43.2 In the World with the Darkest Powers
Note: this portion will be added to the previous chapter since too late I realized it would flow better to have separate time chunks.
Charlotte and her crew wasted no time re-assembling the Chappa-ai Ring Gate. We emplaced it high up in the throne room within the highest tower of this weird-ass Castlevania style castle (which was a separate thing to the combination/throne feast hall in the lower levels).
Then in a few hours, with a satisfying ka-whoosh, the Ring Gate to Mismede opened.
Alan stepped through first, setting up a [Portal] tag just in case.
There was no need to connect to the Alephis Gate, since Charlotte and company had come from Alephis the Duke of Ortlinde already had all the advance warning he needed to emergency mobilize the soldiery if necessary. Alephis Gate was already connected to Berge Gate in Mismede.
Lyon Blitz poked his head out of the strange watery wall.
Castle Zenovi was a dour place of cold stone and even harder men, but enlivened with lush carpets and draperies and paintings of men and women wearing garishly bright clothes with far too many tassels. Truly, Zanac Zenfield's self-proclaimed title as the King of Fashion was a well-earned miracle coming from this family with zero sense of style. It was not even the sort of gauche lack of taste like what a commoner might believe an opulent aristocracy might revel in. No, it takes *confidence* to stick to this sense of aesthetics.
Deep reds and purples contributed to a style one might consider Gothic - with an emphasis on "Goth", as in Ostro-goths, ready to move out and sack Rome at a moment's notice. Considering that the strongest land power in this continent was Fantasy Rome, this was not actually all that unbelievable.
Lyon saw us sitting nearby on a table filled with mid-afternoon tea and pastries. Zorah sat with her arms crossed and almost pouting on one end, while on the other end I sat with my fingers laced together in a Gendo pose. Only those that could be trusted - or had any interest - in high level intelligence and extended debriefing talks were allowed into the room.
Immediately that ruled out Elze and Linze, who could be trusted would be very quickly bored all to heck by all that talking. Yae would be more interested in eating the scones. For much the same reasons, Zorah's surviving retainers begged off attending. Zorah only brought them out in fit of pique because I had insisted that my party could all be trusted with this information since they had all met the King of Belfast and Mismede before, and Zorah called me bald-faced liar and insisted then of course her own people were double trustworthy.
Lydia stood behind Zorah, calm and proud as a dutiful adjutant.
No one stood behind me. Leene had a high enough rank that she would be useful here, but she sat on a chair off to my right. One could almost say it was a place of honor as a lord's right hand, but really it was just at stabbing range. Her smug catlike grin revealed that she knew it, and relished more the fact that her presence was annoying me to distraction than taking it as an insult.
My left cheek involuntarily twitched at random.
Lyon's eyes communicated 'I don't know what I was expecting, but I probably should have expected this'.
He turned back to report the all clear.
The first to come out again was Yumina. She was still wearing her princess gown with a silver tiara on her pale blonde hair. Her expression brightened on seeing my red outfit. "Sir Zah!"
Her gaze then quickly and expertly took in the rest of the room, and seeing Lydia standing behind Zorah and the blank spot behind me, without even prompting she quickly stepped away from the ring and moved over to stand at my back in her position as the most trusted adjutant.
Zorah's thick painted eyebrows went up.
Then silently, and yet with a booming presence, King Tristwin Ernes Belfast stepped onto Castle Zenovi. Quickly and with almost panic Zorah stood up to show respects, while behind her Lydia flinched in place and squared her shoulders to attention.
I placed my gloved palms on the table and with almost languorous slowness pushed off. I breathed out as if tired.
While Zorah loudly proclaimed her hails and welcome to His Highness, I met his eyes behind the blank lenses of my eye mask, smiled wryly and reported "Tristwin, we have found ourselves in a bigly intolerable situation."
Zorah curled up her lips and was about to scream at me to show respect to his majesty, but the king just chuckled and shook his head indulgently.
"If it's you saying it, then it must be tremendous," he replied as he sat down on the chair that Zorah hurriedly crab-walked to offer to him.
-.
-.
Let's skip the debriefing for sake of expediency.
