“To be, or not to be?”
“Your world’s poetry is garbage, just absolute drivel.”
“At least our poetry makes fucking sense Lil’!”
“What is wrong with Grilinta’s first and third parable?!”
“Well, for starters, FIRE ISN’T COLD!”
“It is to their species you ignorant child!”
----------------
Regardless of whatever he had expected, for them to immediately launch a full scale attack on the Corp towers or to begin rallying people behind him, his hopes were quickly crushed.
“However!”
You could give a priest blue balls woman!
“While I would simply adore watching you flail angrily at these people until they inevitably died, we have far more pressing issues to attend to first.”
He couldn’t tell if he was more disappointed at the fact they weren’t going to be ending the Corp bullshit or because there was apparently even more work to complete first.
One way or the other, we will put an end to their fuckery, even if it takes a few years it’s better than if it never ended at all.
“You are too weak as you are now to be of any use to our Lady, and far too untrained to be of any use to anyone else. Even if you were to force yourself upon this world like a tyrant, at best you’d simply rule from strength alone, and the world would inevitably stagnate.”
Wait, ‘Rule’? When the fuck did I sign up for world domination?!
The prospect of actually ruling the world hadn’t even really occurred to him. Sure he knew he was going to be its Guardian but he figured that would be more of a ‘behind the scenes’ type of deal, not actually ruling over it.
I barely passed my economics classes, how the hell do they figure I am going to rule an entire planet?
Confusing bred doubt, and doubt was unacceptable, even to him. Especially him now that he was being thrust into such an important position.
“How am I supposed to rule this world? I can fight, I know I can fight, but I… I don’t know how to ‘rule’ anything. Hell, I can barely keep my own home clean!”
He’d tried, and failed, to keep the building doubt from his voice. Thankfully the question didn’t seem insulting to the woman, possibly one she was already expecting or simply because she understood what it was like being dragged into something she was unprepared for. Judging from the fact she had been in Vira’s employ longer than him, and possibly held a much higher position than he could understand, he didn't doubt she had gone through her own share of trouble.
“If anyone expected you to take this world on your own, our Lady would not have sent me, would she?”
Good point. Though, there is still the issue of literally taking over the world. I really don’t want to kill someone, hell killing someone who hasn’t even done anything to deserve it is just plain evil.
If he had to wage a war, he really didn’t want to kill people, but hurting innocent people? That was simply out of the question. And with the amount of soldiers in the army who joined to protect people, the people that would fight back out of duty or simply because some dickhead with an ego was going for world domination, any of the reasons that could bring harm to people just trying to feed their families and live their lives… It was unacceptable.
“I won’t hurt people who don’t deserve it, regardless of what our… ‘Lady’ wants. I can handle hurting or-” His voice froze for a moment, having difficulty speaking the words coming next. “-Killing someone, if I think they deserve it, or they are putting even more people in danger. But I won’t become a butcher of my own people for someone else, regardless of how important they are, regardless if I think they are doing the right thing.”
This might be the deal breaker for her, if I am not willing to protect the world because I wont kill a bunch of people they might just replace me, or take the world themselves. She can certainly do it, she’s far stronger than me.
He waited for half a moment, just long enough to wonder if this might be where he gets the boot, figuratively, or literally.
Until the woman was in front of him again holding both sides of his face, hands on his cheeks, looking directly into his eyes.
“If she wanted a monster, she wouldn’t have sent me, or you, little Gaiko.”
She’s close.
The reassurance didn't really help, for now, but the fact she was practically holding him was bringing his mind, and body, to places that he knew were far more dangerous than any Altered on the planet.
Luckily for him she backed away from him after a few short moments. He didn’t know what a Gaiko was, nor did he really care. It was hard to think when she got that close to him, partly because of fear and partly because… well she was very attractive. She was attractive enough to turn heads, and strong enough to turn them even further if she wanted to. On one hand, he felt enthusiastic when she was close to him, on the other he knew if he did something she found displeasing he’d most likely be shitting out his own teeth for the foreseeable future.
Takes ‘flirting with death’ to a whole new level, or at the very least ‘flirting with a broken jaw’. Either way I am not that masochistic to risk it.
