The Conquerors Path Chapter 1065 - 1063 — The Sovereign’s Palate

"How exactly do the patrons get up there? I do not see a staircase, and the local nobility strike me as entirely too lazy to levitate themselves."

I asked, analysing the sheer density of the levitation arrays radiating from the floating structure.

"They use the pressure movers, but we are not doing that. The elevators are heavily monitored, and I refuse to stand in a tube with a surface diplomat who smells like cheap floral perfume."

Krave pointed toward a series of hollow, cylindrical crystal tubes rising from the plaza floor.

"We are flying, then."

Luna stated from her perch on my shoulders. It was not a question. The silver wolf sounded immensely satisfied by the prospect.

"We are drifting."

Krave corrected, her dark eyes flashing with that familiar, manic thrill.

We drifted upward through the swirling fog, rising smoothly alongside the massive crystal elevator tubes, completely undetected by the wealthy patrons riding inside them.

The transition through the restaurant’s anti-gravity bubble was entirely seamless. I adjusted our trajectory, landing us softly on the expansive, glowing pearl balcony that served as the establishment’s entrance.

The atmosphere here was completely divorced from the rest of the capital. The chaotic noise of the lower terraces and the screaming waterfalls of the Obsidian Cascades were entirely erased. The air smelled faintly of ozone, roasted sea salt, and incredibly expensive wine.

Blocking the entrance to the main dining room was a massive podium carved from a single block of deep-sea diamond. Standing behind it was a severely dressed high-elf, wearing a tailored suit woven from midnight-blue kelp-silk. He radiated the kind of practised, absolute snobbery that only mortals with entirely too much money could achieve.

"I will handle this."

Krave whispered confidently, stepping out of the shadows and striding directly up to the podium.

I followed at a leisurely pace, dialling my perceptual filter back just enough to allow the elven maître d’ to register our existence. He looked up from his heavily enchanted ledger, his eyes sweeping over Krave’s striking form, then over my understated coat, and finally lingering on the massive silver wolf draped across my neck.

His expression did not change, but I felt his internal aura spike with profound, aristocratic disdain.

"Good evening, I am afraid the balcony is closed to pedestrian traffic. If you wish to admire the view, the lower promenade is freely available."

The elf said, his voice smooth and entirely devoid of warmth.

"We are not here for the view, we are here for dinner. A table near the edge of the gravity-ward, preferably."

Krave smiled, leaning her elbows against the diamond podium.

The elf offered a microscopic, incredibly condescending sigh.

"Madam. The Sovereign’s Palate does not accept walk-in patrons. We operate on a strict five-year waiting list. Our current availability for a party of your... composition... is in the autumn of the next decade. Assuming you pass the financial background check."

"I have a reservation."

Krave lied with absolute, unblinking confidence.

"You do not."

The elf replied smoothly, not even bothering to look down at his ledger.

"I do," Krave insisted, her smile widening just a fraction, revealing a hint of something incredibly ancient and dangerous beneath her human disguise.

"Check the book."

The elf let out another sigh, finally dropping his gaze to the glowing, magically bound pages of the ledger.

"Madam, I personally memorise the guest list for every evening. I can assure you—"

He stopped.

I kept my hands in my pockets, my face entirely neutral. I hadn’t cast a spell. I had simply looked at the physical ink forming the name of a highly prominent human duke scheduled for the best table of the night, grasped the mathematical concept of the letters, and rearranged their atomic structure.

The elf stared at the page. Where the Duke’s name had been a fraction of a second prior, the ink now elegantly spelt: Krave.

"There seems to be an anomaly."

The elf murmured, his aristocratic composure cracking slightly as he desperately tapped the enchanted parchment, trying to dispel what he assumed was a low-level illusion. The ink remained stubbornly unchanged.

"No anomaly, my colleague simply prefers to confirm things in writing. Our table?"

I said softly, stepping up beside Krave. I let a microscopic fraction of my aura bleed into the air. It wasn’t a threat; it was a localised, overwhelming wave of absolute authority that instantly bypassed his conscious mind and spoke directly to his survival instincts.

The elf swallowed hard. His primitive instincts were currently screaming at him that denying us entry would result in his immediate, catastrophic removal from reality. He closed the ledger with a sharp snap.

"Right this way, sir."

He stammered, bowing deeply. Krave shot me a delighted, wicked grin as we followed the trembling host into the main dining room.

The interior of The Sovereign’s Palate was a masterpiece of impossible physics. The dining room possessed no walls; it was an open-air pavilion entirely encased within the transparent, anti-gravity bubble. The tables were constructed from floating discs of spun glass, surrounded by plush, velvet-lined chairs that were magically tethered to the floor to prevent the patrons from drifting away.