Zorah reported about what happened and the state of her House, and begged forgiveness for their failure. Tristwin offered his own sympathies for the death of their patriarch and a renewal of their oath and the trust of the crown.
Then it was my turn to recount what happened at Alpas Castra.
-.
-.
King Tristwin clutched at the armrests of his chair. His wrists were shaking. "This is truly disturbing news. How can one prevail against such… unfairness?"
After that, Zorah had to ask "So he is not only immune to magic, but can devour magic? So how did YOU survive?!"
And my answer: "Because the thing had *range*. It had a minimum spherical range from where it can passively or actively drain magic, and an attack that it could throw out like a wave or a net, pulling in magic from people and magic tools. Most people get knocked out when all their magic is drained from them, but if someone had a large enough magic capacity they can stay awake long enough to get out of range.
I tapped my blank lenses. "This is where being technically blind actually helped. I could sense the disturbance in the air from the magic drain appearing in a cone. And even when it does it, my magic refills almost as fast as it was drained after the effect is done."
"That… is not how magic capacity works. That is not how magic capacity works at all," said Zorah.
I continued: "The problem is not the Drainbracer, it's the Blockbracer. Without the anti-kinetic passive shield effect, you could just fill the air with enough heavy ballista bolts and call it a day."
Zorah hissed "Do not ignore meee…!!!"
Leene said as if Zorah had never said anything "From such artifacts are heroes named and nations founded. A Holy Sword brought the Rammish Theocracy into being, and a Sword of the Undying created the Lestia Knight Kingdom. It is a pity then, that a Shield Hero could end up the foundation of a new and terrible dynasty."
"But those two together… he is invincible," King Tristwin hummed and rubbed at his bearded chin. "As you say, Matriarch Leene. Though perhaps we are fortunate that another hero exists in such a time."
I raised my hand. "Imma stop you right there. Beating his ass into a draw probably counts as a loss for that egotistical meathead, and it is inevitable that he would try to take his revenge against all of Belfast. You don't have to worry about me leaving you in the lurch - I have my own revenge to eke on that asshole…
"But he is *actually* Regulus' problem."
King Tristwin nodded. "And he seeks to rebel against Regulus, which would normally not be an immediate concern except that he has revealed his desire to slaughter through Belfast and offer it as a blood sacrifice for the manpower… demonpower… to eat and digest the Empire."
The king hummed. "Could this possibly be linked to the treason poison plot by Count Balzac? Had Regules actually been ROUSED all this time to conquest? I find myself suspicious why General Bazoar was so garrulous revealing his plans to you. Might he be laying a false image of his dissatisfaction against the Emperor?"
"But we have Count Alpas as a witness to his perfidy!" Zorah hissed.
I shrugged. "A man that is already rebelling and is willing to feed people's souls to demons isn't going to be stopped by the legality of things. If he's already ready to fight the Legions, the order to be arrested means he's just going to kick it off early. And for all his personal power… nothing about it really painted him as very smart."
"He is but one man. Not even a mage. There is only so much that can be done with the swing of a sword," said the king. Rulership was not something that could be done merely on the point of a sword. If it was just that simple he would have started executing his cretins long before they gave him a good enough excuse.
He continued: "The Demon Lord's army is the greater threat… and if he moves against Belfast then first he must have enough souls to sacrifice. But you said he wanted to fight Belfast in the first place as an easier target to fuel his usurpation. What allies could he have to support his seizure of power? Otherwise one might as well create a desert and call it peace."
I nodded. "Therefore we are incentivized to help Regulus not devolve into a bloody civil war."
King Tristwin gave out a hollow laugh and palmed his face. "What strange fellows does politics make. Just yesterday we were preparing to go to war against Regulus, now we must save them from themselves."
Then with a sharp glare "But still we have not fully rooted out traitors in our midst. It is terribly convenient that Belfast would have been so weakened by my death and the war with Mismede right at the moment General Bazoar was looking for many souls to offer as a summoning sacrifice to his Demon Lord. There are powers in Regulus that seek to harm us, this General Bazoar is but the most obvious of them."
I shrugged. "I know. While I would be happy to face him again, I think just waiting for him to make a move is a mistake. Tristwin, I *can't afford* to have this drag on. I have somewhere else to be." I briefly nodded towards Leene. "I have a *major* favor to repay, and it's not on this continent."
