Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 830: A con artist

A transport cruised low over the Cardinal’s outer district, two Eclipse stream drones trailing a few meters behind, their soft hum barely audible over the engine.

"I still don’t understand why we’re doing this," Diana said, arms crossed, boots propped on the dash in a way that would’ve earned a lecture from anyone but her. "Missing pet. That’s the contract. A missing pet"

"The pay is large," Sera said, scrolling through the contract file on her tablet without looking up.

"How large."

Sera turned the screen toward her.

Diana’s eyebrows went up. "That’s not missing-cat money."

"No," Sera agreed. "It is not."

She pulled up the client file properly, and a photo bloomed across the display, a man in his thirties, sharp jaw, expensive watch angled deliberately into frame like he’d taken the picture himself and cared exactly how it looked.

"Desmond Kray," Sera read. "Independent streamer. Content focus: luxury lifestyle, home security technology, and, according to this, competitive falconry."

"Competitive falconry."

"It says that, yes."

"Of course it does." Diana pulled the tablet closer, skimming. "Net worth, self-reported, so treat that with suspicion. House registered as a private estate, size classification ’compound.’" She glanced sideways at Sera. "Compound. Not house. Compound."

"The contract states his cat four beast escaped containment," Sera said. "He requested Eclipse specifically. Said the local task force wouldn’t be equipped for it."

"A cat four." Diana let that sit a second. "As a pet."

"As a pet."

"Sera. Why would anyone own a Cat four as a pet."

"I do not know," Sera said honestly. "Where I am from, nothing that size is kept without purpose. A working animal, perhaps, or something bonded through a real pact. Not simply... kept."

"Rich people don’t need a reason," Diana said, settling back into her seat, watching the district thin out below them into wider, greener land, private estates spaced far enough apart that each one looked like its own small kingdom. "They just want the thing because it’s rare, or because it makes them look interesting, or because someone at a party once had one and they couldn’t stand not having something bigger."

"That sounds exhausting."

"It is exhausting. I’ve met a few. Webb’s the exception, honestly, he’s insufferable in his own way but at least everything he owns has a purpose." Diana pointed out the window as a sprawl of white stone and glass came into view below, sitting on a hilltop overlooking half the district. "That, for instance. Look at that."

Sera looked.

The estate spread out in tiers down the hillside, pools carved into three separate levels, a private landing pad already lit up and waiting, the main structure itself less a house than a small compound of interconnected wings, all sharp angles and glass, catching the afternoon light like something designed specifically to be photographed from the air.

"It is large," Sera said.

"It’s a lot," Diana agreed. "Only other place I’ve seen that beats it for pure excess is Webb’s mansion. And that’s saying something, because Webb’s place has an actual indoor waterfall."

"An indoor waterfall."

"An indoor waterfall."

The transport began its descent, drones adjusting altitude to keep the landing framed for the stream feed, and Diana pulled her boots off the dash, straightening as the pad rose up to meet them.

---

Desmond Kray was waiting at the edge of the pad when the hatch opened, wearing clothes that looked casual in a way that meant they cost more than most people’s rent, arms spread wide in greeting.

"Eclipse," he said, like he was announcing them to an audience only he could see. "Incredible. Genuinely incredible. Thank you for coming, truly, I know you’ve got bigger things to worry about than my little problem."

"Mr. Kray," Sera said, offering a polite nod.

"Desmond, please. Come, come, let me show you the place, I insist, you have to see this before we get into the situation." He was already walking, waving them forward through a set of doors that slid open without him touching anything.

Diana glanced at Sera. Sera shrugged, and they followed.

The interior opened into a hall two stories tall, and along one wall stood a row of life-sized figures, sculpted and painted with obsessive detail, and Diana stopped dead the second she registered what she was looking at.

Noah, mid-stance, sword drawn, expression captured in something between focus and menace. Beside him, Sera herself, wings spread. Kelvin, all four arms extended. Lucas, lightning crawling visibly up the sculpted axe in his hands.

