Chương 39: This Isn't a Blessing, It's an Employment Contract

The Holy Church's Grand Sacred Archive in the capital sat in the hushed dark of late night. The air was thick with beeswax, sacred incense, and the dust of a thousand years of parchment. Whoosh. The space between two rows of marble bookshelves rippled once, then went still again. A perfect combination of Silent Blink and Hidden Step brought Lucian and Sylvia directly in front of the sealed iron door guarding the archive's most restricted vault — without stirring a single strand of warding mana.

He didn't need to pick the lock. With ninety-five billion points of Spell Control, Lucian simply threaded a strand of mana thinner than spider silk into the magical lock, nudged each tumbler into place in the correct logical order, and pushed the door open. At the center of the sacred chamber, resting inside a pale-gold display case, lay dozens of gilded parchment leaves — the original archived copy of the Divinely Chosen Covenant.

Lucian pulled on white silk gloves, opened the case, and spread the first several pages across the stone table. He narrowed his eyes at the text. To the Church's priests and scholars, generation after generation for a thousand years, this scroll was the highest religious relic in existence — filled with divine hymns, tragic verses about salvation and noble sacrifice. They read it with the eyes of the devout, bowing before every line, never once daring to question it.

But to Lucian — a former finance worker now fluent in Old Elvish, Ancient Demonic, and the Sacred Tongue — the ornate outer shell of the text stripped away instantly. Three ancient languages, interwoven into a three-dimensional matrix, formed layer after layer of legally binding clauses tight enough to make his skin crawl. Ting! A dim black notification window from the System v2. 0 burst into his vision: [ANALYSIS COMPLETE: ANCIENT COVENANT TEXT — 'HERO SACRIFICE'] Text comprehension: 100% (MAX).

Constituent languages: Old Elvish + Sacred Tongue + Ancient Demonic. [TRUE NATURE IDENTIFIED:] INDEFINITE-TERM EMPLOYMENT CONTRACT & MANDATORY RESOURCE TRANSFER. Lucian ran a finger along the glowing lines of text, both temples starting to throb as he read through the stripped-down, literal translation. Clause 1: The bloodline-bearer agrees to dedicate 99. 999994% of all mana, physical stamina, and natural lifespan generated daily to the central operating system.

Clause 2: Contract term: Lifetime, automatically renewing and transferring obligation to descendants without requiring re-signature. Clause 3: Right of unilateral termination: None whatsoever. Clause 4: Compensation and benefits: To be addressed by society as "Savior," honored with a memorial statue upon death, and presented with a fresh bouquet of flowers in the event of death in battle. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. CRACK!

Lucian couldn't hold it in — he slammed a fist down on the stone table, and only the fact that his Sound Dampening skill muffled the noise kept the entire cathedral from waking up. The ten-year-old's face had gone dark with fury, his chest heaving.

"Are you kidding me?! This is blatant labor exploitation! These prehistoric capitalists make my past-life corporations look like saints!" Sylvia, standing watch by the window, noticed Lucian grinding his teeth and leaned in curiously, keeping her voice low.

"Lucian... what does the sacred text actually say?" Lucian folded a corner of the scroll back and let out a bitter breath.

"It says that dazed girl out there gnawing on roasted sweet potatoes has been working, unpaid, uninsured, without a single day off, for a shell company for sixteen straight years. Every drop of her labor and wages has been drained dry, and all she gets in return is a worthless title so people can clap for her when she dies." Sylvia stared at the dense, glowing lines of text, something twisting quietly in her chest.

She'd once been a slave bound by a blood covenant herself — she understood too well what it felt like to have every ounce of self-determination stripped away. But at least a slave knew she was a slave. Astra had been turned into one and still smiled, believing it was her sacred destiny.

"But why is all that energy being drained away?" Sylvia asked.

"Where does it go?" Lucian traced the mana pathways sketched into the margins of the page. According to the covenant's preamble, ten thousand years ago, the first Guardian Deity had established this agreement with Astra's ancestors to extract energy for maintaining a massive defensive structure protecting the continent. Historically, the contract had once had a legitimate purpose.

But over the centuries, that original voluntary sacrifice had been twisted by the Church into a hereditary, coerced obligation — turning innocent children into living batteries with no right to refuse.

"Found it." Lucian's eyes suddenly lit up. His finger stopped on a tiny passage cleverly buried at the bottom of the eighth page — Clause 84-B, under the Seventh Seal:'... The extraction effect of the Seventh Lock remains in force for as long as the bloodline-bearer continues to willingly acknowledge and hold the Title of Divine Servitude.' A cold, sharp smile — the exact smile of a lawyer who specialized in tearing apart corporate contracts — slowly crept across Lucian's mouth.

Whoever drafted this contract ten thousand years ago must have been a crafty old fox. He'd known pure magic alone couldn't bind a soul with divine potential, so he'd built in a "psychological consent" clause instead. As long as Astra kept thinking of herself as "the Church's Hero," the seal would run at 100% efficiency. But what if she formally announced... that she quit? What if she filed a written letter of resignation, renouncing the title of "Servant"?

The Seventh Lock would instantly lose its legal legitimacy and collapse from the inside out. Outside the library window, two clerics on night patrol suddenly stopped walking, looking up at the stained-glass dome of the sacred chamber as it glowed faintly from the reflected magic script inside. One cleric pressed his hands together over his chest and whispered, moved:"A miracle... the thousand-year relic is glowing on its own in the middle of the night.

It must be the Goddess of Light herself, blessing our Divinely Chosen Seed for the tournament!" Inside, Lucian used mana to copy the entire contract onto a stack of blank parchment, tucked it into his spatial ring, and carefully locked the display case shut. He turned to Sylvia, brushed off his ash-grey cloak, and let a calculating smile spread across his mouth.

"Let's go, Sylvia. Tomorrow morning, we're going to teach that innocent little Savior how to write a proper letter of resignation."