A timid knock echoed through the room. I loved how there were no pictures to mess with the acoustics of the place. "Master, the council was arranged for tomorrow. If you wish to sail there, you need to leave now."
It was the council already? I'd spent a year and a half with Lethe? Damn. I had more stamina than I thought. She was asleep, but I'd figured it was because she hadn't slept for eight months before our impromptu marriage. Time flew when you were having fun. I grinned and equipped my gear as I climbed out of the bed. She wouldn't be stuck when she woke up, she was Empress now. She partially owned everything I did. At least, she could use all of my stuff without a negative buff. And I'd removed the stupid contingency that only let those with the crown armor equipped leave. It was a totally useless function. Any assassin that could get all the way to my bedroom could hide in a corner of the room perfectly well.
I teleported to the peak of my keep and leapt for the beginnings of my undead city so I could look at it from the sky as I fell toward it. The buildings were starting to emerge. The foundations for the city were already laid. The surrounding forest had been cleared, and the trees were withering away as the pasture was born. I wondered if extra land would rise from the depths for my island towns. Some of the islands were smaller than the average town, so they definitely didn't have room for a pasture. But then, Hate had a dock, so the pasture wasn't absolute. Maybe I could make a floating city. Where would the pasture be, then? Interesting questions. I didn't have time for them, at the moment.
I leapt for the single warship floating at the finished dock. It was set up like a trireme. A massive trireme. The ramming nose of the ship was larger by itself than any of the other ships I had access to. It had four decks, rather than three, so maybe it was a quadreme. Three for oarsmen and one for fighters. I pulled some undead from the city to man the oars. Only four per deck, as the oars were all connected, but with each pulling fifty oars on each side it was still a very impressive ship. Pushing a boat was hardly a difficult job for someone at level two hundred and larger oars would have been easier, but there was something special about the aesthetic of hundreds of people working in tandem. Each of the races wanted a different design, but I designed this baby personally. They could have the rest, but this one was mine.
Once my first flagship was underway, I couldn't help but giggle a bit at the spectacle of it. It was everything I'd hoped it would be. "Row!" the oars dipped in, and I felt myself move. It was strange, being able to keep my feet on the rocking ship. My footing never wavered, though. The oars dipped faster and faster as the undead pulled the ship through the water faster than a modern cruiser.
I put my heavy sword away and held only my staff. I used a spell on each of the oars, making it look like magic was driving the ship instead of undead. I couldn't hold the staff with anything else because I couldn't be human to them. So I'd chosen a mage class, unless I wanted to lose all of the spells I had built up.
The coast was a blurred line at the edge of my vision in under an hour. It would never be gone, like on a round world, but it took a serious spell to let me see that far away with anything resembling focus. Remarkable speed for such an old-fashioned ship. Humans never would have been able to get a ship moving so fast. Not without motors of some kind and definitely not with a wooden boat. Just one more way this world was better than the old one.
A day passed before we arrived at the tiny island. It was a spit of land. Truly, like some earth god had flown over and hocked a loogie on the water. I glanced from the deck to the island. How to get to the sand without showing I had multiple classes? I'd chosen to appear as a mage, so I needed to use magic. Which class, though? A Conjurer would teleport to the sand, but he wouldn't have been able to power the ship without incurring a massive mp drain. No Conjurer would do that. To do it the way I had I needed to use the Priest or Cultist spells. Cultist it was. So…how would a Cultist get from the boat to the sand? I grinned as I realized the solution. I summoned weak monsters and used them as a ramp to the sand. My weight destroyed them, so I had to walk briskly. I glanced around and saw a galleon floating on the opposite side of the island. As I watched, a flash of steel appeared above the ship.
King Arthur smashed to the ground, carrying a heavy sword in one hand and a tower shield on the other. A Knight, ironically enough. "Of course you're a Cultist." His voice was masculine again. It was very intriguing that he could shift it like that. I'd need to figure it out. "Scum."
