A different kind of Death Game

[blueayes]

The inside of the building could easily be compared to a mansion or a church because of its white walls and blue-colored ceiling, but it was the stained glass windows that had the images of saints that caught his attention.

The light outside made the widows glow beautifully, but it was when their images blended with the reflection of the blue-colored ceiling that they seemed to come to life.

Rafael was forced to pull himself away from the moving images as his men began to walk up the twin stairs and enter the various rooms that were on the second and third floors.

"Well look at what the cat dragged in." Rafael heard a familiar voice and as he turned to his left he found Kirito standing in front of a brown door made of wood.

"It's been a long time old friend." he said to Kirito as he walked up to him and shook his hand before pulling him closely and giving the Japanese boy\ man a good hug.

"Let's talk inside." Kirito says to him before he pushes Rafaels away and leads him into the room that he was just in.

Rafael finds himself inside a simple room that only has a wooden table and four chairs, he doesn't bother to wait for Kirito to tell him to sit down he just does so instinctively.

'Kirito."

"Lots of bad things happened after you and your men left." Kirito stops Rafael from saying whatever he wants to say.

"You know how it is when things go bad, they get worse before they get better."

"Kirito you don't need to tell me." Rafael tries to stop Kirito from saying what he wants to say but the look in Kirito's eyes tells him that he's doing so because he needs someone to talk to.

"Just let me tell you why we're here and why my men and I are on the west side of Aincrad." Kirito says to him.

"You know we Japanese, hell everyone from the east always claim that we are better than everyone else, but we are always making sure that anyone who's different from everyone else suffers for it."


"It wasn't long after you left, the constant invasions from the outside were taking their toll on us and as time passed more and more scouts were getting injured and that meant that we needed medicins or healing crystals, but getting either of those things is a risk on itself."

'So you can imagine how everyone reacted." Kirito's expression becomes filled with pain as he remembers the events of the past.

"It wasn't long before I was forced to split both the guards and the scouts and send one group to get what we needed and the other to keep the area around the jail safe."

"Those ungrateful bastards forced us to give everything to them."

"Their excuse was that since the two groups had criminals in them, then we didn't deserve to have any of the healing crystals or potions."

"Things just kept getting worse after that so I began to ask your side if I and my men could switch sides and the people on this side agreed."

The silence that followed after Kirito said those words tells me that the people on the east side of Aincrad didn't appreciate what he did.

'They called us traitors and said that they were better off without us."

"It wasn't until they went after Asuna and Yui that Heathcliff and the other Guild Leaders stepped in."

"Let's just say that after the Guild Leaders punished the ones that were manipulating everyone no one dared to even look at us."

"I know that it sounds like we didn't go through a lot, but having to risk our lives only to find that there wasn't any food for us and the beds that we had earned were thrown away or burned made......"

"If I hadn't gotten us out of there then we would have killed everyone in there." Kirito says to me with a voice that's filled with resentment.

"So are Asuna and yui safe?" I ask Kirto who seems to recover some of his strength as his anger calms at the sound of his wife and daughter's names.

'They live here with me." he says to Rafael.

"Kirito is there anything to drink?" Rafael asks Kirito who smiles before reaching under the table and pulling up a bottle of tequila.

Rafel couldn't help but smile as the sounds of his men cheering reached his ears, they were obviously celebrating the fact that they had managed to return home and now he would join them in their celebration.

As the sound of the alcohol being poured into the glasses filled neither Rafael nor Kirito knew that Rafael's return had already reached the ears of the other guild leaders.

There was a cold sensation felt among the people inside the fortress or the jail when they heard about Rafael's return.

They knew that now that the man was going to demand answers and wasn't going to simply listen to them insult him.

Yet as both the players and the Guild leaders prepared for what was to come the people outside of Aincrad learned about Rafael's arrival.

Several spies that were now living amongst the people of Aincrad had sent word to their masters who frowned at the news.

Like it or not, Aincrad had secured the west for itself even if it had only done so to stop the invasions coming from it.

And now that the same man that had led Aincrads armies from one victory to another was back inside the mountain, they knew that whatever progress they had made in destabilizing the mountain had become meaningless.

 

[blueayes]

Rafael still does not understand why everyone else decided to put him in charge.

The other Guild Masters and Leaders each ruled over their areas the best they could, but none of them wanted to have anything to do with deciding how everyone did things.

That may sound confusing to anyone who heard him say that, but the western part of Aincrad was a mixture of different cultures that didn't agree on a lot of things.

And someone had to tell everyone to stop arguing because what they were arguing about didn't matter. After all, Aincrad wasn't a part of their kingdoms.

Despite him having to say that over and over again, everyone always seemed to forget it and he was forced to listen to people complain about even more pointless things.

