Travelling the multi-verse with Maximus was unsurprisingly a unique experience for Arthur, but his life of late had accustomed him to such experiences by now. So much so that seeing a giant flying yak-like creature nuzzle up against the observation deck’s window didn’t faze Arthur too much, for it was just another absurdity in the long list of ridiculous things that now effectively served as the plot and background of his life after the system.

Yet even though Arthur was seemingly sleeping on a new planet every day, and he was pretty sure they weren’t even in his universe anymore, Arthur was somehow able to find some semblance of internal peace in and amongst the infinite stars. Primarily this peace derived from Arthur finally believing that things were headed in the right direction and that there was hope for the future for both him and his grandson. In only a few days, the boy would have the hex placed on him lifted, and Arthur would then do everything in his power to make up for all of his mistakes and right the wrongs he committed in the past.

For in the new life that he envisioned them living once they landed in the Imperium’s capital, no longer would they both be a breath away from death at every moment, able only to find the briefest of respites before everything erupted repeatedly in their faces to their tremendous detriment. Instead, he would in a sense return to his old life but in a new, more alien form. Everything and everyone had changed around Arthur, but his drive and motivations had not, for he still desired to serve, as that was what he had always wanted to do.

However, while Arthur may have collected himself somewhat whilst aboard the Maximus’ ship, his young companion Steven was still tortured by the memory of his sister, and presumably the loss of the rest of his family as well. For while Arthur had managed to pull himself out of his despair thanks to the knowledge that soon enough Lucas would be well again, the young man had permanently lost everything and everyone he’d ever cared about. His family, his friends, and his home. Everything was gone forever, and Arthur thus couldn’t help but increasingly pity the boy as the days passed by.

The young man would sometimes sit on the observation deck and stare out into the ocean of stars and weep. It was clear to Arthur that the lad was in the throes of the quiet anguish of despair, hopelessness, and the mind-dissolving disorientation of not knowing why he remained alive, and the direction in which he should travel to once again find himself amidst the mental debris that his former life left behind. Arthur had felt it many times throughout his life, especially recently. Arthur had once again recommended to the boy that he try cultivation as a means of helping deal with his trauma, but the young man flatly refused to do so.

The loss of his sister had firmly hardened the boy’s heart against the system. Although externally the boy’s actions were clearly a cry for help, Steven believed that he would never be satisfied by the peace of mind that the system could offer. For the system was an apathetic god-like existence whose insidious rewards and boons seemed as sinister in intention as its crazed man-eating monsters. The naked self-interest that it served to foster and inflame, that of the brutish greed within every sapient entity for sheer power had torn Earthling society apart and turned brother against brother, man against man.

If facilitating individuals’ ascension to power no matter the cost was truly its goal, as it seemed to Steven to be, then the only reason it would offer its users peace of mind was to ensure that they were never despondent enough to just stop fighting. To always have its users ready to continue participating in the great cycle of violence that it was the grand host and overseer of. In other words, it offered peace on its own barbaric terms, and thus its peace was no peace at all but instead, it was an invitation to become like itself. A cold, pitiless, slaughterer endlessly pursuing and gaining power no matter the cost.

Arthur found the ideas rather disturbing. Not only because it took the boy expressing them to him directly for Arthur to realise just how broken the boy had become due to the system, but also because the logic made quite a lot of sense. However, he could not quite put into words the objection that he had to the boy’s ideas as for the most part, the belief that the system was at the very least apathetic about the preservation of life held very true to his own experiences since the system arrived. Yet, he did object to both the conclusion and many of the premises, but he hadn’t been able to properly think up a response at the moment or as of right now.

It was whilst he was deep in thought about the issue that a young demi-human male entered the room – breaking him out of his thoughts.

“Mr. Goodman, The Marshall requests your presence in the dining room.”

Arthur nodded and followed Maximus’ assistant to the dining area where he and the Imperium Marshall had spent most evenings together discussing Arthur’s future within the Imperium. The dining area on board the ship was large and luxurious, which made it quite like the rest of the ship in those regards.

Though the ship was smaller than the mothership, it was not exactly a small vessel, and what made the whole ship feel even more impressive was just the sheer luxury of almost everything on board. Every seat within the ship felt positively divine to sit on, with the leather being very high-quality hide only capable of being processed in the Imperial capital, in a very limited amount every year, and enchanted with the most advanced comfort-enhancing enchants money could buy and it really showed. Arthur had almost fallen asleep whilst sitting on them many times.

“Mr Goodman?” The marshall’s assistant asked, making Arthur realise that they were standing before the door to the dining area.