"As one might expect from a faithless mercenary…" Zorah growled, and with a tone of… disappointment?
The king relaxed on his chair and nodded. "I see. This is your 'intolerable situation', then?"
We stared at each other in silence for a while. Unfortunately in a battle of wills between a monarch and a guy wearing blank white eyepieces, there could only ever be one winner. He looked away and sighed. "As you are not one of my vassals, I cannot speak to you about loyalty - but I have no doubt about your good will. Then your mission remains the same. Wherever you might go - take Yumina with you.
"That even should the worst happen, the royal succession of Belfast remains intact. I want my daughter to be safe, avenging us and recovering the throne is not a priority."
"Father!" Yumina cried out.
Zorah made some sort of demented gargling sound like she had been retroactively slapped in the face and humiliated.
"Tristwin. You did send tools inscribed with tracking magic with your trader-spies into the capital of Regulus, right? Even when you recall them due to an unstable political climate, they should have discreetly left those ground positioning stones behind, right?"
"Of course."
"Then I request permission to pre-emptively invade Regulus and kidnap their Emperor."
Zorah made some sort of whistling noise like an over-boiling kettle and then slammed her face down into the table. Wham.
Splinters flew.
-.
-.
/ The lowest circle of hell, given to those who have acted in treachery
/ Where the suffering comes not from ever-burning flame
/ But the cold; dark and deep, and utterly silent
/ Utterly alone even amongst the multitude
/ Of wretched souls wrapped in ignominy
/ There is a greater noise in absolute silence
/ There is a greater chaos in being utterly blind
/ For when lacking all outside stimulation, the mind begins to devour itself
/ And manufactures for itself torments.
/ Cold as the grave, death without release
/ But as long as I can hear your voice -
/ This shall be heaven to me.
-.
-.
This is intolerable.
-
Zorah squinted and mentioned evenly "Even at best speed trading fresh horses at even stop you should have taken at at least three days."
She shrugged. "Well it turns out if you throw Alan ahead of you far enough…"
Alan collapsed face-first onto the stone tile floor, one hand remaining up, flipping the bird to life and the universe in general.
Throw him far enough, he could set up a series of portals with the horses and carriages only limited by waiting for how long it would take him to land. The way for him to survive was to make sure that he's going to fall INTO a portal and so come out the previous portal at an angle that turns a deadly drop into a fall of a couple of feet.
"Holy shite, man. Why are you still alive? Your wife had better be the best lady, enduring this level of abuse from your sister-in-law is way out there!" I said to him.
"I have nine children and my wife is independently wealthy enough to support even more," he replied dully while still kissing the floor.
"Ah."
"Six of them are twins. And she's pregnant again. Triplets this time"
"HOW IS YOUR DUMBASS SELF STILL ALIVE?!" I screeched out. "Actually, on that note- this has to be intentional because I know contraception potions exist. Are you compensating for your luck as a man in other ways?!"
Alan flopped around. "It is a mystery."
"Ah! The fecundity of humans and their suffering, most of it self-inflicted, never ceases to amuse me!"
"Yeek!" Charlotte abruptly lost her poise and cowered in place.
I reached out and bopped the fairy on the top of her head. "Sit your bony ass down, Leene. You know Charlotte is under my protection."
Leene pouted. "As you wish."
"You… you hit Master." Charlotte's eyes glittered. "No one hits Master…"
I grimaced. "You will find that is actually a large part of the problem…"
Charlotte hiked her skirt up and set out into a dead run, stepping over her brother-in-law, before jumping onto the dining table. ("My spine!", Alan wailed.) Clack! Clack! Clack! - went Charlotte's shoes as she crossed the length then she drop-tackled me right off the table.
"Ah, my knight! I dedicate my bones, my body, and my life to do as you please!" said Charlotte bawling in gratefulness, as she tried to kill me by suffocating me between her breasts.
"MY SPINE!" I wailed.
"... This man is scum," said Lydia.
"Total scum," agreed Elze.
"How noisy. What improper guests you are," Zorah sighed. "Once again this castle is full of noise and chaos...!"
