The Conquerors Path Chapter 1066 - 1064 — The Currency of the Deep

"The drake was acceptable, though the presentation was overly theatrical. I do not need my food to project a documentary before I consume it."

Luna declared from my shoulders, her stomach audibly sloshing with several pounds of violently spiced abyssal meat.

"You are completely devoid of romance; you would eat anything raw and fresh."

Krave sighed, adjusting her heavy coat as we landed silently on the obsidian cobblestones near the edge of the city’s primary golden ward.

"Romance does not provide caloric energy."

Luna countered smoothly.

I ignored the familiar bickering, stepping forward and placing my hand flat against the shimmering, violently humming membrane of the golden dome. The magic here was incredibly dense, designed to keep billions of tons of crushing ocean water from instantly collapsing the city.

I didn’t break the ward. I simply matched its exact elemental frequency, temporarily convincing the localised runework that we were made of the same magical barrier, and walked straight through.

The transition from the dry, artificial air of the city to the true deep ocean was instantaneous.

The absolute, freezing blackness of the abyss swallowed us whole. The ambient pressure instantly skyrocketed to a level that would condense a surface battleship into a solid iron cube in a fraction of a second. I casually expanded the boundaries of my personal spatial barrier, pushing the crushing weight of the water back to form a comfortable, perfectly heated sphere of breathable space around the three of us.

We left the glowing, arrogant jewel of the Aethelgard Dukedom behind, sinking deeper into the sunless trenches.

As we descended past the two-thousand-meter mark, the ambient colour of the upper shelves completely vanished. There were no glowing coral pathways down here. There were no screaming waterfalls or manicured botanical gardens. This was the Aphotic Zone. It was an environment of pure, unrelenting silence and heavy, oppressive darkness.

The sheer vastness of the space gave me time to reflect on the sheer absurdity of the political structure governing this underwater world.

The Aethelgard Duke, with his impossible Dry Wards and his heavily taxed street food, was essentially a petty landlord throwing a tantrum in a sandbox. The Dukes controlled the vast, scattered territories of the ocean floor, constantly squabbling over thermal vents and trade routes, but they did not rule the sea.

The true authority of the deep rested in a hierarchy that was as terrifying as it was ancient.

At the absolute apex were the Whale royal tribes. They did not govern in any traditional sense. They were supreme, god-like emperors of flesh and blubber, beasts so unfathomably massive and saturated with ancient mana that their mere migrations altered the global currents. They didn’t pass laws; they existed, and the ocean simply bent around their gravity. To incur the wrath of a Whale Emperor was not a political misstep; it was an extinction-level event.

Because the Whales were entirely too massive and aloof to care about the daily mechanics of an empire, the actual bureaucratic enforcement fell to the Mermaid royalty.

The Mermaids were the iron fist wrapped in scaled silk. They were the lawmakers, the high executioners, and the absolute masters of the oceanic military complex. They managed the sprawling, incomprehensible logistics of the deep-tide empire, ensuring that the squabbling Dukes paid their colossal tributes to the Whale tribes on time. If a Duke stepped out of line, the Whales wouldn’t even notice, but the Mermaid templars would arrive to systematically dismantle the Duke’s bloodline down to the last cousin.

"You look like you are in deep thought, already missing something?"

Krave noted, drifting through the dark water beside my barrier. She had dropped the need to walk, returning to a slow, fluid, gravity-defying glide.

"I am thinking about the administrative nightmare of ruling this place; the logistical supply chains required to keep the Mermaid royalty funded and the Whale emperors appeased must be staggering."

I replied mildly.

Krave let out a sharp, echoing laugh that rippled through the freezing water.

"Oh, it is a complete disaster. The entire empire is essentially a massive, highly volatile pyramid scheme held together by extortion and heavily armed crustaceans. And we are currently descending toward the absolute centre of it."

I shifted my vision, piercing through the pitch-black water.

Far below us, resting on the flat, desolate expanse of an abyssal plain, a new light was beginning to bloom. It wasn’t the violent, neon bioluminescence of the Starfall plankton, and it wasn’t the arrogant, golden sunset of the Dukedom we had just left.

It was a heavy, rich, sickeningly opulent yellow glow.

We were approaching the two-thousand-five-hundred-meter mark. The abyssal plain stretched out in every direction, a vast desert of pale, mineral snow. And resting in the exact centre of that plain was a structure that made the Aethelgard capital look like a child’s toy.

It was a shell.

A prehistoric sea-turtle must have died here millions of years ago. But instead of rotting, the beast’s colossal skeleton had absorbed a massive, underlying vein of deep-earth aurum. Over aeons, the shell had completely calcified into pure, heavily enchanted gold. It was easily five miles across, a sprawling, domed mountain of solid wealth radiating a blinding, metallic light into the abyss.

"Welcome to the City of the Golden Turtle."

Krave breathed, her voice vibrating with a sudden, manic intensity that completely eclipsed her previous energy.

"It is very bright, and it smells terrible. The water tastes like old coins and desperation."

Luna observed, her eyes narrowing as she glared down at the massive, glowing structure.

"That is the smell of unregulated capitalism~"

Krave beamed, accelerating her descent.

The city was built entirely inside and around the calcified golden shell. Massive, heavily fortified archways had been carved directly into the rim of the ancient ribcage. Millions of aquatic beings swarmed around the entrances—fleets of armoured transport-crabs carrying heavily locked strongboxes, nomadic sea-elf mercenaries wielding electrified pikes, and deep-sea leviathans harnessed to colossal, floating bank vaults.

"This is the central bank for the entire ocean; the Whale emperors store their personal tributes here. The Mermaid royalty fund their military campaigns through these vaults. Every squabbling Duke, every corrupt trade baron, every abyssal warlord with two coins to rub together keeps their wealth inside that shell."