Rafael watched as a pair of knights opened the doors to the meeting room where the representatives of each religion waited for him.

As he followed Asuna into the room he expected the men to either be standing or sitting down, but what he didn't expect was to find himself standing in a room filled with people who were all waiting for him to hear their complaints.

He turned to look at Asuna who shrugged, and with no other options he walked to the largest chair in the room.

The chair wasn't a throne, it was just a big chair but the room filled with gasps, and the people in the room all smiled and murmured with each other the moment that he sat down.

'Okay let's begin." he says before pointing at a man who walked up to him, but kept his distance so that he didn't look like a threat.

the man told him that he had come when he heard that he had returned and was now putting things back in order again and that he was among the farmers whose land had been taken when Aincrad had been invaded.

The man then knelt and swore loyalty to him after happily telling him about how his family was now living comfortably again, after he and his managed to drive the invaders out of the mountain.

As the man walked away a woman walked up to him and she too kept her distance, the woman complained that she had tried to send her daughter to one of the brothels, but the knights had stopped her from doing so.

She argued that this kind of thing was common in Japanese culture as children needed to help their parents when they became older.

Rafael agreed to let the woman do this but she could only do so if she sent the girl to one of the tea houses that were under the female samurai's control.

From the corner of his eye, Rafael could see Asuna glaring daggers at him because he had just allowed the woman to sell their daughter as a prostitute and that meant that there would soon be other people doing the same thing.

Those people would use this one incident as an excuse.

he wished that it wasn't true but even if he hadn't allowed the woman to do so, she would have found another way to sell the girl off, at least this way she would be safe behind the protection of the samurai who he had heard were extremely protective of eachother.

The day went on like this, if it wasn't someone who was asking for help because their village was attacked it was someone trying to open trade with Aincrad.

A group of people who had come to him asking for his help in dealing with an invading army, to a group of men from said army threatening him to join their side or else.

Rafael simply told both groups to go away as he was in no hurry to get involved in another war.

The hours passed until finally the group that he should have met at the beginning of all of this was standing before him, the men were all respectful, and while they were irritated because they had to wait they nonetheless poked softly at him.

They agreed that women should cover themselves and that was all that they agreed on.

Rafael watched as the men began to argue with each other.

One man said that women should be covered from head to toe, while another said that it was too much for them to cover their faces.

Another man argued that women should be allowed to show their ankles because their clothes would get filthy and they would carry the filth with them.

He couldn't help but find the men's actions as funny and he soon began to laugh, The room fell silent as everyone looked at him with wide eyes as they wondered if he had finally gone mad from the stress he had been feeling.

"How about a compromise, each of you has your own belief, why not only have the women from your beliefs dress how they are taught." he says to the men who immediately say that those women would be tempted by how the people around them were dressed.

"Temptation is always going to be there, it doesn't mean that you are going to do it." he says to the men who reluctantly agree to do what he says.

the next thing that the men talked to him about was that they wanted the brothels and other places like them to be shut down and that all of the women that worked in them to be punished.

Rafael reminded the men, that those same women paid for several of their houses of worship to be built and that it was they who begged him to let their people into Aincrad.

The truth was a lot more complicated than that, but he didn't lie about what the women had done.

The men argued that a person could find a prostitute wherever they went and that the kingdom was rotting because of them

"Kingdom what kingdom?" Rafael quietly asked himself, he turned to look at Asuna who didn't react to the men's words and just kept her eyes on the people watching the meeting.

"Okay from now on prostitution is illegal if it's outside of a certain area.
People are going to be people and they have needs, no one can stop them from having those needs met but they can't do that in places where children are." he says to the men who glare at him.

He knows that this won't be the end of this but for the moment it's enough and so the men and the rest of the people in the room leave.

 

[blueayes]

The room fell silent as the people left and it was only when he and Asuna were the only ones in it that he asked.

"What did they mean by kingdom?"

Rafael doesn't like the way that Asuna looks at him, he can only describe it as a combination of pity and worry, he doesn't say anything as Asuna walks up to him.

"It's hard to say this but Aincrad is a kingdom or an empire made of different kingdoms." she answers before she walks to a nearby desk that has several books on it.

Asuna finds the papers that she is looking for and walks back to where Rafael is sitting.

Rafael can only listen to the sound of her armored boots echoing through the room as she approaches him, and he can't help but feel a small amount of fear because the sound reminds him of several of the battles that he was forced to be a part of.

Asuna hands him the sheets of paper and begins to explain what's written on them.

"Silk- spices- meat- glass -rubber -gold and silver are just some of the things that pass through here before they reach the center of Aincrad and then they pass into the east side of Aincrad until they leave and enter the eastern kingdoms."

"Then there are the things that people can get here that they can't get anywhere else, Aincrad's so big that there's always more room and anyone can find work, no matter how talentless they are.' she says to him.