"You have to be kidding me," Diana muttered.

"You like it?" Desmond beamed, gesturing at the display like a proud parent. "Commissioned each one individually. Took the sculptor almost a year for the full set. I’ve got Diana back in the east wing, actually, still finishing the shield details."

"There’s a statue of me."

"There’s a statue of all of you." Desmond kept walking, entirely unbothered by Diana’s expression, leading them deeper into the compound past floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking one of the three pools. "I’m a huge fan. Genuinely. Been watching since the early days, back when it was just you five and a couple hundred viewers."

"Right," Diana said slowly. "About the Cat four."

"Yes! Right, of course, business first, apologies." Desmond led them through a final set of doors onto a wide balcony overlooking a fenced enclosure below, easily the size of a small stadium, high walls, reinforced fencing, and empty.

"His name’s Titus," Desmond said. "Beautiful animal. Absolute unit. I acquired him about eight months ago, fully trained, or so I was told, and somewhere in the last twenty four hours he’s gotten loose in the lower compound. My security drones can’t get close enough to tranquilize him, and frankly, I didn’t want to risk my own staff."

"You want us to catch him," Sera said.

"Or subdue him, whatever’s necessary. I understand if that means he doesn’t survive it, that’s an acceptable outcome given the circumstances."

Diana leaned against the railing, looking down at the empty enclosure below. "Can I ask you something."

"Anything."

"Why do you own a Cat four."

Desmond’s smile didn’t falter. "Same reason I own most things, Diana. Because I can. Because it’s impressive. And because, frankly, in a world with Harbingers in it, I like knowing I’ve got something big and dangerous on my side of the fence, even if it’s just for show."

"That’s not really an answer."

"It’s the only one I’ve got."

---

They geared up in a side room Desmond’s staff had prepared, standard field kit, and stepped out into the lower compound through a side gate, the enclosure’s high walls closing around them the second the gate sealed behind.

Nothing moved.

"Titus," Sera called out, voice carrying easily across the open ground. "Come."

Silence answered her.

They moved deeper in, past ornamental rock formations clearly built to give a cat four something interesting to climb, past a shallow pool, and Diana’s steps slowed as she scanned the tree line ahead.

"This enclosure’s too clean," she said quietly. "Look at the ground. No claw marks, no disturbed dirt near the fence line. If something his size actually broke containment, there’d be damage."

Sera’s expression sharpened. "What are you saying? You think this was all a lie?"

"I think we’re about to find out."

The ground beneath them shuddered.

A section of the enclosure’s floor split open with a mechanical hiss, panels retracting to reveal a drop into darkness below, and before either of them could react, the walls around the enclosure lit up with a low, resonant hum, thick reinforced barriers sliding down over every visible exit.

[SECURITY PROTOCOL ACTIVE]

A synthesized voice crackled out from hidden speakers overhead.

"Welcome to the Kray Estate Integrity Trial. All exits are sealed. Proceed through the compound and eliminate all hostile threats to reach extraction."

"You have got to be kidding me," Diana said, already dropping into a ready stance as something large moved in the darkness below the open floor panel.

"I do not think we are kidding," Sera said, wings already spreading wide behind her.

The first threat came up through the opening, not Titus, something else entirely, a hulking construct wrapped in reinforced plating, movement stiff but powerful, clearly built rather than born.

"Security drone," Diana said, already moving to intercept it. "Armored. Great."

She met it head on, Shoal Shield absorbing the first swing of its heavy arm, fragments orbiting tight and rebounding the force back into its own frame hard enough to stagger it, and Sera came in from the flank, a hardened feather-blade releasing from her wing in a low sweep that caught its legs clean out from under it, driving it to the ground.

More movement stirred beyond the tree line.

Two more constructs emerged, joined a moment later by something biological this time, low and fast, some engineered beast with too many legs and a mouth lined in serrated ridges, clearly not natural, clearly built or bred for exactly this kind of test.