She scoffed - even as she tried to hide a fond smile behind her ostrich-feather fan.
-
-.
Zorah squinted and mentioned evenly "Even at best speed trading fresh horses at even stop you should have taken at at least three days."
She shrugged. "Well it turns out if you throw Alan ahead of you far enough…"
Alan collapsed face-first onto the stone tile floor, one hand remaining up, flipping the bird to life and the universe in general.
Throw him far enough, he could set up a series of portals with the horses and carriages only limited by waiting for how long it would take him to land. The way for him to survive was to make sure that he's going to fall INTO a portal and so come out the previous portal at an angle that turns a deadly drop into a fall of a couple of feet.
"Holy shite, man. Why are you still alive? Your wife had better be the best lady, enduring this level of abuse from your sister-in-law is way out there!" I said to him.
"I have nine children and my wife is independently wealthy enough to support even more," he replied dully while still kissing the floor.
"Ah."
"Six of them are twins. And she's pregnant again. Triplets this time"
"HOW IS YOUR DUMBASS SELF STILL ALIVE?!" I screeched out. "Actually, on that note- this has to be intentional because I know contraception potions exist. Are you compensating for your luck as a man in other ways?!"
Alan flopped around. "It is a mystery."
"Ah! The fecundity of humans and their suffering, most of it self-inflicted, never ceases to amuse me!"
"Yeek!" Charlotte abruptly lost her poise and cowered in place.
I reached out and bopped the fairy on the top of her head. "Sit your bony ass down, Leene. You know Charlotte is under my protection."
Leene pouted. "As you wish."
"You… you hit Master." Charlotte's eyes glittered. "No one hits Master…"
I grimaced. "You will find that is actually a large part of the problem…"
Charlotte hiked her skirt up and set out into a dead run, stepping over her brother-in-law, before jumping onto the dining table. ("My spine!", Alan wailed.) Clack! Clack! Clack! - went Charlotte's shoes as she crossed the length then she drop-tackled me right off the table.
"Ah, my knight! I dedicate my bones, my body, and my life to do as you please!" said Charlotte bawling in gratefulness, as she tried to kill me by suffocating me between her breasts.
"MY SPINE!" I wailed.
"... This man is scum," said Lydia.
"Total scum," agreed Elze.
"How noisy. What improper guests you are," Zorah sighed. "Once again this castle is full of noise and chaos...!"
She scoffed - even as she tried to hide a fond smile behind her ostrich-feather fan.
-
-.
Charlotte and her crew wasted no time re-assembling the Chappa-ai Ring Gate. We emplaced it high up in the throne room within the highest tower of this weird-ass Castlevania style castle (which was a separate thing to the combination/throne feast hall in the lower levels).
Then in a few hours, with a satisfying ka-whoosh, the Ring Gate to Mismede opened.
Alan stepped through first, setting up a [Portal] tag just in case.
There was no need to connect to the Alephis Gate, since Charlotte and company had come from Alephis the Duke of Ortlinde already had all the advance warning he needed to emergency mobilize the soldiery if necessary. Alephis Gate was already connected to Berge Gate in Mismede.
Lyon Blitz poked his head out of the strange watery wall.
Castle Zenovi was a dour place of cold stone and even harder men, but enlivened with lush carpets and draperies and paintings of men and women wearing garishly bright clothes with far too many tassels. Truly, Zanac Zenfield's self-proclaimed title as the King of Fashion was a well-earned miracle coming from this family with zero sense of style. It was not even the sort of gauche lack of taste like what a commoner might believe an opulent aristocracy might revel in. No, it takes *confidence* to stick to this sense of aesthetics.
Deep reds and purples contributed to a style one might consider Gothic - with an emphasis on "Goth", as in Ostro-goths, ready to move out and sack Rome at a moment's notice. Considering that the strongest land power in this continent was Fantasy Rome, this was not actually all that unbelievable.
Lyon saw us sitting nearby on a table filled with mid-afternoon tea and pastries. Zorah sat with her arms crossed and almost pouting on one end, while on the other end I sat with my fingers laced together in a Gendo pose. Only those that could be trusted - or had any interest - in high level intelligence and extended debriefing talks were allowed into the room.
