"...welching on the debt."
Bryce let out a speechless chuckle.
That single laugh was enough to write a thesis titled "People Really Do Laugh When They're Utterly Speechless."
"Mr. Caelus, are you... currently taking part in these talks on behalf of the Astral Express?"
Sensing that this gray-haired young man and the gray-haired girl behind him seemed to be in a less-than-stable state of mind, Bryce hesitated for two seconds before confirming a second time.
"No. I already told you earlier."
Caelus chuckled and waved a hand, leaning back into his chair in a languid posture, toying with Bronya's slender, delicate fingers.
Such behavior would have seemed somewhat flippant and lax during a negotiation, but at this moment it counted as a display of status.
"I don't represent the Express. I'm sitting here merely as the Grand Guardian's fiancé, and every word I speak represents Belobog."
"Very well. Then, Mr. Fiancé-of-Belobog's-Grand-Guardian, do you know..."
Anger and laughter intertwined, Bryce leaned his body forward. So utterly speechless that it took a full two seconds to put his words together, he made a gesture like pulling at an accordion:
"do you have any idea what you're doing?"
"You're demanding payment from the IPC?"
Bryce had hustled within the IPC for over a decade, and through skill and ability had risen to his current position at an enviable speed, becoming a trusted confidant of Director Oswaldo.
From the moment he first joined the IPC as a proud employee, all the way through his market-development career to the present, he had never met anyone so utterly oblivious to how high the heavens were and how deep the earth!
Had they eaten a bear's heart and a leopard's gall!?
Was Belobog really this ballsy?
To say it once again.
How dare they?
"A debt repaid is the way of heaven and earth!"
Caelus seemed utterly oblivious to the contempt and disdain Bryce displayed, wearing the look of a law-abiding, reasonable, honest man.
"Right, right!"
Stelle nodded her little head adorably, switching into repeat mode: "A debt repaid is the way of heaven and earth!"
"Ahem, ahem."
March 7th hurriedly covered her mouth and began to cough drily, as though choked by her own saliva. At first she hadn't known how Caelus intended to handle Belobog's debt problem.
Having changed into a new formal gown, she'd been dragging Stelle around the celebration taking commemorative photos, when she saw the starship fly straight into Belobog's territory and immediately realized a cadre from the Market Development Department had arrived.
The two of them rushed back to Goethe Manor, intending to back Bronya up.
Who would have thought Caelus would turn around and demand the IPC pay up instead!
The maneuver left March 7th utterly flabbergasted.
"That's right, that's right—a debt repaid is the way of heaven and earth~"
Patting her pert, shapely chest, Little March set her hands on her snow-white, tender waist and joined the cheering.
In her view, the IPC coming to Jarilo-VI to collect debts at a time like this was completely unreasonable to begin with—blatant bullying!
Faced with a situation like this, one ought to pay them back in their own coin!
This pack of IPC capitalists all deserved to be strung up on Belobog's streetlamps!
"Mr. Bryce, you came to Belobog to deal with the debt issue in the first place, didn't you? Since you've already confirmed that this debt genuinely exists and is beyond all doubt, then go ahead and sign this debt contract!"
A faint, barely-there smile at the corner of his mouth, Caelus lightly swiped a fingertip across the holographic screen.
That debt contract, shimmering with a dim blue glow, slid off toward Bryce.
The contract hovered above the tabletop, clauses such as Belobog's arrears and the IPC's maintenance fees plainly visible.
Bryce stared at the string of bolded, blown-up astronomical figures on the holographic projection. The corner of his mouth first twitched upward, then froze into some distorted expression somewhere between a sneer and outright fury.
"And if I don't sign?"
He suspected this Nameless had had his brain frozen rotten by Jarilo-VI's glaciers.
"One final reminder to all of you: those who decline the IPC's goodwill have never come to a good end."
Their monetary economic systems destroyed by gold coins that split apart on their own; experimental subjects who weren't even recorded annihilated together with their planet in pulse experiments; or, because of an IOU left by a previous regime—or even a regime dozens of eras prior—every living being on the planet today captured wholesale, to be used and sold as slaves.
Such were the methods of the Market Development Department!
"Aiya, who'd have thought that the IPC, a colossus straddling the entire Galaxy, would actually welch on the debt owed to our little planet."
Caelus shook his head and sighed mournfully.
"The Grand Guardian wants to give our Goose City a fair deal—and a fair deal is exactly what we're demanding today."
Stelle stepped forward and slapped the table with both hands: "Why does the IPC make us maintain its assets for seven hundred years and not pay the maintenance fees? That's just unfair."
"Aren't you just bullying honest folk?"
Stelle pointed one hand at the sky, bellowing with righteous indignation.
Bronya's eyes twitched slightly. She very much wanted to remind Stelle that it wasn't "Goose City," it was "Bei City," but considering the current atmosphere...
Forget it. Goose City it is, then.
Faced with this soul-piercing interrogation from a gray-haired girl whose brain was apparently malfunctioning, Bryce—a veteran senior cadre of the Market Development Department—experienced, for the first time at a negotiating table, the sensation of the blood vessels at his temples throbbing.
"As Star-baby said, if the IPC insists on bullying honest folk, then we'll have no choice but to take hardline measures."
Caelus scratched his gray hair—somewhat mussed from Stelle's grabbing—and in a meek tone delivered the most arrogant words imaginable.
"Heh, hardline measures? Hahaha~!"
Bryce had held back the few traces of speechless laughter from before—though some had still slipped out—but now, hearing that Caelus meant to take hardline measures against the IPC, he finally couldn't help bursting into laughter.
Oh! Good God!
Just look at the joke this guy in front of him had told!
Declaring the use of forceful measures against the Market Development Department?