"Okay, but that doesn't tell me why they said that." Asuna glares at him and forces him to stop talking.

"The Romans invaded your side and you drove them out, the Arab Empire tried to burn the mountain, but their army was destroyed by the monsters."

"The Mongolians invaded our side but we forced them out by letting them in, the monsters hate anything and anyone that isn't from Aincrad." she says to him.

Rafael wants to say something but Asuna's cold eyes tell him to keep quiet.

"I didn't want to believe it until Kirito came home. This war, I mean the one that the two of you just fought left a deep mark in your souls. Rafael you helped build a kingdom where people can be happy, why not enjoy it." she says to him.

"Because I can't." Rafael answers Asuna with a voice that has barely any strength in it.

Asuna hugs the man who saved her husband's life more than once, and the man that her daughter grew to believe is her uncle because of how close he has become to their family.

"Don't die, Rafael, those kids still need you." she says to him as she tries to remind him that there is still something for him to live for.

She lets go of Rafael and smiles as she remembers something that Knowing Rafael doesn't know.

"Did you know that the people here are always looking forward to you coming back?" She looks at Rafael whose eyes have lost most of the light in them.

'They say that whenever you come back everything gets better, that's why there were so many people here to see you sit on your throne." she says to him before she claps her hands once and remembers the people's reactions.

"It's not a throne, it's just a chair." Rafael says to her.

'It's a chair that everyone wants to sit on and people would kill to have, If that's not a throne what is?" she asks him.

The door to the meeting room opens before the two kids from earlier walk in, they are covered in bandages and are now wearing the armor that the orphan players have grown out of.

"I am pleased to say that they are both in good health, but neither of them has anywhere to go back to, as they were considered to be unsellable merchandise and were left behind." the butler says to him.

"What do you mean by unsellable merchandise?" Rafael asks the man.

'What I mean is that they were both slaves that were left behind. From what I know all of the slave traders either left Aincrad with their slaves or were paid for the slaves that they set free before they left."

"Most of the slaves joined the military and looked for work doing the things that they did before they became slaves.
The children that didn't have someone to look after them they weren't o one of the many orphanages that the different faiths control.' his Buttler explains to him.

"So why didnt they?" Rafel begins to ask his Buttler but the man's eyes become hard and he immediately knows that he isn't going like the answer.

"They were thrown out because they were considered to be tainted and were told to have dirty blood."

"From what they told me the children that arrive at those orphanages are being forcefully converted by whoever is in control of the orphanages and some are even being forced to serve those that are believed to be higher than the others.' Rafael had heard enough.

He ignored the kid's frightened faces as he began to walk towards the door, that the people had left through.

"Guards!" he heard Asuna yell behind him as several knights and soldiers ran into the room and began to follow Rafael out of the mansion.

"What are you going to do!?" Asuna says to him as she runs after him.

"Tell the guards to surround the orphanages except the one that I usually visit, tell them to find the children that don't belong to the faith that the orphanage believes in."

"And I want whoever is in charge interrogated." Rafael orders the guards behind him, who immediately run out of the mansion grounds.

'Rafael you can't just do something like this, if you attack like this the way that the people see you will be affected." Asuna warns him.

'Asuna, if this is what a pair of kids who were thrown out saw with their own eyes, what else have those people been doing?" he asks her.

Rafael doesn't say anything else as he walks in the direction of the nearest orphanage.

 

[blueayes]

As Asuna walked back into the mansion she began to feel a headache coming, as the women that Rafael agreed to look after were now looking at the kids with painted-on smiles.

"Damm it." she says to herself as she walks into the mansion before smiling and greeting the group of women, who all come from different places.

Because different areas of the world became connected with places they shouldn't have been connected to, kingdoms that shouldn't have been destroyed were, and others that should have been gone by now weren't.

Some of the women in the room didn't have a place to go back to, and as such they were now considered Rafael's concubines, despite the man not having met any of them.

"Rafael knows, Rafael knows!" she began to hear the people shout like they usually do whenever Rafael found out that someone was doing something to hurt the people.

Asuna didn't like the way that they looked at the kids, as the women's eyes showed the disgust and rage that their beautiful faces hid.

Just because they were left here by their fathers or abandoned after their kingdoms were destroyed didn't mean that the women didn't have their own agendas, and one of those agendas was being the one that gave birth to Rafael's heir.

"Kids come here." Asuna ordered the kids who ran up to her and hid behind her legs.

"Ladies could you help me with something." she says to them with the same practiced smile that she has gained over the years.

'Stay behind me." she whispers to the kids before walking past the group and into the mansion.

She led the group into what had become their classroom because it was there where they all taught each other how to read and write each other's languages.

