Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Chapter 717: Suing The Brassbound Guild [III / Bonus Chapter]

With trembling clumsy fingers, the guildmaster pulled the contract toward himself.

It weighed more than he expected... Well contracts always did, when you were the one being eaten by them.

His eyes darted over the sharp bureaucratic text.

The clauses were brutal.

...Clause One handed over ninety-five percent of the guild’s liquid treasury to the account of Lord Vespera, which was worse in ink than it had sounded out loud.

...Clause Two stripped the executive board of every voting right, operational veto and scrap of managerial authority.

”The board has no vote?” he croaked. ”None?”

”The board has no assets,” Number Five said. ”Votes follow assets... This is basic corporate law, unless you don’t know business?”

”It’s very basic,” Kara agreed. ”You’d have known if you’d ever read the charter.”

Then he reached Clause Three, and his breath stopped.

[Section III: Corporate Reassignment & Executive Remand]

[Effective immediately upon signature, full legal and structural ownership of the Brassbound Guild, its manufacturing assets, foundry leases and intellectual holdings is transferred in perpetuity to Lady Kara White, acting as the Lord of Blessed Land.]

[The sitting guildmaster is hereby stripped of rank, title and commercial standing, to be replaced without delay by an appointed Special Secretary of the World Council, who shall oversee all operational directives, fiscal auditing and production quotas on behalf of the owner...]

”Wait!” His voice cracked into a strangled gasp and his fingers clutched the parchment until the fibers creaked. ”Ownership?! You’re taking the entire guild?! You said a SETTLEMENT! You said we’d keep building the golems! I’m the founder! My name is on the charter! You’re putting someone else in my halls?!”

”Founders are replaceable,” Kara said, almost kindly. ”Don’t worry, we’ll keep the name over the door... It’s free branding.”

He opened his mouth to scream, to cite the charter laws of the Second Ring, to demand an audience with the commercial magistrates but Kara White took a single quiet step forward.

She didn’t shout or draw a weapon.

She just leaned down, and Silas let Kara’s violet eyes bore into his dilated pupils with a weight like a mountain peak coming down on his skull.

Beside her, Number Five raised one silver-cuffed finger.

Huuuum!

The spatial fabric around the guildmaster’s neck cinched tight as the air pressure dropped to nothing.

His collarbone groaned, his voice caught in his throat, and his lungs went freezing and empty.

’This is coercion! You can’t coerce someone into signing a contract or it can be voided in court!’

Neither of them said a word.

’...But then again, who wants to go against them?’

It was the silence of an executioner waiting for the condemned to lay his neck on the block.

His courage, his greed and his pathetic outrage folded in on themselves like a punctured bellows as tears of pure humiliation spilled over his eyelids and his lower lip quivered.

”I understand,” he whimpered, sounding barely audible as the pressure eased enough to let air back in. ”I’ll sign.”

He fumbled across the desk, knocked over an empty brass inkwell, and found an enchanted drafting quill tipped in black mythril.

He dipped it into the glowing azure inkwell set into the contract itself and pressed down.

His hand shook so badly that the first stroke came out as a jagged scrawl, and he misspelled ”Brassbound” on the first line and had to start over while Number Five watched him with the patience of a cat at a mousehole.

”Umm... Umm...”

...He kept writing anyway.

He signed the asset transfer... He signed the patent relinquishment... He signed the deed to the manufacturing tracks and the foundry leases and, last of all, his own resignation from the commercial registry.

”Your handwriting is atrocious,” Number Five noted.

”I was being strangled!”

”Mitigating circumstance... Your circumstances have been noted and ignored.”

Scritch! Scritch! Scritch!

The final dot hit the paper.

Flash!

A blinding azure crest bloomed above the desk, the celestial compass-rose spinning once before it burned itself into the fibers of the contract.

The binding settled deep into the paper and locked the terms into every administrative ledger in Central City at once.

”Looks pretty~” Kara said.

”It is a legal instrument,” said Number Five, and sounded slightly pleased anyway.

Number Five scooped up the signed documents with one practiced snap of her small silver-cuffed hand.

Fwip!

They vanished into her spatial storage, leaving the desk bare except for the sticky wine stain.

