Gardener of Eden

Chapter 204: Chapter 204: Sovereign Pressure (3)

Roxie wiped the cold sweat from her porcelain forehead, her cold feline eyes flashing with lethal fury as she watched the last of their thirty-six S-Rank purists get torn apart by the enraged guild executives. The screams of their elite strike team echoed through her comm-slate before dying out in absolute silence.

”Adam, we have to get personally involved,” Roxie said, pushing herself up from the plush hotel sofa. She cracked her knuckles with a series of sharp, satisfying pops, dark purple illusion mana coiling around her slender forearms like venomous vipers. ”Our men aren’t capable of taking down that kid.”

Adam rose slowly from his leather armchair, his massive, armored frame casting a suffocating shadow over the room. His crimson mana core ignited with a deep, guttural hum, sending a violent shockwave through the penthouse that shattered every mirror, crystal glass, and piece of mahogany furniture into dust.

”Then we put an end to him ourselves,” Adam growled through his metallic face-guard, his eyes burning like dying stars.

Without another word, the two Order executives launched themselves straight through the penthouse window. The reinforced glass exploded outward in a sparkling curtain of shards as Roxie and Adam plummeted into the open air. Kicking off atmospheric mana platforms, they blurred into twin streaks of dark velocity, making a lethal beeline straight over the rooftops toward Eden International’s flagship store.

High above the cloud line, suspended in the silent, frozen void of the troposphere, Emperor Aurelius shifted his stance.

His golden eyes tracked the two massive, corrupt mana signatures—one a toxic velvet illusion aura, the other an explosive crimson death pulse—as they broke cover and tore through the capital’s upper skyline like twin dark meteors.

Aurelius folded his arms across his broad chest and let out a deep, contemptuous snort, the sheer pressure of his breath parting the surrounding clouds for miles.

”The worms finally left the den,” Aurelius rumbled softly, his voice echoing like distant thunder against the sky.

His hand hovered inches above the hilt of his imperial sword, but he made no move to descend just yet. His golden gaze remained fixed on Rowan Vance standing in the center of the store below. ”Let us see if you two can even force him to take off his hat.”

Down on the street, a roaring sonic boom rattled the brass framework of Eden International’s entrance. The cobblestones outside cracked open under a sudden surge of atmospheric pressure as two dark silhouettes landed with cratering force right on the boutique’s doorstep.

Inside, the victorious guild executives froze, their blood running cold as the overwhelming, oppressive pressure of Executive 2 and Executive 9 filled the air.

Rowan slowly adjusted the brim of his straw hat with a single finger, turning his head toward the entrance. Beneath the shadow of his hat, his eyes were cool, amused, and completely undisturbed as Adam and Roxie stepped through the smoke.

”Well,” Rowan said smoothly, resting the Hoe of the World-Tiller comfortably over his shoulder. ”Looks like the big weeds decided to pull themselves out of the dirt.”

***

A heavy, sickening stench of rot and decay suddenly washed over the boutique, instantly overwhelming the crisp, sweet scent of fresh produce and life-giving mana.

Adam reached across his back and unlatched a massive, jagged shaft of black iron. With a sharp metallic scream, he drew forth a terrifying, crescent-bladed polearm wrapped in writhing, pitch-black miasma—the Scythe of Corruption. The weapon hummed with a vile, parasitic frequency that made the very air surrounding it curdle and wither.

With a single, thunderous sweep of his arm, Adam swung the scythe through the air.

A crescent wave of oily, pitch-black necrotic energy erupted from the blade, slamming directly into the dense network of emerald green vines. The moment the corrupted edge touched the living greenery, the unyielding vitality infused by the Fragment of the Origin Earth Pulse began to instantly rot. The glowing vines turned dark brown, shriveled into brittle husk, and crumbled into heaps of lifeless black ash upon the ruined floorboards.

The handful of surviving black-armored purist elites collapsed onto the floor, gasping raggedly as they scrambled backward behind Adam and Roxie, freed from their living prison.

Rowan adjusted his posture, his knuckles whitening slightly against the ash-wood handle of the Hoe of the World-Tiller. Beneath the shadow of his straw hat, his brows furrowed tightly as a wave of dead, corrupted feedback rippled up through the ground and into his hands.

That blade isn’t just heavy armor-piercing, Rowan thought, his eyes narrowing as he analyzed the sickly black aura spreading across the store’s marble tiles. It carries a conceptual blight. It rots organic life and earth-rooted vitality on contact.

It was a complete, hard counter to his primary plant control and domain-based regeneration. Any vine he sprouted, any root network he summoned to bind them, would be instantly decayed and turned into useless ash the moment it came within range of that scythe’s corrupting field.

