After several days, in the empire’s capital.

A tall middle aged man was entering a throne room. Although he was nearing 50 years of age he was still well built. He kept himself in shape. He couldn’t bear the thought that he would look worse than the soldiers he was in charge of just because of his older age.

When the man entered, he walked to the throne under the gaze of many empire’s nobles who were seizing him with cold looks. He knew what they were thinking. Another dirty warrior daring to talk with the emperor. However, they would never dare to voice their thoughts as he, despite his brute looks, was the minister of defense and lord of the fortress at the borders. His influence was immense. He controlled the whole army stationed at the borders. A single noble, born into his status, could never compete with him.

“Your Highness.” The man kneeled on the cold marble floor, executing the standard Fang empire etiquette.

“General Dalmar.” The person, sitting on the throne said slowly. The emperor then continued. “What brings you here?”

“Your Highness, the matter on the borders-”

“I know what happened at the borders Dalmar, you know I hate wasting time. The are only 3 questions remaining: Who did it? What was his purpose? And… Do we go to war?” The emperor said in the same slow manner.

“I-I’m afraid we don’t know. The 2 guards who were recognized as the culprits had never done anything suspicious… They also served the empire for several years.”

The emperor squinted his eyes and looked at the general. “So you are saying that someone used those 2 men for an assassination?”

“Yes. It’s the most likely scenario.” The general Dalmar quietly responded.

The emperor then laughed, completely contradicting his previous behavior. “Good! It doesn’t matter what that person wants. We should even thank him! He gave us the perfect excuse to finally go to war. With this we can finally set the plans in motion.”

The general was a bit taken aback. He didn’t expect the emperor to react so wildly. It was now obvious that he wanted the war.

“Everyone, hear my words! In 10 days we will invade the Kingdom of Alura! Have the army prepared at the borders!”

The crowd was shocked by the emperor’s behavior as well. The emperor was now the most energetic he had been in a while. The announcement of war obviously rekindled the old spirit of a conquerer he once had.

“Yes, Your Highness!” all of the nobles, authorities and the general said in unified voice. The order of the emperor was absolute. What he said, was the law. The nobles might not be the nicest people in the world with kind intentions, however even they had to obediently listen to the emperor, no matter how crazy his order was.

All of the present officials then left the throne room, leaving the emperor alone, sitting on the throne with only his bodyguards.

The emperor had a wide grin on his face, clearly still excited about the whole matter.

“This boring world will finally see its windmills set in motion once more.”

…

During this time, Aleir was in hiding back in the mountains. He knew that it would take time for the empire to react. Although he wasn’t completely sure that the plan would work, he was around 90% confident it would. The empire was looking for an excuse to start the war and destroy the Kingdom of Alura. He gave them one.

“How can I improve my dark energy now? Is it really only devouring life force or magical energy? Or is it something else?”

As he was in the mountains, Aleir was pondering. He didn’t really know what the dark energy actually was. What he knew was that it was stronger than magical energy of an average mage. It was far more flexible and stronger. He could even use it to create minions to do his bidding. However, that was limited.

First, he planned to create thousands of dark figures and then send them to gather life force for him but there was a problem. He couldn’t create more than 5 figures before he ran out of dark energy and the more figures he had, the weaker he got. It wasn’t worth using in most situations. It was good for getting information or assassinations but outside of that it had quite limited uses.

“I can’t risk using figures during the war. If I get into a tight spot it could lead to my death. Seems like I will have to do it all alone.” Aleir frowned as he wasn’t happy about the situation but there wasn’t much he could do. If he wanted to achieve his goals, he had to first stay alive and get stronger.

The next several days Aleir spent experimenting with the dark energy as he was trying to improve his manipulation of the energy, as well as the speed at which he could command it. Neither was easy to achieve and during his days of training he made only minor improvements. On the tenth day he heard loud horns in the distance.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Aleir grinned. “I knew they wouldn’t disappoint.” He looked over and could see a large amount of soldiers gathering. From what he could tell at this distance, It must’ve been at least 100 000 men strong army.

As he expected, the Kingdom of Alura was no match for the Fang Empire. However, that didn’t matter to him, all he cared about was getting stronger. Even the destruction of a whole kingdom wouldn’t make him to even bat an eye. Was he to fail, the woman, or the man controlling her would eventually kill him the moment they find out about his existence. The fact they thought he was dead, was the only thing keeping him alive.

After he observed the army, he then looked over at the opposite side of the mountains. There was nothing but the city, oblivious to the situation on the other side. They didn’t know what awaited them. They didn’t know that in few days, they will most likely face death. Although the Empire had spies in the kingdom, there was no way to deliver the news fast enough. The army was rallied, scouts and smaller forces of soldiers were already scouting the area. Trying to make it back to the kingdom to report the threat was akin to a suicide.