Bryce felt that, rather than the fiancé of Belobog's Grand Guardian or the Astral Express's Nameless, an interstellar stand-up comedy stage might suit this young fellow better for showing off his gifts.
A line like this could've made him laugh his way from a P45 grade up to a P46 grade.
Bryce gently set the terminal in his hand down on the smooth negotiating table, his face a blend of anger and laughter:
"Miss Bronya, Mr. Caelus, since the two of you insist on your own views..."
"Then I'll lay my cards on the table as well: the IPC cannot acknowledge any asset-maintenance fees your side has proposed."
His tone was steady, as if he were stating the most ordinary fact in the world.
"—All rights of interpretation belong to the IPC!"
"On behalf of the IPC, I issue a warning to Belobog: if your side persists in defaulting on the debt, the IPC will take hardline measures."
Resorting to the threat of force had been part of Bryce's plan all along; unless Belobog's leaders were incompetent mediocrities, getting them to surrender the planet Jarilo-VI so easily was impossible.
For a civilization that couldn't even fly out of its own homeworld, the IPC's warships were Trisolarans in the truest sense—a dimensional-reduction strike.
As Bryce interlaced the ten fingers of both hands, his index finger and thumb elegantly twirled the crest-ring on his middle finger, the dark-red gemstone set into its surface refracting light as it turned.
Receiving the order, the employee inside the starship unhesitatingly raised a hand and pressed the red button on the screen.
In Jarilo-VI's near orbit, the Fourth Divine Key continuously projected an extremely faint azure light onto the planet's surface—in essence a fresh breeze, regulating the planet's ecology.
Suddenly, a small armed spacecraft lurking in the dark of orbit abruptly accelerated, carving a lethal acceleration trajectory through the vacuum.
BOOM!
The fireball from the explosion instantly swelled to several hundred meters in diameter, the searing-white plasma swallowing the satellite like a greedy maw.
At almost the same instant, within Goethe Manor, an irregular purple-black magic cube appeared in the pale, tender hand of the Silver Wing.
"Fluid shield, activate."
The Fourth Divine Key had been designed as a massive, conspicuous satellite, so naturally it had been built with defense mechanisms to counter space-borne firepower.
Amid the savage flames, the silhouette of the Fourth Divine Key remained clearly visible, wreathed in fresh breeze the entire time. The explosion's energy shockwave slammed into that defensive Ideal Fluid shield—thin as a cicada's wing—and was deflected entirely.
"It actually blocked it?"
The weapons-control employee in the starship cried out, eyes wide.
"It doesn't look like an Imaginary energy shield... what is that?"
Bryce had no idea what was happening inside the starship. After giving the action signal, he leaned back in his chair, ready to enjoy the show of someone rushing in shortly to report the satellite's destruction.
But after the Grand Guardian's twin sister produced the black magic cube, Bryce had a bad premonition.
"Now there's also an emotional-damages fee, a satellite-repair fee, and compensation for deliberately launching a firepower attack on Jarilo-VI."
The corner of Caelus's mouth still wore a playful, flippant curve, but a frosty light like ice-shards had already congealed in his pupils.
A pair of golden earrings, dazzling as those blazing golden eyes, appeared in his palm. "Ah Qi, I need Yue'er's help."
Caelus tossed out the pair of earrings separately.
Little March caught the earring in a flustered scramble, pouting to mask her bashfulness:
"...Mn... fine~!"
Although recalling what Yue'er had done the last time she came out still made her feel shy, in a situation like this March 7th certainly wouldn't refuse Caelus's request.
With practiced ease she fastened the earring onto her right ear.
The other had been tossed by Caelus to Seele—the one in control of the body at this moment was her own self, Caelus-Seele.
At this moment, both Black Seele's and White Seele's consciousnesses were present within Seele; they too would take part in the fusion. A three-consciousness Seele was one of the strongest fusion materials—and don't forget she also possessed Imaginary and Quantum power, equipped with the Tiger Talisman.
There were two reasons for choosing to fuse March 7th with Seele.
First, her Six-Phased Ice was needed.
Second, Yue'er was the magical girl most compatible with Ruby.
Caelus had had the other fusion warriors give it a try in bed too; though their compatibility was all quite high, none surpassed Yue'er's.
Under Bryce's gaze—shifting from puzzlement to stupefaction—Seele, holding the Ruby magic wand in one hand and wearing the earring on her left ear, and March 7th attracted each other like the two poles of a magnet, floating up and locking into an embrace.
White light flared briefly, then the very next second was infused with a purple-pink glow.
"Ta-da~ Magical Girl Yue'er, making her dazzling entrance~!"
Hair lustrous as galactic crystal falling to her shoulders, off-shoulder white gauze, a purple-pink skirt hem, a butterfly-wing cape, magical leg rings.
The fusion and the transformation completed in the same instant; provided Caelus didn't resort to cheats, Yue'er in this state was the Astral Express's strongest combat power!
In her normal state she was a quasi-Emanator, a notch stronger than even Welt; and if she burned her cuteness value with Ruby for a burst, she could serve as a strong Emanator for a few seconds.
"Naughty children must accept their punishment~!"
Lustrous white bare feet treading upon the void, Yue'er took a single step; pink-purple butterflies and flower petals scattered through the air, and she vanished from the administrative hall.
Quantum tunneling.
In one step, Yue'er arrived before Bryce's starship.
She gently shook Ruby, just like a princess casting magic in a fairy tale: "Seal~!"
The instant her voice fell, the starship was sealed within solid, cold-emanating Six-Phased Ice.
"Master, long time no see! I missed you to death!"
"Hurry and turn all those ugly things down there into ice sculptures! Let them get a taste of your cuteness, ya know! Cuteness is justice—jiejie~ gu!"
Ruby flapped its little wings excitedly.
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