Where had I heard about the Harem Hero before? Right, that would have been in Karr’s dungeon. Karr seemed mildly obsessed with the Harem Hero and had even tried to instill me with some of his ideals. In the end, Karr’s Blessing had made it so I couldn’t remember the slave bonds of the girls. In many ways, that had changed my life significantly. It helped me finally decide it was worth having them by my side. Had he held me back, I met have released all of my slave bonds, and there was no saying where anyone would be at that point.
“Please… you can call me Artemis.” King Roth grinned. “We are old friends, right?”
“Don’t smile at me like that… your smile makes my skin crawl.” Astria shot back.
“Don’t be like that. I’ve heard Chalm has been restored, and you have fallen for a new Master. I’m sorry I didn’t visit and break up that dungeon you created. By the time I heard what happened, the churches of Aberis had already dealt with it.”
“More lies?” Astria asked. “When I cursed Chalm, the people fled to Dioshin first. You closed your borders to them.”
Roth shrugged nonchalantly. “My people are a superstitious lot. They weren’t willing to risk them bringing ghosts. However, don’t try to make it seem like I am the bad guy. After all, it was you who murdered Karr and destroyed Chalm.”
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She looked away. “Karr was poisoned. By creating the dungeon, I was able to pull the poison away from him. It would have rotted his soul and he would have died right there.”
“It’s too bad you weren’t able to maintain your sanity. You ended up destroying everything anyway.”
I found myself extremely intrigued by this conversation. Although I had gained Karr’s Blessing and seen the lore, it had always felt somewhat scattered and incomplete. There had always been holes in that story, pieces that didn’t fit. Who had killed Karr? Just what was happening behind the scenes? How did the harem king fit into all of this? His presence was enough that even my blessing had aspects of a harem, so he had to have some relevance to the plot.
Fairies weren’t particularly mindful, and the story from Astria’s point of view was a bit scattered. Unevolved fairies weren’t particularly bright, and a fairy queen like Astria was naïve to the point of being a child when she first met Karr. I didn’t know if it was because of Celeste’s slave bond, her half-human upbringing, her evolutions, or her constant interactions with the other girls, but she wasn’t quite as foolish as the other fairies.
As for Astria, after being resurrected from Karr’s sacrifice, she also had grown more intelligent. That said, even after she had enhanced her mind, she had never really spoken much about Karr or her life with him. Whether she had reevaluated the events and came to other conclusions about what had happened, I had never heard her side of things.
Thus, this was the first time I was hearing this story from another point of view. King Artemis Roth, the Harem Hero, who was idolized by Lord Karr… just what was his connection to Chalm, and more importantly, why was he attacking me now!