Ramos Boa did not stop there. The mockery of the "fossil" was merely an appetizer. Now, the President's visage hardened, his brows diving sharply, donning the severe expression of an executioner's judge prepared to deliver a death sentence.

  He raised his fist high and brought it crashing down upon the podium.

  SLAM!

  The concussive impact echoed, slaughtering the remaining laughter and replacing it with a fresh, suffocating tension.

  "But their regression is no longer a mere jest, ladies and gentlemen!" Ramos bellowed, his voice trembling with manufactured fury. "It is a looming threat!"

  His index finger stabbed straight toward William, as if indicting the Prince as a war criminal seated in the docket.

  "Look at their borders! Unnatural military maneuvers in the Iron Mountains! Unilateral closures of vital trade arteries! Troop mobilizations utterly devoid of transparency to the global council!"

  Ramos leaned into the microphone, his voice a venomous hiss like a viper preparing to strike.

  "Does Carta believe they can play god behind their high walls? Not under my watch!"

  He straightened his posture, puffing out his chest.

  "Therefore, as the initiator of this democratic coalition, the Republic of Salomos submits an emergency resolution this very hour!"

  The colossal screen behind him bled into a blazing crimson, displaying a schematic for an absolute economic blockade.

  "Effective immediately, we demand Total Economic Sanctions against the Kingdom of Carta!"

  "Freeze the assets of the Royal House in all international banks! Halt all technological exports to their territories! Enact a total embargo across all maritime and aerial trade routes!"

  Ramos spread his arms wide, as if intent on crushing Carta within his embrace.

  "We shall choke the neck of that ancient dragon until they learn to kneel before the laws of the modern world! We shall isolate them until they beg for mercy at the feet of democracy!"

  ROOOAAAR!

  The assembly hall did not merely grow rowdy. It detonated into mass hysteria.

  The delegates from Salomos's allied nations vaulted from their seats. Their faces were flushed crimson with fervor, fists punching the air, mouths spewing rabid agreement.

  "Agreed! Isolate them!"

  "Crush the monarch's monopoly!"

  "Sanctions! Sanctions! Sanctions!"

  Applause thundered like an unyielding tempest. The blinding flashes of journalistic cameras struck like lightning, immortalizing this "victory" of diplomacy.

  They perceived Ramos's diatribe as a declaration of justice. Yet to a discerning eye, it was a brazen declaration of systemic robbery.

  The industrial nations hungered for Carta's mineral veins.

  The agrarian nations lusted after the fertile soils of the south.

  And Ramos Boa coveted total hegemony.

  William sat motionless within the eye of that deafening storm of applause. He was besieged by hundreds of people currently cheering for the starvation of his homeland.

  He observed those avaricious faces.

  He listened to the roars of undisguised hatred.

  And beneath his bespoke suit, William felt a glacial chill crawl up his spine. It was not fear. It was the absolute, crystallizing certainty that this world truly deserved to be condemned.

  Amidst the sea of ear-splitting cheers and boiling wrath in the UN General Assembly Hall, there existed one unnatural point of absolute silence. A singularity of composure amidst the chaos, like the frozen eye of a hurricane while the surrounding vortex pulverized everything in its path.

  At the isolated desk of the Carta delegation—like a meager coral reef encircled by a starving ocean of sharks—William Ironseat sat with his legs crossed.

  His posture radiated an innate, aristocratic arrogance, a visual insult to the thousands of pairs of eyes glaring at him with murderous intent. He wore no military regalia, only a midnight blue bespoke suit that wrapped his robust frame. Yet, the aura he projected was infinitely heavier than any suit of steel plate armor.

  William felt the hundreds of pointing fingers from the superpowers' delegates leveled at him like spear tips. He could see the burst capillaries in their eyes, bloodshot with pure hatred and unmasked greed.

  They wanted Carta's lands. They wanted its sugar, its mines, and its seas. Ramos's speech was merely the trigger for a legalized, mass plundering.

  Yet, William’s face remained smooth and impassive, as though he were observing a cheap mummer's farce rather than auditing the death warrant for his realm. Inside his skull, a countdown ticked away. Less than forty-eight hours before the sky ripped open, and these fools were desperately haggling over stock prices.