"Self-righteous bastard. We've got the insults out of the way so where are the subterranean ones?" a pick burst through the ground at my word. Damn, I was good. Or they were paranoid and wouldn't approach until they'd confirmed that everyone else was already there. "Ah, there they are. Welcome to the conference, subterranean ones." Feeler and Norse were cursing and grumbling as they bashed their way out of the earth. Feeler was a Hunter. Norse was a Crusader. I shifted through their races as fast as I could. I finished before anyone could figure out if I'd done anything. I grinned as I gained the bonuses of their races. "So…what's this all about? What couldn't we talk about in the forum?"
Feeler glared at me. She was the only one I was surprised to see hated me. She was the leader of a dark race. Of the traitor race, but still. I couldn't think of a reason for her to hate me? "We're here to make an alliance. We had to meet in person or it wouldn't be anything more than an informal agreement."
"So what use is a formal agreement?" they hadn't brought a banker, so there wasn't going to be any money exchanged or concrete agreements bound with the will of the banking system. It was probably the only way to enforce such an agreement. Being locked out of the bank, no matter if you owned it or not, was a terrible price to pay for anything. Since they didn't seem to know that, this was a pointless meeting. "Seems that meeting was just a ruse to make an assassination easier." I saw a human Shadow back off at my claim. So King Arthur wasn't as stupid as he appeared. Or maybe whoever was pulling the strings was smart. Vyktor hadn't been able to find out if there were secret rulers behind the scenes. I grinned as my Shadows slipped into the hole.
"Should we be worried?" King Arthur was looking at the hole. Had he seen my Shadows enter? It was an easy skill to learn. His face turned to me, anger in his voice, though the emotion cracked the façade a little. I could almost understand the altered tone! "Have you brought a hundred Assassins to kill us while we talk?"
I scoffed and waved a hand. "Don't be ridiculous. Your death would only mean your successor took over and all three of your empires would unite against me immediately. If that was my plan, I'd want to destroy at least one of you before I assassinated all of the leaders opposing me." I summoned a more durable demon and sat on it as it appeared. I pulled my helm off and put it on the demon's head, making sure it didn't think I was giving it equipment. Having that demon take my helmet back to hell with him when the time ran out would be a terrible pain. "Let's talk like people. Nobody here to put on a show for. Unless you're trying to impress me. Which you've already failed to do."
King Arthur's helm dissolved as he returned it to his inventory. His face shimmered into view. That was weird. It shouldn't have shimmered. He jammed his tower shield into the ground deep enough that it was level with the middle of his thighs. He sat down and slid his heavy blade into the ground next to him.
Norse and Feeler remained standing, but they put their helms into their inventories. I didn't blame them, even now they were barely taller than Arthur. I was a little shorter, but it didn't matter at this distance. "That's better. Now I can see the faces of my 'friends' as we talk." I looked pointedly at Arthur. "More or less."
He cursed in a very feminine voice. "How'd you know?" a hand waved across her face to dispel the illusion making her look like a male. "Morrigan said it was a perfect disguise. Mordred agreed, he said I could fool my own mother." There was the hint of more to the sentence, but Arthur didn't elaborate.
Mordred? "Do you really know the story of King Arthur? You should know better than to trust anyone named Mordred. Or Morgana." She sneered at me. I chuckled. "A helmet doesn't shine as you put it into your inventory. An illusion shines around the edges when you make it. Would your mother know that?"
"Whatever. You're a total asshole! Why shouldn't we destroy you right here and now?" Feeler was glaring at me again. She really hated me, for some reason. We had never interacted, though. I didn't explore below…maybe my traitors were making a mess on her turf. Maybe they were even doing it in my name. Was that where they'd all gone? "Dickhead."
I turned to look at her and her anger vanished a bit. She almost stepped back. I had to try really hard to keep the grin from forming. "Because I might not survive the war, but you'd be so weak at the end of it that the armies of heaven and hell could walk through you without raising a blade. And because if you assassinate me, my subordinates will destroy you in turn." That Shadow was getting annoying. She kept on inching closer to me one step at a time. If she was truly sneaking, it wouldn't matter how fast she moved. Unless she was trying to be silent, which she wasn't. The crunch of her feet on the sand was timed well to be almost impossible to detect, but anyone paying attention would notice that nobody was walking except the Shadow. And she was too heavy not to leave a little denting in the sand. A fairy would be a better bet. "Arthur, would you tell your Shadow to go back to the ship? I'm getting tired of watching her."