She flicked two fingers toward the double doors.

Clack!

Four armored peacekeepers stepped in from the corridor.

Their blackened steel was etched with the balance-scales of the High Judiciary, their faces hid behind grilled visors, and heavy suppression rods hung at their belts.

They looked at neither Kara nor Number Five.

Two of them went straight to the desk, grabbed the former guildmaster by his golden velvet shoulders and hauled him to his feet while the other two bagged the wine goblet, the mythril quill and the torn ermine collar buttons as evidence.

”No, wait,” he choked with his boots dragging uselessly across the plush rug as they turned him toward the door.

His ermine collar was torn and his hair hung in sweaty clumps across his forehead, and his knees refused to carry him. ”This is my guild. I’m sorry. I’ll go back to the cellar... I’ll apologize to the soup!”

”Sir,” said the lead peacekeeper in a dead flat voice, ”you’re dripping wine on the evidence... The pits are this way.”

”Nobody wants you to apologize to the soup.” Kara said.

”Bye!” Solenne called, waving with all five fingers and two tails.

”Solenne... Don’t.”

”Sorry... It slipped out again, my Lord...” She rolled her shoulders cutely. ”I just wanted to be nice.”

’Damn you!’ his mind screamed as the guards marched him over the threshold. ’Damn you, Kara White! Damn you, World Council! Damn that miserable silver fox! I built this guild! I turned scrap blueprints into an empire! You took everything... every last copper! May the deep rifts swallow your territory whole! May your sky-barges burn in the clouds! I hope you all rot in the lightless void—’

Slam!

The mahogany doors cut off his silent curses and his scuffing boots faded down the marble hallway.

The big office went quiet and peaceful, as if somebody had finally taken out the trash.

”That went well,” Kara said.

”It went on schedule,” Number Five replied. ”I booked this room for eleven minutes but we were over by four.”

”You booked the room?”

”I book everything... plus the people that came here and all, somebody has to.”

Three seconds later, the side door to the archival chamber swung open with a dignified click, and a tall impeccably dressed man walked in.

He wore a crisp high-collared coat of dark charcoal wool with silver piping on the lapels and cuffs.

Silver-rimmed spectacles sat perfectly straight on the bridge of his narrow nose, and his dark hair was parted with mathematical precision as a thick leather ledger bound in audit cords was tucked under his left arm and a brass stylus clipped neatly to his breast pocket.

’He looks like a... Eh... eeh... Professor from Earth, right?’

He carried himself like a man who had never once misplaced a comma.

He stopped four paces in, and his polished shoes clicked together as he bent at the waist in a deep flawless ninety-degree bow, first to Kara and then to the masked Council Head.

”Greetings, Lord Vespera... Greetings, Fifth Seat.” His voice was crisp and free of emotional clutter.

Straightening, he nudged his spectacles up with one knuckle.

His sharp gray eyes took in the luxurious office, rested for a fraction of a second on the spilled wine, then he dismissed it.

”I have assumed administrative custody of the Brassbound facilities under the Council’s special receivership program,” the Secretary announced, opening his ledger with a clean rustling snap. ”The commercial accounts are frozen and partitioned... Ninety-five percent of the liquid reserves, two hundred and nine million Spirit Credits, is being rerouted through the Grand Reserve’s primary clearance into Lord Kara White’s account... The transfer will settle before the midday bells.”

”Where did you find him?” Kara asked quietly.

”He was in the archive when the notice went out,” Number Five said. ”Receivership requires a Secretary on site, I do not leave it to chance.”

Kara’s violet eyes gleamed with approval.

”And the manufacturing tracks?”

”Operational continuity will be maintained without interruption, my Lord... The workforce will be informed of the transition within the hour. The assembly lines will be recalibrated for the Blessed Titan Golems, strictly to the original dual-stage hydraulic specifications provided by your Chief Artificer. Every unit will carry the seal of Blessed Land, and the eighty-five percent gross margin will be wired to your accounts every two weeks.”

He closed the ledger against his chest and bowed again.

”You may consider this guild’s industrial output entirely at your disposal, Lord Vespera... I shall manage the ledgers personally.”