Using his will, and rather efficient control over his new body’s responses, he pushed down all the worthless thoughts and feelings that had flooded his body. Whether he liked it or not, whether he’d regret it in the future, he had work to do, and this was work he couldn’t just take a day off on.
He knew now, if he hadn’t been able to guess before, that the woman wouldn’t be content with ‘working in the shadows’, she wanted him to rule the planet, not just protect it. She also seemed content with him taking it humanely, which was slightly more surprising. Whether or not he even declared himself overlord was still up in the air, as he really didn’t want to, nor did he think he would be the best for the job. He had enough problems doing his own taxes, which were mostly automated these days, and the amount of skill and knowledge it would take to take over an entire world was far beyond what he was capable of.
Maybe they’ll send some accountants? Or maybe a few thousand people actually equipped for running a planet… Not like it can get much worse for us at this point.
As he was thinking he watched as the woman began observing the city around her once again, wearing the small smile she had when something was interesting to her.
If I was strong enough, or had enough cash and influence, I guess I could always pay people to do most of the annoying stuff for me. It would give me more time to work on other things… like learning some of that magic stuff she uses.
A tick appeared in the back of his mind, an irritation he’d suppressed out of an uneasy fear he’d had of her in the beginning.
I don’t even know her name. I can’t work with someone I don’t even know the name of, right?
His general wariness of the woman hadn’t faded, but he knew he couldn’t keep referring to her as ‘her’, or ‘the crazy woman who could break him in half with a thought’ forever.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“If you don’t mind me asking, what is your name?”
A second passed, where she cocked her head towards him confused, before sighing lightly and palming her face.
“The Lady really didn’t tell you anything before she sent me here, did she? I figured she would have at least given you the basics.”
I was given the basics, enemies at the gate, the world needs a protector, I am the runner up for the job. How much more do you need for it to be considered the ‘basics’?
Turning towards him she threw her arms out to her sides, hands open and fingers splayed out, speaking in a tone emperors would use to speak to their subjects, and rather poorly at that. “I am the Overseer of Old Revenant, The First Chosen! The last seer of Forgotten Virasuta! When I move, armies fall, when I speak, Gods listen! I am the first, and last of The Revenants, and the first of the New Order! I am Lilliha, The Overseer!”
She doesn’t do speeches all that often, or she doesn’t bother with them. She sounds like a high-school theatre kid doing her first monologue.
Surprised by the sudden and poorly done monologue, and doing his best to keep track of the massive dump of titles she’d just thrown at him, he’d had little enough time to register it all before she dropped the act.
“You don’t even recognize those names, let alone the titles, most people of our stature would be kneeling by now, and you are just standing there like an idiot.”
Hurtful.
“I’m sorry, it’s just… I don’t even know what the hell a ‘Chosen’ really is, or what ‘revenant’ means, or any of that.” It took most of his strength not to comment on the over the top monologue, or at the very least the poor acting she’d done while doing it.
“I just wanted your name so I knew what to refer to you as.” Clearing his throat of the small rock that had seemingly nested in it he continued, “Do you prefer ‘Overseer’ or ‘Lilliha?”
Lilliha was looking at him now, her lip twitching in either annoyance or amusement while she watched him. Pinching the bridge of her nose she laughed before waving her hands uncaringly.
“What would be the point of making you address me by a title you don’t understand? I can't expect a frog to understand the world outside its well. Simply refer to me as ‘Lilliha’ for now.”
At least now I have a name for her.
Realizing he’d lost the plot for a moment, he thought back to his rather rude awakening.
Don’t we still have ‘work to do’?
“Earlier, when you woke me up, you mentioned ‘work’ we had to do. Preparing for… world domination’ is going to take a lot of that work you mentioned. What was your first plan? Rob a bank, steal secret documents from a corp, assassinate someone?” While he wasn’t against rubbing the noses of powerful people in their own garbage, he was telling the truth about the whole ‘becoming a butcher’ bit. Taking out crucial members of the military, city defense force, or other powerful or influential members of the elite would put a large amount of pressure on everyone involved, but he wasn’t going to go on a rampage kick and kill a bunch of people for no reason.
