Rise of the Cosmic_Emperor

Dystopian Continent...

The Phoenix Clan...

Aspasia\'s return was made to be grand and the moment she was meant to be back home, her mother was ready to welcome her. In a sense of the word.

Alvira, the Dystopian Phoenix queen was not seated in her mighty throne room but was rather in a massive room of relaxation located in her residence.

There she lay on a luxurious sofa with her cheek resting on her fist and her eyes focused on the door as though expectedly awaiting the moment her daughter would walk through.

Three days she had waited and every single minute of every single one of those days she had spent plotting the way forward. Even considering the possibility that his daughter had indeed done what she was accused of doing.

Alvira wondered if there was perhaps any hope of mending the relationship between her clan and the Dragon Clan should the accusations prove to be true.

"Princess Aspasia has arrived and she seeks an audience with Her Majesty the Queen," said a voice from outside the room Alvira was in.

"Let her in," Alvira said in a low voice that those outside the room heard as loud and as authoritative as possible.

Aspasia entered the room alone and did a respectful curtsey to her mother who sat up just a bit but the movement was so slight that it could be mistaken as her just adjusting her lounging position.

The room they were in was massive and while it obviously lacked the presence of members of her court, Alvira was not alone.

Many guards of the Phoenix Clan, all sporting the signature red hair and eyes, were in there with her and in strategic locations looking very ready to tackle any threat that came so that their Queen would not have to.

These guards, male and female, differed from the servants who tended to the Queen\'s every need. The servants possessed cultivation themselves but of course, it was nowhere near the level of the guards.

"Mother-" Aspasia began as she curtsied to Alvira who interrupted her before she could go deep into pleasantries.

"Did you do it?" the Queen asked.

"Yes I did," Aspasia said immediately with full knowledge of what her mother was referring to.

The moment she confessed to the crime, there were gasps all around especially from the guards.

Aspasia rolled her eyes at their reactions but said nothing.

This time, Alvira sat up on the sofa with an angry expression while her red eyes glowed brighter as though mini infernos were burning within.

"Why? Why would you do that?" Alvira asked.

"He asked me to and he made a lot of good points. You should hear them" Aspasia said with a serious expression.

"Who\'s \'he\'?" Alvira asked with furrowed brows.

"If that\'s not a perfect entrance line, I don\'t know what is," Hal said as he suddenly became visible in the room seated on a comfortable high-backed chair.

Attack stances were assumed by every guard in the room and they all had those stances directed at Hal who was all smiles.

Hal let his eyes roam over Alvira\'s body and he liked what he saw. He had seen Alvira\'s face before on the conference slab in the Devil Tribe and it was even more impressive in person.

Alvira had a full head of red hair with full lips that looked made for sucking. The Imagination of what pleasure those lips were capable of was enough to get the lesser man spewing on the spot but Hal was beyond all that.

Alvira\'s eyes, which were ablaze with fury at the moment, appeared to be rooted in a desire to uphold Order... To always seek common ground although all of that seemed to have become very suppressed on account of the emotion she was currently feeling.

Unlike her daughter, whose looks were an almost exact copy of hers, Alvira\'s beauty glowed with a maturity that would never fail to attract Hal.

Hal\'s eyes trailed lower to the high peaks of her chest covered well by the silk robe she was wearing and he did not hide the fact that he was staring at that area. In fact, it was so clear what he was doing, that Alvira got angrier by the second.

Sure, with a good look on Hal\'s face and the absolute raw sexuality that he simply oozed just seated in that high-backed chair, it was hard, nay impossible, for Alvira not to feel flattered at the attention but that only annoyed her more because she felt she should not he felt that way.

She had gone a good number of millennia without feeling that way once and she wished things were kept that way.

That said, in the time that Hal had spent staring her down, Alvira observed him as well... Not for perverse reasons (is what she told herself) but rather because she felt a familiarity with this stranger.

Like she had met him somewhere before.

It did not take long for her to piece things together and it directed the very first words she said to him since he appeared in the room. A feat that was still mind-boggling.

"The Mouthy Sapphirine Prince," Alvira said referring back to Hal\'s disrespect to her and two other Continent rulers about a year ago.

"In the flesh," Hal said and smiled at the fact that she did not take long to know who he was.

"My eyes are up here," Alvira said in anger with a gesture towards her eyes as Hal still had his eyes directed at her coveted breasts.

"I know," Hal said but did not change the direction he was staring at.

Hal had just spoken that a Pheonix feather, blazing with bloodline energy, whizzed past the side of his face and stuck into the wall.

It was not the Queen who shot the feather but rather one of the guards with the others looking ready to follow suit.

The ones paying attention among them noticed that Hal had not even flinched once. In fact, he had not even acknowledged the attempt to threaten him.

"Show respect to the Queen! You are not worthy to ogle her" said the guard who had shot the feather.

"Stand down," Princess Aspasia said to the guards who were tensing to attack.

The only thing they appeared to be waiting for was the order from the Queen to attack. However, with each second that passed, they appeared to be less and less inclined to wait for an Order.

Just standing and doing nothing to an obvious intruder made them feel silly, useless, and just terrible at their jobs.

"I\'m sorry but we won\'t, your highness," said another and as one, the guards either armed themselves with flaming feathers shaped like weapons (mostly swords) or armed themselves with talons.

"He\'s not here for a fight and besides, even if you attack him together, you can\'t win," Aspasia said at the same time that her mother smirked at Hal and addressed her guards for the first time since he appeared in the room,

"Attack," she said in a calm voice.

Hal had, for the first time taken his eyes off Alvira\'s high peaks to lock eyes with her and he had a bright smile on his face as he did.

"Mother-" Aspasia started to say but was practically shut up and definitely pushed to the side as multiple Feathers charged at Hal who snapped his fingers to stop them all before they reached him.

As he did, those who had armed themselves with talons and made to stab him with those talons got uncomfortably close but Hal met them with walls of Devil energy that smacked them away into the walls of the room.

*BANG!* was the sound that they all made with the wall and the force they had hit the wall with should have destroyed it but that was not the case because a certain someone reinforced the part of the wall they hit.

That, someone, was Hal and he did it with the use of Astral Runes.

For the previously charging Feathers, Hal corrupted them with his Devilish Phoenix flames and sent them right back to those who had shot them at him.

Corrupted, the feathers moved faster and blazed hotter than any of the guards could react to but right before the feathers hit them and likely ended their lives on the spot, the feathers were incinerated by Phoenix flames from Alvira the Dystopian Pheonix Queen who had her eyes on Hal as she did so with such incredible, perception-guided, precision.

Fists made of Devil energy and backed by Sovereign Might stretched out from Hal to smack the feather-attack users against the wall like their unconscious fellows.

The parts of the walls they hit were also reinforced with Astral Runes just like the previous batch.

Aspasia stood to her feet from where she had been smacked by the charging attacks. The ease and speed with which the guards had been dealt with did not surprise her but the room was now thick with tension...

... Tension that was generated by both Hal and Alvira who were having a staring contest,

"What do you stand to gain with the sabotage of the relationship we and the Dragon Clan have been building for years?" Alvira asked and as she spoke, she stood to her feet and took a step towards Hal as though to tower over him.

Hal chuckled, the intimidation tactic obviously a failure,

"Everything. I stand to gain everything-"

*BAM!*

Hal had barely managed to get his words out when Alvira kicked him in the chest.

The kick was so hard that it not only shattered the chair Hal had created for himself but also warped space. In fact, Hal had only sailed back two meters when a rift tore in space and he was sailing through the unstable vacuum of a closed void.

Alvira followed him through the space with a follow-up punch to his face...

*BAM!*