Dimensional Keeper: All My Skills Are at Level 100 Chapter 1473 A Letter of Invitation!

"Despite holding onto this artifact for thousands of years, your clan still ranks among the weakest powers in this realm," Joe remarked offhandedly, shaking his head in what seemed like gentle regret.

His voice carried a casual, almost chatty quality, but the statement itself sliced through the atmosphere with keen precision.

The impact struck right away.

The faces of the seven family heads turned grim simultaneously. Their once-restrained poise grew tense as subtle waves of restrained aura emanated from them. The elders positioned behind also found their expressions hardening.

Being insulted so openly in their own holy testing area, in front of their followers and clan folk, amounted to outright contempt.

Still, the quiet persisted. None of the family heads advanced, and none of the elders let their rage escape in words, for underneath the wrath Joe's remark had ignited in everyone flowed a thread of icy, clear realization that they dared not overlook.

The individual before them wasn't merely impolite or lacking etiquette. He served as an elder of the Violet Star Palace, and even the most outraged among the gathered knew for sure that dismissing the implications of that role would lead to repercussions none were ready to handle.

That organization's might loomed behind Joe like an unseen, unyielding barrier, and everyone there sensed its pressure squeezing the gap between them and him. Thus, they remained in their fury and kept silent, letting the hush around the Combat Legion Tower linger without interruption.

"Heh," Joe's derisive chuckle broke through first, a brief and scornful noise that slipped out with the natural fluency of one so used to viewing the surrounding world from above that mockery felt instinctive.

Next, without fanfare or introduction, a rectangular card appeared in his grasp as if summoned from thin air.

"Take this," he instructed, and before Mathew could do more than react on reflex, Joe had already flung the card toward him with a nonchalant wrist snap that implied the item held little value to him, even though conjuring it hinted at the contrary.

Mathew caught the card and lifted it for inspection, his eyes scanning its face with the deliberate focus of someone aware that any item from a Violet Star Palace elder merited thorough review before judgments.

The remaining family heads observed him from their spots, their prior irritation not entirely faded, and briefly the assembly buzzed with the strain of folks anticipating details they hadn't yet received.

They traded subtle looks with each other, pondering what this rectangular item might signify and why a Violet Star Palace elder would journey to their trial world just to hand it over.

While they speculated, they saw Mathew's expression alter, and it shifted in a manner none had anticipated from a figure of his calm and seasoned nature.

The thoughtful, controlled curiosity that had covered his face during the card's scrutiny didn't ease into another state gradually but flipped abruptly, pulling every onlooker's attention.

In place of the concentrated scrutiny of a family head evaluating an unfamiliar item stood something primal and exposed, an unfiltered thrill that shattered all the composed barriers years of command had erected around him.

It resembled the look of someone who had just grasped an idea that reshaped the limits of possibility in his mind.

"This..." He uttered it scarcely louder than a whisper, glancing from the card to Joe and back, his eyes darting as if verifying the deliverer's reality and the object's authenticity in his palm.

Even as leader of one of the seven major families and a top authority in the Black Dragon Clan, a role requiring unwavering displays of power, he struggled to regain his balance right then.

The card gripped in his hand touched too profoundly on his clan's goals and requirements for him to feign indifference, and the poise he'd upheld perfectly against Joe's prior barbs collapsed completely in the face of what he now possessed.

"Here, see this," he urged, handing the card to the closest other family head with a haste in the motion that conveyed its importance prior to anyone's personal viewing.

The card passed hand to hand, and for every new examiner, the identical shift repeated. Astonishment claimed each countenance in turn with the steady reliability of individuals facing something that surpassed the expectations for the day.

The prospect embodied by the card went beyond mere importance like random bits of luck that aid a group amid the usual rivalries and obstacles of existence in the Divine Realm.

It operated on a magnitude that overshadowed every challenge the Black Dragon Clan had met across tens of thousands of years, a duration so immense it engulfed entire eras and lineages, yet the object circulating among the seven family heads rendered all prior events in that expanse seem mundane.

"Don't look at me," Joe declared, lifting both hands in a motion that pushed their shared wonder away from himself, as if he sought no share in the praise for the feelings the card had evoked.