The first thing the Incarnate had thought about when he felt the raging waves of power exploding from the figure on the throne, was what his experiences back in his old life had taught him to do when dealing with offended important officials.

Whether it be a King, a Prince, or a nobleman, a foot soldier of no renown like him would have to bow and express an unreal degree of humility and make himself not look like anything worth punishing.

This lesson from a past life was indispensable right now. The Incarnate had realized that the man seated on the throne was without a doubt King Alabas.

Flying Reaper Sword.

It had been an error on his part to not show a King the respect he deserved from the start, and thus why he begged to be forgiven.

Thankfully, the simple gesture worked well. King Alabas would indeed have done him harm for his insolence.

“Tell me. Who are you?” Alabas asked. “What manner of bravery or folly possessed you to walk into this plague – this darkness?”

The Incarnate swallowed a lump of saliva and remained planted on the floor.

He had to answer quickly.

“Your Majesty, while I am a traveller, I am not acquainted with much to do with this land. I arrived here only a short while ago and I have been wandering without purpose since.”

Alabas hummed.

“Wandering? Hmm. You do possess a degree of power in that strange body of yours. Perhaps that is what gave you the courage to plunge yourself into this plague?” he said, his tone livid with curiosity and hints of amusement.

“I…Yes. That is one reason,” the Demonling said.

Alabas remained silent for a while.

“Articulate. Brave. Young,” he said. “You cannot be someone from my time, from my lands. Even if I cannot tell how much time has passed, it is all but certain that nothing from my reign still lurks with youth like yours outside. Even if there was such, it would not come anywhere near what my kingdom has become. Yet you have. Ignorantly at that.”

The Incarnate kept taking deep, measured breaths.

“What is your name?” the King asked.

Incarnate ^8001 shook.

His mind spun, cycling through the years before his death.

He found no name that he had been given worth presenting to the figure before him.

Thus…

“I have none,” he simply said.

Alabas once again remained silent for a while.

“Rise,” he said.

The Incarnate stood up but he didn’t dare look directly at Alabas.

“Show me that shield you were wielding before,” the King said.

At once, the Incarnate retrieved the Valiant Subject’s Ward from the Hermetic Vault.

King Alabas seemed to raise his head a little, his body shaking as he did.

“O Maestus…” he said. “I would recognize your craft no matter which form it takes.”

The heaviness in the king’s voice bore down on the Incarnate. With what he had read, he could understand the emotions gushing through the king at the moment. He (Alabas) seemed to turn so bitter that ten whole minutes passed without him saying anything more.

The Demonling, realizing that he couldn’t just stand here and hope that chance would take care of him, took a leap of faith. If this was another stage of this Floor, his actions would be judged too.

“If I may be so bold, Your Majesty,” he said before waiting for a few seconds, “Maestus personally handed this to me.”

King Alabas raised his head fully for the first time, revealing his empty eye sockets riddled with maggots. His gruff beard seemed to tremble as he let out a hoarse breath.

“Maestus? He gave you that personally?” the King asked.

Incarnate ^8001 took a sharp breath and lowered his head even further. If he was going to spill the beans on what happened outside the Ainfidd Kingdom, he was going to have to be extra careful with his words.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Your Majesty, allow me to explain a few things first,” he said. “I did not lie when I said I am not acquainted with things to do with this land. I would never dare say I understand a nation such as yours simply because I read about it from a piece of paper. I found a record written by one of your councilmen. It told of the events beginning from your victory over the Feraanites up to when… the writer perished.”

The King seemed to mull this over with interest.

“What is it that you read?” he asked, a sharp tone notable in his voice.

The Incarnate explained everything he had read in detail, and in the end, he felt the King’s suspicions die. His rage bubbled instead.

“So that was what that wench sought to do? Bring our people to ruin? That was why she fought me and turned my children against me?!” King Alabas roared.

Once again, the Incarnate felt a sharp pressure rise from him, but he said nothing. He waited, hearing the audible grating of Alabas’ teeth and the squelching of his maggot-ridden hands as they balled into fists.

The King grew quiet again and then he asked.

“What of the shield? When did you meet Maestus?”

The Demonling got down on one knee and placed the shield on the ground.

“As… as I travelled, I met the creature that the Queen summoned. It had nearly ensnared me when the bones of Maestus spoke to me and granted me this shield. It is capable of warding away dark influences,” he said.

The Incarnate wasn’t prepared to explain how he knew Maestus’ name. He had said it with a suspicious degree of familiarity since Alabas first mentioned it.

However, Alabas did not bother with such a thing.

