He had to kill the king.

Or at least talk to the king.

What was Katani’s secret? How had he kept thousands upon thousands of gnolls from killing each other?

Was it the threat of torture? Would that be why he’d been torturing the humans?

He had to get answers. And to get those answers, he’d have to raid the palace and get to the King first.

There was a fight at the gate to the palace and he didn’t interfere. Instead, he created a hole in the back wall and walked through. The outside of the walls were unclimbable, and they were too far from surrounding buildings to jump, but the gnolls had never considered that Shape Earth might get into the wrong hands.

From there he was able to follow what seemed like a central path. It got more and more obvious as it went that it led to some sort of official room, and when he opened the doors he saw some sort of paintings on the walls — the first such art that he’d seen in gnoll society.

Inside was only one gnoll: the level 19 warrior.

“I want to talk to the king,” said Jerome.

“You’re the human,” said the warrior. “You’re the one that’s destroying our civilization.”

It had a point, but he couldn’t acknowledge it publicly. “You’re the ones who are torturing humans.”

“Other civilizations kill the humans. We’re trying to make them immortal. For that you destroy us?”

“Let me talk to the king. Maybe we can come to an understanding.”

“After what you’ve done outside? We can only perform the ceremony so fast. Many of those gnolls will lose half their levels, half their memory.”

“Even more reason for us to reason with each other.”

“You are a disruption that must be purged.”

“Fine. Have it your way.” Jerome clawed it with Portal Hand.

The warrior charged him with a speed and ferocity that made Jerome wish Krystyna were here to help. He’d tackled a level 15 warrior before, but that had been while in Krystyna’s form. Sure, he’d trained, leveled up, and learned a lot since then, and he had many forms to switch between now… but none were as strong as Krystyna. And this gnoll was level 19.

But it was only the two of them, with no one to interrupt.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Jerome channeled Crystal Overload.

It hit when the warrior was just two feet away, and the shaking gnoll collapsed near Jerome. A couple more inches and the body’s momentum would have carried the gnoll into Jerome and interrupted the casting, but it ended up working perfectly.

The capital mages had done this to him before Jerome had gotten Ether Ghost and an army, and it felt good to return the favor. When his MP ran out he used Recoil Burst on the warrior’s body before it could recover, switched into a new body, and started channeling again.

The warrior had a lot of HP, and the armor had some magic defense, so it took until halfway through Jerome’s third form before it hit critical HP. If he’d been in a mage’s body maybe he’d have finished sooner, but it wasn’t like Jerome was running out of forms.

“Tell me where the king is,” said Jerome.

“Kill me, it doesn’t matter. I’ll be revived first.”

“I will kill you, but it’s what happens afterwards that you decide now. Do you get respawned properly, with the ceremony, or do I throw your crystal into the ocean?”

The warrior gasped, cursed, called him a blasphemer, but eventually it told him where the king was. Jerome finished off the gnoll and left it there.

Outside the sounds of battle raged, but that was not important. Jerome followed the warrior’s directions to a small room, one hardly different than any of the others, and opened the door. Two gnolls were inside: the level 16 mage and another one that must be the king.

The king sighed. “So you’re the one causing all this trouble.”

“It didn’t have to be like this,” said Jerome. “I wanted to rescue the humans, and this was the only way.”

“Rescue them? I am protecting them. The ockdine want to kill your kind. The outer gnolls want to kill your kind. The elves want to kill your kind. The ptau… who knows what they want, but it involves eating your kind if they can. Do you think you can protect the humans? You’ve got powers, but can you be everywhere at all times? No. That is why we have civilization. Because one individual can’t do it all.”

The king’s tone annoyed Jerome, but this gnoll was the only one to hold together a large gnollish civilization. “Teach me. Rule with me.”

“You’ve destroyed half of the city! How am I supposed to trust your intentions? Even if I did, how am I supposed to know that you won’t make yet another stupid decision that destroys even more?”

Jerome was about to argue when he noticed something: his SP bar was almost gone.

He punched the mage using Portal Hand, then switched forms and flicked on Ether Ghost again before rushing the mage and pounding it into the stone.

Without the debilitating effects of Hold or Crystal Overload it had no method for keeping him away, and since Jerome could switch forms to restore SP he could block an almost unlimited amount of magic.

The mage died.

“Rule with me,” Jerome repeated, “or this will all be destroyed. I won’t try to destroy it, but like you said: I’m terrible at this. You’re the only one who knows how to keep everything from falling apart.”

The king sighed. “You will add nothing, but I have no choice. We rule together.”