Chapter 322: The True-One Fragment
The daemon-fishing session was over. Silentium looked visibly wrung out, announced he was completely done, and said he needed to go sleep immediately.
Kian started cleanup. He suited up in protective gear, applied Sanctified Oil, pulled on heavy rubber gloves, and entered the isolation chamber to collect the drops. Everything got gathered up and brought to the Emperor's Shrine for offering.
Thirteen items total. He arranged them in front of the Shrine. Golden flames rose, consumed each one cleanly, and settled.
He waited.
Nothing appeared. No feedback. No blessing. No system notification.
...What?
He stared at the shrine. He checked his own condition. Nothing had changed — no attribute boost, no new ability, no divine prompting of any kind.
"Seriously? I sacrificed thirteen daemon artefacts and got absolutely nothing?"
He was about to start packing up when something caught his eye. Down on the ash-grey floor, half-hidden in the dust — a tiny glint of gold.
He crouched and picked it up carefully. It was barely a tenth of a fingernail in size. A fragment of something, golden, irregular at the edges.
He held it up between two fingers and looked at it. It looked like a tiny chip of gold. Which seemed underwhelming, given the context.
He pulled up the system interface and ran an identification.
The display read:
Fragment of the Armour of Reason. Sacred Relic. Priceless.
The Armour of Reason was the personal battle armour of the Emperor of Mankind, forged from Auramite. Following the Emperor's critical wounding and His ascension to the Golden Throne, He personally ordered the armour melted down and the material distributed among those who had served with greatest distinction.
Recipients used these fragments to create medals, decorative fittings, and adornments worn on their persons and their armour — signifying that the Emperor walked with them. Objects of incalculable spiritual significance.
Kian very slowly set the fragment down on his palm and stared at it.
No exaggeration: in the right hands, this thing could be traded for an entire fleet group. Possibly for a thriving inhabited planet.
Of course, the more likely scenario in most hands would be that the person holding it got quietly eliminated and the fragment taken from their corpse.
He felt two contradictory emotions arrive at exactly the same moment.
On one hand: the Emperor's Shrine actually worked. It delivered. This was genuinely extraordinary.
On the other hand: he absolutely could not spend this. It was useless to him right now. Having something this valuable, at his current level of power, was like a child holding a diamond — it just made him a target.
Maybe in the future. Maybe when he had dozens of capital ships at his back, he could deploy something like this to enhance himself properly. For now, it was going in the deepest part of the Sanctum and staying there.
Several days later, Kian was mid-training when a message came through from General Zeppelin: Get to the Spire immediately. Serious situation developing.
He made his way up. Zeppelin was waiting for him at the entrance, practically bouncing on his heels.
"Noble war. Internal noble war. It's started."
Kian blinked. "Start from the beginning."
"Yesterday. The Campella patriarch died.
Before he died, he named his younger son as heir. But his daughter — Lady Nightingale — won't accept it. She's claiming her stepmother forged the succession document, and she's already rallied supporters. She's preparing to contest it by force.
The stepmother's side is backed by her own birth family, which is a major noble house in its own right. Several of Campella's senior retainers have also declared for the stepmother.
Both sides have mobilised. They're arrayed around the Campella Estate Tower right now, and it's about to turn violent."
The memory of his original agreement with Lady Nightingale surfaced immediately. Back when he'd been starting out, before any of his current reputation, she'd extended him a meaningful amount of early support. They'd had an understanding: when her inheritance dispute came to a head, he'd be there.
"What's the current situation? Where is she? Still in her family's tower?"
"No — her people got her out in time. She's under protection from the nobles who support her.
But she's losing on paper. The stepmother's faction has thirty thousand armoured troops and a hundred thousand private soldiers, plus the physical will document claiming legitimacy.
Nightingale's side has ten thousand armoured and forty thousand private soldiers. And the stepmother is running a narrative about her being an unfilial daughter — claims she was estranged from her father and neglected him."
Zeppelin produced two letters and held them up.
"Both sides have invited me to join them."
"Which way are you leaning?"
Zeppelin shook his bald head slowly.
"I haven't committed yet. I'm watching.
On pure odds, Nightingale loses. Stepmother's side looks like the winning bet. Nearly every noble house has already gone to that camp, which actually means the spoils are thin — so many players dividing the prize that even the winning faction doesn't gain much.
Nightingale's side, by contrast, is the underdog. Full disadvantage, almost certainly a losing hand — unless something extraordinary intervenes.
Which means if she somehow wins, whoever backed her gets disproportionate returns."
Kian tilted his head. "So your decision is...?"
Zeppelin scratched his bare skull and smiled sidelong at Kian.
"Nightingale is about the right age for marriage, wouldn't you say?
What if you married her? If you agree to that, I put my entire fortune on her winning — and with House Zeppelin and House Campella joining through marriage, the combined power would be something the Spire hasn't seen in a very long time."
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