We were back in the Mage room. Wallaheesh Galamon was bound to a chair by some banners from the wall as well as some straw I stole from the food storage room the first time I found it. He was still knocked out for now, and I had him gagged with, again, some straw. I was sitting on the large desk to the side, trying to understand how Mages use runes and how that relates to Mana.

I'm so happy I was able to buy enough time to set up that Energy Barrier and cast a Lightning Bolt through it, I thought.

Soon, I saw him stirring from the corner of my eye and walked up to him, holding a jagged rock. He opened his eyes, confusedly looking around. Once he saw me, his eyes widened.

“Trying to say something, huh?” I asked him, with an evil grin on my face. I decided to have fun and monologue at him like the villains used to do in those theater plays that we watched a lot back in my old town.

I took a deep breath before proceeding to tell him about my villainous backstory, smiling in pure joy the entire time at how fun it was while slowly walking back and forth to complete my villainous image.

“You must be wondering how I, a mere servant under Oath, know magic and was able to attack you. Well, listen to me as I tell you the fantastic tale of my mysterious origins and my current goal in your palace!

Hundreds of years ago, I was born in but an unassuming village to a poor single mother! My father was a druid, powerful relative to my small village, but oh so weak outside. He went off on an Excursion in the city to repel monsters and died before I was born… In a few years, I discovered how to use magic all on my own, because I was, of course, a genius.

Then, when I was a young man, disaster struck and my village was caught between two warring factions. I single handedly protected my village from utter annihilation and decided to rally up my all my friends, train them, and create an army. Using my obviously superior intellect and power, we became a secret organization that protects innocent towns and villages from being wiped off the map, for ages to come, due to our drastically increased life spans that was, again, thanks to the great Me! My powers in Magic and Cultivation have increased exponentially as I continued my life’s mission, which is why I was so easily able to bypass your stupid, puny Oath and let loose just a trillionth of my full power to defeat you even through your obvious life’s worth of Cultivation!

Now, my organization’s protection of innocent towns includes destroying anyone in our way! Which brings me to why I’m here…

The Galamon family is directly destroying innocent towns that had nothing to do with them. I am here to put a stop to it.

Now, there is only one way I will not hunt down every last Galamon and slaughter them all -- tell me everything you know, and I will leave the Galamon family intact, killing only the guilty members. Right now, if you don’t tell me absolutely everything you know about the Galamon family - everything, including the deepest, darkest secrets of the Galamon family - then you will be directly responsible for the obliteration of your entire family!

Is that what you want!? No? Then you know what you have to do. If I am satisfied with the information you provide, I will allow you and any innocent Galamon to live. If I am not… well, you know first hand what I can do with just a trillionth of my power. Imagine what I could do if I let loose my full power! You may as well kiss your puny palace goodbye as it turns to a pile of steaming ash as it burns in the pure intensity of the light that is my FULL POWER!!!”

I stopped pacing back and forth as I finished my amazing speech, or I should say, my steaming pile of bullshit that I cooked up spontaneously, with influences from my true real life events, some stock villains from one of my favorite theater plays back in the day, and my desire to sound as mind-numbingly powerful as possible.

Of course, while this was some of the most fun I have ever had since waking up in the dungeon cell, my monologue also had a very practical purpose: information. If I could scare this guy into giving me all the information he knows, I could use that to decide what to do next… including what to do with him.

He is clearly a douchebag and I would have no qualms killing him, especially if he actually tortures servants as he was threatening to me, I thought. However, he may be able to convince me of an alternative outcome in regards to his life if he gives me a good reason.

I expected Wallaheesh to understand the amount of apparent danger he was in, and that defying my command may even lead to the end of every Galamon in this palace if my words were true. Which of course, they weren’t.

But he didn’t need to know that.

Luckily, he reacted somewhat as expected as he looked at me with a determined expression and asked, “So I tell you everything I know about my family, and in return, you won’t destroy everything I know and love?”

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I smiled at him before answering, “Looks like you understand the offer that I made you with my generous, merciful heart.”

“I accept,” he said just about immediately.

It seemed that he really didn’t want to get on my bad side after he “realized” how powerful I was, I laughed mentally. I gestured for him to begin.

“So, first off, you should know that we have lots of secrets that even I don’t know. Only higher members of the family know most of them, and I am just a son of one of the Branch Lords. I can lead you to some of these people if you want to… talk… with them. Um, anyway, please please please don’t attack any nobles in the South Wing. That is where the children and their caretakers live, and I swear that as far as I know, no one there is responsible for any attacks on anyone.

And please try not to kill the knights around the palace. They are just doing their jobs and if they attack you for any reason later, just please knock them out painlessly or something. They don’t deserve the brunt of your power bec-“

I slapped him and cut him off. “I asked for information on your family, not for your begging to not kill people. I already told you I will only kill people who are guilty or deserve to die as long as you deliver on your end of the deal. If you choose to continue what you’re doing now and not deliver, I’ll just kill you, demolish this entire palace, and sing a song of “The Galamons are Falling Out” within the next five minutes. The song will take most of that time,” I kindly explained to him, while laughing inside at my amazing villain act.

