The news of the signed Sovereign Charter of Valum hit Caligula like a silent, systemic plague. It wasn't the sound of war or the shock of a magical curse, but the quiet, devastating finality of a legal document backed by unanswerable power. While the distant Imperial Court reacted with abstract political panic, the effects in the Ducal Palace of Caligula were immediate, intimate, and profoundly destructive to the very soul of Duke Alexander's family. The treaty did more than free Maximilian; it delivered a fatal, public blow to the established order of the Caligula household, all thanks to a seventeen-year-old boy who, in a world ruled by blood and magic, held a crippling, absolute monopoly on modern, kinetic warfare.
Duke Alexander returned from Valum a truly broken man. He was physically present within the high, stone walls of his ancestral palace, but he was utterly hollowed out, consumed by the terrifying knowledge of his bastard son's scientific superiority and the political quicksand he now navigated. The public humiliation was absolute: he, the venerable Duke, had granted his bastard son, a boy barely older than a squire, the power of a foreign nation, sacrificing the dignity of his house to save the Imperial Western Garrison and, implicitly, his own life. This wasn't merely a political retreat; it was a testament to the fact that his feudal authority had been rendered null and void by a singular, non-magical innovation.
The Duke's catastrophic failure to seize Max's technology—a capability unique to Valum, a fact made horrifyingly clear by Duke Enoch—was viewed not merely as a diplomatic misstep, but as a catastrophic failure of leadership by his own court. His failure was proof that the genius he had scorned for two decades was now the one holding the leash, making the established laws of succession, fealty, and military defense feel antiquated and absurd. The once-authoritative Duke became defensive and volatile, obsessively reinforcing the palace defenses, installing new layers of complex magical wards, and doubling the guard patrols—all futile, frantic gestures against a threat that came without warning, without magic, and without a visible army. His paranoia was a palpable, contagious force, infecting the palace staff and his loyal soldiers with an uneasy silence. Every shadow seemed to harbor a scientific assassin.
Alexander understood that the Charter was a political chain; its terms meant that he was now forced to protect Valum's existence. Any Imperial aggression against Max would inevitably lead to Max demonstrating his "deterrent" in an escalating fashion, thereby validating Max's genius and proving Alexander's incompetence to the Emperor. The bitter irony of his position was a constant, burning torture: he was defeated not by a seasoned rival, but by the very child he had rejected and sought to destroy. He now lived in his ancestral palace that felt like a gilded cage, trapped between the unforgiving demands of the distant Emperor Alaric and the silent, overwhelming sovereignty of his own brilliant son.
The charter was nothing less than a public, humiliating castration of Lucretia, the Duke's wife, whose fury bordered on psychosis. Her entire identity, her social currency, and her future security were built on the supremacy of her trueborn lineage and the comforting, unshakable assumption that the bastard Maximilian would eventually fail and disappear. She had spent decades attempting to poison, exile, or disgrace him, certain that her sons, pure of blood and title, would inherit the Duchy and its favor. Now, the bastard had not only survived but had legally, permanently eclipsed her entire family line before he was legally an adult.
Lucretia's public composure, the iron mask she had worn for years as the Ducal consort, finally shattered into a thousand sharp pieces. She saw the charter as Alexander's final, unforgivable, and deliberate betrayal—a declaration that Max's raw, technological intellect was worth more than her entire aristocratic bloodline. Her immense political power, derived from her family ties and her control over court appointments, now felt utterly flimsy; all her social maneuvering and noble connections meant nothing against a secret weapon that dismantled Mythril, the backbone of the Imperial elite, with casual, repeatable efficiency. The Mythril-shattering slug had done what all her complicated schemes could not: it rendered her sons' birthright meaningless. Her fear, now mixed with towering, desperate rage, was channeled into a manic, reckless effort to contact Count Volder, urging him to accelerate his plans before Max's industrial monopoly rendered any conventional rebellion impossible. Her desperation was a poison; she was willing to risk total civil war and ruin the duchy rather than live another day under the shadow of the seventeen-year-old sovereign.