”Fifth Seat,” he added, turning with a second bow, ”the receivership requires your countersignature on the freezing of the secondary accounts.”

”It is already signed,” Number Five said.

”Of course it is.” He did not look surprised.

He looked like a man who had never once been surprised by the Fifth Seat’s paperwork and intended to keep that streak alive.

”Excellent work, Secretary,” Kara said, dipping her chin. ”Keep the furnaces burning, and make sure that apology hits the front page of the evening gazettes...”

”The draft is already with the printers, Lord Vespera. The former guildmaster will be delivered to the Directorate steps at four o’clock.”

”Make sure he has a crate since he’s so short.”

”A crate,” the Secretary repeated, and wrote it down without a flicker.

”I really him... He’s like Alfred.” Kara said quietly.

”He was inexpensive,” said Number Five. ”What’s an Alfre—?”

”It shall be done precisely as ordered, my Lord.” He retreated toward the side chamber to start cataloging the safe files.

Kara turned around.

In the middle of the vast quiet office, Solenne stood frozen.

Her satchel was clutched to her stomach, but her golden eyes were huge and shimmering, wet with unshed tears that caught the lantern light like molten honey.

Her hands trembled and her pointed silver ears fluttered back and forth as if she were trying to wake from an impossibly vivid dream.

Two hundred million credits... A public apology on the Directorate steps... Her golems stamped with the crest of the territory and mass-produced under Blessed Land’s protection.

Her life’s work, hauled out of the gutter and scrubbed clean of corporate filth.

Kara walked over with her steps light and easy on the steppe rug as Silas looked down at the overwhelmed kitsune with his violet eyes gone soft and warm.

’Lady Kara White, owner of a mining-golem guild...’ Silas thought, a little dizzy. ’Somewhere down the road I’m going to have to explain this to Thora.’

He pushed the thought away before it could start stressing him... Solenne was still staring up at him, and he’d rather look at her. Thora would be quite jealous but he would put this place in her name too just to be sure.

’She actually did it,’ he thought. ’She spent fourteen months building that frame, got robbed, got thrown in a canal, and she’s still standing here worrying whether I’m happy...’

”Well, Solenne?” Kara asked, her feminine voice gentle and teasing. ”Are you happy?”

Solenne’s breath hitched.

”My L-Lord...!”

She didn’t care about the tailored suit and she didn’t care about the empty left sleeve or the immaculate midnight-blue wool either.

With a tearful breathless sob, the fox beastkin threw her arms around Kara’s waist and buried her face in the front of her vest with her fists wrapped in the fabric.

All nine silver tails swept around Kara’s hips and thighs and bundled her into a plush cocoon.

”Thank you, thank you so much, my Lord!” Solenne wept into his chest, muffled by the expensive tailoring. ”You did it! You took it all back! You made them pay for every single gear! I don’t know how I can ever repay you! I’ll build you a thousand golems! An entire army of steel! I’ll work the lathes until my fingers fall off!”

Kara chuckled and patted the kitsune’s messy silver hair with her lone right hand.

”Don’t work your fingers off, Chief Artificer... Just build what you love... That’s why you’re in Blessed Land.”

”Thank you, Lady Council Head!” Solenne squeaked, peeking out of the vest.

”Do not thank me,” Number Five said. ”Thank the fee schedule.”

”Is this necessary?” She went on, from somewhere behind the desk, in the tone of a woman watching someone feed pigeons in a library.

”Yes,” said Kara.

”Very,” whispered Solenne, into the vest.

”The embrace has exceeded forty seconds,” Number Five added. ”I am timing it...”

”What are you, a jealous robot? Come hug me too if you want!”

Then Kara’s fingers drifted downward.

She couldn’t help it.

Those nine silver tails were wrapped so tightly around her waist that her right hand slid off Solenne’s back all on its own and sank into the thick impossibly soft base of her middle tail, and he gave it a slow firm squeeze.

Solenne’s sobbing stopped mid-hiccup.

’I’m a terrible person,’ Silas thought, with a very clear conscience. ’She’s crying and I’m squeezing her tail but it’s so... so fluffy.’

The fur gave under his fingers like warm snow, and the kitsune went very still.