Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 875: Commitment

The scribe’s hand had not stopped shaking for the last three pages.

She sat at the far end of the table with her ledger open and her pen still moving, because the pen always moved, that was the job, but the letters had been getting smaller and tighter with every demand the young man across the table lobbed at the Chairman of the Awakened Association.

The latest one informed the Chairman that the legal framework governing every dungeon entity in this country could not stand any longer. He’d said it as if he expected the man to agree with him on the spot.

Her ledger contained all they discussed, the prize packages, legal backing, federal arbitration channels, sovereign dungeon ownership, and entity reclassification, every sentence a grenade lobbed in the softest wrapping she had ever witnessed.

The Chairman let the silence sit for three beats, then set both hands flat on the table.

”I have heard your wants, Mister Grey.” He used the name pointedly, ignoring the Eclipse framing Kaiden had maintained all meeting. ”I will tell you plainly that I cannot promise a single one in this tent. What I can tell you is this.”

He held up a hand before Kaiden could respond.

”If Eclipse wants what you’ve described, we will need more than information. We will need a commitment. Should a catastrophic-scale threat emerge on United States soil again, Eclipse has to respond by being among the first on the ground. No advisory periods, no committees, no delays. Boots and power at the site before the press helicopters arrive.”

He folded his hands. ”Without that agreement, I doubt any of this finds the support it needs.”

”You doubt?”

The corner of Kaiden’s mouth turned up, but it carried none of the saintly warmth from before.

The pressure that rolled off him hit the room like a shift in gravity, cold and focused, heavy enough to make the scribe’s heart nearly jump out of her chest.

”Mother.” He didn’t turn around. ”Help me understand something, because I seem to be lost.”

Vespera hadn’t spoken since they’d entered the tent. She’d staffed this meeting in silence, positioned behind her son’s right shoulder, letting him conduct every exchange without correction.

The Chairman had noted her restraint early and filed it under ’manageable.’

That filing was about to expire.

”What is it, Kaiden?” she asked it the way she might ask him to pass the salt.

”Is the Chairman suggesting that Eclipse should take its cooperation, its research access, its proven record of handling extinction-level threats, and offer them to someone more... appreciative?”

Vespera looked at the Chairman.

For the first time since entering the tent, she smiled.

It landed on the room like a second shift in gravity.

Kaiden’s pressure was cold and focused, but the woman standing behind him carried the full weight of the Shadow Monarch in the curve of her lips, and the two of them together, mother and son, sitting and standing, filled the tent with a unified threat that made everyone else in it feel like furniture.

Grace’s skin prickled. Goosebumps climbed her forearms beneath her sleeves, and a single thought arrived fully formed: what a terrifying pair.

The scribe’s chest had gone tight enough to hurt.

Every breath came shallow, her pen slipping from fingers that had gone numb, and she pressed her lips together against a sound she couldn’t name because voicing discomfort in this room right now felt like it would get her killed.

”Yes.” Vespera’s voice carried no hurry. ”That seems to be the case.”

The answer sat in the tent and did not leave.

Then the pressure cut out, both of them at once, and the warmth washed back in so cleanly that the scribe’s next breath came out as a shudder she couldn’t control.

”But of course,” Kaiden continued, and the ’we’ was back as if it had never left, ”humanity’s safety has always been our foremost concern. We would never dream of standing idle while innocent lives hang in the balance.”

He pressed a hand to his chest with such earnest sincerity that Grace’s eye twitched. ”Eclipse is more than willing to stand among the first responders should such a terrible catastrophe arise again. It’s simply the right thing to do.”

The Chairman stared at the grin behind the pious mask, his fists pressed flat beneath the table.

To Kaiden, this wasn’t a concession at all.

Being a ”first responder” meant Eclipse would send people to assess, monitor, and study whatever the mana apocalypse threw at them next.

It didn’t mean they’d have to go all out, nor did it mean strapping his girls to a warhead and launching them at the first sign of trouble.

Furthermore... If another Kaiju-class threat materialized, he’d be involved anyway.

Partly because trouble always seemed to find him, and partly because the benefits they’d reaped today were far too good. He and all his girls gained more than twenty levels! Not to mention the DMP gains, Pebble, political power, and more.

”Noted,” the Chairman grunted.

”Then we have only one final hope.”

Grace went still.

The scribe picked her pen back up, held it over the page, and braced.

The Chairman’s hands unfolded, then refolded, the readiness behind the shift unmistakable. ”More... hope?” He couldn’t believe his ears.

What more could this arrogant fucker possibly desire?!

Three people in the room prepared for whatever Kaiden Grey was about to extract from the United States of America next.

”We hope,” Kaiden said, smiling innocently, ”that Miss Scribe receives a raise.”

He turned his head toward the woman at the end of the table. ”She’s been remarkably diligent.”

The Chairman’s mouth opened and closed without producing a sound.

The scribe made a noise somewhere between a gasp and a squeak, small and strangled, the only sound she had produced during the entire meeting.

Her job was to be invisible.

Scribes were fixtures, and fixtures did not have opinions about sovereign territory demands.

Being singled out by the world’s biggest anomaly while the Chairman and his secretary watched from either side was so far outside her job description that her pen slid sideways across the page and left a long diagonal streak of ink through her otherwise flawless transcript.

The scribe glanced at Kaiden and turned away as if she’d touched a stove.

Grace shook her head, biting back a laugh.