He grit his teeth when he heard the name of the song that all Galamons religiously hate, but quickly went back to his fearful expression as he remembered the magnitude of his situation.

“I- I’m sorry. So, the West Wing is partly abandoned because of a toxic outbreak that happened in one of the Alchemy rooms about half a century ago, making most of that part of the palace uninhabitable until it was cleaned up. By the time it was fully cleaned out, most of the inhabitants of that part of the palace simply moved to another part of the palace or died in their rooms, believing that they could survive a simple toxic outbreak using magic, potions, force fields, or whatever. Needless to say, none of that worked and they died anyway.

Now, about fifty years after that incident, people never really moved back in to live in that part of the palace, and it became a large storage area of sorts where only those stupid, lowly servants go into. Also, most of the servant living quarters are in the West Wing.

Now, hmm, I already told you about the South Wing with the kids, so… the North Wing.

The North Wing is where most of the family big shots live and work. I suggest going there if you want to find out more than I can tell you about whatever you want to know. If you were a normal person, I would have warned you that most of these people are quite powerful in their own right with high levels of Magic or Cultivation, my father included, but I know you would be able to destroy almost anyone there without a blink of an eye, so I’ll just say that you need to use slightly more power on them than you used on me in order to defeat them.

These high-profile family members include the various Council Members, the Branch Lords like my father, the Revered Elders, and our Knight Commanders,” he said, and he was about to continue, but I cut him off.

“Hmm, interesting. Tell me more about these people,” I commanded. The more inner details I know about the family, the more information I can use against them later when the time comes, I thought. I’m pretty sure I can trust that at the very least, this guy believes that everything he’s telling me is true. He looks scared out of his wits and since I made him think that he was essentially saving his entire family, living in this palace at least, from utter destruction, he seems more than eager to give me as much reliable information as he could. Well, either that, or he’s even better of an actor than I am, I mused.

Immediately, he dove into descriptions of all these “high-profile family members.”

“So.. the Council Members follow some sort of election every couple years, and they are chosen from a vote that counts all eligible family members. I- I’m sorry, I don’t know more than that. I never bothered voting and I never care about this stuff normally. Um, they are the people that make all major family decisions.

Really quick, you should probably know that most of the people that live in this palace are part of the main branch of the Galamon family, since this was, of course, the Galamon’s historic home for thousands of years. Some people are from other branches: Me, for example. My father is the Branch Lord, or representative, of the Jerendiem-region branch of the Galamon family. That is why he lives here in the main palace with his family instead of our branch’s home in the west.

So, now, uh, the Branch Lords, as I already mentioned, are just representatives of all the Galamon family’s branches around the continent and they are here to vouch for their branch’s interests.

What else was there? Oh, yes. The Revered Elders. They are simply the older family members who have lived for centuries, and they are respected and listened to since they are old and wise.

And.. the Knight Commanders are just really powerful or strategic former knights under the Galamon family who ranked up to official’s status to now advise the family on military matters,” Wallaheesh explained.

Before he could continue, I interrupted him again. “So these Knight Commanders are the ones responsible for attacks on towns and villages as well?” I asked.

“No no no, not at all. Most decisions for attacks and such are finalized by the Council and the other advisors I mentioned like the Branch Lords and the Revered Elders. The Knight Commanders just focus on how to execute the attack once it is ordered by the Council,” he said.

I won’t be satisfied until I know exactly why the Galamons chose to destroy my hometown and end my life as I knew it, I thought. And since I’m nowhere near powerful enough to take on the average Galamon family member one on one, it may be a good idea to perhaps talk to the Council. Of course, I would have to use a cover up of some sort: maybe a secret identity or something? Whatever, I just heard Wallaheesh’s stomach growling and I’m not done juicing information out of him yet, so I guess I’ll have to feed him for now and give him a break.

“Ok, so far so good. Keep cooperating and I will show you mercy. Here, take a break and have some Alquertine fruits,” I told him, putting some said fruit on a plate before placing it on the side of my desk and sliding him over.

He shot a contemptuous look at the food for a moment, probably because it was servant food and clearly, Wallaheesh didn’t seem to have a very high opinion of his servants. However, he probably remembered the risk I represented and quickly bowed his head and said “thank you.”

Since I didn’t unbind his hands, he had to swallow his pride and eat straight out of the plate, like a dog. I went back to studying runes while he ate, and I got so engrossed in it that the notion of time disappeared from my mind for a while, and since Wallaheesh was too scared to say anything and break my concentration, he stayed silent.

And so it happened that I was drawing theoretical diagrams while a bound Galamon ate servant food directly out of his plate on the same table.

I can't believe my fabricated tale actually worked! How did all of this even happen? I sighed.