”Did you really think a few overgrown weeds were going to keep us locked up, farmer?” Roxie purred, stepping forward alongside Adam. Dark purple illusionary serpents slithered across her arms, her eyes dancing with cruel delight as she noticed the slight shift in Rowan’s expression. ”The Order didn’t come unprepared. We brought the exact key to wither your little garden into dirt.”

Adam raised the Scythe of Corruption, resting its wide, dripping blade on his shoulder. The black miasma oozing from the metal hissed violently as it ate away at the stone floorboards beneath his boots, slowly expanding outward like an ink stain in clear water.

”Your tricks are finished, Rowan Vance,” Adam growled, his crimson eyes gleaming behind his metallic face-guard with absolute lethality. ”Without your precious vines to hide behind, you are nothing more than a civilian with an iron stick.”

Behind Rowan, the guild executives took a collective step back, their fiery confidence faltering as the toxic aura of the scythe choked out their own mana pools.

Rowan stood his ground in the center of the hall, his eyes calm and calculating beneath his hat. His vines were countered, but a true tiller of the earth knew that when the surface soil was poisoned, you simply had to dig deeper.

***

Roxie’s eyes glinted with malicious satisfaction as she uncoiled a heavy, barbed chain whip from her waist. The moment the dark metal unraveled, it hissed violently, bleeding the exact same pitch-black corruption mana as Adam’s scythe. The toxic miasma slithered along the iron links like a living parasite, eating away at the floorboards and choking the remaining air in the grand hall.

Rowan adjusted his grip on the ash-wood handle of the Hoe of the World-Tiller, his posture instantly shifting into a tight, grounded defensive stance.

His mind worked through the tactical reality in a fraction of a second. Standing alone against two Order Executives was one thing, but taking on two blighting, corruption-type combatants simultaneously while shielding dozens of panicked guild leaders, noble patrons, and store staff trapped directly behind him made the situation exponentially more dangerous. A single stray lash from Roxie’s whip or a wide arc from Adam’s scythe could rot a dozen civilians into dust before Rowan could intercept it.

Adam grinned beneath his metallic face-guard, raising his crescent blade alongside Roxie’s hum of black chain links. ”No vines to hide behind, and nowhere to run, farmer—”

”Alright.”

A voice rumbled down from the cosmos—not loud, yet echoing with a terrifying, absolute authority that vibrated through the very marrow of every living soul in Sol Aethel City.

Before Adam or Roxie could take a single step forward, the clouds miles above the boutique parted in a massive, blinding circle. High above, Emperor Aurelius lowered his folded arms and released a fraction of his transcendent mana straight down into the capital.

BOOM!

A golden column of suffocating, god-like atmospheric pressure crashed down through the shattered skylight. The sheer, incomprehensible weight of the Imperial Crown slammed into the room like an invisible anvil.

Adam and Roxie didn’t even have time to gasp. The golden aura flattened both Executives instantly, smashing them face-first into the crushed marble floorboards. Their corrupted weapons—the scythe and the chain whip—screamed under the divine weight before being pinned flush against the stone, their pitch-black miasma thoroughly snuffed out like a flickering candle under a bucket of water.

The surviving purist elites were crushed flat beside them, unable to lift so much as a finger as the Emperor’s transcendent power locked their bones, their lungs, and their mana cores in absolute paralysis.

Hovering just outside the ruined ceiling, his dark imperial cloak billowing in the golden light, Emperor Aurelius looked down at the trapped cult leaders with cold, towering disdain.

”Do you guys have no shame?” Aurelius’s voice rumbled like thunder across the boutique, heavy with sharp, mocking judgment. ”Bullying a child of a mere sixteen years old?”

Before the pinned cultists could even squeeze out a raspy groan, the shadows around the grand foyer pool began to ripple.

Filing silently out of the darkness like liquid ink, a dozen clad-in-black Imperial Shadow Guards materialized throughout the ruined boutique. Working with terrifying, practiced efficiency, the shadow guards knelt beside the immobilized Executives, snapping heavy, rune-etched Divine-Grade Mana Handcuffs over Roxie’s and Adam’s wrists. The moment the cold iron clicked shut, the dark corruption networks inside the two cult leaders were severed entirely.

Without a single word, the Shadow Guards hauled the paralyzed, handcuffed Executives and their surviving purists off the floor, vanishing into the darkness of the shadows to convey them directly to the deepest interrogation dungeons beneath the Imperial Palace.

Inside the quieted flagship store, the suffocating pressure dissipated as quickly as it had arrived.

Rowan slowly relaxed his defensive posture, resting the Hoe of the World-Tiller casually against his shoulder. He reached up, tipping his signature straw hat back with a thumb to glance up through the broken skylight at the hovering Emperor.

Rowan offered the Emperor a calm, appreciative nod, a faint, grounded smirk playing on his lips as the store staff and guild executives finally began to catch their breath.