Chương 447: Chapter 430 - An Offer in the Dark

Alonso hadn't waited as long as he expected when footsteps approached his doorway. A dwarf stopped just outside, broad and low to the ground. Full plate armour, dark and worn at the edges, a beard so thick it had its own geography, and eyebrows that, when drawn together as they were now, reorganised most of his face into a single, consolidated frown. Barokh Stonevein Stage 1 – 54. 820% Alonso studied his prompt. The highest SP value he had seen. Both the hag and the Holy Knight had shown as [???], but among readable entities, this dwarf sat at the top of everything he had encountered so far.

"You Alonso?" The Old Norse came out gruff and clipped, or at least that was roughly what he assembled from it. Alonso nodded, keeping his expression neutral while his mind ran through the possibilities, and most of them were… not good. Had he failed to fool the elf scout? Had word from Brithelm already reached this deep? Either way, being singled out first, while officially the weakest on paper due to the Silver-ranked token, was not a particularly reassuring sign. He cursed inwardly, but kept his face still.

"Yes." The dwarf jerked his head in a short, almost casual motion. Alonso stood still for a moment, and followed shortly after, the guard at his door remaining undisturbed as it all happened. Pulses came in quickly from Lukas, Leonie and the others, as he moved, each carrying a different flavour of concern and advice that he absorbed and appreciated, even if he was fairly certain none of it would help much if his suspicion turned out to be right.

They walked for quite some while, making it clear just how ridiculously complex and large this underground fortress was. And he had a hunch this was just the face of it. If what Pablo had said earlier had any anchor in reality, there should be entire underground cities beyond this point. He wondered if they had Dungeons down here too. Would make sense, both for power progression and for sustaining whatever market ran beneath all of this.

The thoughts drifted through his head as they turned corridor after corridor, staircase after staircase, until after what felt like forever and more than a hundred turns, the dwarf stopped, gave a short nod toward the door ahead, and without waiting or explaining, simply walked away. Alonso blinked. He looked around. No guards, no escort, no one watching from any direction. The corridor felt genuinely isolated, the nearest filament light a good distance back.

He looked back at the plain wooden door, shrugged, and opened it. The room beyond was not quite what he had expected from the rest of the underground. Warm, for a start, the air carrying the faint trace of something aromatic, wood smoke and something floral beneath it. Bookshelves lined the far wall, packed and ordered. A desk sat to one side, neat, with a small collection of objects arranged on it.

Candles burned at intervals across the room, their light softer and warmer than the filament glow of the corridors, throwing the whole space in amber. It gave Alonso a strong impression of a stylish noble fashion from late 1600s Earth, the kind of room that existed to communicate taste more than anything else. At the centre stood a well-decorated table of dark wood, one chair waiting on his side.

And across from it, one leg crossed over the other, a woman in a black cloak sat facing slightly away from him, one hand resting in her lap, the other rotating a small silver spoon slowly around what appeared to be a cup of tea. Her fingers were slender and pale, almost white, moving with the unhurried elegance of someone entirely comfortable with silence. Her hood was still up, her face angled just enough down that her features stayed out of view, which Alonso was fairly certain was intentional.

He studied what he could from the doorway. She seemed relaxed, unhurried, the posture of someone who had been waiting without minding the wait. But more than that— Virgilia D'Aubremort Stage 1 –??? While Alonso was not entirely sure about his chances against the earlier dwarf, against this woman he could say, without a shred of doubt, that he was quite literally at her mercy.

Still, he knew that would have been the case with most powerhouses they could have been brought to at this point, so he kept himself absolutely calm, and genuinely curious, as he crossed the room, pulled out the chair, and sat down.

"Care to take a guess," the woman said, her voice soft and subtly teasing. Alonso frowned slightly. More than the tone, it was the language that caught him off guard. English. As far as Pablo had told him, English was spoken mainly in Brithelm, rare elsewhere in this stage. And while learning a new language in this world could theoretically be done in an instant given the right means, cultural values ran deep.

Locals tended to hold their own tongue as a point of identity, many outright refusing to accommodate foreigners regardless of how easily they could. Which meant this woman had chosen English specifically… for him. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. Alonso exhaled. It was what it was. He knew there was no easy escaping whatever script The Tower had now revised for him, so he might as well go with the flow.

"Word travels fast," Alonso said calmly. The woman tilted her head, only for visible red lips to show beneath the shadows of the hood, curved into something between a smile and an answer.

"I wouldn't call it a matter of speed."

"Connections then," Alonso said, unbothered.

"Among other things." The spoon continued its slow rotation around the cup, the sound of it almost imperceptible in the quiet of the room.

"I suppose you have some idea of who I represent by now." Alonso leaned back slightly, studying the shadow beneath the hood where her face should have been. His gaze moved around the room once, casual, yet taking every detail in.

"Let's see," he said.