  As the roaring ovation slowly ebbed—allowing a dramatic pause starved for the Prince's apologies or frantic self-defense—William finally moved.

  Scraaaape.

  The sound of the leather chair sliding back rang sharply in the sudden, gripping silence.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  He rose slowly. His movements were not those of a trembling diplomat, but the languid grace of an apex predator rousing from an afternoon slumber. William adjusted the collar of his suit with maddening precision. He locked eyes with Ramos Boa on the stage, then began to walk.

  Thud. Thud. Thud.

  His steps were casual, almost indolent, ascending the stairs toward the main podium where Ramos Boa still stood, panting slightly from his exertion.

  As William approached the lectern, Ramos took an involuntary step back. His politician's instinct screamed of mortal peril when confronted point-blank by the suffocating killing intent radiating from the young man.

  William stood at the lectern, the wood still warm from the Salomos President's palms. He carried no speech scripts. He held no data-slates. He brought only himself and a harrowing truth.

  He cast a fleeting glance at Ramos's glass of water; the liquid within was trembling. The tiny ripples reflected William’s serene visage—the profound calm before a slaughter.

  William did not speak immediately. He let the silence steep.

  His razor-sharp eyes swept across the representatives of the nations. From left to right.

  He stared at the barbaric Larrus delegation.

  He stared at the hypocritical Latham clerics.

  He stared at the bloodthirsty Draka generals.

  And finally, he bolted his gaze onto Ramos Boa, who now sat fidgeting in the front row.

  William smiled faintly. It was not the gracious smile of a prince; it was the smile of a man who recognized that this grandiose hall was, in truth, an opulent mass grave. He remembered Rajendra’s words, remembered the crushing, lonely burden borne by his father.

  Let them look upon the monster they have created, William thought.

  He drew a long, deep breath. Hhhh... Gorging his lungs on the cold, sterile, air-conditioned air.

  And then...

  KRAAACK!!!

  The impact detonated like the blast of a heavy howitzer.

  The entire hall violently flinched; the hearts of the delegates seemingly forced to skip a beat. William had not struck the desk with an open palm, but with a clenched fist accustomed to shattering bone. The teakwood podium fractured instantly—splintering into jagged shards that launched into the air.

  The violent crack was amplified by the highly sensitive microphones, forging a sonic boom that temporarily killed the audio system with a deafening, high-pitched feedback squeal.

  SCREEEEECH!

  The delegates clamped their hands over their ears, wincing in agony. Before they could process the shock, another sound followed. A sound infinitely more harrowing than the physical explosion.

  "Hah..."

  William chuckled softly. Dry. Raspy.

  "Hahaha..."

  Then the laughter swelled. Erupted. Descended into madness.

  "BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

  William Ironseat's laughter roared, flooding the entire acoustic dome of the assembly hall, bouncing off the prismatic glass walls, slapping the severe faces of the world's leaders with naked, unadulterated contempt.

  It was not the laughter of joy. It was the laughter of a man watching someone diligently polish their shoes on the train tracks while a locomotive hurtled toward them at full speed. A laugh drenched in pity and scorn.

  He laughed while clutching his stomach, pointing a finger at Ramos Boa as if the man had just delivered the most ludicrous jest of the century. Tears of dark mirth leaked from the corners of William’s eyes.

  "Sanctions? Embargoes? Invasions?" William asked through his laughter, his voice echoing with a dreadful resonance. He wiped the corner of his eye with the back of his hand.

  "You speak of freezing our assets? You speak of isolating us?"

  William abruptly ceased laughing. His visage transmuted drastically from manic amusement to glacial frost in a fraction of a second. A volatile shift in emotion that made the fine hairs on the necks of the nearest delegates stand on end.

  He gripped the neck of the microphone, glaring directly into the camera broadcasting his face to the globe.

  "Do it... enact every pathetic threat you wish, you Clowns!"

  "Send your naval armadas! Blockade our ports! Burn your utterly worthless paper currencies to ash!"

  "BWAHAHAHAHAHA...."

  William threw his head back and roared with laughter anew, spreading his arms wide as if challenging the very gods.

  "Do you think we care? Do you genuinely believe Carta fears economic threats while we are busy holding back the tides of hell from spilling into your living rooms?!"

