Global Lords: Building the Strongest Civilization with SSS Rank Talent Chapter 296: Capturing the Vance Siblings

Julian pushed the cracked wooden shutter open just enough to peer down into the plaza. Armor clattered against the cobblestones as lines of Vanguard infantry marched through the main thoroughfare. No one raised a sword against them.

The local laborers eagerly accepted wrapped blocks of nutrient paste from the invaders while Gildreath guards discarded their insignias into the gutters.

"Kronos surrendered," Julian whispered, stepping back from the window. "He handed them the entire empire without a fight."

Julia stopped pacing across the cramped tavern room. She stared at the closed oak door, her breathing shallow and erratic. "We need to leave right now. If they secure the periter and start searching the inns, we are dead."

Julian reached inside his cloak and withdrew the crimson crystal. Deep red light spilled across the dirty walls of the rented room. The weaponized artifact pulsed with the trapped souls of Aethelgard’s slaughtered citizens.

The sheer density of the concentrated mana made the air feel heavy, suffocating the small space.

"Link with ," Julian ordered. He channeled his golden hard-light magic into the gem to stabilize the turbulent energy. "Focus on the southern coastline. We can bypass the borders and jump straight to the ocean."

Julia pressed her hands against the crystal. Sapphire light swirled from her fingertips to mix with the crimson glow. The space in front of them rippled like water, slowly tearing open to reveal a dark, unstable void.

Out in the street, Krug paused his patrol. He rested the handle of his greataxe against his shoulder and tilted his head. The Apostle possessed a deep sensitivity to gravitational shifts and mana density.

An unnatural weight pressed down on the atmosphere from the tavern directly to his left. It felt like a mountain of stolen lives concentrated into a single, agonizing focal point.

Krug left the marching column and approached the stone building.

Upstairs, the spatial tear widened to the size of a doorway. Julia gritted her teeth, sweating as she struggled to anchor the destination. "It is fighting . The crystal has too much raw power to direct cleanly."

"Just force it open!" Julian snapped, glancing nervously over his shoulder.

Heavy footsteps echoed from the wooden stairwell outside their room. Each deliberate step made the floorboards groan and tremble. Julian dropped his hands from the crystal and manifested a golden barrier between them and the entrance.

The oak door buckled inward. Iron hinges shrieked and snapped as the wood splintered into pieces. Krug stepped through the ruined doorway, ducking slightly to clear the fra.

He looked at the golden shield, the swirling spatial portal, and the glowing red gem clutched in Julian’s hands.

"A spatial tear and a stolen battery." Krug tapped his scaled finger against the handle of his axe. "You must be the twins who ran from the capital."

Julian pushed more mana into his barrier, thickening the hard-light construct until it glowed like a miniature sun. "Get the portal open, Julia!"

Krug didn’t raise his weapon. He simply extended his free hand toward the shimring spatial tear and crushed the localized gravity around it. The portal instantly collapsed upon itself, folding the sapphire magic into a harmless spark before vanishing completely.

Julia gasped and stumbled backward against the wall. Her escape route was gone.

"You are running out of kingdoms to hide in," Krug said, stepping closer to the golden barrier. "And my god wants his soul back."

Julian maintained the glowing barrier between them and Krug. He tightened his grip on the crimson crystal while his chest heaved with panicked breaths. "Who is the god you serve? Is it really Red? Did he send you to kill us?"

Krug rested his greataxe against the ruined doorfra and stared at the trembling man. "I do not know anyone nad Red. The sovereign I serve is Rubedo."

"Then why is he doing this to us?" Julian yelled, his voice cracking as the hard-light shield flickered. "We haven’t done anything to him! We are just trying to survive!"

Up in the sanctuary, Rubedo monitored the confrontation through the neural tether connecting him to Krug. He tapped a sequence onto his holographic console, broadcasting his voice directly through the crystal embedded in Krug’s armor.

"I was also just trying to survive when you turned my life into hell," Rubedo’s voice echoed through the cramped tavern room. The synthesized tone carried zero emotion.

Julian froze at the sound. He recognized the cadence imdiately. "Red, listen to ! It wasn’t us who got you sacrificed! Marcus and the others chose you when Voranthar demanded a sacrifice. Julia and I didn’t even raise our hands! We didn’t do a single thing!"

"I am not talking about what happened in this world," Rubedo replied.

The words hung heavily in the air, dragging the weight of their past on Earth into the present. Julia stepped out from behind her brother. She clutched the fabric of her cloak and stared at the armored comm-link on Krug’s chest.

"Please, Red, just stop," Julia pleaded, tears spilling over her eyelashes. "Why are you doing this to us? Are you actually enjoying hunting us down like animals?"

"Yes," Rubedo answered imdiately. "That is the entire point."

The blunt honesty paralyzed both siblings. They stood rooted to the floorboards, completely unable to process the cold satisfaction radiating from the speaker. Neither Julian nor Julia could find the words to argue against such pure malice.

[ BASE SUMMONING COST: 1,500,000 DP ]

[ SUSTAINNT UPKEEP: 50,000 DP PER MINUTE ]

The space in the center of the cramped tavern room suddenly warped. A rift tore open through the air, and Glitch stepped out from the void.

The six-legged anomaly padded onto the floorboards, its pitch-black fur absorbing the dim light of the room. Glowing geotric runes surfaced along its spine, locking its chaotic elental energies into place, while erald primordial plasma swirled within its unblinking eyes.

"Reclaim my soul," Rubedo ordered.

Glitch simply bypassed Julian’s golden hard-light barrier, stepping through physical space to reappear directly on Julian’s chest. Despite its small size, the anomaly possessed the compressed weight of a subterranean leviathan.

The floorboards shrieked and splintered under the focused density as Glitch pinned Julian flawlessly to the wood.

Julian threw his head back and scread. Glitch activated its anti-mana field, sinking its fangs into the aura surrounding Julian’s heart. The golden divine magic fractured like spun glass beneath his skin and flowed rapidly into the runes along the creature’s back.

The extraction hollowed out Julian’s core, tearing the stolen energy from his veins until the brilliant light vanished completely. He collapsed flat against the splintered floor, gasping for air as a powerless mortal.

Glitch turned its swirling erald eyes toward Julia and took a slow step forward on its velvet-padded paws.

Julia shrieked, dropping to her knees. She pressed her forehead against the dirty wooden floorboards, bowing frantically toward Krug while squeezing her eyes shut. "Stop! Please don’t let it touch !"

Julian dragged himself across the ruined wood. His muscles trembled from the severe extraction trauma as he reached out and grabbed Krug’s iron boot.

"Spare her, please!" Julian begged, coughing a spatter of blood onto the floor. "She is pregnant with my child! If you rip the magic out of her core right now, the shock will kill the baby. Just let her live until the child is born! You can do whatever you want to us after that, just please wait!"

Krug looked down at the desperate man clutching his armor, waiting in silence for a command from the orbital sanctuary.