Chương 47: Preparing for the Negotiation with a God

The study at the Vance family estate in the capital was bathed in the white glow of thirty-six moonlight pearls. The four-meter ebony table was covered in hundreds of parchment scrolls, energy-flow ledgers, and ancient grammar dictionaries. The smell of herbal ink mixed with heavy beeswax in the late-night air. Sylvia sat in the left corner, her silver beast ears twitching occasionally as her quill flew across the page, cross-referencing characters between Old Elvish and the Sacred Tongue.

Across from her, Eleanor had shed her heavy knight's armor and wore only a plain white silk blouse, her golden hair pinned up neatly at the back of her neck. She was using the royal jade seal to stamp red authentication marks onto each page of legal appendices. At the center of it all, Lucian wrote at the speed of an arcane printing press. Ting! A brief System v2. 0 notification flashed at the corner of his vision. [LARGE-SCALE DOCUMENT DRAFTING PROGRESS:]'Speed Reading' skill leveled up: Lv. 5 → Lv. 8!

'Syntax Weakness Detection' skill leveled up: Lv. 6 → Lv. 9!

'Author' Class leveled up: Lv. 3! Eleanor picked up the freshly stamped stack of parchment and skimmed through it for a final check. At page fifteen, her finger stopped. She looked up at Lucian and tapped the page.

"Lucian... explain Clause 5 to me." Lucian kept writing without pausing, answering evenly.

"Short version: business hours." Eleanor took a deep breath and read the clause aloud."' Clause 5: The Hero's regular extraction rate is reduced from 99. 999994% to a maximum of 12%. Extraction hours fixed at 8: 00 a. m. to 5: 00 p. m., weekdays only. Saturdays and Sundays off, per standard labor practice.'" She flipped to page seventeen."' Clause 6: In the event the barrier comes under beast attack outside of business hours, any additional seal activation to draw extra energy shall be classified as Overtime.

Compensation shall be calculated at a 1. 5x multiplier, paid in Premium-Grade Mana Ore deposited into the Hero's personal account within thirty days.'" Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. Eleanor set the papers down on the table and looked Lucian dead in the eye.

"You're making our god pay overtime?"

"Even gods have to respect basic market economics," Lucian said, dipping his quill to finish the last line.

"If gods insist on picking midnight to manifest, that's on them. Forcing an employee to work night shifts without hazard pay is a violation of international labor law... my mistake, continental labor law." He flipped another sheet over and slid it across to her.

"Stamp page twenty-four too while you're at it. That's the clause on maternity leave and unemployment insurance in case the god unilaterally terminates the contract to swap in a new Hero." Eleanor picked up the jade seal and stamped it down onto the page with a firm thump, the corner of her mouth twitching.

"If my royal ancestors could see me from beyond the grave, using the national seal to authorize a contract demanding overtime pay from a god... they'd probably claw their way out of their tombs." She looked up at Lucian. Under the arcane lights, the ten-year-old was carefully lining up the margins of each page with a ruler, checking every last punctuation mark across thirty pages of appendices. No grand oaths about love for the homeland. No tragic speeches about saving the masses.

Only meticulous, cold precision, and a mountain of numbers calculated down to the last copper coin. And yet that same dry, unromantic precision was carving out a real path forward for Astra — and shielding this entire empire from collapse. Eleanor looked at the ink stains on Lucian's fingertips, then at the ash-grey traveling cloak draped over the back of his chair. For the first time, Eleanor considered the possibility that she'd been asking the wrong question.

Whether Lucian knew the Nameless Knight mattered less than she'd thought. The methods on the table in front of her — ugly numbers, legal clauses, contingency plans — were unmistakably his own. That only made him more difficult to classify. Click. The door opened. Astra walked in, wearing her new light leather armor, the Sun-Slaying Dragon Sword at her hip. She carried a small wooden box holding four fragrant roasted sweet potatoes, which she set on the table.

"Late-night snack, everyone. Just finished baking these." Sylvia picked one up and broke it in half, smiling.

"The full syntactic structure of all thirty appendix pages has been translated into the Sacred Tongue. The seal linkages are ready for negotiation." Lucian blew gently on the ink of the final page to dry it, then gathered all thirty sheets and slid them into a jet-black dragonhide tube. He stood, tightened his belt, and turned to look at Eleanor, Sylvia, and Astra. The moment had come. Beneath the Sun Temple, the gate leading down to the Solaris Core Engine had opened in the dark.

Down there, a ten-thousand-year-old divine will was operating the machine that drained energy from the entire continent. Lucian tucked the dragonhide tube under his arm and brushed off his sleeve.

"Let's go. Time to teach a god a thing or two about workers' rights."