Arthur thanked the young demi-human and made his way inside the dining area where Maximus awaited him with a smug grin on his face.

“You ready for another game, Arthur?” The Marshall asked, gesturing at a now familiar board game on the table in front of him.

“Indeed, Maximus,” Arthur replied swiftly, taking the seat opposite the marshall. After 2 weeks of travelling together and speaking to each other almost every day during those two weeks, the two had decided to drop some of the formalities and just address each other by their first names. Arthur had found this hard at first, the man in front of him clearly outranking him in almost every respect, even age, but the man who had slayed the world serpent was not easily denied and by now Arthur almost always remembered to call him Maximus and not Sir Marshall or Sir General.

As soon as Arthur sat down, Maximus moved one of his central pawns two places forward – beginning a new game of chess. The two had played the boardgame a lot recently, so much so that neither of them really focused on the game, as they both knew each other’s moves well enough by now, and so the real battle of wits took place in the verbal arena and, as usual, Maximus was the aggressor in this domain as well.

“I see that your control over your aura has improved considerably in the last few days Arthur. I can only hope that my advice was of assistance to you.” Maximus said calmly in the Imperium’s common tongue, the language module that the man had used to communicate in English previously had now been discarded.

“Your advice on that matter was of some assistance, but I personally think my practice controlling my aura has been too little as I must say that I have been mostly pondering what you said surrounding the Butler’s guild,” Arthur replied, speaking in his highly accented form of the Imperium’s common tongue – a language he had been able to learn dozens of times faster now that both his intelligence and learn language perk were so high after levelling up so much.

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Maximus laughed before he replied casually, “I wouldn’t be too worried Arthur. I’m sure the guild shall be more than happy to accept you into their ranks, and if you end up serving a powerful enough master, the likelihood that you end up in the upper echelon of that organisation is almost certain.”

Arthur shook his head and responded, “It’s not entering the organisation I am worried about, Maximus. It’s more that I am concerned about the…”

Their conversation was interrupted by the bursting into the room of the young demi-human assistant whose face was aghast with concern. Maximus, clearly thinking the boy’s clear terror was him overreacting, raised his eyebrow at the boy and asked dismissively, “What in the world has you bursting into the dining room like a madman boy? It’s not my wife, is it?”

The boy shook his head, before looking at Arthur warily and then saying, “A few days ago The Crown Prince was attacked in the royal palace by a crew of unknown assassins. The Imperial Emperor…”

“WHAT?!” Maximus roared, erupting to his feet and releasing a titanic blood-soaked aura – evaporating the chair he was just sitting on in the process as well as scaring both his assistant and the unprepared Arthur.

“Does the child live?!” Maximus yelled at his assistant, both panic and fury clear in his voice.

His assistant could only meekly get out a “Yes” in response, the single word calming Maximus down somewhat but even so, the man was clearly beyond furious still.

“Which verminous schemer does his Imperial Majesty suspect to have hired the accursed assassins?! I shall render their entire dynasty to ash! Not one of their kind shall escape my wrath.” The enraged general bellowed out, clearly forgetting all about Arthur – quite reasonably so.

The man’s assistant replied nervously, “His Imperial Majesty currently suspects the Amean Duchy of orchestrating the attack.”

The boy’s words clearly rang true to Maximus’ ears as the Marshall began cursing in a tongue that Arthur didn’t understand, but Arthur could tell that every word carried sheer hatred and distaste towards this Duke of Amean.

Seeing that if he didn’t say something soon his boss might incinerate the Amean duchy, his assistant spoke up once again, “But nothing has been confirmed and the duke firmly denies being involved, and even allowed Imperial forces to search his home for clues and they found nothing.”

Maximus slammed his fist against the wall of the dining area – surprisingly doing no damage to the ship in the process. Then he ordered in an eerily calm voice, “I hereby authorise this ship to use the emergency Imperial lanes to travel straight to the capital, have us at the Imperial Palace by tomorrow evening.”

His assistant quickly ran out of the room to obey his boss’ command, leaving the dining room in near-total silence. Until Maximus spoke, his voice calm yet loaded with an unfathomable depth of power, “Mr Goodman, I am sure that I need not say this to one as intelligent as you but still. You are to keep all the information that you heard this evening to yourself and if you should ever tell another soul about what you just heard, be it to a priest or to your grandson, I and the entire Imperium shall not only destroy you but also destroy every single Earthling that yet lives.”

Arthur gulped in terror before nodding in understanding, “I understand Sir Marshall. I shall keep what I heard to myself. I swear it on my honour.”