Worse comes to worst, I somehow convince her to try something else if she recommends something utterly disgusting. Best case scenario she just wants to start spreading propaganda leaflets… wait if they are our leaflets do I still call them propaganda?
His plans were one thing however, while the reality was another, because Lilliha had something far more insidious than assassinations, or even genocide in mind for him.
Looking directly in his eyes with the kindest smile he’d seen on her face since she’d arrived she stated, with no room for argument exactly what they would be doing for the next several months.
“Studying of course!”
Fuck.
----------------------
Two months later, Mark was even more miserable than he’d been when Lilliha had told him the ‘plan’, which felt more like a school course than anything else.
He hadn’t really expected for her to be telling the truth when she’d said he’d have to spend a few months going over some old books she’d brought with her. He didn’t believe her when she said he wasn’t even a tenth of the way done by the time his first week was over, and he certainly didn’t believe her when she said that everything he’d done over the last two months was elementary work for children.
Yet, here he was. A prisoner in his own apartment going over dozens and dozens of dusty old books that looked like they’d been found inside someone's attic, instead of being magical tomes meant to train children on how magic worked.
The only upside to the situation was that he’d learned more about magic in the last two months than most people on the planet, not like that was saying much according to Lilliha. However no matter how much he learned, it wasn’t really translating into ‘doing’. Everytime he asked to be taught how to perform magic, or how to start doing any of the training exercises the books spoke of he was rebuffed.
“You’re not ready.” “That is far too advanced for you right now.” “If you don’t stop asking, I will remove your tongue.”
Rejection after rejection, and all he had to show for the last two months of effort was an apartment full of books and an annoyed Lilliha. If he wasn’t so sure he’d fail, he would have made a runner for it to get out of the place for a few days. But anytime he tried to leave without permission he found himself back in the apartment, usually with a sore limb or cracked rib as punishment.
Another week of this and I swear to Vira I’ll kill this woman.
Pouring over another one of the books he’d been tasked with reading he did his best to learn whatever was inside of it. For most of the books they covered the basics, mana, its usages, theories on its creation, typical middle schooler stuff. So far from everything he’d read the books covered mana and magic like a middle school class would cover science or history. ‘This is what we know, this is what we don’t know, this is what we theorize, end quote’. He’d learned the basics in practically every field, including one that had immediately taken his attention away from the dozens of other books he was still learning from.
Plague Magic.
It seemed that Ambrosia wasn’t the first magic plague, nor was it anywhere near as dangerous as magical diseases or plagues could get. The few short examples and explanations within the book had painted a bleak picture of what could have transpired when Ambrosia had been released into the wild, and as horrifying as it was it also filled him with a new feeling of hope.
Judging from the size and scale of some of the ‘magi-plagues’ in the book, something like Ambrosia would probably be considered a tier one, or tier two spell at most. The book itself measured ‘tiers’ up to nine, with tier ten having been impossible to use save for a ‘Lord’ or someone called the ‘Asura’. The book didn’t paint either in a good light, using terms like ‘slave masters’, ‘brutes’ and ‘fiends’ to refer to the Lords, while the only real explanation of the ‘Asura’ was simply; “He Who Reaps’. Either the two of them were other Gods, or they were demons of some kind, because the book didn’t explain much about either of them beyond insulting their appearances with vague words about ugliness or ‘uncouthness’, whatever that meant.
Ambrosia was mostly considered a tier one or two plague spell because its rate of death and severity, not rate of infection, was absurdly low. Many of the plagues written would turn the hosts into monsters, undead, or something that the auto-translator he’d been gifted kept reporting as ‘Demonhand’, which he didn’t understand the meaning of, before the infected would spread like an old-timey zombie apocalypse. Plague hits city, city’s population is turned into monsters, monsters spread across the planet.
Like a fucked up World War Rage… Virasuta damn, this shit is brutal.
Compare that to another spell, one that had a high infectivity but ‘low death rate’ such as Ambrosia, taking years with their current understanding of magic to kill the hosts, meant that it was ranked rather low on the list. However the fact that he didn’t know for sure, wasn’t an expert and was only really ranking it because everything else on the ‘known magi-plague’ list was far more terrifying, meant that he’d have to ask Lilliha what she would rank Ambrosia as.