"Miss did we do something wrong?" the girl with the cat tail asked her, her soft voice sounded as if she could start crying, but from what Asuna could see the girl had learned that crying wouldn't help her situation and so she was doing her best not to do it.

"No the two of you didn't do anything wrong, the ones that did are about to learn the difference between seeing that man angry and being the ones on the receiving end." she says to the girl before rubbing her head and then patting the boy on his head.

"Ladies I need you to write a letter to everyone that you know. Explain to them that Rafael has returned home and that my husband will be expanding the guard."

Asuna stopped to look at the women's expressions, had she not spent so much time with them she wouldn't have ever been able to notice the reactions that they had behind their carefully crafted masks.

"Miss Asuna, does that mean that Rafael will be staying home from now on?" one of the women from Japan asks her, Asuna nods to her without saying any words so that if Rafael did leave she wouldn't be called a liar.

"Kirito will be cleaning the higher floors of the mountain to make room for people. And considering that your kingdoms have so many valuable people, I know that your kingdoms have plenty to spare." she says to the women who don't react to her words.

She knows that the men and women that the empires sent to Aincrad are nothing more than troublemakers and the trash of society.

It just so happened that trash that the different empires were trying to get rid of, made excellent soldiers that were able to fight the monsters and earn their place in Aincrad.

Not to mention that several of those men sent a lot of money to their families who would eventually follow them to the mountain and gave the men a reason to join the guard or the army.

'Lady Asuna forgives me." A woman from Australia begins to say something but before she can finish the front door to the mansion slams open and Asuna rushes out of the classroom to see what is going on.

Asuna has her hands on her sword just in case another group of would-be killers tried to send a message to the Players but she can only widen her eyes and feel her soul being crushed by the sight before her.

Some of the kids are nothing but skin and bones, others are so hurt that the knights have to carry them and some Asuna can't help but cover her mouth at the thought of what was done to them.

Kirito!' she says to her husband who is carrying a pair of infants in his arms.

"Asuna I don't have time to explain but get as many healers as you can and I don't care what you have to do get these kids food." Kirito says to her as he hands her the two infants.

"Kirito how bad is it?" she asks him.

'Bad, we had to stop Rafael from tearing their heads off, because we need to have a proper trial."

"Asuna they sent kids into the mountain in the areas where no one went. My men are searching but the chances of them finding anyone alive are." Kirito doesn't finish saying those painful words to her, he just walks out of the mansion with his hand on his sword.

Asuna uses her help screen to call her guild and she explains what is happening Heathcliff immediately agrees to send help but he doesn't agree to send any clothes or food.

He does agree to send healers and soldiers to help keep people from attacking her or the kids.

Asuna remembers the group of women who are all still sitting in the classroom.

She walks back into the room and orders them to write the letters, she knows that the women will take this chance to tell their kingdoms what is happening in Aincrad.

It doesn't matter because everything that Rafael does is always known to the public, the man doesn't try to hide anything.

 

[blueayes]

The truth is that I couldn't just make the Players fight everyone.

Like it or not the Players are people from our time, and if you ignore the Murder Guild, most of them won't want to hurt other people especially if they think that those people real.

On the other hand, the people of the past have no problem with it.

It's just the difference in generations, Aincrad is a place that might be filled with monsters, but the Players are people with modern Morals in a world that sees those morals as foolish.

I'm not saying that one is right and the other is wrong, just look at our past and you will see that we had to go through some horrible things to get to where we are, the people outside of Aincrad are going through those same things.

Different experiences, different morals and you can see how dealing with this is affecting Rafael because it's breaking him.

From his and the other Players' point of view the things that they have done and seen are inhuman, but for the rest of the world, they are perfectly normal.

And yet people go to the Western half of Aincrad because of how safe it is and because they know that Rafael and his soldiers are keeping them safe.

Because of how he has managed things with the help of the other players, the west side of Aincrad has flourished to the point where the rest of the world considers it a Kingdom or empire.

 

[blueayes]

The sounds of the soldiers marching through the city could be heard late into the night.

Asuna was forced to stay awake as the doctors looked after the kids, it hurt her to see how some of the kids were covered in parasites, while others were so sick that it was a miracle that they hadn't died yet.

What was worse was seeing how more were coming, but they weren't alone, priests and nuns who Rafael, Kirito, and the guards had deemed to be innocent were sent to the mansion to help heal the kids.

She did know what was being done with the rest of the kids or what had happened to the people who were responsible for this tragedy.

Yet she couldn't allow herself to be distracted.

It was late in the afternoon when both Rafael and Kirito returned, but before she could say anything Rafael walked past her found one of the jars that were filled with wine, and drank it.

He did this over and over again until he couldn't stand and fell unconscious.

"Kirito what happened?" she asks her husband whose eyes seem to have lost the light that they had.