Arthur gaped at me. "You can see Morgana?" seriously? She either had a death wish, or she knew these people in her other life. "How? She promised she was completely invisible."
As if I'd actually answer that question. What did she take me for? I summoned a demon behind Morgana. It gripped her by the throat and hurled her back toward the galleon before returning to Hell. "Thank you. Now I can relax. So, what're the terms of our new alliance?"
"Nobody attacks nobody. Nothing goes down, and we have peace. You start shit, we make your whole continent bleed." Norse growled. He wasn't glaring at me, he was staring down at me like he thought he was better than me. I grinned at him. He thought he was a badass. "You got me, Emperor Void?" he was trying so hard, it was almost laughable. Didn't he know that the secret of owning people was to do it in an offhand manner?
"I feel you, dog." I sniggered at him. His haughty expression turned angry. Feeler looked entertained, though. So she didn't like Norse. Good news. "Is that all. No monetary support for the weak? No posturing? No agreement to attack the monstrous cities in unison?"
"I won't work with you, and they don't like each other any more than we do." Arthur didn't seem to like that fact. She was probably one of those that worshiped the idea of world peace. Moron. The only way to get world peace was the way I was doing it. When I was finished, nobody would dare rebel. And I wouldn't have had to compromise on a single point. "A unified front is beyond us, I think. The best we can get is to provide checks and balances against each other." We'd also provide a definite reason not to go all out against either heaven or hell. Leaving our own empire that vulnerable would be beyond stupid.
"I'm still not seeing what makes this different from an informal agreement." The only difference was that we were all here in person. Not that big of a difference, all things considered. "I don't see any way to make us keep our word that we won't attack each other."
"We've seen your face. You can't hide anymore." Feeler actually thought that was enough. I couldn't help it. I burst out laughing. They all looked at me like I was insane, which just made me laugh harder. "What's so fucking funny?"
I cut off my laughter instantly. It was a skill that was useful when your nemesis zoned in on you with amazing ease as soon as you laughed. It worked to make people uncomfortable as well. "You are all retards if you think that anyone is scared because you know their face. All they need to do is wear a mask. You've seen my cursor, darn. I guess I won't be able to hide if we meet face to face again. I guess I'll just have to send an army and make sure you're one of the corpses. I don't intend to sneak past anyone. Or hide. I've never hidden from anyone." In this world. "Do you really think that matters? Come on. We're kings. Everyone knows our cursor. Please say you've got something more solid than that."
"If any of us attack anyone else, everybody attacks the aggressor. We all agree to it, so nothing will happen. It's as simple as that." Arthur looked like she was making a novel point. She was all puffed up and proud of herself.
"I knew that coming in. And I seriously doubt anyone is going to attack anybody but me, so it's basically a warning against me attacking anyone else. I knew that coming here. What else you got?" Were they really puppets? Was it a complete waste of time for me to come here? I hated wasting time.
Feeler snarled as an arrow dug into the demon I was sitting on. I shifted it to stone, so my seat didn't vanish, as she was expecting. Hoped none of them were watching close enough to notice I'd used a Conjurer spell. They weren't mages, so the likelihood of them knowing that I was using a Conjurer spell was small, but I'd made a tactical error. Damn. "The world doesn't revolve around you! Those Hammer bastards have been itching to invade. Think we're weak because we're smaller. As if they could talk. I want your word that you won't attack anybody defending their territory or their ally's territory because someone else is invading."
"My point is, what's in this alliance for me? I know you'll all unite if I attack anyone. I know that you all built your little empires because everyone was getting scared of my power and how fast it was growing. So, I say again; what's in all this for me? I know that as soon as heaven launches an attack against me, all three of you would seize the opportunity to attack me. How does that change if I agree to your little treaty, and what guarantee do I have that you'll keep your end. From where I sit, it's you three against me no matter how this alliance goes." Feeler was fuming. She couldn't argue with any of my points. She was the one I was directly over, so she would be the one who attacked first if heaven suddenly fell on me. She couldn't even deny it. "Why should I promise not to take advantage of a momentary weakness? You three will."