Immediately that ruled out Elze and Linze, who could be trusted would be very quickly bored all to heck by all that talking. Yae would be more interested in eating the scones. For much the same reasons, Zorah's surviving retainers begged off attending. Zorah only brought them out in fit of pique because I had insisted that my party could all be trusted with this information since they had all met the King of Belfast and Mismede before, and Zorah called me bald-faced liar and insisted then of course her own people were double trustworthy.
Lydia stood behind Zorah, calm and proud as a dutiful adjutant.
No one stood behind me. Leene had a high enough rank that she would be useful here, but she sat on a chair off to my right. One could almost say it was a place of honor as a lord's right hand, but really it was just at stabbing range. Her smug catlike grin revealed that she knew it, and relished more the fact that her presence was annoying me to distraction than taking it as an insult.
My left cheek involuntarily twitched at random.
Lyon's eyes communicated 'I don't know what I was expecting, but I probably should have expected this'.
He turned back to report the all clear.
The first to come out again was Yumina. She was still wearing her princess gown with a silver tiara on her pale blonde hair. Her expression brightened on seeing my red outfit. "Sir Zah!"
Her gaze then quickly and expertly took in the rest of the room, and seeing Lydia standing behind Zorah and the blank spot behind me, without even prompting she quickly stepped away from the ring and moved over to stand at my back in her position as the most trusted adjutant.
Zorah's thick painted eyebrows went up.
Then silently, and yet with a booming presence, King Tristwin Ernes Belfast stepped onto Castle Zenovi. Quickly and with almost panic Zorah stood up to show respects, while behind her Lydia flinched in place and squared her shoulders to attention.
I placed my gloved palms on the table and with almost languorous slowness pushed off. I breathed out as if tired.
While Zorah loudly proclaimed her hails and welcome to His Highness, I met his eyes behind the blank lenses of my eye mask, smiled wryly and reported "Tristwin, we have found ourselves in a bigly intolerable situation."
Zorah curled up her lips and was about to scream at me to show respect to his majesty, but the king just chuckled and shook his head indulgently.
"If it's you saying it, then it must be tremendous," he replied as he sat down on the chair that Zorah hurriedly crab-walked to offer to him.
-.
-.
Let's skip the debriefing for sake of expediency.
Zorah reported about what happened and the state of her House, and begged forgiveness for their failure. Tristwin offered his own sympathies for the death of their patriarch and a renewal of their oath and the trust of the crown.
Then it was my turn to recount what happened at Alpas Castra.
-.
-.
King Tristwin clutched at the armrests of his chair. His wrists were shaking. "This is truly disturbing news. How can one prevail against such… unfairness?"
After that, Zorah had to ask "So he is not only immune to magic, but can devour magic? So how did YOU survive?!"
And my answer: "Because the thing had *range*. It had a minimum spherical range from where it can passively or actively drain magic, and an attack that it could throw out like a wave or a net, pulling in magic from people and magic tools. Most people get knocked out when all their magic is drained from them, but if someone had a large enough magic capacity they can stay awake long enough to get out of range.
I tapped my blank lenses. "This is where being technically blind actually helped. I could sense the disturbance in the air from the magic drain appearing in a cone. And even when it does it, my magic refills almost as fast as it was drained after the effect is done."
"That… is not how magic capacity works. That is not how magic capacity works at all," said Zorah.
I continued: "The problem is not the Drainbracer, it's the Blockbracer. Without the anti-kinetic passive shield effect, you could just fill the air with enough heavy ballista bolts and call it a day."
Zorah hissed "Do not ignore meee…!!!"
Leene said as if Zorah had never said anything "From such artifacts are heroes named and nations founded. A Holy Sword brought the Rammish Theocracy into being, and a Sword of the Undying created the Lestia Knight Kingdom. It is a pity then, that a Shield Hero could end up the foundation of a new and terrible dynasty."
"But those two together… he is invincible," King Tristwin hummed and rubbed at his bearded chin. "As you say, Matriarch Leene. Though perhaps we are fortunate that another hero exists in such a time."
I raised my hand. "Imma stop you right there. Beating his ass into a draw probably counts as a loss for that egotistical meathead, and it is inevitable that he would try to take his revenge against all of Belfast. You don't have to worry about me leaving you in the lurch - I have my own revenge to eke on that asshole…
"But he is *actually* Regulus' problem."