  The hall gaped in stupefied silence. The diplomats, accustomed to veiled insults and silver-tongued rhetoric, now sat paralyzed, jaws unhinged. They had anticipated pleas, desperate negotiations, or at least vehement denials. Instead, they received a brazen invitation to total war delivered through the cackles of a madman.

  CLATTER.

  The shocked silence shattered as a chair was violently shoved back in the ranks of the Larrus Federation delegation.

  Scrape! Scrape! Scrape!

  A tidal wave of indignation hoisted hundreds of delegates to their feet in unison. Their faces warped into masks of crimson, apoplectic rage. Their fragile egos had been butchered.

  "DERANGED KINGDOM!" screamed a delegate from the North, the veins in his neck protruding like taut steel cables.

  "DRAG HIM DOWN!"

  "BARBARIAN SCUM! WE WILL BOMB THEM INTO SUBMISSION!"

  The dam burst. Vituperations erupted like the snarls of humiliated beasts. Plastic water bottles were hurled toward the stage. Diplomatic protocol was incinerated into ash.

  And amidst that torrential rain of abuse, William simply stood there, a crooked sneer etched upon his face. He savored this hatred. He drank it in like fine, aged wine.

  "Come... scream louder..." William muttered, his eyes glinting with manic delight.

  His hand drifted slowly toward the audio control panel embedded in the podium. He located the rotary dial marked MASTER VOLUME.

  He cranked it. Twisted it all the way to the right. MAXIMUM.

  SCREEEEEEEEECH!

  The deafening wail of static feedback made the window panes vibrate violently.

  William brought his lips a hair's breadth from the microphone. His voice now sounded like the wrath of an angry god, booming from the colossal speaker arrays in every corner of the chamber, threatening to deafen anyone who heard it.

  "YOU INSIGNIFICANT WRETCHES..."

  The building physically shuddered.

  "YOU ARE NOTHING BUT FROTH! MERE CHILDREN PLAYING WITH MATCHES ATOP A MOUNTAIN OF GUNPOWDER!"

  "YOU CALL US FOSSILS? LISTEN CAREFULLY, YOU DREGS OF CIVILIZATION!"

  William leveled a finger squarely at Ramos Boa's chest from afar, the sheer acoustic pressure forcing the President to flinch back into his seat.

  "THIS VERY FOSSIL HAS BEEN THE SPINAL CORD OF THE WORLD FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS! WITHOUT US, YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN DEVOURED AS FODDER FOR THE SHADOWS SINCE THE FIRST EPOCH!"

  "WE DO NOT NEED THIS WORLD! IT IS THE WORLD THAT WEEPS IN NEED OF US!"

  Fifteen hundred throats screamed back in unison, a singular, pure note of absolute hatred. The kinetic energy of the two colossal sound waves violently collided in the center of the hall.

  THOOOM!

  The UN building shook violently—a physical tremor, no mere metaphor. The thick, reinforced glass panels lining the upper tribunes fractured—crrrrraaaack—sprouting intricate spider-web patterns. The arc-spotlights flickered erratically.

  Amidst the tremors of that man-made quake, William stood perfectly serene.

  Hah... hah... hah...

  His breaths came in heavy pulls, not from terror, but from the adrenaline flooding his veins with scalding heat. His ears rang shrilly, yet his heart felt entirely unburdened. Utterly liberated.

  He closed his eyes for a fleeting second. Fuhhhhhhh....

  He exhaled a long breath, and with it, the suffocating weight of a lifetime of doubt evaporated. His chest felt hollow, in the best possible way. The agonizing constriction of feigning politeness to these hypocrites vanished completely. His right hand gripped the edge of the shattered teakwood lectern so fiercely that splinters ground into sawdust within his palm.

  He opened his eyes. They were no longer the wavering eyes of a conflicted prince. They were the eyes of a Warlord King.

  The most honest, crooked smile of his entire life carved itself onto his lips.

  Damn, I have always wanted to do this, he thought. It tasted incredibly sweet, sweeter than Ghandarvya sugar, more intoxicating than the neat scotch on the jet.

  He had successfully incinerated the bridge. He had successfully crowned himself the world's public enemy number one, the collective nemesis of humanity. There was no path back to the negotiating table. From this very second onward, there was only war.

  And standing before the tempest poised to obliterate him, William felt alive.

  Truly, violently alive.