"He built an entire gauntlet," Diana said, breathing harder now, ducking under a swipe and driving her shield forward into the beast’s flank. "This whole enclosure. This isn’t a rescue mission. It’s a test course."

"For what," Sera said, a feather-blade punching clean through a construct’s shoulder joint.

"For his security system." Diana caught the next construct’s strike on her shield, absorbing and redirecting it back with enough force to crack its casing. "He wanted to see if anyone could actually break out of something built to keep people in. And what better test subjects than us."

The gauntlet kept coming, wave after wave, constructs and beasts both, the enclosure’s terrain shifting subtly around them as hidden panels reconfigured walls and cover, clearly automated, clearly designed to escalate the longer they took.

Sera moved through it with growing intensity, wings snapping wide, feathers loosing in tight bursts that dropped construct after construct, and when a beast lunged at her from the treeline she met it head on, wing driving forward like a blade and punching clean through its chest in one brutal motion.

Diana fought beside her, shield absorbing blow after blow, momentum building with every impact she redirected, and somewhere around the fourth wave something in her expression shifted from focused to something colder.

"Enough," she said.

She didn’t wait for the next wave to fully emerge. She charged the nearest reinforced wall panel directly, shield leading, and slammed into it with the full accumulated force of everything she’d absorbed through the fight, metal groaning, buckling, then tearing open in a shower of sparks.

"Diana—"

"I’m done playing his game."

She tore through panel after panel, Sera falling in beside her, feather-blades carving through anything that tried to intercept, and together they ripped a path straight through the compound’s supposedly sealed containment, alarms blaring uselessly overhead as they broke into the main structure through a service corridor never meant to be an exit.

They found Desmond in a control room two floors up, watching the whole thing unfold across a bank of monitors, and he turned as they burst through the door, face lighting up with genuine delight.

"Incredible!" he said. "Absolutely incredible, you breached in under eleven minutes, that’s a new record, my previous best test team took almost forty—"

"You locked us in a fake enclosure and threw armed constructs at us," Diana said, voice flat and hard.

"A stress test," Desmond said, entirely unbothered. "The Kruel attack proved nobody’s home is truly safe. I wanted real data. Who better to test the limits of my security system than the strongest people in the entire Cardinal?"

"You could have told us."

"You’d have held back if you knew it was a test. I needed authentic performance data." He gestured at the monitors, replaying the footage with clear pride. "And look at this. You didn’t just escape, you dismantled my containment protocol entirely. That’s invaluable."

Diana stared at him for a long moment; Sera’s wings flared, sharp and tense, behind her.

"I’m calling this in," Diana said finally, already reaching for her comm. "Angel’s people are picking you up. False emergency contract, unauthorized deployment of lethal force against faction members, and whatever charge covers building an entire compound designed to trap people who came here to help you."

Desmond’s smile finally faltered. "Now, let’s not be hasty—"

"You’re lucky it’s just them coming," Diana said, already turning toward the door. "Because I’m two seconds from finding out if your panic room works as well on the inside."

Ten minutes later, a task force transport set down on the landing pad, and two of Angel’s people escorted Desmond out through his own front door in restraints, the man still protesting something about liability waivers and informed consent forms buried somewhere in his contract’s fine print.

"You signed off on emergency deployment," one of the officers said, unmoved. "Not gladiatorial testing."

"It’s the same clause, technically—"

"Get in the transport."

Diana watched from the pad’s edge, arms crossed, jaw tight the entire time, and didn’t relax even after the transport lifted off with Desmond still audibly arguing through the hull.

"Rich people," she muttered, mostly to herself. "You give them enough money and they lose the part of their brain that tells them normal people exist. Man builds an entire death maze into his backyard and thinks it’s a gift."

She turned, expecting some kind of agreement, and found Sera a few feet away, seated on the low wall bordering the pad, thumbs moving fast across her comms device, entirely absorbed.

"Hey." Diana walked over, dropping down beside her, adrenaline still working its way out of her system. "You good?"