After several hours, the soldiers started moving. They were walking in formations closer toward the mountains. They weren’t that far from where Aleir was watching right now.

“I better move.” He then left his observing spot at one of the mountain peaks and went to the side of the kingdom, waiting for the army to arrive.

He descended down the mountain and as he did he could see the withered, dead land he had left during his resurrection. Although the scene looked more like an apocalypse, he didn’t even flinch and continued, making his way to the city once more.

When he was near the gates, he decided to look for someone to smuggle himself in. He didn’t want to cause unnecessary troubles for himself by someone accidentally recognizing his face. And if he decided to climb up the walls, maybe someone would see him. It was not worth the risk. He needed a silent, quiet place and most importantly, living beings to experiment on. The empire would arrive in the upcoming days and he wanted to improve his dark energy as much as he could. Using humans as experiment subjects would yield far better results in shorter amount of time. And he knew that they would most likely die soon, so there was no need for them to not ‘help’ him.

During the time he spent observing, he could see a suspicious, hooded man standing right by one of the caravans near the city gate. He then approached the man.

“Hello sir, can you smuggle me into the city?” Aleir casually said, leaving the man shocked. The man didn’t expect anyone to directly ask him like that.

“What are you talking about?” The man pretended to not know about anything as someone asking him like that was extremely suspicious. Occasionally, guards tried to rat the smugglers out and he thought this might be one of the attempts. As he saw it, it was the best to just pretend that he didn’t know about anything.

When Aleir heard the man’s response, his expression didn’t change. However, he raised his hand and pointed at the man. The man then started violently coughing and gasping for breath.

Then Aleir put down his hand and the cough stopped as fast as it had appeared. He smiled at the man and his expression was more than enough to completely terrify the smuggler.

“P-Please, I will gladly smuggle you in.” The man then said with a forced smile.

They both entered the city, the city guards at the gates ignoring this specific carriage. It was obvious that they had some cut from the smuggling business.

When they entered the city, Aleir left the man who let out a deep breath of relief, running as far as he could right after. Aleir then went into the more poor side of the city, so he doesn’t get unnecessary attention. If people started disappearing in those kinds of places, no one would probably notice as this was quite the common place there. Poor people, criminals, prostitutes, all those people won’t be missed by the city.

Aleir then went into an inn there and bought a room since he didn’t want to sleep on the streets. As he was walking up the stairs to his room, he could see that the inn was full of questionable existences. Some of the people were giving off dangerous vibes and It was very obvious that this inn was a place where the shady business was conducted. It was the perfect place to start.

He then searched for his room and found that 2 men were standing right in front of the doors, seemingly waiting for someone.

One of the men noticed the approaching Aleir and threw him a warning look “Hey, this room is occupied. Piss off.”

Aleir frowned. “I have the keys to that room, who do you think you are kidding?” He didn’t want to waste his time on such petty matters. He decided that he would settle it right here and now.

“Huh?! You dare to talk back?” The men then started walking towards Aleir with bad intentions.

When they were upon him, one of the men put his face right in front of Aleir’s hood, almost breathing into Aleir’s face. However, he still had his hood on and they couldn’t clearly see his face.

“If I see you aga-” The man was startled as Aleir’s hand immediately grabbed him by the neck. The man tried to move the hand with all strength he could muster but it didn’t budge.

“Hey! What do you think you are doing?!” The second man then took out a knife and tried to stab Aleir. However, before he managed to do it the suffocating man was thrown at him with great strength and they both slammed into the wall, leaving several cracks on it.

“Ugh.. You bastard…” The second man had several broken ribs as he was squeezed between the wall and the first man.

The man with the broken ribs still couldn’t move, as his colleague wasn’t moving. “Hey, get up!” His friend wasn’t moving at all. He then reached out with his hand to turn the man’s head. When he saw his eyes, he was shocked. They were lifeless, the man was dead. He then started realizing what was happening and who he had messed with.

“Dammit, dammit! You will pay for this!” The man yelled as Aleir just stood there, looking at him.

The man tried to free himself but couldn’t. However, at that moment Aleir started slowly making his way to the man. He was panicking, he could make a rough guess what fate awaited him had he fallen into the Aleir’s hands.

Aleir got closer to the man and grabbed him along with his dead friend. He then opened the doors and went in.

“Ugh…”

Aleir put down the dead body and then looked into the eyes of the injured man. “Who is your boss?”

“Fuck you…”

Aleir’s expression turned cold and he pointed his finger at the man who immediately started coughing blood. This scene continued for around a minute until the man was barely breathing, then Aleir stopped.

“Who is your leader?” He then asked again.