The trueborn sons, Marcus and Julian, the very pillars of Lucretia's ambition, fared the worst, suffering an existential shock that crippled their sense of self. They were reared on the promise that their birthright was invincible, their place in the hierarchy guaranteed by their mother's noble blood and their father's legacy. The shame of being outsmarted and outmaneuvered by their younger, illegitimate half-brother, who held the unique, terrifying power of firearms, was psychologically devastating.
Marcus, the elder and more militaristic son, collapsed into a perpetual, drunken, despairing state. The very idea of commanding men whose Mythril armor was demonstrably useless filled him with existential dread. His military training, his identity as a strong, invincible knight, was invalidated by a boy with a scientific secret no one could copy. He became paralyzed, unable to order training exercises or even show his face in the barracks, fearing the undisguised contempt and pity of the common soldiers who understood the lethal reality Max possessed. He felt like a relic, a man made obsolete by a single, terrifying invention. Every sneer he had ever given Max came back as a stinging reminder of his own spectacular, arrogant failure to see the coming future.
Julian, the more political and ambitious son, was initially consumed by a fierce, resentful fury, but his rage quickly cooled into a bitter jealousy laced with a dangerous new respect. He recognized Max's victory as a victory of logic over legacy. The charter, which granted total freedom to Max before he even hit twenty, was a prize Julian desperately coveted. He began to subtly emulate Max, discarding his overly ornate noble clothing for simpler, more utilitarian styles, and spending hours poring over the Duke's forgotten engineering libraries. He started asking sharp, technical questions of his own engineers and alchemists, trying to understand the principles of the slug's force and whether it could pierce Adamantine or the rare Black Meteorite ore. Julian realized that his father and brother were obsolete because they fixated on power and tradition; Max was the future because he focused on mechanism and industrial replication. This led to a profound, internal conflict: should he try to destroy Max through political maneuvering, or attempt to co-opt his genius and steal the technological monopoly for himself, perhaps offering Max a false alliance in the near future?
The reverberations of Valum's sovereignty spread quickly, destabilizing existing hierarchies and shattering long-held ambitions across the entire Duchy.
Count Volder, the powerful noble plotting rebellion, saw his meticulously laid plans utterly destroyed by the treaty and Max's unassailable monopoly. Volder's army, the very tool of his ambition, instantly became a liability and a target for a teenage prodigy. He knew that if he marched, Max would use the same unique force that defeated the Imperial Knights to wipe out his troops. The failure of Mythril, combined with the Emperor's new knowledge embargo which focused immense Imperial scrutiny on the Western Duchy, meant that Volder was now trapped. Any military movement would be interpreted as a direct attack on the Emperor's strategic perimeter. His plan to seize the duchy was dead, choked by the silent, terrifying sovereignty of Valum.
Baron Scofield, the minor noble whose territories bordered Valum, lived in the true, unrelenting horror of Max's capability. Months prior, Scofield had attempted to settle an early feud and assert his dominance, sending five thousand men, exactly half of his ten thousand-strong army and his only son and heir, to attack Valum. The result was a chilling, total massacre—Max's defenses had annihilated those five thousand men and resulted in the unspeakable death of his son. For Scofield, the signing of the charter was not a political event; it was the formal, Imperial recognition of the demon that had wiped out his lineage and his power. He possessed the terrifying, unique knowledge that Max's threats were not bluffs—they were descriptions of an accomplished, bloody fact. Scofield was now a shell of a man, stripped of his heir and crippled militarily, forced to live next to the sovereign who had executed his family. He dedicated his every waking hour to avoiding any action that could draw the lethal gaze of the seventeen-year-old Lord of Valum, knowing that his territory now existed entirely at Max's whim, a grim, silent example to any other small lord considering defiance. His terror ensured that Valum's southern border remained absolutely silent and secure.