Chương 198: Emptying the Arsenals

While Lumia was fighting her battle in cosmic silence, Dex Williams was waging an entirely different kind of war in the other half of Seiron. It was not a war relying on assassinations or direct bloodshed, it was an economic, logistical, and psychological war aimed at paralyzing the enemy's capabilities before he set foot on the battlefield. His objective was the three secret warehouses that Sylvester had established in the abandoned industrial district on the city's outskirts.

Those warehouses were no mere ordinary stores for grain or provisions, they were the vaults that had swallowed the blood and sweat of the Western Province's people. They contained Sylvester's personal reserve arsenal, which included hundreds of Crystal Swords imported from the cold northern mountains: weapons forged from steel blended with pure mana dust, capable of penetrating ordinary armor as though it were cardboard.

In addition, Manalit Armor, magical breastplates and shields that Sylvester had imported at fantastical prices, paying for them from the heavy and exorbitant tax revenues that had broken the people's backs, forced farmers to sell their lands, and driven craftsmen to beggary. Dex reached the perimeter of the main warehouse, a massive stone structure resembling a miniature castle without windows, located at the end of an industrial alley reeking of coal and rust. The light rain heightened the place's bleakness.

The warehouse was guarded outwardly by a few drowsy guards, but the real danger lay in its enormous steel gate, equipped with a very complex alarm enchantment and mechanically interlocking locks designed specifically in the Imperial capital's workshops.

"Okon, move forward," Dex whispered as he watched the gate from behind a pile of wooden barrels. Commander Okon, who in his early youth had been one of the continent's most skilled thieves before Marcus had recruited him and transformed him into a loyal commander in the Old Guard, crawled toward the gate with caution. He drew fine tools from his belt, pressed his ear against the cold metal, and closed his eyes to feel the delicate mana pathways coating the locks.

After a minute of silent examination, Okon pulled back, his face dripping sweat, and looked at Dex with a discouraged shake of his head.

"The situation is worse than we anticipated, my lord. These are not merely mechanical locks, there are three layers of interlocking cylinders, and each layer is connected to a mana circuit sensitive to pressure. Any error by a single millimeter, or any attempt to break them by force, will trigger a deafening alarm that wakes the entire military garrison in the neighboring barracks."

"How long do you need to safely open this complexity?" Dex asked with coolness, his eyes never leaving the gate. The old thief looked at his tools, then at the massive lock, and swallowed.

"If you want me to disable the mana circuits and undo the mechanical gears without triggering the alarm, I'll need at least a full hour. Maybe more. It is surgical work, my lord." Dex drew his silver pocket watch and studied its hands.

"We have only five minutes before the next outer guard patrol passes, and Sylvester is already at maximum alert. We do not have the luxury of time."

"Then we are at an impasse," Okon sighed.

"We cannot storm the place without bringing the provincial army down on our heads."

"Step aside, Okon," Dex said quietly as he removed his leather gloves.

"I will open it." Dex advanced with steady steps toward the imposing steel gate. He drew no lockpicking tools and did not draw his sword. He placed his two bare palms directly on the cold metal surface, precisely over the area of the central complex lock. He closed his eyes and focused his attention on the blazing core in his chest. The blue flames ignited from his palms. But this time they were not the chaotic or explosive fires he had used in the underground vault during training.

They were not aimed at wide-scale destruction. Dex used the astonishing control he had learned from his father to direct the phoenix flames to become frightfully concentrated, transforming his palms into something resembling high-temperature plasma torches in a manner the human mind cannot process. The black steel, forged to withstand catapult strikes, began changing color beneath his hands. It turned cherry red within seconds, then graduated rapidly to blazing orange, then to a blinding incandescent white.

The air around the gate trembled from the intensity of the thermal radiation, and the rain droplets approaching his back began evaporating before they could touch his clothes. And in a scene that defied every law of metallurgy, the complex internal locking mechanism melted entirely.

The gears crafted from the hardest types of metals, the interlocking cylinders, and even the armored plates, all converted into a white viscous metallic liquid that began running from the lock's openings and dripping onto the stone floor like tears of fire, emitting a muffled hiss. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. The most astonishing thing was that the magical alarm bell did not sound.

The sensitive mana circuits embedded inside the lock found no opportunity to activate. The blue phoenix flames were so concentrated and powerful that they did not merely melt the metal, they consumed the mana itself. They incinerated the magical pathways and destroyed the enchantment's foundational structure in a fraction of a second, reducing the alarm to mere ash before it could transmit its signal to the barracks. Dex pushed the massive gate, it swung open with a faint creak, revealing the inner darkness.

