“So, King Metron, to what do I owe this about-face that you’ve shown me?” The king in question sighed and motioned to his wife.

“Sorry dear, can you get me a glass of wine? I have a feeling I’ll need a bit of alcohol tonight.”

“Sure, honey. Do you want Watercolor or Pastel?”

“Watercolor please. Today is only Thursday after all. Pastel might be a little too strong for a weekday.” The two shared a kiss and Queen Metron pulled away first, tracing her finger down the king’s body. She caressed his neck before moving off of him, licking her lips as she walked out of the room.

If that was how they displayed their affection in front of others, it was no wonder that some, if not all of their children were sexual deviants.

The king gave a wistful sigh after turning back to me. “To be honest, half of my actions towards you were to keep up my appearances in the court. I wouldn’t have wanted the other nobles pressuring the throne to find out that we, or even the Judgment System for that matter, had no control over your actions. There’s also the matter of our allied front against whatever organization is targeting the Metron Kingdom at the moment. Be it the Neo-Yakuza, Kiba, or the Shippo, we need to come together for this.”

“Reasonable… I guess.” As if such an asinine reason would make sense to me. If your politics are so fractured that you need to act abusive towards another person, that’s your own damn fault. “And the other reason?”

Queen Metron returned with the requested glass of wine and took a seat next to the king. “Truth be told,” he sniffed, “I just don’t like you being around my daughters.” I struggled to keep the emotionless smile on my face at his words. The feelings are mutual you prick,

“I’ll assume you aren’t stupid, and knew the conditions of accepting a kingdom key, and the role of Paladin that you chose.”

“A wise assumption.” I responded to King Metron, who was sitting across from me in his private chambers. “Do tell though, why did you instantly trust me against your own son?”

The king swirled a deep blue wine in a clear chalice, and took a small sip before answering. “My eyes, and my ears.”

I cocked my head in confusion while the king continued to sit in silence. “Master, he means his information network.” My mouth opened and closed at Judgment’s analysis, causing me to chide myself for overthinking something so simple.

“Be careful Master. Don’t try to see shadows when there’s nothing to cast them.” Duly noted. Oddly poetic for an AI, don’t you think?

“By my calculations, you are attracted to women with a cunning intellect. I have come to the conclusion that behaving intelligently is a good way to improve our working relationship." I inwardly sighed at the comment, but kept a smile on my face for the king.

“What did your eyes and ears tell you… my King?” Despite my best efforts, my face contorted as I spoke to the king in a subservient manner. No matter how I may have felt about him, or still feel about him now, I was a professional.

Not to mention, it wouldn’t be funny if he decided to denounce my position and throw me into prison. Of course, I had a contingency plan in place, but I’d rather not make an enemy out the world yet. I still didn’t nearly have enough resources at my disposal for that.

“For one, despite how I may personally feel about it, it is a fact that you seem to be getting along well with my daughters.” My heart started to race, and the queen’s next sentence amplified it even more so.

“I think it would be a good idea to match you up with one of our sons or daughters and marry into the royal family.” No no no no no! I mean, friends with benefits is fine with me, but to be tied down to a country is-

“Not to mention,” the queen added, “Lucina seems quite taken by you.” A small frown came over my face, causing the queen to laugh.

“No need to be so defensive dear. Her room is right next to ours. It’s a good thing we have good walls for the most part, because I fear that girl would have woken up everyone in the castle otherwise. Oh, and don’t worry. I’ve known of her sexual preferences for a while. Comes with being a mother. Frankly, the amount of times she’s been comforting herself since your first encounter with her is frightening. I would ask what you did, but I confiscated the security footage from her Judgment device.”

The king shook his head but said nothing. Nice to know who wears the pants outside of the throne room. “My lady, please, I beg of you to reconsider.”

“Hm? My daughter is not good enough for you?” I sighed and glared at Queen Metron, already tired of this farce she had constructed.

“You know that’s not what I meant. Honestly, I’m so sick and tired of dealing with you people. Let me just continue to do my business unmolested. I’ll steer clear of whatever shitstorm you and your husband have concocted, and you’ll stop pestering me with trivial matters such as this Kingdom’s internal affairs. Don’t forget, my ‘loyalty’ is to this kingdom. Not its rulers.”

The queen’s smile stretched while the king only looked mildly offended. “See, I told you honey.” Queen Metron rubbed her husband’s shoulder. “He’s much better when he’s like this. Really exudes an air of confidence when he’s playing the rebel.”

I stood up and started to leave the room. “I’ll give you a chance to cool down. Why don’t you interrogate Brice now? I’m sure you’ll be able to get some information out of him. We’ll send someone for you later.”

I turned around in false shock, doing my best to sell the bit. “You’re encouraging me to torture your own son?”

Queen Metron smiled. “Of course, sweetie. Do you really think that familial value is important? I’m sure all three of us in this room know that Brice isn’t destined for greatness. In fact, he’s precisely the kind of person who gets in his own way, all the way into his grave.”

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

“Only, now he’s getting in the way of the kingdom and it’s profits. Honestly, conspiring with terrorists just because you stepped on his ego a bit? What would have happened to our country had you not killed the cyber-stein motherbrain before it infected the arena?”

“So yes, you have my permission, as his mother and the queen of this country, to torture him at your discretion. Oh, but you’d enjoy it anyway, wouldn’t you? Have fun then!”

I looked at her in disgust. I could almost visualize a smiling emoji appearing from her words. Scoffing at the couple, I slammed the doors and walked briskly down the hall until I stopped at an elevator entrance. Did you set the espi programs into their devices?

“Yes, Master, both the king and queen were hacked. Would you like to listen to their conversation?”

I thought for a moment, pressing the button downwards to the lowest floor of the castle. Sure. I’m curious to see if they bought my acting or not.

My vision fuzzed, and a small, black box with a white line indicating sound waves appeared in the lower left corner of my sight.

“Well that went well.” King Metron’s voice reverberated in my ears.

“Oh come on, honey. You know how I get when I see a man with defiant eyes. It just makes me want to bend him to my will.”

The Queen’s words sent a shiver down my spine as the elevator doors opened. Stepping inside, I listened closely to the next words that were spoken.

“Ah, I really like him. Besides, if one of them manages to seduce him, we can bend Judgment to our own-”

She stopped speaking abruptly, and the sound of palm hitting face echoed throughout my ears.

“Starlords rotten taint. We’ve been had, Roger. No wonder he was so eager to leave the room. Restore your Judgment device to default settings. He bugged us. The feed from Roger Metron’s device disappeared, leaving only Queen Cindy’s running.

“Well played, Joshua. I can admire acting like yours. Too bad you’re inexperienced and it leaked through in your final act, although, besides that I give you passing marks. I’ll look forward to more of these games between us in the future.”

And with that, the queen went radio silent. As the elevator continued down towards the prison, I shivered. “Would you like me to reupload the software onto their home cloud, Master?”

I took a deep breath. No, that’s alright. They’ll probably be overly cautious now that they figured out. It was a gamble that failed, but I’m just lucky that this gamble had little at stake.

The doors opened, and I was greeted by the sight of Brice Metron strapped down to a table. Behind every great man is an even greater woman… was the quote, wasn’t it? Meh, even if it wasn’t, it needed to be written that way.

I walked up to the princeling, whose eyes were puffy from crying. He shrieked when he saw me. “What are you doing here!? Where are my parents!? I demand to see them!”

I gave Brice my best cold, dead eyes and walked closer to him.

“Stop! Don’t come closer!” I lifted my hands towards his face, and he screamed. He tried to escape, violently shaking the metal table he was on and injuring himself against his restraints.

“Guards! Brothers, Sisters! Mother!” He continued wailing as I drew closer, then went silent as I placed a hand on his Judgment panel. Judgment, shut down the use of the elevator until we’re done with the interrogation.

“As you command, Master.” There was a whirring noise as I assume some bolts locked into place in the elevator shaft behind me. Enter us into subspace.

“Safety mechanisms exclusive to the royal family prevent me from doing that. Shall I override his panel’s commands?”

The quicker the better.

“Understood, Master.” Only a brief moment after Judgment spoke to me was I transferred into another subspace. Only, this one was a bit different than the rest.

“What the fuck is this?”

“I don’t know Master. This is the first time that I am ‘experiencing’ data instead of merely processing it.” I looked around the wretched landscape: a massive, maybe two football stadiums wide throne room. Strewn across it’s rust-colored floors were the bodies of many people. As I waded closer through the corpses, the throne came into view.

It was an atrocity to look at, a tan throne with spikes on the headrest and thorns adorning it. The spikes were littered with the severed heads of the Metron royal family. A lone boy was sitting on the throne, blood pooling in the seat beneath him.

“Decapitation is so medieval.” I sighed, causing Brice to look up at me. When he saw me, his face contorted, but he said nothing.

“Ah, did you finally realize that screaming won’t get you anywhere? I like fast learners.” I grabbed his arm and threw him off the throne. “So,” I said, looking around at the landscape, “care to explain this mess?”

“How dare you.” He whispered. “This is my rightful path to the throne! A bloody escapade where I’ll need to crawl over the bodies of my fallen-!”

I punched him right where he stood, sending him spinning into the arm of the throne. He he hit his head, and a low groan escaped his lips. Judgment, I thought people couldn’t interact with objects inside subspace.

“That only applies to other people, Master. A person’s subspace is a fragment of the reality in which they view the world, therefore they are bound by the laws that govern it.”

My mind flashed back to my own dark, twisted subspace and Reya’s empty one. A grin formed on my face as my mind drifted, thinking about what Lucina’s looked like.

“However,” Judgment thankfully put a stop to my thoughts, “all subspaces are linked within the network, therefore giving you access, and through my software, admin privileges.”

“I see. I guess it’s time to clean this place up then.” Brice tilted his head up at my words, and watched in horror as I raised my hand.

Judgment, begin restoring his subspace to factory settings. “As you wish, Master.” Brice twitched, and glared up at me.

“What did you do!?” I cocked my head and frowned.

“What do you mean?”

“I can feel it! You… you did something to me. It feels wrong, awful, unnatural! What are you doing!?” Black veins came to the surface of his skin, becoming larger and larger until his skin was pitch black.

There was a deafening bang, and a bright black light that engulfed the world for a moment. When it faded, the room was pure white, and clear of any blood or body. The once menacing throne had turned into a simple white, wooden rocking chair.

A message popped up in my vision. It was the queen, wanting to know why her son’s vitals had dropped so much. Ignoring it, I looked at the prince in question.

His eyes were vacant, and he had calmed down significantly. What’s wrong with him?

“He has had his subspace, an area which is inexorably linked to his psyche, tampered with like it was a plaything. It’s a miracle he is still responsive at all. As he is now, he shouldn’t have the mental faculties to lie to you, although I will still monitor his vitals as a precaution. Really Master, at this rate, his parent’s might have to restore his brain from a backup copy.”

“Not my problem.” I shrugged, moving closer to Brice. Tilting his head up, I said, “I refuse to believe that you yourself had contact with anyone of significance to the terrorists. Tell me, who was your middle man to the Luong Empire?”

Brice, eyes still glassy, answered in three words. “Head Researcher Teramoto.”