Krave explained, practically vibrating with excitement. She swam backwards, facing us, gesturing grandly to the sprawling financial metropolis.

"I assume the security is substantial."

I noted, analysing the layers of magical wards overlapping the city.

The runework here was entirely different from the Aethelgard Dukedom. It wasn’t designed to keep the water out; it was designed to keep thieves from existing. The ambient arrays pulsed with incredibly dense, soul-crushing pressure magic. Any unauthorised entity attempting to bypass the perimeter wouldn’t just be killed; their physical form would be compressed into a single, flawless pearl, which the bank would then confiscate as payment for the inconvenience.

"The security is impenetrable; they have three divisions of elite Mermaid templars guarding the outer vaults alone. The inner sanctums are locked behind temporal stasis fields and blood-pact wards."

Krave grinned wickedly as she said.

"And yet, you look incredibly excited."

I said, sliding my hands into my coat pockets.

"Because I know exactly how the local economy works, Austin. Do you have any idea how much highly leveraged, fundamentally unstable debt is flowing through that shell right now? The bankers here issue deep-tide bonds based on elemental futures they can’t possibly control."

Krave purred, her eyes flashing with pure, predatory intent.

"You want to rob a bank."

Luna stated.

"No."

Krave gasped, looking genuinely offended by the suggestion.

"Robbing a bank is crude. It requires violence, and it leaves a mess. I want to participate in the open market. I want to walk onto the trading floor, make a series of perfectly legal, incredibly high-stakes investments, and systematically bankrupt a dozen arrogant Mermaid lords before lunch."

Luna stared at the massive, glowing city of gold. Her ears twitched, flattening slightly against her skull.

"I fail to see the appeal; gold is soft. It does not bleed. You cannot eat a localised economy. Will there be meat?"

The silver wolf grumbled.

"Oh, there is always meat; the bankers stress-eat. They import the finest, most heavily marbled trench-beasts to serve in the VIP lounges. Technically, you could also eat the bankers, though I imagine they taste incredibly bitter from all the anxiety."

Krave promised brightly.

"Acceptable, as long as someone suffers, I am content."

Luna muttered, resting her chin back on my collarbone.

[And you are the craziest of them all]

[With whom?]

I let out a soft breath of amusement. The sheer, terrifying scale of the Golden Turtle’s infrastructure was genuinely impressive, but Krave was right. Systems built entirely on greed were inherently fragile. They relied on predictability. They relied on the assumption that the fundamental laws of reality would always function as the ledgers dictated.

They had absolutely no defence against someone who could rewrite those laws on a whim.

"Adjust your auras."

I murmured, smoothly drawing out a fine thread of my core intent.

We registered as auditors.

"Hold your head high, Krave, look incredibly disappointed with everything you see. It terrifies financial institutions."

I instructed mildly as we drifted down toward the massive, heavily guarded central archway of the golden shell.

Krave let out a sharp, delighted laugh, immediately straightening her posture and adopting a severe, haughty glare.

"You are a terrible influence on me, Austin."

She beamed.

We glided flawlessly through the impenetrable perimeter wards. The soul-crushing arrays washed over my barrier, recognised the fabricated clearance of an elite, royal auditing committee, and completely disengaged. The heavily armoured Mermaid templars guarding the archway actually snapped to attention and saluted as we passed, their eyes locked rigidly forward.

The hollowed-out inside of the prehistoric shell was a sprawling, chaotic cavern of pure, unadulterated commerce. The architecture was aggressively opulent. Walkways of polished platinum crisscrossed the open water, connecting thousands of suspended, floating counting houses. The air—or rather, the water—was thick with the deafening roar of millions of aquatic beings shouting over each other.

Currents of physical wealth literally flowed through the city. I watched a high-pressure tube shoot thousands of carved pearl-tokens across the cavern, transferring funds between two rival merchant guilds in real-time. Armoured courier-crabs scurried along the golden walls, their shells magically sealed to protect the incredibly volatile stock certificates they carried.

It was a beautiful, hyper-capitalist nightmare.

"The Abyssal Bourse."

Krave announced, pointing toward a massive, sunken amphitheatre in the very centre of the city. The noise emanating from it was louder than the roaring waterfalls of the Aethelgard capital. Thousands of heavily jewelled traders were frantically waving kelp-paper ledgers, screaming prices at a giant, magically shifting board of glowing runes.

"Are we going down there?"

I asked, looking at the writhing mass of frantic bankers.

"Absolutely not, the trading floor is for the peasants. We are going to the VIP observation decks. I need to find a deeply corrupt floor manager to facilitate my entirely legal market manipulation."

Krave scoffed.

Luna leaned her head over my shoulder, watching a passing courier-crab scuttle along a platinum railing. The crab was glowing slightly, radiating the faint magical signature of extreme neurotoxins designed to deter thieves.

"Austin, if I bite that crustacean, will the localised banking alarms trigger?"

Luna whispered, her eyes tracking the crab with cold, predatory calculation.

"Yes, Luna."

I replied smoothly, steering us toward a spiralling staircase of polished onyx that led up to the private viewing platforms.

"What if you fold the space around its mouth so it cannot scream?"

She bargained.

"It is a crab, Luna. It does not scream. It simply triggers a magical distress beacon that will summon three hundred Mermaid templars."

"I could eat three hundred templars."

Luna noted confidently.

"We are not eating the local law enforcement before I get to ruin the bond market, priorities."

Krave scolded, floating slightly ahead of us.

I slipped my hands into my coat pockets, maintaining our flawless, intimidating disguise as we ascended above the chaotic, shouting masses. The City of the Golden Turtle was a monument to the ocean’s greed, an unbreakable vault holding the wealth of empires.

It was going to be an incredibly entertaining afternoon.