Moira raised an eyebrow. "What? Why would we have to choose between one or the other?"
"Our princess' happiness is to return home!" Hamil barked.
Nero sighed inside his head. If his plan for these two had a sliver of a chance of working, he needed to find out if these two have the mental flexibility to abandon their world views. How deep was Coriander's misinformation campaign? Their princess renounced, and she was home. Happy as a pea in a pod with her family. Coriander sent murderers after her, for a couple cards. National treasure my ass, Nero cursed. It was pride. Crystal's curse was pride. He clenched his fists and ground his teeth, seething with anger. Tyre's pride stole her from the life she knew and tossed her down into hell. Coriander's pride forced her to cast away her identity. In a way, the books Serena wrote with state secrets was treason.
That's why she changed her name. Princess Serena died. Crystal was the one to pick up the discarded husk and live inside the princess' body. And by all that was holy, she deserved to be happy. That was the core of Nero's question. He felt his emotions run out of control. He would demolish that castle, burn that army. Crush all of them and dry Coriander's oceans.
If he could. If. As strong as he became in the months since his activation, Nero was still weak. As versatile as his Class-changing powers were, he was restricted to the first-tier of Skills, and only those without a level requirement. As powerful he was over the lives of two wounded soldiers or anything else that could survive inside a rank-III Dungeon, outside he was but a speck of dust.
But Crystal was his sister. He loved her. He hated everyone that hurt her. This stupid war. That stupid prince. Those stupid armies. it should all burn. Tyre should burn for his crimes and shame. Coriander should fall into a volcano for abandoning her.
Nero threw his head back and screamed. His wail of pain and anger drew the attention of nearby Dungeon monsters. A pack of wolves and a bear.
His bloodshot eyes took in the monsters but he didn't see them. "Come bastards. I'll murder you!"
He shouted and ran toward his enemies. In his delusions, the bear had a golden mane and a sleek, agile body. The wolves had fins and gills. He revved his bayonet, relishing on the familiar buzz of the clockwork sword. He embraced wrath. He was god and the Dungeon his demesne. He alone decided what should live and what should die. Tyre and Coriander had to perish. Shards of frozen blood, bone, and sinew flew, lit in the Dungeon's eternal full moon night by the sparks of lightning coming from his weapon.
Nero screamed. He cackled maniacally. He saw a red not like the red of blood or the red of Essence. He was destruction. The two soldiers' refusal to acknowledge the dichotomy between reality and propaganda pushed him across the line. The feelings he kept bottled for all these weeks under Tyre's employ burst out all at once.
The grinding teeth spilled frozen gore on the Dungeon's fake forest. A white mist seethed from the metal triangles revving against one another. Crystals, cards, Accolades. Nothing snapped Nero out of his frenzy. If there were no monsters, he hacked the trees, carving a path of destruction through the Dungeon.
He heard Tyre's laughter. He heard the moaning of the women in the prince's tent. He felt the world shake as Coriander's massive trebuchets rained stones and terror down from the sky.
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Sergeant Moira couldn't breathe. Even the searing pain of her broken leg was forgotten. The boy seemed friendly and even interested in her from all the glances he stole at her figure during their first interaction. Also, his coy demeanor at the sight of her naked body gave her hope he would not murder them. Moira would even offer her womanhood to him if it meant getting out of this hell of a Dungeon alive.
But they screwed up. She knew they'd answered wrong. She replayed the scene before he went crazy in her mind's eye, trying to figure out what went wrong.
> "Do you want us to work for you?" She asked.
>
> Betraying her homeland during such an important rescue mission was not on the table but they needed to survive. Moira needed to know what this young Adventurer's intentions were. He healed them. Three potions and the splint around her hurting leg told her he was a kind person. Someone whose heart still hadn't been hardened by the world.
>
> "Not really," The kid replied. "I am more concerned if you are going to be a liability to me or not."
>
> His eyes wandered away into the distance. His concern was not for himself but for someone else that was on his mind right now. By the way the corners of his eyes squinted, someone he was very fond of.
>
> "We came here to rescue our princess your prince kidnapped. Bast needs to be punished for what they did," She replied honestly.