"Mm." Sera didn’t look up. "Fine."

Diana glanced sideways at the screen, more out of habit than real interest, and caught a scroll of message bubbles, one right after another.

"You’re really glued to that thing," she said. "What, comments blowing up from the stream already?"

"Oh. No." Sera’s mouth curved, easy and unbothered. "Just a fan."

"Tell me about it," Diana said, leaning back on her hands, actually smiling now. "Stream comments can be hilarious. Had someone last week convinced Kelvin’s arms were actually possessed."

"It is not the stream," Sera said. "This is separate. My messages."

"Your what?"

Sera turned the screen toward her, still smiling, clearly expecting Diana to find it as charming as she did.

Diana leaned in.

It wasn’t a comment thread. It was a direct message log, dense with names she didn’t recognize, dozens of them, messages stacked on top of messages going back what looked like months.

"Wait." Diana took the device from her hand outright, scrolling up, then further up, the log just kept going. "Sera. Is this your DMs?"

"Yes." Sera said it simply, like the question answered itself. "People wish to know me. Not the version on the stream. This is not public, so it feels more honest, I think. A lot of them say they appreciate that I respond."

"You respond. To all of these."

"When I can."

Diana kept scrolling, thumb moving fast now, and the names kept coming, dozens, then closer to a hundred, most of them unfamiliar, a handful she recognized as actual Eclipse members mixed in among a sea of strangers.

"Okay," Diana said slowly. "Who’s this one. Elvarion something."

Sera brightened. "Oh, he is sweet. Very devoted fan of elves, he says, he lives with his mother currently but has told me many times that if I were ever to leave Noah, he would move out immediately and find his own place. For me."

Diana stared at her. "That’s not sweet, Sera, that’s—okay, that’s a lot, but sure, fine, whatever, harmless enough I guess." She kept scrolling. "Who’s this."

"Persistent supporter, I believe he goes by that name. Sends encouragement every few days."

"And this one. Stanley."

Something in Sera’s expression shifted slightly, softer, almost fond. "Stanley. He is going through a difficult time. He tells me often."

Diana opened the thread.

The messages ran back weeks, and the pattern emerged fast, ugly and clear the deeper she scrolled. A message about feeling low, followed by a request. Merch, this time, an actual shipped item, tracking number pasted into the chat. A week later, another rough patch, another ask, this time something Sera had apparently made herself, a batch of ice cream, recipe discussed in detail across four separate messages. Further down, a request for money, framed carefully, an emergency, just this once, he’d pay her back, he swore it, he just needed her to understand how much he needed this from her specifically.

"Sera," Diana said carefully. "Did you send him money."

"A little." Sera shrugged, unbothered. "He was in genuine distress. He said no one else understood him the way I did."

"He’s a stranger."

"He does not feel like a stranger. We have spoken for months."

Diana kept scrolling, and the messages kept escalating, gently at first, then less gently, guilt woven into nearly every request, thank you for understanding me, you’re the only one who actually listens, I don’t know what I’d do if you stopped talking to me.

Diana’s stomach turned.

"Sera." She lowered the device slowly. "This isn’t devotion. This is someone using how kind you are to take things from you. Money, gifts, your time, all of it, and dressing it up as needing you so you won’t say no."

Sera blinked, genuinely confused. "He is simply sad. I help. That is not so different from anything else I do."

"It’s completely different." Diana’s voice had gone flat, careful, the way it got when she was working hard not to raise it. "A fan is someone who watches your stream and cheers for you. This is someone who found a direct line to you and figured out exactly which buttons make you send him things. That’s not friendship, Sera. That’s a pattern. And it’s not okay."

Sera looked at the device in Diana’s hand, something working slowly behind her eyes, the beginning of a thought she clearly hadn’t let herself finish before now.

"But he needs me," she said quietly.

Diana held her gaze, steady, unflinching.

"No, Sera," she said. "It’s not okay."