Then, the man left Arthur alone in the dining room. Arthur sat in complete silence, contemplating not only the explosive news he’d just heard but also the fact that the man with whom he’d become so familiar of late had just threatened to kill hundreds of millions of people to keep him silent. His sense of inner peace now threatened to implode into a million different pieces before his mind’s eye once again as a familiar harsh reality showed its ugly head once more. That reality was that maybe the peaceful life that he’d dreamed of ever since they'd started heading to the capital to cure Lucas might never come to pass.

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Caesar jolted awake; a familiar headache pounding in his head. He looked around him, but his room was totally dark save for a small candle on his bedside drawer that illuminated a small parchment on which was written a note from his father. He would read the note later, for now, he just needed to get something, anything really, to drink – the crown prince began almost drooling as he imagined drinking a nice cold glass of enchanted water.

However, once again, no matter how hard he tried – he just couldn’t reach the door handle, him being far too small to reach the lofty bars. Despite this, however, or perhaps because of this, his efforts were not fruitless as suddenly flashes of recent memories he’d momentarily forgotten began flickering in his mind.

He’d been shot. Cassius has been shot. He’d used his special Foresight skill.

Each memory hammered his mind with tremendous power but the final realisation, more than the first two combined, hit Caesar hard due to his current state. His head drooped low, and his stomach began rumbling ferociously, and the boy prince realised just how hungry he was as well as thirsty. His body desperately wanted to eat and or drink but he knew that indulging his body would only hurt him now.

The price of future sight was degradation in the future and for Caesar, that took the form of being unable to eat or drink for at least a week. This was no regular hunger or thirst, but a form of magically enhanced torture that grew worse and worse the more that one used the skill in question. His father had warned him against using the skill for anything other than emergencies, and Caesar had only used it once before, but that one time had taught him well enough that this would be a terrible week.

The anticipation of true agony did much to depress Caesar’s mood as he walked back to his ginormous bed and snuck back underneath the warm heavenly covers. However, his mind was too plagued by questions to go back to sleep. He wanted to know more than anything whether Cassius was ok and he wanted to know why someone would attack him out of nowhere, and most of all he dreaded the punishment that his father would dish out to him once he’d finished recovering from the after-effects of using Foresight.

His father was a harsh man whose mode of parenting very much relied on punishment and disincentives, but even he was not so cruel as to further punish Caesar whilst he was already doomed to basically starve for the next few days. Though he doubted he'd receive any aid either, and if that was the extent of the punishment then that would probably be classified as his father being merciful considering that Caesar had almost gotten himself killed.

The Crown Prince closed his eyes and tried to distract his mind from thinking too much about the pain he was about to endure, by instead focusing it on wondering about Cassius. He could just about remember the giant teen being hit in the leg with a bolt, but he couldn't remember anything after being shot for the second time. He hoped with all his heart that the older boy was fine - his only friend could not die because of him, that would be too much for the young prince to handle.

Though his concern for his friend was real, his insatiable hunger was as well and was quickly consuming his sanity, so he needed something else to distract him. Then he remembered the note, and his eyes shot open and he glanced at the note on his bedside drawer. The note's contents were not more than a couple sentences, but each word seemed perfectly designed to make him feel even worse for what he had done.

He bowed his head in shame as he read the note over and over again.

Child,

By the time you read this, you will already feel the consequences of your actions.

Yet not only are you suffering for your insolence, but now so is your 'friend'.

I know you will endure the suffering with manly virtue, for you are my rightful son and heir, but know that you have disappointed me greatly.

We shall discuss this incident after your hunger normalises.

Augustus Hergalexius. Your Father

Caesar could almost hear his father's voice bellowing each word into his ears as he read each word. No scribe had written this. No nanny had fabricated this to punish him. This was a note well and truly written to him by his all-mighty father. Knowing that his father meant every word with 100% conviction made each word feel like a dagger striking at his heart - the pain produced by the note's words was far more intolerable than the hunger he was feeling.

It was a numb and throbbing pain around his heart. Similar in kind to the pain he had felt when he was told by his father that his mother had died because of him, though not directly. His bodily needs suddenly no longer mattered to Caesar as all he felt was guilt, shame, and regret. He wanted to make it up to his father, to Cassius who had been hurt because of him, but stuck in his room as he was he could do absolutely nothing but endure the weeks of agony that lay ahead as his father said he had to.

Caesar knew deep down that he would cry out in desperation. That he would beg for relief and receive none. For he knew most of all that he was alone. He'd let down everyone around him and now they were nowhere to be seen. He would endure the physical hunger and thirst of his body, so at the end of it all he may feast in their company once more.