None of them could answer. I looked at Feeler, and she glanced down. None of them could even meet my eyes. Then Arthur started glaring at me. I waited for her reply. She didn't drop her gaze again, but she didn't speak either. Norse was the one who ended up replying. "I'll keep the peace. Either of them act against you, I'll be on your side. You act against us, though, and I'll obliterate you."
"Again. Empty words. I think we're done here if all you're going to do is posture. You can't provide me with assurances that you won't attack me that I trust, and I can't provide you with an assurance that you'd trust either. Excepting the Hammers of Ragnarok, of course. I'd have to destroy at least one of the other two first, so you'd know I was coming. Have a nice life." I stood and grabbed my helm. Arthur was standing in front of me. Inches away, actually. Far too close for comfort. If she'd had any weapons, I'd have thought she was attacking me. Maybe she focused on a different set of weapons out of the crown set. "Yes, Queen Arthur?"
"I have one means of alliance that both of us could trust. Marriage always worked in the real world. Why not in this one?" she was glaring at me with such passion I thought I'd burst out in flames. Something still seemed off to me. She was a very aggressive girl. Too aggressive for a girl? And girls generally preferred romance over tactical relations. I was sure she was a girl, her voice and body proved that, but her personality gave life to the male illusion. This person was truly difficult to understand. Were there multiple layers to the illusion? "If it will guarantee peace, I'll marry you."
I grinned at her as I put my helmet on. "Sorry, but I'm already married. Having one wife is bad enough, don't know what I'd do with two. I do appreciate the offer, though." I set up my weakling bridge back to my ship. I hesitated before heading back, I didn't want to turn my back at the moment. The feeling I was getting from Feeler was a very potent desire to attempt an assassination. Her class was designed for single-target damage. She could probably one-shot the average Cultist. Sifting through the illusions and tricks used by Cultists was the reason everyone hated them, but without any prep at all…no Cultist would turn their backs on a Hunter.
Arthur's hate was gone, replaced with shock. "You're married. Someone would marry you?" of course. There were always those attracted to power and wealth. I had plenty of both. Probably not the right description for Lethe, but it was a common enough thing that she shouldn't have been surprised. I'd been inundated with proposals since I took over the continent. Few of the npcs wanted to be empress, even fewer had the balls to tell me themselves, but a lot of players did. "Regardless. What do you want from us to settle on peace? I don't want to go to war with you!"
"A feeling shared by many. I'm afraid that I can't think of any way for us to coexist forever. We'll stay in this state of limbo for a couple centuries, is my guess. Assuming Heaven and Hell don't do anything. Eventually someone will break. Either I'll attack you or you'll attack me. We'll get confident of our power or sick of waiting for the other to act first. Either way, the peace will be over. Until then, have fun." The real factor would be if Heaven launched a full invasion on either of us. Or if Hell came up from below the goblins. That was the core of our tentative peace at the moment, as far as I could tell, and I didn't see any reason for that to change. If I didn't have to watch my back, I'd leave enough to hold against a small angel invasion and assault Camelot with everything I had. Heaven was perfectly capable of a massive invasion, though.
I laughed as I headed back across my bridge. I half expected Feeler to shoot me, but I didn't feel any arrows dig into my back. I left a listening spell on the ground behind the statue I'd been sitting on, so I listened to them as I dropped onto the deck. My ship turned and rocketed away as I listened to the result of my rapid departure.
"You were actually willing to marry that thing?" Norse laughed. I could almost feel Arthur's anger through my ward. "You must really be scared of him. Or you just really like sex, no matter who it's with." He really wasn't good at making friends. How had he become a king in the first place?