"We found basements filled with courses, nuns that were pregnant, and the names of the slavers who they were selling the kids to" Kirito answers her, by the way, that he is looking at her Asuna knows that there's a lot more that Kirito isn't telling her.

"Rafael has ordered that we inspect all of the merchants and houses t see if anyone else is doing something they shouldn't, but he said to ignore anyone that was stealing or doing anything similar." Kirito says to her.

Asuna doesn't like what she is hearing because of the implications of what Kirito just told her would mean.

"There's a high chance that we have a slave market in Aincrad, one that is grabbing the people here and selling them to the people outside." Kirito says to her.

"What about the ones responsible?" she asks Kirito.

"Rafael cut their hands off and sent a messenger from each kingdom head of them before he sent them back." Kirito answers her.

Asuna dislikes this because what Rafael did could start another war, but she doesn't like the fact that the man didn't torture and execute the ones responsible either.
][][][

The sound of the bells ringing could be heard throughout the holy city, as the news of what had happened within the Great Mountain spread through the land.

The Kingdom of Aincrad had proven itself to be a thorn in Rome's side and yet the mountain was something that had repelled the invaders of the east before they could do any harm to the people that now lived on the border.

The emperor read the letter that the messenger brought to him and he was tempted to tear it apart, to think that Rafael would dare to put sanctions on him because of what the priests had done.

the man was so weak that he hadn't killed the men responsible for committing these crimes in his lands and had instead chosen to send the trash back to him.

And yet he couldn't just send his armies to the mountain because the growing threat of the north was something that prevented him from doing so.

Then there was the other letter that had arrived, to think that the filth that had escaped into the mountain had become useful for the players was something that even he couldn't have imagined.

Granted that he would have preferred that they could have done the same under his rule but as long as they helped defend his lands what did he care?

The Holy Roman Empire had become one of the best places to live since he started sending criminals to the mountain.

The money that those men sent to their families was taxed so that the men paid to fix whatever they broke, it didn't matter if it was the people's faith in his control or a put that they destroyed the money that they sent would pay for it all.

The pope was publicly announcing that those responsible for the crimes that caused the sanctions were men who had abused their positions and he was excommunicating them.

The people agreed with his decision because the priests had targeted children, instead of adults who deserved to experience such things.

Still, he can't just simply ignore this obvious challenge to his rule, Even if Aincrad has helped strengthen Rome's power, he has to do something to make sure that Rafael doesn't get any bright ideas in the future.

He could order the walls that keep the dead from spilling into Aincrad to be destroyed but that wouldn't do anything other than allow the monsters living in the mountain to spread into his lands.

He could send assassins, but knowing Rafael's reputation and the reputation of his guards he knows that doing such a thing would be pointless.

Aincrad is dependent on the trade that the world passes through it and it's not like the mountain is lacking in resources, so he can't just order his men to surround it and force everyone in it to starve until its rulers surrender.

"What to do??" the emperor says to himself before he sees something or better said someone that he has chained to the wall next to his bed.

The woman was pleasing to the eyes, yet whatever poison had been given to her was quickly eating away at her mind, he would have used her but the thought of sleeping with such a thing was beneath him.

That was it, he knew exactly how he would return this slight that Rafael had done to him, he would dress this woman in the finest of silks and grant her the best Jewels before presenting her to Rafael.

This act would force him to go to the mountain himself, he would have to order his men not to enjoy themselves with the men and women of the mountain as he didn't want to start a war with Rafael yet.

Np going there himself would be too much as the mountain was a place where peasants and outcasts went, It was a perfect place for this woman who claimed to be Nero himself but for him to set foot there, no that couldn't be allowed to happen.

His mind changed and he decided to send the woman to the mountain along with others who were just as mad as she was, their madness would either end up killing them or they would cause so much trouble for Rafael that the people in Aincrad would begin to lose faith in him.

 

[blueayes]

Asuna sat in front of her desk as her mind went through everything that had been uncovered after Rafael had practically burned the orphanages down and punished everyone for the things that they were doing.

Had she been the same person that woke up in this world she wouldn't be able to stomach everything that they found, She felt Yui move and she couldn't help but smile at her daughter who was sleeping peacefully in her arms.

It was during peaceful moments like these that she was forced to remember the last four years and why she and her family were living in the American Half of Aincrad instead of the Japanese Half.

Everyone blamed the Beta testers because of what had happened, it didn't matter that there was no way of them known about what was going to happen, but everyone wanted, no need someone to blame.

As a result, Kirito and everyone in the scout and guard groups were hated by everyone, it didn't help that the Samurais and Knights had joined the two groups.

It was during a fight when both the guards and scouts had to work together to push back an invading army that everything finally boiled over and both groups chose to leave the East section of Aincrad.

