The proceedings started with Etit giving her side of the story. She is the daughter of a second-class noble. In their civilization, a first-class noble is basically the king. Which makes a second-class noble something like a duke. A third-class noble would be a marquess and a fourth would be a count. A fifth and sixth would be a viscount and a baron respectively. Baronets and knights would occupy the seventh and eighth noble ranks.

According to her, the current King has not been governing their country properly. He keeps wasting taxes and never comes up with anything good that will improve the lives of the citizens. Things have gotten so bad that there is a rumour that the blue Xerxi wants to attack and conquer them. Etit's father, Remi has been trying his best to keep the country together. Because of that, public opinion has been shifting to his side and the King hates it. One of her big brothers died about a year ago. His carriage was suddenly attacked by a group of bandits and he was killed. They suspected the King had a hand in it but they had no proof. Two months ago, the King announced to everyone inviting the Duke and his whole family to come to have a party with him. They had one month to prepare for the party. When they arrived at the capital, the King indeed threw a party for them. The parties went on for two weeks and although they were not poisoned, it was concerning. The Duke knew the King was up to something. Perhaps, he was preparing a great scandal that he would use to destroy their whole family. The Duke decided he would let his children flee. They were under constant watch during the great cycle, which would have been the best time for them to escape. Three days later, the Duke found a way and sent his daughter off. Unfortunately, she was ambushed. There were stronger guards with her but the enemy also brought strong men. The stronger guards tried to hold off the stronger pursuers and that led to what I saw. They were outnumbered and the princess almost died.

The special corps members said they were told to annihilate traitors. Four of the special corps members who are with me were indeed rookies who were just conscripted.

I made my judgment. A selfish one. I first asked Etit if she would serve me, and she said, "I should be dead by now if you didn't zave me My Lord. Zince you are the one who zaved me, my life is yours. I will gladly serve you My Lord. The Zairitz family alwayz settle their debtz.". Since she has accepted, there is no need to ask for the opinions of her subordinates. I wanted to make all of them my subordinates together. I am now training myself on how to properly use the system and I'm now trying my hands at determining exactly when I pass the system to others.

I turned to the pursuers and said; "She is now my subordinate. Which means you attacked my subordinate. If you decide to serve me, there will be no punishment. But, if you don't, I'll let her punish you however she sees fit.". All of them said they would serve me but I wanted to confirm with Lante.

"Lante, I know you are telling me what I want to hear, but the moment someone accepts to serve me, they won't be able to betray me. Do you still want to serve me?".

"I just want to live. If serving you means I will get to live then I will gladly serve you.". Is there a story behind her need to live? It's as if something happened in the past that makes her want to live no matter what. It may be related to the fact that she has the title [Starved Orphan]. It is now grey, which means she is no longer starved but I'll ask her about it later.

"I didn't tell all of you this but becoming my subordinates will instantly make you more powerful and your potential will increase to the point that you can become more powerful than those you call gods."

"Master, when their system gets upgraded, their level will go down because they have yet to gain enough experience."

{Is there a way to remedy that?}.

"You can sacrifice the experience you will gain from their skills and the experience you gained from Juba's skills to let them keep their levels."

{Okay, do it. If their levels decrease, it may disrupt my plans. By the way, did Juba also lose some levels?}

"Yes, Master. His true level now is twenty-one."

"From henceforth, all eight of you are my subordinates." The moment I said so, all, except one of the eight collapsed.

Au was the one who didn't collapse. Probably because her level will be suppressed. I'm starting to think I collapsed when I got the system because I was too weak for it and not because I recovered my memories.

I have one extra traveling bathroom but it is my backup. I'm not a genius inventor although I wanted to become an engineer when I was in high school in my past life. I can't give my backup bathroom to them. The current one is in my tent and I'm not going to let anyone who has wet him/herself come inside. I guess I can let the princess in. I have another way to create a bathroom for them but I don't want to waste one of my three talismans that can create a bathroom using earth magic. Huh! I guess I'll have to waste one on them. I wanted to just let them bathe in the open but they are my servants now.

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"Is something wrong, My Lord?". Au asked when I sighed.

I looked at her and uttered but two words; "Follow me." And started walking to the back of my tent.

I pulled one bathroom talisman and placed it on the ground. Ten seconds after I activated it, it was done creating a medieval-style simple bathroom made of only hardened soil. After that, I pulled the five gallons of water that were distilled from my blood and placed them in front of Au.

After that, I said to Au, "Except for little Etit, ask everyone who wakes up to come bathe here. When Etit wakes up, bring her to me. If you have time, you can go with Juba to the river and fetch more water. And yeah, you should take this.". I pulled soap from the spacial ring and passed it to her.

"Pl-please My Lord, what is this?"

"Soap."

She knelt down in front of me and presented the soap back to me; "Pl-please My Lord, don't waste such a luxurious item on us. Even the first noble doesn't have soap this luxurious looking."

I think I'm going to have to learn some of the common sense of this planet. But, now that they are my servants and I know they can not betray me, I think just doing this for them is not a big deal. Although, I have to conserve my resources.

The way of making soap and terabytes of other information are stored on my terminal and home terminal which I have mounted in the tent that I sleep in. As long as I find someone who can learn how to make soap, I'll show them how to. It most likely wouldn't be as good as the ones I brought though.

After talking to her, I went to set up my third tent. This one will be my throne room.

