The Conquerors Path

Chapter 1067: Chapter 1065 — The Abyssal Bourse

The observation decks of the Golden Turtle were designed to give the elite a comfortable, insulated vantage point from which to watch the financial slaughter below. They were quiet, heavily perfumed, and entirely too boring for Krave.

We didn’t stay on the onyx balcony for more than three minutes.

“The problem with observing a rigged game, Austin, is that you don’t get to see the exact moment the cheaters realize they are bleeding.”

Krave murmured, her dark eyes tracking the frantic, swirling masses of traders on the floor beneath us,

“I assume you intend to be the one holding the knife.”

I replied mildly, keeping my hands resting in the pockets of my coat.

“I am going to be the entire executioner’s block.”

She beamed.

‘Elowen will go crazy here.’

Without waiting for my confirmation, Krave stepped off the edge of the polished onyx platform. She didn’t fall into the chaotic pit below; the ambient, heavily regulated gravity of the cavern caught her, allowing her to drift downward like a predatory shadow descending upon a school of entirely oblivious fish.

I let out a soft breath of amusement and followed her, stepping off the ledge and pulling the localized spatial laws with me.

Luna, who was still draped comfortably around my neck, let out a soft rumble of annoyance as the air pressure shifted.

“I don’t like others too close to me.”

“I will ensure your personal space is violently respected.”

I promised Luna.

We touched down on the polished platinum floor of the Bourse.

The noise was not just loud; it was a physical entity. It battered against my passive sound-dampening barriers like a solid wall of kinetic force. Thousands of traders—ranging from four-armed trench-goblins to sleazy, silk-draped surface elves who had paid fortunes just to be in the room—were screaming at each other over the shifting values of glowing runic boards floating above the trading pits.

Currents of physical wealth whipped through the air. Specialised, high-pressure water tubes crisscrossed the cavern, shooting millions of carved pearl-tokens back and forth between the massive, floating teller stations.

Luna’r eyes were locked onto the walls of the amphitheater.

Scuttling along the platinum railings and specialized coral tracks were the courier-crabs. They were roughly the size of large dogs, their shells heavily plated in enchanted obsidian. They moved with terrifying speed, clutching tightly rolled cylinders of kelp-paper in their massive claws—the physical stock certificates and ownership deeds of the deep-sea empires.

“That one, the shell is saturated with localized neurotoxins designed to instantly paralyze anything that bites it.”

Luna projected directly into my mind, her ears pitching forward. She watched a particularly large crab carrying a bundle of glowing red certificates dart past a screaming triton banker.

“It is a highly secure, biological delivery system, it is not a snack.”

I noted.

“I can smell the meat beneath the poison. It is incredibly fresh.”

Luna corrected smoothly.

“Luna, if you bite that crab, you will trigger a magical distress beacon that will lock down the entire financial district.”

I warned, effortlessly steering us through a dense crowd of heavily sweating dwarven brokers. They subconsciously stepped aside, their minds failing to register why they were moving.

“I can eat it and finish digesting it before it can even think about beeping,”

The wolf argued, her eyes tracking the crab as it scurried up a vertical pillar. I stared at the silver wolf resting on my collarbone, genuinely marveling at the terrifying, flawless logic she applied to her gluttony.

“Keep observing it, we will find a blind spot in the arrays.”

I compromised softly.

Luna let out a deep, vibrating purr of satisfaction, entirely ignoring the chaotic economy collapsing and rebuilding itself around us, her attention solely fixed on her heavily armoured prey.

Ahead of us, Krave had confidently marched up to one of the largest, most aggressively contested trading pits on the floor.

The Pit Boss was a massive, scarred triton with four muscular arms, each clutching a different glowing ledger. He was currently screaming at a group of terrified merchant-barons, rejecting their trades with brutal, expletive-filled finality. Behind him, a colossal board of shifting green and red runes tracked the real-time value of the ocean’s most vital resources.

Krave didn’t wait her turn. She walked straight to the front of the pit, completely ignoring a furious human nobleman who was attempting to leverage his family estate for deep-tide bonds.

“You.”

Krave commanded, her voice cutting through the deafening roar of the pit with the crystal-clear resonance of a struck tuning fork.

The triton Pit Boss blinked, his four arms pausing mid-gesture. He looked down at the beautiful, completely unremarkable woman standing before him, his brain immediately categorized her as someone he could not afford to dismiss.

“State your capital, lady, or get out of the pit the market is volatile today. I don’t have time for surface tourists playing with their allowance.”

The Boss rumbled, wiping a bead of sweat from his scaled forehead.

“I want to short the entire southern abyssal obsidian sector, every single claim. Every mining guild operating below the three-thousand-meter mark. Sell it all.”

Krave stated calmly, leaning her elbows against the heavily warded platinum counter.

The Pit Boss stared at her, his jaw dropping slightly. The human nobleman next to us actually gasped.

“Are you insane?” Southern obsidian is the most stable commodity in the ocean! The Mermaid templars use it to forge their armor! The Duke of the Southern Trench just opened three new magma-vents yesterday! The price is going to skyrocket by nightfall!”

The Triton barked, leaning over the counter.

“No, it isn’t, because the cooling currents from the deep-tide drift are currently shifting three degrees to the west. They are going to completely bypass the new magma-vents. The magma will boil the surrounding water, the pressure gradients will collapse, and the mines will flood with toxic sulfur before the shift change. The obsidian will turn to brittle slag.”

Krave smiled. It was a terrifying, deeply ancient smile as she said so.

The Pit Boss sneered, slamming one of his heavy ledgers onto the counter.

“The oceanic analysts haven’t predicted a current shift in that sector for another four hundred years, lady. You’re reading tea leaves. I need proof of capital for a trade that size. You’re talking about leveraging the GDP of a mid-sized kingdom.”

Krave didn’t blink. She reached into her coat and pulled out a single, beautifully carved pearl-token—the exact same token we had stolen from the arrogant merchants in the Aethelgard taverns. It contained exactly five hundred platinum coins.

It was a vast sum for a tavern game. It was absolute pocket change on this trading floor.

She slapped the pearl onto the runic scanning plate built into the counter.

The runic plate glowed a dull, angry red, preparing to emit the loud, humiliating buzzer that signaled insufficient funds.

It was time for me to work.

I didn’t move my hands. I didn’t whisper an incantation. I simply looked at the mathematical logic governing the runic plate. The magic was designed to read the physical weight of the platinum stored within the pearl’s pocket dimension and convert it to a numerical value on the ledger.

I gently grabbed hold of that mathematical reality and added seven zeros to the end of the equation.

The dull red light of the scanning plate violently stuttered. It flashed to a blinding, piercing green. The magical ledger in the Pit Boss’s upper left hand sparked, the enchanted ink rewriting itself so fast the parchment actually began to smoke.

The triton stared at the ledger. All four of his arms went entirely slack.

His brain, heavily influenced by my perceptual filter, didn’t question how a single pearl could suddenly contain more wealth than the entire Aethelgard royal treasury. He simply accepted the reality I had imposed upon the world.

“Trade confirmed.”

The Pit Boss whispered, his voice trembling as he hastily stamped Krave’s receipt with a heavy, glowing seal.

“Excellent, now, give me highly leveraged futures on Northern Trench glowing kelp. The entire harvest.”

Krave beamed, snatching the receipt.

For the next forty-five minutes, Krave turned the Abyssal Bourse into her own personal playground.

She didn’t use analytics, and she didn’t care about the political maneuvering of the Dukes. She was playing the market using a fundamental, intimate understanding of the ocean that no mortal could possibly possess. She knew exactly when deep-sea leviathans migrated, predicting localized supply chain disruptions decades in advance. She knew which coral reefs were secretly infected with abyssal rot, shorting the agricultural markets just moments before the royal inspectors discovered the blight.

We drifted from pit to pit, leaving a trail of utterly bewildered, sweating floor managers in our wake.

Every time a scanning plate threatened to reject her increasingly impossible wagers, I simply smoothed the reality of the transaction over. I altered the perception of the automated magical systems, tricking the central bank’s core logic into believing Krave was an authorized market-maker.

“Austin, I just bankrupted Lord Morwen. He heavily invested in deep-tide pearls, and I just flooded the market with synthetic futures. His entire ancestral estate is currently being foreclosed upon by the central algorithm.”

Krave laughed, her eyes completely wild with the thrill of the hustle as we watched a massive board of green runes violently crash into the red.

“You are a terrifying entity.”

I murmured, watching a squad of armored bankers sprint past us, frantically screaming about a sulfur collapse in the southern obsidian mines.

“I am merely correcting market inefficiencies.”

She grinned.

While Krave systematically dismantled the Mermaid royalty’s investment portfolios, Luna finally made her move.

We were standing near a massive, spiraling pillar of solid gold. A courier-crab, carrying a tightly sealed cylinder of incredibly valuable sovereign debt certificates, was scuttling rapidly down the track, heading directly toward us.

“Yup, it’s in there alright.”

Luna projected, her body tensing on my shoulders. She didn’t crouch; she remained perfectly still, but the kinetic potential coiling in her muscles was staggering.

“If you bite its head, the alarm will sound.”

I confirmed, watching the crab approach the ten-foot mark.

“Then I will not bite its head, Austin. Fold the space beneath its legs. Drop it.”

Luna said smoothly.

‘She is so spoiled.’

And I loved it, I didn’t hesitate. The crab was highly enchanted, but it was still just a crab. As it scuttled past the five-foot mark on the golden pillar, I reached out and removed the concept of friction from the section of track directly beneath its claws.

The crab slipped.

It didn’t just fall; it plummeted off the vertical pillar, its legs flailing uselessly in the air as it dropped directly toward my chest.

Luna didn’t jump. She simply extended her neck with the terrifying, blinding speed of a striking viper.

She didn’t bite the shell. Her jaws snapped cleanly around the soft, unarmored joint connecting the crab’s heavy claw to its thorax. Before the beast could even register the pain—before the magical distress array woven into its nervous system could send the signal to the templars—Luna violently jerked her head back.

The sheer, raw physical strength of the silver wolf tore the crab’s central nervous system completely out of its body in a single, brutal motion.

The crab instantly died, going completely limp mid-air. The distress array, deprived of a living host to power the signal, simply fizzled out in a tiny, pathetic spark of blue light.

Luna caught the heavy, paralysed body in her jaws before it could hit the platinum floor.

I casually adjusted my coat, stepping slightly to the left to block the view of a passing teller. I expanded my perceptual filter to encompass the wolf, ensuring that no one on the trading floor noticed the massive silver predator currently crunching through an enchanted obsidian shell as if it were a fragile potato chip.

Luna chewed methodically, her eyes closed in deep, violent satisfaction. The highly toxic venom sacs ruptured inside her mouth, but her absurd, divine biology simply digested the neurotoxins as extra seasoning.

With a soft, delicate ptoo, Luna spat a rolled-up cylinder of kelp-paper out of her mouth. It bounced off the platinum floor, completely soaked in crab fluids.

“The meat was sweet, the texture of the shell provided a highly satisfying acoustic crunch. However, the paper is entirely flavorless. You may discard it.”

Luna reviewed, licking her chops.

I looked down at the soggy kelp-paper. It was a bearer-bond representing a massive fraction of the central bank’s emergency liquidity reserves.

“You just ate a messenger carrying enough wealth to buy a city.”

I noted, kicking the soggy, worthless paper into a nearby drainage grate.

Krave returned from the final trading pit, her arms completely loaded with massive, glowing pearl-tokens. The Bourse behind her was in a state of absolute, unregulated meltdown. The runic boards were flashing with catastrophic warnings. Heavily armored templars were beginning to flood the floor, completely unable to understand how the entire market had just been hollowed out from the inside.

“I think we broke it, I currently own 2 percent of the Golden Turtle’s physical gold reserves. If I cash this out, the entire ocean will revert to a barter economy.”

Krave announced, looking immensely proud of herself. She tossed one of the massive pearl-tokens into the air and caught it.

“Are you going to cash it out?”

I asked, weaving our stealth filter slightly tighter as a squad of panicked templars sprinted past us.

“Gods, no.”

Krave laughed, tossing the incredibly heavy, priceless token onto a random teller’s desk.

“What am I going to do with physical gold? I just wanted to see if I could make the algorithms cry. The floor is entirely boring now, Austin.”

She looked up, her dark eyes locking onto the massive, heavily fortified deep-sea diamond doors resting at the absolute back of the cavern. The doors pulsed with layer upon layer of soul-crushing pressure wards and blood-pact magic.

“Let’s go look at the Vault of Tides, I want to see what the Emperors are actually hiding.”

Krave smiled, the ancient thrill returning to her voice.

I let out a soft breath of amusement, entirely content to follow the chaos.

“Lead the way.”

Leaving the screaming, ruined financial district behind us, we strolled perfectly undetected toward the most impenetrable vault in the world.