The country of Saracondra was one that focused heavily on might and power. The surrounding countries were similar, as all of them were founded by tyrants, but Saracondra was a particular culprit of the mindset.
There was no better piece of evidence for that point than the royal palace. It was separated from the city surrounding it by five moats and six enormous walls. It boasted eight towers each with space to keep a trebuchet on the roof. There were over a thousand guards under the direct employment of the dictator and you would be hard pressed to find a room that didn’t have at least three hidden weapons in the furniture.
Sitting on the throne in such a palace was Roland Sarah Filluqe, the current dictator of Saracondra, who was currently lost in his thoughts. He was not thinking about anything in particular, letting his mind wander in an attempt to rest and get away from his work. The problem was that such wandering often led his mind right back to his plans to conquer the world, which was work. This annoyed him because this was a rare moment he had to himself, and he didn’t want to spend it thinking about how his plans would probably fail if he can’t get that ridiculous Hype character under a mind control curse.
“Your glorious dictator, Persain Sarah Corsn and Selina Sarah Filluqe request an audience.” A guard by the door broke the enjoyed silence.
“See them in.” Roland dismissively waved a hand.
After speaking, the doors to the throne room opened to reveal two of his subjects. Who walked into the middle of the room and bowed.
On the right was a medium sized, slender man. He was wearing armor that was granted to foot soldiers, and it showed decades of use. This was Persain, the first in command of Roland’s army as well as his right hand man. He arguably made use of him far too much to be safe, especially when he didn’t even know something as basic as Persian’s hair color because he never took off his helmet.
On the left was a tall, bulky woman. Her armor was so luxurious that it was hard to believe it wasn’t cerimonial. This was Selina, his daughter and a high ranking general in his military. Frankly, he didn’t really have high hopes for her. Sure, she was remarkably competent in her martial and mental prowess, but she lacked the necessary ferocity to succeed him.
“My lord, we have finished the investigation and your initial suspicion has been proven true. Charlie Hype is indeed alive.” Persain was the first to speak.
While the report was respectful and only gave the relevant information of the investigation, Roland became annoyed at the way this information was presented as a discovery.
“Suspicion? What do you mean suspicion? It was obvious from the start that he was alive. Like anyone would believe in a cause of death like that.” The cause of death Charlie had chosen was also a point of annoyance for Roland. It could have been anything from poisoning, to an accident while fighting a monster, but he went with that instead.
Roland’s expression soured as he remembered it. Charlie was walking along normally, when all of a sudden he keeled over, groaning about stomach pain. When enough people in the surrounding area had heard about his supposed stomach ache, he exploded. EXPLODED! How does that even make sense?! AND PEOPLE BELIEVED IT TOO! Thousands of people genuinely mourned his death. How are they so gullible? People don’t just spontaneously combust you DAFT MORONS!
As Roland cried that in his heart, he realized he was gripping his throne a little too hard and got his emotions under control. “I hope your investigation went further than surface level.”
“It has, while we were unable to find his location, we believe we have ascertained his motive for faking his death. Selina, if you will.” Persain responded while handing the rest of the report off to Selina.
“We believe the primary reason for Charlie Hype’s disappearance is that he learned of our plans. Specifically, the plan to curse the medals for the Tournament of the War God and use the winners as weapons of war. Given his past disrespect to his country, it makes sense that he would remove himself from the public eye and join a group of terrorists or similar.”
“Hmmm.” Roland thought to himself, it made sense that Charlie would do something like that. He had always been against expanding the country, saying something along the lines of “We’ll just lose any territory we gain, so what’s the point?” Charlie was lucky he didn’t have him executed. Honestly, the only reason Roland kept him alive when he was so critical of the dictatorship was because he planned to use him as a weapon.
Roland assumed Charlie was against the country on a moral level. Using his public image to spread the issues with “unnecessary expansion” and “unfair taxes”. In reality, Charlie only said expansion was stupid because he knew the world was a video game where the countries, and players by extension, would be battling for control of the world. It wouldn’t make sense from a gameplay perspective if the countries didn’t start on an even playing field. As for the criticism of the taxes, he just didn’t want to pay them. It was Roland’s misunderstanding.
“While we assume Charlie would try to join some kind of organization aligned against us, we believe that will take time. His decision to fake his death seems to have been a split second decision, and he was not affiliated with any terrorist group before. He was acting normally until the night after the final match of the tournament. When he suddenly, and flusteredly, asked if he could drop out of the tournament and give first place to the runner up. Obviously, we declined. Not only because we wanted him to wear the cursed medal, but he had already won the tournament so quitting then was just ridiculous. After we declined he became even more anxious, at which point he exploded. Based on this sequence of events we can infer that he somehow learned of our plan after the tournament and quickly decided that faking his death was the only course of action.” Selina continued, never stopping to breath. She didn’t seem to be bothered by that though.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
“Is that all?” Roland asked.
“Yes.”