"The gravity here is functioning at precisely ten per cent of the standard oceanic pressure."

I noted, feeling the incredible lightness in my step.

"It makes the digestion of heavy abyssal meats substantially easier for the surface-dwellers."

Krave explained, taking a seat at a table positioned right at the edge of the invisible barrier. Below us, the entire glowing, fog-shrouded expanse of the city was visible.

Luna did not take a chair. The silver wolf hopped off my shoulders, floating effortlessly in the low-gravity field. She stretched her front paws out, completely suspended in the air, and drifted until she was perfectly level with the spun-glass table.

I sighed, extending a tiny thread of spatial intent, essentially tying an invisible leash around her waist and anchoring it to the table leg. Luna let out a deep, vibrating purr of satisfaction, curling into a floating ball of silver fur directly next to my empty plate.

A new server approached our table. He was a tall, incredibly gaunt triton whose eyes glowed with a faint, residual crimson light.

"The sommelier, a reformed blood-mage. He uses his mastery over localised fluid dynamics to manipulate the beverages."

Krave whispered to me.

"Welcome, may I pour the standard vintage, or does the table require something with more... weight?"

The sommelier intoned, his voice a dry rasp.

"Skip the wine, bring us three spheres of liquid moonlight. And for the main course, the heaviest cut of trench-drake you have in the stasis-vaults. Seared in cobalt fire. Do not trim the fat."

Krave commanded, waving her hand.

The sommelier’s glowing red eyes widened slightly in surprise at the sheer expense of the order, but he bowed gracefully.

"At once, madam."

When the first course arrived, there were no glasses.

The sommelier returned, accompanied by a heavy, silver tray. Floating inches above the polished metal were three perfectly spherical orbs of glowing, pale luminescence. They weren’t contained by glass; the liquid was holding its own shape in the low-gravity environment, bound together by the surface tension of pure, condensed mana.

"Liquid moonlight, harvested from the surface reflection of the Great Northern Whirlpool, distilled through abyssal pearl, and suspended in zero-gravity."

The sommelier announced, carefully guiding the floating spheres onto our table using a subtle application of his blood magic.

"How do you drink it?"

I asked, analysing the fascinating, fragile runework holding the liquid together.

"You don’t, you breathe it."

Krave smiled, leaning forward.

She didn’t use her hands. She simply leaned her face close to one of the glowing spheres and inhaled sharply. The orb of liquid light lost its cohesion, stretching into a ribbon of pale luminescence that flowed seamlessly into her mouth. Krave closed her eyes, letting out a long, shuddering breath as the ambient mana in her body violently spiked.

I leaned forward and mirrored her action, inhaling the second sphere.

The sensation was indescribable. It didn’t taste like a liquid; it tasted like a physical emotion. The moment the moonlight hit my tongue, it instantly vaporised into a cool, rushing wave of pure, unadulterated euphoria. It tasted like the memory of a perfect, quiet morning. It bypassed the digestive system entirely, flooding the senses with an overwhelming feeling of absolute clarity and profound peace.

"Remarkable, the emotional resonance is flawlessly preserved."

I murmured, my eyes snapping open as the lingering, pale light faded from my breath.

Luna floated near the third sphere, sniffing it carefully. Her nose twitched in disgust.

"This is not food."

Luna declared flatly.

"More for me."

Krave laughed, casually inhaling the final sphere of moonlight.

The tranquillity of the first course was violently shattered by the arrival of the main event.

Four heavily muscled triton servers struggled to carry a massive, rectangular slab of scorched, pitch-black bone to our table. They set it down with a heavy thud that made the spun-glass table groan. The bone was actually a single, hollowed-out armoured scale belonging to a trench-drake, serving as the plate.

Inside the scale rested a colossal cut of abyssal meat. It was seared perfectly black by cobalt flames, heavily crusted with deep-sea salt and volcanic spices. The meat was so dense and saturated with latent energy that it was actually bleeding a faint, highly pressurised purple steam into the air.

Luna’s eyes went entirely black.

The silver wolf didn’t wait for the servers to step back, and she certainly didn’t wait for me to provide her with utensils. She launched herself forward in the zero-gravity field, sinking her jaws directly into the centre of the massive steak.

The crunch of cartilage and the tearing of hyper-dense muscle fibres echoed loudly across the hushed dining room. Several nearby aristocrats turned their heads, their faces completely horrified by the display of savage, unfiltered table manners.

"Luna, try to leave the bone intact. It is a serving dish."