"I was handpicked out of my group and brought somewhere private, which reduces whatever authority and leverage The Covenant could exercise over the conversation. The room is clearly designed for guests, the books unread, no real sign of personal use. Someone furnished this space specifically for important envoys from outside organizations." He looked back at her.

"And if I think about which powers could have predicted our movements this accurately, and this far in advance, the list gets short very quickly. Of the two remaining, one would never be permitted inside The Covenant at all." He met the shadow of her gaze directly.

"So… what does The Black Mantle want with me?" The red lips curved into something wider. She then reached up with one pale hand and drew the hood back in a single smooth motion. The face beneath was striking, one could even say inhumanly beautiful, sharp and symmetrical, framed by hair so dark it seemed to absorb the candlelight rather than reflect it.

Crimson eyes, the same shade as her lips, held his with a calm, amused clarity that suggested she was entirely used to whatever reaction her appearance tended to produce. Her skin was pale to the point of contrast, white against the black of her cloak and the dark of her hair. And when she smiled, fully this time, the unusual fangs were unmistakable. More than a bit longer than they should have been by human standards, catching the candlelight at the tips.

She set the silver spoon aside and extended one hand across the table, the gesture formal and unhurried.

"Pleasure to meet you, Alonso." Her voice carried the same soft, teasing quality as before, but with something underneath it now, a directness that matched his own.

"I am Virgilia D'Aubremort, an envoy of The Black Mantle." Alonso looked at her for a moment longer. More than the beauty itself, something that did not particularly affect him given his own standards and the fact she was not particularly his type, it was what her appearance suggested that caught his attention. The pale skin, the crimson eyes, the fangs. The whole composition of it pointing at something that existed in Earth's mythology with remarkable consistency. A vampire.

He nodded, reached across the table, and shook her hand. Virgilia released his hand and settled back into her chair, one leg crossing over the other again, the silver spoon returning to its slow orbit around the cup as if it had never stopped, even if her fingers no longer touched it. Alonso watched it for a moment. Silver. He wasn't sure if she was making a point, or if vampires in this world simply didn't carry the same weaknesses Earth's folklore had assigned them.

"So, Alonso," she said.

"I will get straight to the point." She looked at him directly, the crimson eyes steady and unhurried.

"We want you to join The Black Mantle." Alonso was quiet for a moment.

"I am not entirely against that," he said.

"But why should I?" Virgilia smiled.

"A much better question would be why wouldn't you." She tilted her head slightly.

"But so be it. I will entertain you… young Sovereign." Alonso held steady at the word. At this point, entirely expected.

"The Black Mantle offers something no other power in this world can match," she continued.

"Your road to the peak, accelerated. Resources, connections, and opportunities that no single organisation, kingdom, or even the entirety of The Covenant could provide, while you retain full freedom of action and authority over your own path. We do not own our members, Alonso. We invest in them."

"My road to the peak," Alonso said, already feeling the faint beginning of a headache.

"You are assuming I am not already there."

"Assume?" Virgilia's smile widened just slightly.

"We never assume, Alonso." A brief pause, the crimson eyes holding his.

"We know." Well. That was fast. Alonso exhaled quietly through his nose. If they knew he was not a true Fifth State Sovereign, and they clearly did, then the fact that they were sitting across a table making him an offer rather than simply removing the problem said something.

He looked at the woman across from him, at the easy confidence in her posture, at the spoon still orbiting the cup without her touching it, and felt very much like someone who had sat down at a poker table only to discover the deck had been arranged before he walked through the door. He had absolutely nothing to bargain with. Even if Virgilia had framed it all in goodwill, the underlying weight above their heads was clearly there.

At this point, The Black Mantle held all the cards, with the power and means to end their lives at a moment's notice, and there was nothing he could do about that. But there was a bright side to it too. Rather than an uncertain future in The Covenant, he was being offered alignment with a power, one of the strongest in the whole stage, that would actively want him to grow. A power that understood exactly what he was and had chosen investment over elimination. He looked at Virgilia for a long moment.

"Alright," he said simply. Virgilia's expression didn't change, though a glint in her eyes suggested she had held no real doubt about his answer from the start.

"Good," she said.

"Then let's get down to business." She reached into her cloak and set something on the table between them. A mask. White, smooth, covering only the upper half of the face. Alonso picked it up, curious. The craftsmanship was immaculate up close, the surface carrying a faint iridescent quality that shifted with the candlelight.

But more than the exterior, Alonso could feel the interior, an intricate layered system of conductive filaments woven into the inner face of the material in patterns so fine they were barely visible, each one interlocking with the next in a web of staggering complexity.

"It's yours," Virgilia said, watching him turn it over.

"The network inside reads your EM signature the moment you wear it and generates a continuous counter-frequency. To anyone scanning for you, you become someone else." A brief pause.

"Which means you will need a new name. So… what will it be?" Alonso set the mask down and thought for a moment. Another name for myself, huh? Alright…

"Mind if I borrow yours?"

"Go ahead." Then he smiled, faint and certain.

"Darius."