The sound of metal on metal rang through the air. "You're a moron if you're not scared. Remember how you won your crown! It's like he said. We used the fear controlling everyone to take our place on top. We did it with money, and our hold is weaker than his. My people have seen how little he's done in the past couple of years. They're starting to worry about who they put in charge. I know it's the same for both of you. Without him scaring everyone into our pockets, we're losing all our power." Arthur sounded pissed, but she sounded scared as well. Smart girl. "We started the rumors of wars so we'd have a backup plan. And we need it. You heard him. He's willing to sit around for centuries! Centuries! How could anyone be that patient? If you're not scared of an immortal psychopath ruling a country, you should be. He won't care about losses, so long as he wins. This is still a game to him." Sorry, sister. You're exactly wrong about that bit. "And he's enjoying it. If he's patient on top of that…we'll need to act first. He'll fight on the defensive for as long as he needs to before he launches a counter. Do you realize how dangerous that sort of person is? He's probably already started training the npcs for all out war!"
"Did you see the tinge of pink in his cursor? He's killed players. Recently enough that the pink hasn't quite faded to black yet. That means no more than a year ago. His reign of terror had played out by then. It means he's been hunting the pockets of resistance personally." Feeler sounded terrified. So that's why she'd been pissed the whole time. She was trying to hide her fear. I shouldn't be surprised, they'd done the same thing with the chat, but they were talking a lot about someone that left moments ago. Without checking the area at all. My spell was subtle, but it was far from impossible to find. This time I didn't have the excuse that they were playing up to a crowd. The only people they could be acting for was each other. "And he wasn't scared of us. At all. We're all in crown gear, but he wasn't scared. A Cultist. They're a coward's class. Always hanging back. Never getting into the fray. He defied his class. No Cultist should be able to face down a Knight, Crusader, or Hunter face to face. And he wasn't scared of all three of us combined. What does that tell you?"
"He's figured out how to respawn." Arthur whispered. I could almost see her face go pasty white. I laughed into the ocean spray that told me I wasn't actually on the beach anymore. "It's not possible. Nobody can respawn. Dead is dead for good."
"Not…entirely accurate." Norse coughed. I heard the metal grind and sand crunch as Feeler and Arthur slowly turned to face him. "I figured it out by accident. I was just buying all the buildings in town and I realized that the temple was way more expensive than anything else. I wondered why, so I asked the banker. Your whole guild can respawn at any temple you own." Fool. He was giving away secrets that could have led to his ruling over the other two. They would have figured it out, eventually, but that didn't mean he needed to spill all of his secrets. "Since it's us against him, I figure it's better if we all work together."
"By the way, what was with the whole gangster act?" Feeler asked. She sounded a little pissed. "You're no fucking gang banger."
"Watch your mouth, young lady." Norse sounded like a teacher. Was he one of the old players that rarely wanted to admit how old he really was? Had he gone through college? Did he have real kids? Or was he some white-haired loser with no friends about to die of old age? "Honestly, how can you live with yourself?"
Metal struck metal again. This time it was accompanied by a howl of pain. "Stop pretending to be better than everyone else." Feeler snarled. Metal struck metal again. "Old fags shouldn't play video games!"
"Christine, stop it. Right now." He sounded like he expected obedience. And he knew her real name. A common enough one, at that.
"Or what, you'll ground me?" Feeler snapped back. Was she his daughter? "We're in an entirely different world, Dad! Get with the fucking program!" Father and daughter sharing a game together. How sweet. I almost laughed at them. They were getting stuck in old-world politics instead of realizing just how amazing this one was. At least, he was. She could be slightly better.
"Get over yourselves!" Arthur snapped. She was into this world. Definitely. She liked it. She understood it better than the two subterranean ones. Her problem was that she still thought it was fake. She wasn't ready to admit that this world was better than the one we'd left. "Your bickering is why we had to have this fucking conversation on this damn island where he could spit right in our fucking faces and jog off like he owns the place! You're not father and daughter anymore! You're two equal immortals. Kings! Act like it, or I'll do his disgusting job for him. Remember that both of you combined isn't worth one of us. Heaven and Hell are the only fucking reason you're kings at all!" She snarled and I heard her grab her gear from where she'd shoved it into the ground. The ground crunched as she launched herself back to her galleon. I heard Norse slip back into the hole. Get wrecked, bitch. Arthur was really growing on me, though.
"Fucking bitch." Feeler was still topside. Why was she standing there all alone? Then I heard her turn. She was pacing. