In the elevator, he felt the upward movement take place, and then everything went dark again. This time, however, when light entered his eyes again he wasn’t lying down; he was still standing. With gratitude, he noticed he wasn’t in prison. Instead, there was a huge castle in front of him, and on his sides, he could see a flourishing city and a stern looking man, staring at him impatiently.

“Hurry, you don’t want to make the king wait, do you?” he asked Lucas. The man was about forty years old and had a respectful appearance, wearing shiny full metal armor, giving him the look of a valiant warrior. But when he spoke, Lucas got the impression he was nothing but a servant for this King.

Perhaps a member of his guard? Lucas thought, entering the story much faster than he did back on the first floor. This time around, he was prepared, and he was glad to discover that he was still wearing his old clothes and had access to all the perks of the system, including the ring. The man saw him looking at the ring in his hand and gave him a small nudge, but when Lucas glanced at him, he flinched. Is he afraid of me?

It certainly seemed that way, as the man didn’t dare look in his eyes or touch him again. But forced by his sense of duty, he reinforced what he had previously said: “The King doesn’t like to wait…”

“Ok, ok, chill. I just got here,” Lucas said, a little annoyed by all that rush. He didn’t even had time to look around the city yet, and people were already inciting him to do things. Another thing that was on his mind was that his objective on this floor hadn’t popped up yet. Maybe it has something to do with this appointment with the King, Lucas thought.

“What do you mean you just got here? I thought you had arrived yesterday,” the man replied, breaking Lucas out of his thoughts.

“Oh, yeah, I did… but it’s still too little to get to know the city,” Lucas lied, trying not to break character.

“You will have plenty of time for that later,” the man said, anxiously.

“Yes, yes, I’m going,” Lucas said, giving one final glance towards the city.

He wasn’t sure about this meeting with the king. He had never seen one and had no idea how he should behave. This uncertainty increased when he considered the fact that he wasn’t sure what his role was in that play. Was he someone respected? Feared, maybe, judging by the reaction of that man towards him. Whatever, if anything bad happens, I can just slash my way out, Lucas thought, happy to have his blades back with him for this one.

He crossed the bridge after the guards let him in and arrived at the castle, standing in the middle of a river. It looked like any medieval castle he had ever seen, made from rocks and with a few flags waving in the wind on top of the walls. Surprisingly enough, Lucas didn’t feel intimidated walking into that fantastic setting. He decided to act like this was all some game, and in a certain sense, it really was, apart from the small detail that he could die in it.

After climbing lot of stairs with guards following him around, he finally arrived at the door of the King’s throne room, where he was told the King was waiting for him. They also said that he should come alone, despite the concerned looks he received from an older man, whom he assumed was the head of the royal guard, judging by the authoritative tone he used to speak to him.

That man also mentioned that they would come in if anything out of the ordinary happened. It wasn’t hard to figure out that the man was threatening him, but Lucas ignored all that nonsense and walked into the room.

The room was pretty big, with next to nothing in it apart from the massive throne standing tall on the other end, and a fat bearded man that was seated on it. Lucas wasn’t sure if he should wait or just walk towards him, and in the end, he chose the latter.

After arriving in front of the man, who didn’t take his eyes out of him the entire time, Lucas stood there for a couple of seconds, trying to remember the correct honorifics. Finally, he spoke: “Your Majesty…”

“Lord of shadows, he who kills without being seen, I asked you to come here because I require your services.” The man spoke with a pleading tone that Lucas didn’t expect to hear from a king. But what was more surprising were the titles the man gave him. Lord of shadows… he had to admit it sounded kind of cool.

“Can you… Can your Majesty…” Lucas started, but the king interrupted.

“There’s no need for you to speak with me in such a way; you’re not my subject after all, and you must hold more power than I can imagine,” the king said. Lucas nodded, happy to drop all that polite act he was playing.

“Then can you explain what exactly you want me to do?” Lucas asked, and the king’s expression turned grave.

“Yes, but you must understand that this is a sensitive topic for me, and I don’t want a word of what I’m about to say to get out, do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand. It will stay between us.”

The king nodded and spoke again. “A few days ago, my son, the crown prince, was kidnapped by the terrorists that have been threatening my kingdom lately. You must’ve heard about them,” The king said, and Lucas only nodded for him to proceed.

“Well, the circumstances of his kidnapping are rather suspicious, and the location of the prince is well known. But my men believe the place was set as a trap for us to lose even more manpower and further weaken the kingdom as a whole, making it easier for a certain individual to claim.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Do you mean the prince?” Lucas asked, surprised.

“Precisely. My son and I are not on good terms, and while I’m not sure, I suspect he could be at fault of treason,” a little of the king’s anger could be heard in his voice at that moment. “Nevertheless, he is my son, and I want to be able to punish him when and how I see fit. So my mission to you is to go into the enemy’s territory and retrieve my son, killing as many men as possible on the way.” Before Lucas could say anything, the king continued.

“However, I’m aware of the difficulty of that mission, seeing that it is unknown how many enemies you will be facing. So I’ll consider the mission accomplished even if you don’t manage to bring back my son, but only if you kill their leader, the infamous Sultan.”

Lucas thought the king was expecting a reaction from him, but as he gave him nothing, he kept on talking.

“I shouldn’t be surprised his name don’t scare you, but you must now that this man has caused enough trouble for me and my kingdom, and his death would be even more valuable to me than the return of my son.”

Nothing like family love, Lucas thought. “What is the reward?” Lucas asked with a sheepish smile. He knew his rewards would be given by the system, but if he could take something extra from the king, wouldn’t that be nice?”

The King didn’t seem confused by his question, however, he acted like it was expected. “If you manage to accomplish the mission, I’ll give you more gold than you’ve ever seen in your life!” He said it in a deep tone.

Lucas was pretty happy with this reply and answered promptly: “I’ll do it; just point me to their location.”

The King nodded with a smile on his face. “I knew the great Lord of Shadows wouldn’t disappoint me. My men will tell you where they are. Good Luck!”

Lucas left the king’s throne room and was escorted out of the castle. They told him the general location of the enemy’s hidden place on the way, but he realized he didn’t even need them to tell him. He could see a light pointing at the location even from miles away, and a quest had popped up for him.

*Objective: Rescue the king’s son, or kill the mighty Sultan.*

Lucas didn’t immediately leave after his destination, however, because he was curious about that little city near the castle. It was the first city he saw since arriving in Ponos apart from Zoria, so it was natural for him to be a little curious. Even if that place wasn’t exactly in Ponos, it was still a post-system world.

He was also curious about its size. In his first challenge, he was already a little surprised by the size of the prison, considering he was technically inside a tower. But considering how many things a ring of all things could store, it wasn’t so surprising. The second challenge took things to another level. There wasn’t only the castle or the city; there were even things beyond it, and Lucas wondered what would happen if, instead of doing his objective, he decided to explore the things of this world.

Actually, now that I think about it, can I store things from this place in my ring? Lucas thought. If he could, that would mean he could seek out treasures on this world, apart from doing his mission. But if he couldn’t, that would mean the king had just scammed him with that promise of gold, and he would leave the floor empty-handed after completing his mission. Anxious to find out the answer to this question, he entered the next bar he passed through to see if he could find something that he could store on his ring.

There were quite a few men drinking in there, and they didn’t seem to notice when he walked inside and ordered a beer from the waitress at the counter. He found himself a place to sit. He wasn’t too keen on beer actually, but he thought it would be too weird to order a coke in a place like this. From what he could gather from the city outside, he was in a pretty medieval place. Zoria was sort of medieval too, but nothing like this.

There was simply no pavement or any sort of technology to be seen. The buildings were falling to pieces, and people’s clothes were all made of wool or leather, not to mention their teeth or their breath. So, yeah, no coke for him today.

As soon as the smiling waitress delivered his beer, Lucas tried to place it on his ring, but nothing happened. No treasures or gold for me then, dang, Lucas thought, already expecting some shenanigans like that from the system to keep him from plundering this floor.

With his dreams crushed, he took a sip of his drink and find out it was even worse than he had imagined. Just when he was about to pay for it and leave, however, he heard something from a table close to him that caught his attention, and he listened in with his back turned towards the source of the conversation.

“… yeah, the king is too afraid of him. I heard he is looking for some fool to go do the job for him,” a drunk voice said.

“Is there someone stupid enough to face that monster?” another coarse voice said.

“I mean, if the king paid me well enough, I might try my luck,” a voice coming from a young male sounded in response.

“Hahaha, you wouldn’t even be able to reach him, much less kill him. This is Sultan we are talking about, the man who killed an army all by himself, not someone you can talk about like that,” the first drunken voice spoke again.

“You sound like you respect him,” the coarse voice replied.

“I respect his skill with that weird sword of his. It’s much more than I can say for the king or his stupid son,” was his reply.

After hearing that last part, Lucas paid for his beer and left. It seemed like the king had really lost the respect of his subjects, probably due to the recent attacks by this terrorist group he mentioned. However, the way they talked about Sultan made Lucas feel excited. He should be a good opponent for me to test my blades, he thought with a smile.

His goal was to complete both objectives—rescue the prince and kill this Sultan—just because that was probably the best way to get the most points out of this floor. After leaving the bar, Lucas walked a little more around the city, but he came to the conclusion that there wasn’t much to see.

It was a pretty shitty town, and the recent attacks hadn’t done much to improve it. The only thing of interest was all the gossip around the town, that was probably made so whoever took the challenge had a heads-up, before finding the enemy, but Lucas wasn’t interested in that. Who likes spoilers, after all?

After leaving the city, Lucas saw a pretty desolated landscape in front of him, and out there somewhere, he saw a glow marking his objective. His path towards it didn’t have many obstacles, but it was a few miles away, so he soon started running with a smile on his face.

It was the first time he had made a full-on sprint ever since gaining his super-human agility, and it felt amazing, his hair waving in the air as he increased his speed more and more. But just when he was about to reach his maximum speed, he saw something that almost made him stumble to the ground: there was a person moving slowly through the desolate place on a turtle’s back, or at least it looked like a turtle, but it had very long legs.

The man was reading a book, completely immersed in it, to the point he didn’t even see Lucas. But that wasn’t what made Lucas almost lose his balance; it was the man’s clothes. They were completely black, giving the man an indistinguishable dark aura. Lucas made a hasty stop and stared at it in shock.

Are those… are those Faruk’s clothes?