>
> Moira's hope was that he would open up and tell his true intentions if he went along with her sincerity and overshared. She couldn't hide the surprise when he nodded at her last sentence.
>
> "Princess Serena, right?" He almost chuckled. Could he be a sympathizer? Someone that shared their goals? From what she heard, the bastard prince Tyre was not well-regarded in his own country.
>
> "Yes!" Moira exclaimed, hopeful. "I can't imagine the torment she suffered."
>
> "It was--" The honesty she was hoping for came but died right away as he caught himself. "Must've been terrible. I have one question for you. I'm removing Hamil's gag. Don't do anything I wouldn't, Hamil."
>
> He was joking with them! That was good. Moira let the candle of hope in her heart flare. When he released Hamil's mouth, she almost shed a tear.
>
> "What is your question?" She asked.
>
> "What is more important, Serena's happiness or your country's pride?"
>
> Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
The tells were all there. She missed it in the heat of the moment and now a rampaging beast was unleashed. She almost felt sorry for the Dungeon monsters the boy brutally murdered. She prayed his wrath would be quenched with only monster blood.
By her side, Hamil was barely breathing, frozen in terror. Moira replayed the scenes again and again. The sound of that terrible bone-grinding weapon vanished in the whooshing of the wind and the swaying of leaves. Her fear cleared a bit and she focused on his reactions as she revisited the whole encounter. The way he looked at her. At first, she thought it was the way a man looked at a woman, and while it was a man looking at a woman, she couldn't help but return to the impression of innocence she saw in his eyes.
Yes, there wasn't lust. The way he looked embarrassed as avoided looking directly at her naked body while he treated her leg even though her precious parts were shamelessly exposed reminded her of... a bashful brother walking into his naked sister.
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Nero drove the sawing teeth of the bayonet into the skull of the dire warg and a minute later into the stone floor of the cave as the boss' body vanished into blinding white motes of Anima. The weapon ran out of Essence and stopped working. His exhaustion caught up to his being and he came to his senses. For now, his emotions were spent and his throat, sore. At least his mind was clear now.
He scooped the cards and walked back. His self-cleaning clothes and the fact the gore was frozen meant he had not much dirt and gore on him, but he couldn't believe the path of destruction left in his wake. There was a gutter ten feet wide open through the forest. Badly cut trees fell to the sides and hung on the limbs of the other trees. Shaking his head, Nero backtracked and collected his drops along the way.
The hike back through the greatly shrunk Dungeon allowed him time to think. And notice things that should be obvious. This Dungeon was more than two hours on foot from the castle. If Coriander was comfortable sending troops here to forage for drops, it meant they could walk past the castle anytime. His previous assumption that the castle was blocking their way was faulty. They could and did move past the castle.
There was a missing piece of this puzzle. Why are they still besieging the castle if they could move past it, and why did they have this confidence in ranging this far from their camp? Where were the punitive raids, the patrols keeping a lifeline open to and from the castle? It was not like they had completely surrounded them as his late-night trip showed. If anything, the castle's security was full of holes. It felt it was that way by design, on purpose.
They wanted to take the castle. Was it a strategic asset? Yes. But cutting the supplies and laying siege with a token force while the main army moved down to destroy the countryside would work just fine, especially because Tyre didn't have as many soldiers. Heck, they were outnumbered by fifty to one if Nero's estimate was correct. No, they wanted to either take the castle or someone inside the castle.
They wanted to kill prince Tyre. Instead of leading the defense, the guy was wasting his days away in debauchery and salaciousness. Taking the castle was secondary. It didn't explain why they weren't pushing forward into Bast as the county of Honeywitch was basically ripe for plundering - even the count himself was at the castle. Yes, that was strange, wasn't it? Count Honeywitch was there defending a pile of rocks while his lands were wide open and almost undefended. Yet the enemy didn't move to take it.
Nero believed he was probably overthinking things. These people were military experts, weren't they? He was just a kid not a year after his coming-of-age ceremony, still wet behind the ears. Anyway, he found the nereids. They hadn't moved from where he left them.
He met Moira and Hami's eyes one at a time and readied himself.