The Alliance of the Oppressed, supported by the Old Guard's elite, poured inside the warehouse. The moment they lit their faint magical torches, everyone gasped in genuine astonishment. The hall was the size of a small battlefield, and was stacked floor to ceiling with wooden crates sealed with Sylvester's personal stamp.

They contained a wealth of weapons sufficient to equip and arm an entire small army: thousands of Crystal Swords, Manalit breastplate armor, lances with armor-piercing heads, and sophisticated composite bows.

"Look at this, this is enough to occupy an entire province!" whispered one of the resistance men, his eyes widening at the enormity of what he saw.

"Take everything," came Dex's voice, decisive as a blade's edge, echoing through the warehouse's recesses.

"Leave no crate, leave no armor, leave not a single nail. Empty this place until they find nothing in it but dust." The men worked like a precisely organized beehive. There was no shouting or jostling. Secret rear gateways connecting to the city's old tunnel network were opened, and a long column of handcarts and strong men began transporting the heavy crates in silence.

The spoils were immediately distributed toward the poor and marginalized neighborhoods, and to the hideouts of exiled knights and veteran soldiers whom Sylvester had expelled and stripped of their ranks merely for having shown loyalty to Lord Marcus in the past. Within a few short hours, all three warehouses had been completely emptied.

Dex stood in a wide earthen square in the middle of the poorest and most wretched neighborhood in Seiron, where the families displaced by Sylvester's taxes had gathered, and where workers who had lost their limbs in the province's mines without compensation dragged out their days. The place was swarming with hundreds of men and women who had assembled, their faces pale and carved by hunger and oppression, their eyes having lost the glimmer of hope long ago.

Dex ordered his men to open the crates in the center of the square. The moment they were opened, the blades of the pure Crystal Swords and the radiant Manalit armor gleamed, as though stars had fallen into the mud of poverty. The light reflected off the faces of the astonished poor who had never seen a weapon of such purity in their lives. Dex stepped forward and stood on one of the empty crates so everyone could see him.

He wore no golden armor, only a simple black cloak, his young features carrying the harshness of years.

"People of Seiron!" Dex shouted in a resonant, deep voice full of power, reverberating in the dark corners of the neighborhood like the roll of thunder heralding the coming storm.

"Look carefully at what is inside these crates. These are not merely swords and armor. This is the blood of your husbands who died in the mines. This is the food of your children who went to bed hungry. This is the roof of your homes that was sold to pay unjust taxes!" Dex pointed his hand toward the gleaming weapons.

"Sylvester Williams did not forge these weapons from his own pocket. He bought them with your pain. He stored them in the darkness, away from your eyes, to protect with them his stolen throne, and to use them to crush any voice that dared to demand bread or dignity. He armed his executioners with your money." A majestic silence settled over the square, a silence charged with a suppressed fury that had begun boiling in chests.

"But today, this wealth has returned to its true owners." Dex bent down and seized one of the Crystal Swords, raising it high. The sword blazed, as though it were a lighthouse illuminating the path of vengeance.

"Today, we will not go to the doors of his palace to beg for mercy, because tyrants possess none. Today, we will not plead for a crust of bread. Today, we will arm every hand capable of gripping a sword in this province. We will use the weapons he built with our blood, to cut off his arrogant head and cleanse our city of his filth!" The response was not merely cheers. It was a roar. Cries of loyalty and fury rose from the throats of hundreds of the oppressed.

They were not mercenaries searching for gold, and they were not soldiers obeying orders out of fear of punishment, they were beasts whose chains had been loosed: human beings whom suffering had driven to the edge of the abyss, who had now found the instrument of vengeance in their hands. In that moment, Dex was no longer merely the son of a former lord, he had become a symbol of salvation, a sword leveled at the throat of injustice.

Before leaving the central warehouse, now completely empty and desolate, Dex returned to it with quiet steps to leave his final message. In the center of the dark, bare, deserted hall where the crates had been piled only hours before, Dex stopped. He drew an ordinary dagger from his belt and drove it with force into the stone floor, standing it vertically. Then he reached into his pocket and drew out a perfectly ordinary bird feather, a white feather he had picked up from the road.

He affixed the feather to the dagger's handle, then passed his finger over it lightly, coating it in his blue flames. But he used an extremely rare and complex technique: he made the flames burn as a cold flame. A flame that dances in luminous blue, illuminating the surrounding darkness, yet does not burn the fragile feather at all, does not consume oxygen, and does not go out in the wind. He left the dagger and the burning feather as a terrifying blue beacon in the center of the dark void.

A silent, artistic, and lethal message, that would reach Sylvester the moment his soldiers opened the melted doors, saying to him plainly: We were here. We took everything. And we are coming for you.