I have a few earth magic scrolls, but I haven't had time to learn them. If I had, I would have used it to create stools for my subjects but since I haven't, I'm calling Xebec.

There is a large tree near where I am going to set up the tent. I decided to test out some of the skills I gained from my new servants. One of those skills is [Blade Arts] which lets the user infuse their blades with mana to perform different actions that a normal blade otherwise wouldn't be able to do. I tried using [Blade Arts] with Xebec but I immediately realized it was a bad idea. One casual swing will cut down more than the big tree in front of me. Xebec easily accepted the magic too. I put Xebec aside and took my second dummy sword. I positioned myself properly, making sure the [Blade Art] I was going to use wouldn't affect more than the tree I was trying it out on. Then... [Blade Arts: Sword Slash], I used the first [Blade Art] that I automatically learned when I received the skill, projecting a sword slash from my sword which cut the tree cleanly in half. Then I used the skill version of [physical reinforcement] and [Herculean Strength] and caught the falling tree. I gently placed it on the ground without breaking a sweat and went on to easily pull the stump out of the ground. Skills rule. But frankly, I don't think I'll be able to keep track of my skills in the future. I got a lot of skills from the eight Xerxi who just became my subordinates that I can boldly declare intelligent races have skills in abundance compared to less intelligent races. I also found out that titles bring benefits to the individual who has them. For example, my [Master Of Trickery] title increases the probability of my tricks working out by zero point eight. My [King of Cheats] title is actually a title that boosts the probability of me getting cheat skills by two times its initial probability. Whether through skill creation, skill learning or skill augmenting, as long as there is a cheat available, my probability of getting it is instantly raised. This will become more apparent when I get rare and above skills. Of course, if someone learns that you are the King of Cheats, they are more likely to think you go about cheating people which is why Ansah didn't want me to have it. A lot of powerful people who will find out will try to off me. I need a concealment skill to hide it. To me, it doesn't matter if you are a cheat or have cheat skills. Both are threatening. Unless you are in my camp, dealing with you is the best choice. A person with cheat skills is sure to grow rapidly.

I used the [Absorption] skill from both plant and water natures to absorb just enough water from the tree. After that, I tried another blade art skill [Blade Arts: Sharp Blade]. It made it easy for me to use my second dummy sword to cut a chair out of the tree but the surface wasn't smooth enough so I used Xebec for the rest. I just had to make sure I didn't let him cut more than he should.

From there, I levelled the ground and set up my third tent.

I saw Au and Juba fetching water by the way.

By the time I was almost done setting up my audience hall, Au and Etit came to meet me. Etit is a princess so I can't let her bath with the rest. She is also the only one who didn't piss herself so I have decided I'll allow her to use my bathroom.

"Etit."

With reverence in her eyes, Etit answered, "Y-yez My Lord"

"Since you are the only one who didn't wet yourself, I have decided I'll let you use my bathroom as a reward."

"But My Lord, I don't de-"

"Don't tell me you don't deserve it or anything of that sort. That will displease me."

"I won't, My Lord.". There is no need for you to say it with that much conviction ya know.

"I hope you can bathe by yourself. If you can't, you can join your handmaiden."

"I'll do my bezt to not betray your expectationz of me, My Lord. Pleaze allow me to uze your bathroom.". Betrayal... 'Betrayal of expectations.' That is something I didn't consider. What exactly will be considered as betrayal according to [Ruler's Reach]? Thinking about it, in the worst-case scenario, my subordinates may become mindless drones thinking that if they do anything without my explicit permission they may betray my expectations of them.

{Ansah, can I decide exactly what is considered as betrayal when it comes to my [Ruler's Reach] skill?}.

"Yes, Master."

{Then make it such that, giving those I consider enemies confidential information, defecting or going against my direct orders are the only forms of betrayal recognized by the [Ruler's Reach] skill. If I don't say it is an order or command it shouldn't be considered as a direct order unless I thought of it as a direct order when making the statement.}.

In my past life, I was poor, but I had an inheritance which was a five-bedroom house and a two bedroom boys' quarters. I couldn't properly maintain it though.

Well, I decided I'd rent out the boys' quarters so that I'd get some passive income but since I was a child, the tenant wanted to take over the house. If not for Junior's parents, my property would have become the tenant's. For half a year after evicting him, I was too afraid to stay in my own house alone. Junior would join me at home or I'll go and stay at his house during this period. After that incident, I couldn't accept any new tenants. I think I was paranoid but what can I say? Maybe I brought the betrayal clause into the skill creation because I was still paranoid. I couldn't trust my own family members and the first tenant also betrayed my trust so I think I was right to trust no more. Yeah, excluding Junior and his family, I couldn't trust anyone else. One of the reasons I died a virgin. I'm sorry my subordinates. I just realized that I can just order anyone who accepts to serve me to kill themselves and they will. I wouldn't like to find myself on the receiving end so I'll do my best not to make foolish orders.

"Sorry for spacing out, Etit. Follow me.".

I allowed Au to leave and took Etit to my bathroom. Since it was her first time using such a sophisticated bathroom, I let my home terminal display how it was used to her. Then I showed her my washing machine. I set it to auto and taught her how to use it. She simply had to put her clothes in the inlet and the washing machine would wash, dry and iron them in five minutes. After that, I told her to not touch anything else and left.

If you are asking why I didn't let the others wash their clothes in my machine then it's simple. 'They can do it themselves.'.