It was before anyone knew that the monsters could leave the mountain if they wanted to.

The enemy army was forcing both groups back each time it took more ground from the defenders until Kirito was forced to call for help.

Her guild along with a few others heard the scouts and guards' calls for aid but they were completely outnumbered.

It didn't matter if the players were stronger and faster than a normal person, because the enemy army could easily wear them down.

Asuna can still remember hearing all of the insults and curses of the other players as they said that the scouts and guards deserved to die because of what they had done and that the world would be better off without them.

She can still remember feeling helpless and fearing for what the other players would do to Yui after she was done.

That was when the American Players showed up and fired upon the enemy catching them completely off guard, it was because of them that they won that fight.

The Americans were largely considered useless because even if they had guns, they needed to aim and fire the things, something that anyone could do with a bow and arrow.

A creak from outside made her turn her head but it was just a guard walking.

She begins to remember the argument that followed after the fight and how Aincrad nearly went to war with itself because of what the other guilds had done.

If she compared those days to what she had seen these last few months she would have said that she was reliving those days again.

None of the people responsible for nearly killing her, Kirito, and everyone else felt like they did anything wrong.

Just like the Monks, priests, and whatever title the person who managed the orphanages had, who believed that they were doing the right thing.

Just like back then, the people who blindly followed the men and women protested and cursed both Rafael and the guards claiming that they had no right to do what they did.

Rafael who had seen the things that were being done to the kids, silenced everyone with a single look and ordered them to leave Aincrad or else he would have them killed.

The crowd left that day, but the protest didn't end until all of the protesters, their families, and everyone who helped them were thrown out with whatever valuables they had.

It was a death sentence because the gap or border between Aincrad, and the other kingdoms was filled with bandits and monsters.

The door to her office opened and Asuna found herself looking at someone whom she had grown to consider a friend, despite the woman in question having once tried to kill her.

The samurai was wearing a dress that showed her curves, Asuna could see the woman's long legs that came out of her dress as she walked towards her.

The woman had cut her long black hair short in protest of something that Rafael had refused to do, but she wasn't the only one, other women in the tea and both houses had done the same.

"How long is he going to stay this time?" the samurai asks her.

Asuna looks into the woman's light brown eyes. "We aren't leaving anytime soon." she answers the samurai.

"......."x2

"You are good people but our rule has been plagued with insurrections, wars, and betrayals, and yet despite all of that your kingdom has flourished." the woman says to her.

Asuna doesn't bother to say anything, because she knows all of this already.

"It's time for all of you to start ruling and put everything in order before it collapses under its weight." the woman says to her.

"And how do you suppose we do that? Did you already forget what happened when Lugging Coffin fought the Mongolians? Or what happens when anyone that isn't living under one of the guilds tries to take a part of the mountain?"

Asuna asks the woman as she remembers the corpses and abandoned villages that the players found.

She remembers exactly what happened when Lauffing Coffin Humiliated Genghis Khan and took his first wife just to insult him, before unleashing several high-level monsters in the man's army.

Needless to say, no one has dared to even approach that part of Aincrad since then.

Asuna watches as the woman kneels and places her head on the floor. "Please let us deal with those that plot behind your backs, we will not kill anyone innocent." the samurai says to her, but Asuna doesn't answer.

 

[blueayes]

Luffing Coffin Guild House

'I have a question." Poh the Guild Master of the Murder Guld Laufing Coffin says to his prisoner who looks at him with the same soft yet hard eyes that she had ever since his guild had captured her.

'What's worse. A king that is cruel from the beginning or a king that starts as a good person and then becomes cruel?"

"Before you answer, let me add to that question, whats worse a kind king that starts good and slowly becomes cruel or one that jumps the boat and becomes cruel overnight?"

Borte didn't answer the creature that had the form of a man, she knew that the being in front of her might speak and act like a Human but the thing was far from it.

She had seen what it and the beasts that lived within the stronghold that she was imprisoned in could do and trembled at the memory of it.

She watched as a smile formed on the man's face and no matter how kind it may have looked she knew that the thing in front of her was planning something evil.

the fact that the creature was being so friendly with her was unnerving because she had been left to her own devices since she had been captured.

'....Something happened and it's not good for any of us if we allow the bottle to break and the king to jump the ship." Poh says to her before he signals to his men to leave the room.

"You think I'm a monster don't you?" Poh asks her but she remains silent.

"Think of everything that Husband of yours did, continues to do, and will do in the future, and then tell me what's the difference between him and me."

'The man that you were with killed entire cities, decapitated men- women and children, he didn't even spare the animals and you look at me as if something that wasn't Human was talking to you." Borte struggled to keep herself from screaming as Poh spoke to her.

