient air pressure naturally shifted around his broad shoulders.

"Good luck, guys," Silas told the table, offering a polite two-finger salute.

He turned and walked away with his strides carrying him smoothly across the polished hardwood floor of the cafe.

The wealthy patrons once again fell into a dead terrified silence.

They completely paused their conversations, watching the dark-haired golden-eyed predator walk past their tables.

Silas noticed the terrified stares.

’Why is everyone looking at me like I’m about to rob the register?’ Silas wondered internally, completely oblivious to his own overwhelming aura. ’Did I spill coffee on my shirt? I swear, rich people in this city have absolutely zero social skills.’

He pushed his shoulder against the heavy brass-trimmed glass doors and stepped out into the freezing rainy night.