"Hey, I'm back. Sorry about the outburst," Nero tittered, still nervous. "So, back to our talk. I think we weren't seeing eye-to-eye. Let me phrase my question in another way. If you had to choose only one of these two, sacrificing the other to rot in the mud, which would you pick. Serena's happiness, or Coriander's pride? You can't have both."
"You seem to know a lot about our princess," Moira teased, fishing for a reaction.
"More than you do," Nero said seriously as he stared into the blue-haired Nereid's deep navy-blue eyes. "A lot more."
"So you know what your bastard of a prince--" Hamil stopped as Nero's face flushed with anger.
Nero grunted and groaned. The boiling anger threatened to rise from the pit of his stomach heralded with a wave of bile. "You want to know? He raped her. He inflicted psychological torture upon her. He locked her down and stripped her of all dignity as a person. And when confronted with his misdeeds, he discarded all she was and called her 'used goods'. You don't give me this crap propaganda your nation taught you. I know."
The two nereids flinched. Nero blinked and two tears rolled down his cheeks.
"You think you hate that wretched leonal?" He glowered at them, snarling. "You two have no idea. IF I HAD THE CHANCE, I WOULD SQUEEZE TYRE'S LIFEBLOOD OUT WITH A BLUNT ROCK AND THROW HIS ACCURSED NAME INTO THE ABYSS. Burn his rotting carcass and spread the ashes on a necropolis."
He breathed heavily, his chest heaving from anger and accumulated stress.
"Now, answer or die," He gave an ultimatum.
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Moira was taken aback. The boy's outburst was real. She had no doubt he would fulfill his vow. And she was too scared to talk. The lull from the imminent death granted by the healing and the setting of her broken leg softened her resolve. But she knew time was running out.
"You lying bastard," Hamil growled. "You are toying with us. Fuck you, leonal dog. I'd rather die with my dignity."
She cringed. Moira was about to berate Hamil but the sight of that monstrosity of a weapon rising, as pitch black as moonless midnight in the depths of the ocean, made her freeze like a hare watching a snake coil itself. She opened her mouth and no sound came out. A drawn-out minute and it was too late.
**BLAM**
She yelped. Moira felt something cold and sticky raining on her. She hadn't the courage to look to her side. She was frozen, mesmerized by that boy's eyes. She heard him clicking his tongue and contorting his face into a rictus of disgust. A minute later, he looked at her.
"What about you? Don't you care for Crys-Serena's wishes? Her happiness?" He asked her.
Moira's mind was plagued with doubt. Her intuition told her there was more to this kid's story. He spoke of royalty with a degree of intimacy unthought of for commoners. And by his demeanor and speech, he wasn't even low nobility. He spoke like a boy from a rural village.
"Wait. Please don't kill me. Just tell me, do you by any chance know the princess?"
His anger turned to sadness. Maybe regret after killing Hamil but Moira wouldn't dare to assume that much. He looked away into the distance and it felt as if he longed to see his lover or a long-lost relative.
"We have time," he said after checking an exquisite timepiece. "Let me take my rope and his Arbitrium. We should move to the clearing. I'll show you."
He fiddled under his cloak then removed the stone around Hamil's body. The rope was soaked in blood but he just stored it in his magical pouch. After sawing off the wrist, he slid the Arbitrium off and the bracer also vanished. Then he picked her up in a bridal carry. Moira didn't dare to speak or move. After a few minutes, they were back on the clearing and he carefully put her down.
"You remind me of her, actually," he said then quickly corrected himself. "Sorry, I'm not saying all Nereids are equal, but we don't have many of your race in our country."
"Do-don't worry," She said and felt like a frightened child.
Moira looked away. When she heard him sigh, she looked at him and found that he had a small painting frame and a polished stick. He was rubbing the stick on the canvas as if he was painting. Absorbed in his work, his features softened. He was showing signs of mental instability. He previously went from a tender gaze into a rage too fast. As she watched him paint, Moira's eyelids felt heavy. She fought for days to get the cards and Essence her team took outside. They didn't want to leave Moira and Hamil but she knew their delve was over when a bear broke her leg. They had to take the cards and Essence back so she ordered them to take the two [Egress] cards and leave.
Without any immediate threat, she allowed her body to relax. Moira fell asleep.