The man never raised his voice, he didn't even approach her, and yet he seemed to grow as the room around him darkened and the fire in his eyes became an infernal that threatened to consume her.

"The scouts told me about something that coming and I got an idea, something that would help us keep that thing from ever coming into existence," he said to her.

"You see Rome is sending a gift to one of our allies, a pretty little thing to help strengthen our allegiance with them," he says to her and Borte can barely keep herself from urinating out of sheer terror.

"I will give you as a wife- concubine or whatever to Rafael and woman pray that your body can keep that monster from releasing his pent-up stress on the world that deserves his hate.' Poh says to her before he leaves the room

Borte isn't able to move as her mind forces her to remember what happened when her husband and his men managed to take one of the key areas of the mountain.

While she hadn't been present during the siege, she knew about it because of how the Players retaliated.

Shit was a bright day and everything was going on as normal until several large horned demons flew over her home, what happened next could only be described as the complete humiliation of her people.

The gargantuan creatures laughed as the men fired their arrows, the horses were thrown as if they were pebbles that a child was playing with and the men's weapons couldn't even scratch the creature's bodies.

When the Players arrived she remembered their capes and how the faces that were painted on them mocked her and everyone around her.

The players ordered all of the men to pick up their weapons and attack them, The players broke the men's arms and legs and then took all of the women to the mountain.

Her captors left everything else, not a single tent- child or animal was harmed, They even left the gold and precious stones behind as if they were all worthless.

The demons that the players had brought with them made their journey faster than it should have been.

She can still remember seeing Genghis Khan beneath her as the demon held her in its arms while it flew over him and his men.

The demons let out a roar that nearly took her hearing and she was forced to watch as the creatures of the mountain tore into the men and their horses as if they were nothing.

The only reason that Genghis Khan was allowed to live, was because the man responsible wanted him to come back with as many men, weapons, and monsters as he could.

Normally she would have thought that Poh was the pinnacle of stupidity, but she had seen how he and his men drooled at the thought of being allowed to cut loose like they wanted to.

That day she understood that the creatures that she had been forced to live with lived for one thing only and that was to destroy anything and anyone.

They could have destroyed everything that she cared about but what fun would that have been, no they wanted to enjoy their slaughter and so they welcomed the day that Genghis Khan returned.

But now she knew that they had felt something or someone.

 

[blueayes]

Aincrad West
If Kirito had to describe these last few days he would have said that he wished he was in another war, That was just how bad everything that they had discovered was.

The Players could be put into two different groups, those that cared about the people around them and those that believed that all of the people around them were nothing more than N.P.C's whose lives didn't matter.

Sometimes he wished that he was like the second group, that way he wouldn't feel any sense of guilt when he was forced to kill or punish someone.

It didn't help that the people that he was supposed to protect believed that because those kids were from another kingdom or religion and so they deserved what they had gone through.

The different towns tried to stop him and his men from throwing those responsible for tormenting the kids out of Aincrad.

The west side of Aincrad was in a bad spot Rafael had lost the trust of the people yet at the same time the man had strengthened said trust because of what he had done.

Kirito could only rub his eyes because of where this side of Aincrad stood.

On one side the people believed that he and Rafael had spit on their religions and beliefs, and yet they were happy to know that their rulers would stop at nothing to keep even the lowest of them safe.

Kirito could feel his head pulsing because of the stress, The people were divided even in their own homes not because of what he and his men had done but because they didn't know what to believe.

From the very beginning, Rafael had publicly claimed that Aincrad was a kingdom, and because he allowed the different kingdoms and religions to live without almost no control everyone in Aincrad believed him.

And yet now that the chaos of the merging had finally stopped and the players were able to take control of things again, the players were putting rules that didnt exist before.

It didn't end there, from the people's point of view Rafael's words seemed to have power over most of the western lands of Aincrad and even his men in the scouts and guards obeyed the man.

From the people's point of view, Rafel was the King, it didn't matter if the man rejected the title, and it didn't matter if he didn't have a throne to sit on or a crown on his head.

Whatever Rafael said was law and everyone obeyed it.

And that was the problem, now that the chaos of the merging had ended, where did that leave them?

There were people from all over the world here and they all believed that they were a part of another kingdom or empire.

Yet if they were forced to obey Rafael instead of their emperor or king, then didn't that mean that they weren't a part of those empires or kingdoms?

Kirito struggled to keep himself from grabbing the bottle and copying Rafael who was sleeping on the floor next to him.

The stress was killing the man and Kirito was honestly afraid that he would either snap and go on a rampage or commit suicide.

The door to the meeting room opened but Kirito didn't say anything as Asuna walked up to him, She didn't say anything as she held him in her arms.

that sat together on the floor neither of them spoke as words weren't needed, these last few days had been tough on everyone.