King Tristwin nodded. "And he seeks to rebel against Regulus, which would normally not be an immediate concern except that he has revealed his desire to slaughter through Belfast and offer it as a blood sacrifice for the manpower… demonpower… to eat and digest the Empire."
The king hummed. "Could this possibly be linked to the treason poison plot by Count Balzac? Had Regules actually been ROUSED all this time to conquest? I find myself suspicious why General Bazoar was so garrulous revealing his plans to you. Might he be laying a false image of his dissatisfaction against the Emperor?"
"But we have Count Alpas as a witness to his perfidy!" Zorah hissed.
I shrugged. "A man that is already rebelling and is willing to feed people's souls to demons isn't going to be stopped by the legality of things. If he's already ready to fight the Legions, the order to be arrested means he's just going to kick it off early. And for all his personal power… nothing about it really painted him as very smart."
"He is but one man. Not even a mage. There is only so much that can be done with the swing of a sword," said the king. Rulership was not something that could be done merely on the point of a sword. If it was just that simple he would have started executing his cretins long before they gave him a good enough excuse.
He continued: "The Demon Lord's army is the greater threat… and if he moves against Belfast then first he must have enough souls to sacrifice. But you said he wanted to fight Belfast in the first place as an easier target to fuel his usurpation. What allies could he have to support his seizure of power? Otherwise one might as well create a desert and call it peace."
I nodded. "Therefore we are incentivized to help Regulus not devolve into a bloody civil war."
King Tristwin gave out a hollow laugh and palmed his face. "What strange fellows does politics make. Just yesterday we were preparing to go to war against Regulus, now we must save them from themselves."
Then with a sharp glare "But still we have not fully rooted out traitors in our midst. It is terribly convenient that Belfast would have been so weakened by my death and the war with Mismede right at the moment General Bazoar was looking for many souls to offer as a summoning sacrifice to his Demon Lord. There are powers in Regulus that seek to harm us, this General Bazoar is but the most obvious of them."
I shrugged. "I know. While I would be happy to face him again, I think just waiting for him to make a move is a mistake. Tristwin, I *can't afford* to have this drag on. I have somewhere else to be." I briefly nodded towards Leene. "I have a *major* favor to repay, and it's not on this continent."
"As one might expect from a faithless mercenary…" Zorah growled, and with a tone of… disappointment?
The king relaxed on his chair and nodded. "I see. This is your 'intolerable situation', then?"
We stared at each other in silence for a while. Unfortunately in a battle of wills between a monarch and a guy wearing blank white eyepieces, there could only ever be one winner. He looked away and sighed. "As you are not one of my vassals, I cannot speak to you about loyalty - but I have no doubt about your good will. Then your mission remains the same. Wherever you might go - take Yumina with you.
"That even should the worst happen, the royal succession of Belfast remains intact. I want my daughter to be safe, avenging us and recovering the throne is not a priority."
"Father!" Yumina cried out.
Zorah made some sort of demented gargling sound like she had been retroactively slapped in the face and humiliated.
"Tristwin. You did send tools inscribed with tracking magic with your trader-spies into the capital of Regulus, right? Even when you recall them due to an unstable political climate, they should have discreetly left those ground positioning stones behind, right?"
"Of course."
"Then I request permission to pre-emptively invade Regulus and kidnap their Emperor."
Zorah made some sort of whistling noise like an over-boiling kettle and then slammed her face down into the table. Wham.
Splinters flew.
-.
-.
/ The lowest circle of hell, given to those who have acted in treachery
/ Where the suffering comes not from ever-burning flame
/ But the cold; dark and deep, and utterly silent
/ Utterly alone even amongst the multitude
/ Of wretched souls wrapped in ignominy
/ There is a greater noise in absolute silence
/ There is a greater chaos in being utterly blind
/ For when lacking all outside stimulation, the mind begins to devour itself
/ And manufactures for itself torments.
/ Cold as the grave, death without release
/ But as long as I can hear your voice -
/ This shall be heaven to me.
-.
-.
This is intolerable.
