(Sep 18)

“You do know that I’m the king’s son, and Mona and I are fighting for the throne to become the next ruler, right?”

Wait what?

I stared at Briggs and I tried to connect the words that he just spoke to me.

King’s son.

Fighting for the throne.

Next ruler.

So it turns out that Briggs is the king’s first child and next in line to become the king, and the ruler of the entire kingdom including this capital city.

And Mona, the second child and the daughter of the king, also wants to ascend the throne, must compete with Briggs if she wants to become the king.

That explains quite a bit, during the festival tournament when Mona and Cornelia were dueling, they seemed to be arguing and on bad terms.

Cornelia likes Briggs (if that wasn’t obvious by now) and wants Briggs to become king, and since Mona is Brigg’s rival and competitor, she would harbor some distaste towards Mona.

The thing is… how did I not realize this until now? How is it that I only found out that Briggs was the king’s son just now?? Why do I always find out the important stuff so late???

“Uh well, I wasn’t trying to keep it a secret or anything. It’s an openly known fact, but I guess since you were new here, you never found out since I never told you.”

He patted me on the back and stood back up.

“So I’d like to ask you to try not to get involved with Mona too much. This is between the two of us, and the fate of the entire kingdom. I apologize that I didn’t let you know earlier as I had assumed you knew.”

That was basically the gist of our conversation, he left after some goodbyes, and I went back to my wife.

However, I couldn’t stop thinking about Briggs and Mona.

All this time, I was talking so casually to Briggs and he was like a brother to me but it only occurred to me now, how little that I know about him.

He was always that one guy who was always cheerful, funny and everyone liked him.

But he’s a lot more serious than I expected… Briggs always seem to be able to surprise me.

My respect for him has skyrocketed.

(Sep 20)

I bought a new house!

Yea! Our entire family went house shopping and we’ll move into our new house within the next couple of days!

Other than that, not much happened.

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(Sep 21)

Tomorrow I have to go back to work! Pain.

I wish everyday was a vacation.

As a soldier of this city, I do patrols around the city and guard the castle or do other jobs that the higher ups want me to do. Though it seems quite simple, it’s hard work and can be surprisingly dangerous at times.

But I have it lucky compared to other soldiers because sometimes William and Brigg sometimes give me a free break so they can train me, but I still get paid as if I were working!

Not only that, I get a lot of job benefits because of my special position as the dragon boi!

Work is still boring though.

Anyways, I went to William’s office today and said hello to let him know I came back.

When I went there, I saw this huge capsule machine thingy that William was building. It looked like a giant metal egg with a bunch of tubes come out of it.

“What’s this massive thing?”

“Oh this? Uh, don’t worry about it. It’s nowhere near complete. Just ignore it.”

William just casually brushed it off but when it’s a literal massive metal machine that takes up half the room, it’s quite hard to ignore.

“I was quite surprised when I found about the assassins who were spying on you, good job with that. Because of you, we’re now able to provide some evidence to the fact the Kenava kingdom is trying to cause war.”

William changed to the topic and started talking about the current situation with Kenava.

“Before this, we had our spies tell us that the Kenava kingdom were creating dragons but there wasn’t any evidence to provide to the Council Of Rulers but now that we have the captured spies, we have some evidence, although it’s still not solid proof. It’s better than nothing though.

Using this information, we can pressure the Kenava and perhaps even negotiate with them. If all goes well, we could settle this peacefully.”

“Wait. So what happens if things don’t go well, and we can’t settle things peacefully?”

“Well, we could request support from the other kingdoms in our Council Of Rulers and we could subdue the Kenava forcefully which would result in a war. The problem here is, we don’t know if any of the other kingdoms are backing or supporting the Kenava, and if any of the kingdoms are, we would be at a massive disadvantage.”

Man, things are getting complicated.

“Prepare yourself Anthony, you’re a major chess piece in this battle.”

As he said that, I imagined myself playing chess with William but every single chess piece on the board had my face on it. I quickly shook my head to get rid of that weird imagination and continued listening to William who continued on.

“We haven’t confirmed an exact date yet, but we’re going to meet up with the leaders of the Kenava kingdom and negotiate with them. I want you to come with us as one of the soldiers that we’re bringing.”

“Eh? This is quite sudden. You don’t even know when? How long we’re gone for?”

“We’ll let you know the date when the negotiation meeting is happening. In the meantime, return to your normal life. Oh, and don’t forget your training.”

(Sep 23)

There have been rumors among the people that we might go to war with another kingdom.

I don’t know how but some information has been leaked to the public.

(Sep 24)

I finally finished moving all of my stuff into the new house!

It was quite a long process, but it’s done now. I’m officially moving into my new house today with Gabi and my wife!

(Sep 27)

I’ve finally ease back into my normal routine.

Things are back to normal, training with Briggs and Cornelia once and a while along with other soldiers, and I meet up with William every couple days too.

It’s almost bizarre to think that only a while ago, I was fighting with assassins after my life.

(Oct 2)

Today started off as a normal day, went on my guard duty, trained a little with the other soldiers until the afternoon.

It was a bit after lunch and I was taking a short rest in the soldier’s break room, the place where soldiers can hang out during break time and just meet up in general, until suddenly someone rushed in.

“All soldiers on break! Hurry up and follow me! We have a situation!”

It seemed like something had happened so all the soldier grabbed their weapons and rushed out to follow the person who requested support.

We ran through the city until we arrived at a crowd of people surrounding and looking at something.

And there, I saw one of the most gruesome scenes I’ve ever seen in my life.

On the ground, laid three dead bodies completely torn up and dismantled.

There were bits of flesh scattering the ground, the bodies… no, the lumps of flesh, were completely mushed up as if they were mashed like mashed potatoes.

Bones were smashed apart and bits and pieces of them were scattered around like seeds.

It was as if someone… or something ate them in the most brutal and vicious way possible…