Because they couldn't trust anyone who had run the orphanages they had been forced to send the kids to the American Guilds who agreed to take care of them.

That was another problem, everyone wanted to know what Aincrad was, or better said what it believed in because no one knew what it was, In a time where religion was something that everyone cared about and would go to war for Aincrad was an anomaly.

Rafael had once said that he was Catholic, but Kirito had once said to a person who asked him the same question that he believed in the Kami.

The same question had been asked to other players and while some would answer with a different answer, others would claim to be something that someone else had already said.

Kirito couldn't help but smile as he heard Asuna begin to snore, Both Yui and Auna were the ones keeping him sane and while Asuna had her own problems, she would do things like this to lift his spirit.

Kirito closed his eyes tomorrow a caravan from Rome would arrive and he would have to be ready because everyone expected both the Emperor and the Pope to retaliate.

 

[blueayes]

"What the hell is this?" Rafael asks Kirito as they watch the caravan arrive.

The caravan was nothing more than a hand of soldiers, three carriages, and roles upon roles of men who did not wear anything except what could only be described as underwear because it only covered their private areas.

One of the carriages opened its doors and a man unrolled a scroll. "Lord Rafael the Emperor has chosen to overlook your insult to the church as well as to him."

'Your alliance with Rome has allowed the empire to prosper like never before and as such he wishes to strengthen the relationship between your kingdom and the Empire." the an says to him even as the caravan moves passed him.

the second carriage opened its doors and a woman with long blond hair and light cream skin stepped out, She was wearing a white dress that touched the ground the moment that she stepped out of the carriage.

Yet what struck Rafael the most was the woman's bright green eyes.

'Wow." Rafael says to himself in a low voice.

Kirito and Asuna who had heard Rafael nearly broke down laughing because the man had instantly fallen for the woman's beauty.

The three of them watched as the woman puffed her chest and took a deep breath before opening her arms wide as if preparing herself to make an announcement.

"People of Aincrad I Nero have come to ease your king's mind and warm his bed!" Nero proudly announces to everyone who is looking at her and the new arrivals.

There was a long moment of silence as everyone stared at the woman and for that moment both Kirito and Asuna began to laugh quietly as they noticed that the man who had made the first announcement covered his face in frustration and embarrassment.

"Then you have the wrong place because Aincrad has no king." Rafael says to Nero as he walks up to her, yet his words did nothing to discourage the woman who kept her carefree smile.

"King -emperor- pope who cares they're all meaningless titles, as long as your someone in charge it's the same thing." Nero says to Rafael as she puts her hands behind her back and slowly swings her hips from left to right.

Rafae looks into the woman's green eyes and says true.

'I don't allow slavery in this place." he says to the woman as he looks at the slaves that she brought with her.

"Slaves these men aren't slaves, they're prisoners who were going to be crucified but I thought that it was better if they made themselves useful." Nero says to him, but Rafael doesn't answer her as she looks at the men who greedily drink the water that the guards are giving them.

'So you brought your trash." he says to Nero.

The woman continues to look at him with the same expression, it's as if she was looking for something but Rafael doesn't know what it is.

"Trash, I would never carry trash with me, and judging by the way that you look at them neither do you.' she says to him.

"I merely gave them a reason to live and they chose to follow me here." she answers Rafael before pointing at the third carriage whose doors open and a girl with long brown hair steps out.

the girl had light tan skin and bright brown eyes, but unlike Nero who was burning with confidence the girl didn't seem to have any.

"This is Anna, she is the daughter of one of the men, he killed because someone raped and killed her mother. I managed to find her and bring her with us." Nero says to him.

"Explain?" Rafael orders Nero as he looks at the girl who is running towards one of the men, who immediately kneels and hugs her.

The pair begin to cry as the guards and the other prisoners look at them.

"Isn't it obvious, I am your new wife or am I going to be one of your concubines?' Nero asks him but Rafael doesn't answer her, he just turns to look at Kirito and Asuna who look at him with the same expression that he is looking at them with.

"Come with me.' Rafael says to Nero before leading her to the mansion and to one of the rooms that isn't being used

'I have a lot of things to do and I know that you might want to get some rest.' he says to her before leaving her in the room.

Nero just stares at the door before she is sure that no one is outside and Rafael has already left.

She can feel her mind pulsing as her eyes begin to turn red, The poison that should have killed herby now is starting to take control of her gain and it's only out of pure will that she stops herself from laughing madly.

She remembers how she died, she remembers the betrail, she remembers everything and yet here she was alive long after everyone that betrayed her had died and Rome had been split in half.

the smile of a predator formed on her face as she planned her revenge, She would eneter this man's mind and heart and when he was under her control she would make him wage war on her enemy's descendants.

She would rule Rome once again or burn it to the ground and dance on its ashes.