Instead, his teeth seemed to break as he gnashed them.

With the Incarnate’s narration, he was made to confirm things he had only dreaded for the last millennium.

“Alas, I failed as King. I boasted the greatest name and greatest strength on this entire continent, and yet what felled me and my legacy, was my lust for someone unworthy of standing by my side,” he said with a harrumph of self-loathing.

“That woman – that witch! She had the gall to visit me in this prison and place this foul curse on me! She looked at me like I was some dim mutt and proclaimed that she would keep my children alive… safe from some disaster that fell on the land! That I too should live on and try to escape this darkness so that I can meet them! She claimed that my wrath at that time would be meaningless because she would have long passed! What kind of hateful design is that?!”

The Incarnate shook.

So that’s how it was.

Marar’bel had visited Alabas after she escaped the Omen with her children. She had cast the same power that kept her sons ‘alive’ on him too and left him here still.

Truly, Alabas wasn’t wrong in asking what kind of messed up idea this was. Was Marar’bel that scared of associating with Alabas since her betrayal of him?

The Demonling wondered about something else too.

‘Tenyen and Kadyas were mindless creatures that didn’t even speak. How is Alabas keeping his sanity? Is it just because he is strong?’

A deep silence grew once more; this time, it was not abated until nearly twenty minutes had passed.

“Traveler with no name,” King Alabas said. “You have seen combat, haven’t you? You have seen war.”

The Demonling was stunned. Alabas had somehow noticed.

“Y-yes.”

“Where do you think lies the heart of it? The match that lights war,” Alabas asked.

The Incarnate took a moment to think, but he had been carrying his answer since before he met the grave.

“The King,” he said confidently.

“No,” Alabas instantly rejected the answer. “Try again.”

“The King’s council?”

“No. No,” Alabas said and he slammed his fist on the throne’s armrest. “War begins with the King’s sworn swords. His warriors. His soldiers!”

“It matters little what I decide. In the end, if no one follows me to battle, I cannot raid a nation on my own as long as I hold the title I have. I need my army. It is my followers that enable me to point my hand at an enemy and demand that they be captured or slaughtered. If I were so fearsome alone, why would I care that the Feraanites numbered fifty thousand? I would simply march on and kill them myself.”

The Incarnate’s head involuntarily rose to look at Alabas’ face. He shivered when he saw the eyeless sockets.

“If I were so mighty alone, Marar’bel would have sought to control me. However, after she made me fall for her and made her way into my court, she became powerful enough to make the Baniale` kneel. Our force of eighty thousand marched on the Baniale` lands. We were confident in those numbers, even though we had never seen hope in eradicating the Baniale` before. Marar’bel didn’t need Sorcery to burn those people to the ground, only my men. That is where the heart of war lies.”

The Incarnate frowned, against the better judgement in his mind.

“Your Majesty, do you blame the soldiers then? Is the army the one at fault? Were they supposed to rebel against their orders?” he asked, his tone firm yet careful.

“Who knows? Perhaps,” said Alabas airily. “That is the only luxury a warrior gets to consider for themselves, after all. No man who has ever raised a sword against another is innocent, but to cower under a rock and think about the millions they have killed is not a soldier’s duty. A soldier’s only concern is who they will raise their sword for and for what purpose. Everything else is just an excuse to die and be done with this wretched world.”

The eyes of the Incarnate bulged. Fury rose within him for a moment.

A soldier’s only concern…

Alabas gazed at the Incarnate sharply.

“I can see you were not just a stray who wound up in a war. You lived it,” he scoffed. “You disagree with my opinion?”

The Incarnate didn’t know what to say.

He felt like Alabas’ words were a little too… constrained, biased enough. A bit of grief and bitterness was also mixed in, making it hard to confirm whether or not this was how the king truly felt.

But the Incarnate took those words to heart nevertheless.

He had thought this man would blindly blame Marar’bel for everything, but no. He considered her betrayal and her choices afterward as two separate problems with different interpretations.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” King Alabas suddenly said and from his body, an ebony-coloured outline of Spirit Essence surged, making the Incarnate turn pale. “It doesn’t matter who is wrong and who is right. Rather, it shouldn’t.”

The Incarnate backed away in fright.

“Unfortunately for you, once you entered this plague, your fate was sealed, traveller. As for me, I have a predicament of my own.”

As Alabas said this, the candle at his side flickered.

“Only a short time remains before this light fades and my sanity disappears. I doubt I can achieve anything in that time nor can I meet anyone else,” he said and his bastard sword became encased in a vicious dark light. “Honour me with combat before that time comes, traveller.”