I said mildly, casually slicing a perfectly proportioned piece of the drake for myself with a silver knife.

Luna ignored me, letting out a terrifying, guttural growl of pure joy as she aggressively ripped a massive chunk of the violently spiced meat free.

"She has excellent taste," Krave grinned, bypassing her knife entirely and tearing a piece of the drake off with her bare hands.

The meat was brutal. It was incredibly heavy, forcing the jaw to work for every bite, but the flavour was a masterpiece of culinary violence. The cobalt fire had broken down the natural venom in the drake’s muscle, leaving behind a rich, earthy taste that practically vibrated with raw, deep-sea power.

We ate in a thoroughly satisfying silence, broken only by the horrifying sounds of Luna systematically demolishing a cut of meat that weighed nearly as much as she did.

When the final piece of the trench-drake was gone, the empty, scorched scale remained on the table.

"Now, the real reason we came."

Krave whispered, wiping a smear of dark grease from her chin, her eyes shining with anticipation.

As she spoke, the ambient lighting of the entire restaurant dimmed to absolute zero. The glowing pearl balcony went dark. The gasps of the surrounding nobles were immediately silenced by a heavy, localised acoustic ward that fell over the dining room.

The scorched scale sitting on our table suddenly flared with a piercing, indigo light.

I immediately recognised the magical structure. It wasn’t an illusion array; it was a memory-extraction matrix. The Aethelgard mages had woven the spell directly into the serving dish, designed to tap into the residual, cellular memory of the beast we had just consumed.

The indigo light exploded outward, washing over the entire open-air pavilion.

The walls of the restaurant, the floating tables, the aristocratic patrons—everything vanished. The artificial dry air was instantly replaced by the perfect visual illusion of the crushing, sunless abyss. We were no longer sitting above a glowing city; we were suspended in the absolute depths of the ocean trench.

The projection was completely immersive. I could see the massive, jagged spires of underwater volcanoes erupting in the distance, venting colossal plumes of black smoke into the freezing water. I could see the shimmering, localised thermal currents twisting through the dark like ghostly rivers.

And then, I saw the drake.

The projection shifted, allowing us to view the memory through the eyes of the beast. We were gliding effortlessly through the crushing pressure, banking sharply around a towering coral reef. The illusion perfectly captured the terrifying speed and the sheer, majestic grace of the apex predator in its natural element. A massive school of glowing glass fish parted before us in a frantic, scattering cloud of neon light.

The silence of the projection was absolute. It wasn’t the deadened, magical silence of the city wards. It was the heavy, profound, ancient silence of the true deep.

I looked over at Krave.

The divine kraken was sitting perfectly still in the dark. The projected, bioluminescent light of the trench reflected in her wide eyes. For an entity who had spent the entire day mocking the Aethelgard Dukedom for their arrogance, their fake plants, and their pathetic attempts to control the ocean, she was currently rendered completely speechless.

"They captured it, they actually captured the silence."

Krave whispered, her voice cracking slightly, thick with an overwhelming wave of genuine emotion. She reached a hand out, her fingers trembling slightly as they brushed against the illusion of a passing, glowing thermal vent.

"It is a beautiful tribute."

I agreed softly, maintaining my own stillness to avoid breaking her immersion.

Even Luna had stopped licking the grease from her paws and floated beside me, her eyes tracking the projected movement of the deep-sea currents, utterly captivated by the phantom world surrounding us.

The memory lasted for three minutes, a breathtaking, silent glide through the absolute bottom of the world, before the indigo light slowly faded. The visual illusion dissolved into mist, and the soft, ambient lighting of The Sovereign’s Palate gently returned to the pavilion.

Krave didn’t move for a long time. She simply stared at the empty, scorched scale on the table, a soft, incredibly genuine smile resting on her face.

"I am entirely prepared to admit that occasionally, these mortals get something exactly right."

Krave finally said, her voice quiet but ringing with absolute sincerity,

"A high compliment."

I murmured, signalling the sommelier to bring the check, preparing to leave behind a small fortune in stolen platinum.

I looked out past the invisible barrier of the restaurant, watching the ghost-currents of the simulated night cycle drift over the sleeping capital below. We had walked through the most heavily fortified, arrogant city in the ocean as completely unnoticed phantoms, ate their most impossible delicacies, and observed the sheer, terrifying beauty of the abyss.

"The capital was an acceptable diversion, but there is nothing left to eat here. Where are we going next?"

Luna projected, drifting back down to land softly on my shoulders, her stomach visibly rounded from the ridiculous amount of meat she had consumed.

"Deeper,"

Krave said, smiling.