I still can't understand how a one hundred percent death rate is still considered a low tier plague, simply because it takes a long time to kill. Is cancer considered a low tier issue as well then? I guess when stopping a plague outbreak relies entirely on finding the appropriate mage it's not as big a deal, but still... its practically a guaranteed death. I wonder if the tier changes based on other factors, such as the complexity of the spell or how difficult it is to cure. What if a seemingly tier one spell required a tier five spell to cure, would it still be considered tier one?
On second thought, maybe I should try to find more books about the subject before I spent a week just questioning these things.
Which brought him back to the thing that had begun to sprout some hope for a far earlier recovery for his mother than he’d ever hoped.
Because cures for these plagues were apparently common enough magic to be noted within the book itself, many of them being general skills such as ‘Micha’ or ‘Cleanse’, a tier one cleansing skill, the book was filled top to bottom with different plagues, how they worked, and what skill worked against them, as well as a small biography of the mage who had created it.
Every damn spell has a biography, it’s rather egotistical that instead of a reference or just their name they require half a page as an explanation, hell some of the biographies are longer than the pages for the plagues themselves. What fuckin’ egotistical pricks demand they have their entire life story in an encyclopedia of plagues and cures, let alone so many of them. I’d say it was more of an ‘honor’ type of deal, but a lot of these people read like right pricks.
If plagues that were apparently far more potent than Ambrosia were curable, and there were practically thousands of different tier four plagues, let alone tier ones or twos, then what was the chance that Lilliha knew some way, or someone, capable of curing his mother?
While I didn’t want to ask her for help right away in case it wasn’t possible, if there are these many recorded plagues what are the chances she cant cure Ambrosia sickness on her own, or know someone willing to help? Why waste my savings for the chance the company will cure her, instead of just asking Lilliha?
He had pushed off asking her due to his, in his mind, warranted cautiousness when interacting with her. However, if these plagues weren’t as rare as he thought, and she could cure his mother with ease, was getting his ass beat for annoying her worth the risk of losing his mother because he didn’t ask?
I’d take a thousand beatings if it meant she’d cure her, besides I heal quickly, right?
Rising from his spot on the couch he left and walked to the bedroom door. Shortly after they’d returned they, or rather he had finished cleaning the bedroom of the stink that had still lingered inside. Of course he was more than happy to go out and buy a new bed, bring it home, and set it up.
Only for Lilliha to claim the room as her own within seconds of him having left it.
He didn’t know if he should have taken a piss on the doorframe to mark his territory but when he’d brought up the fact she had stolen his bedroom she’d scoffed at him before asking “If you claim the bedroom where shall I sleep? The floor?” and closing the door on his face.
Of course she didn’t care that he’d just spent nearly five hundred dollars on the bed, a no small chunk of change, before essentially telling him to pound sand. After that he’d done his best not to buy anything she could steal or break… like his television that she’d broken.
Apparently magic didn’t care about the state of the electronics she’d fried when she’d disassembled it.
Nor did magic care about rent, but hey who fucking cares when you have books to read? At least scrounge up some mana crystals or something to sell to the city for some quick cash, sparing me from having to delve into my fucking stash. Or at the very least stop assaulting me any time I ‘dare raise my voice’ against her. I swear she grows less attractive by the damn day.
Figuring it’d be better to get his interaction of the day with her done as soon as possible before he spoke out of turn, again, he knocked on the door twice. He’d barely blinked before it was open, and Lilliha stood there book in hand, barely paying him any attention.
He’d grown used to her mood swings, archaic rules and punishments, and the general lack of respect a long time ago, but it still irked him when she wouldn’t even put down her books to speak to him. “I got a question about plague magic, and it’s not a ‘you aren’t prepared question’ either.”
She didn’t even bother looking up from her book, waiting for him to ask.
“Do you know anyone capable of curing plague magic, or have something that can do it for you?”
Seemingly bored and already tired of dealing with him, she flicked to the next page and halfheartedly said something that left him breathless in shock.
“I am capable of cleansing practically all magi-plagues below the fifth tier, so I would assume I can cure whatever disease you caught in this dump.”
I could have just asked. This entire time I could have just asked.