“Then Persain, you will lead a search party to find Charlie. No matter what we have to make sure we curse him or our plans of expansion won’t be able to go far. Also, keep this investigation a secret. If we can convince the surrounding countries he’s dead, they’ll be completely unprepared for an assault led by him.” Roland was quick to make a decision.
“My lord, if I may, I would like to head the investigation. I have less responsibilities than Persian, thus I would be able to be more efficient.” Selina spoke up after a moment of hesitation.
“No, I want this done without the masses knowing he’s alive. If we curse him and put a mask on him no one will be able to tell we usurped his free will. That makes this situation more delicate. Persian will do it.” Roland shot her down as soon as she was done talking. “If that is all, you are dismissed.”
Both Selina and Persian bowed, then left the room. Leaving Roland once again with his thoughts.
----------------------------------------
Selina carefully walked out of the throne room. She carefully bid farewell to Persain and headed toward her room. She carefully controlled her breathing. She carefully saluted every guard she happened to meet on her way.
As she stood in front of the door to her room she carefully turned the knob. It jammed. She stared at it for a moment. She carefully tried again. It jammed. She carefully made sure there was no one in the hallway. She forced her hands between the door and its frame, and ripped the door off its hinges. Then she spent the next several, cathartic minutes tearing the door into smaller and smaller pieces.
“Rrrghhhr….. Ggggghhhhh!” Making guttural noises of seething rage.
Once Selina was done turning one door into many, smaller doors, she put the pieces into a pile. She also noticed that the pile had reached about half her height. She decided to blame this on her father, her temper wouldn’t boil over as much if he wasn’t so… infuriating.
Selina’s relationship with Roland was always less of a familial relationship and more of a professional one. She was fine with that, it was easy and clean. Boiling down to: she does shit, she gets shit. The problem is that she’s been getting less and less shit to do. It started slow, Roland gives one of her tasks to Persain every once in awhile. Fine, but then it got so out of hand that Persain schedules his days down to the second while she’s lucky if she leaves the palace more than once a week!
The part that she hated the most about this ridiculous state of affairs was that when she told Roland about this concern, he dismissed it saying she didn’t have enough achievements or something. How the hell am I supposed to get achievements if you don’t let me do anything?! Even if I don’t have enough “achievements” I’m still level 45. FORTY FUCKING FIVE! Do you have any idea how hard it is to find someone who can beat a level 45? Is Persain level 45? NO! HE’S LEVEL 40! EVEN A CHILD KNOWS HOW BIG OF A DIFFERENCE THAT IS! She cried these things in her heart.
Even if she ignored her father’s incompetency in delegation, another big issue is that his ambitions are just too large. Roland sees it as his absolute duty to take over the world. He will do anything in his power to make it happen. Selina found Roland stupid for this. Granted, she wanted to take over the world as well, just as much probably, but the key difference is that Selina understood that a country has to not be in shambles to be able to do that.
Roland had spent most of the country’s budget to increase the strength of the military, ignoring important things like road infrastructure or government personnel. He left the actual managing of most of the countries land to any noble that just happened to be in the area. The amount of corruption that goes on at the local level because of this is ridiculous.
Due to these compounding factors, Selina decided that it was in her best interest to overthrow Roland. The problem was that if she just walked up to Roland and stabbed him she would be quickly dogpiled by everyone in the palace. She may be the strongest individual here but she’s not strong enough to fight everyone else on her own.
That was where Charlie Hype would come in. She knew that she would be able to do it if they were fighting together, and he was clearly unsatisfied with Roland as the dictator so she assumed if she could explain the plan to him he would be on board. That’s why she needed to head the investigation.
But yet again, Persain gets all the work. She could work with this though. With Persain busy with the investigation, Roland would have to give Selina her fair share of stuff to do, and it’s not her fault if her responsibilities just so happened to make her go where the investigation is taking place.
With the crude beginnings of a plan in mind, Selina went to acquire a new door.
----------------------------------------
I found a good inn after about an hour of walking. It really shouldn’t have taken an hour, but three feet of snow is always hard to traverse. Also I had to stop every couple of minutes to make sure Duke hadn’t died. I ordered myself some dinner and that’s when I realized that I had no real way to feed Duke. I don’t have breasts and if Duke didn’t understand that I’d ground him. Luckily the barkeep happened to have some duckmilk. So I bought her entire stock. Unfortunately, it was marked up as hell. All I’ve got is a measly 20 gold left. Looks like I’ll have to give Duke a lesson in highway robbery.
Money troubles aside, I have to deal with the problem at hand. I knew I’d have to deal with this eventually, but I was less prepared than I’d hoped. I always wanted kids but I never actually got any, because of this I don’t know the exact method to change a baby.
“Ok Duke, I can’t afford any diapers nor do they exist in this world. Thus I’m gonna put you into my towel, clean your rag, then move you back to your rag on rotation.”
With a plan in mind I remove the dirty rag covering Duke and....
…
…
…
Duke is a GIRL?!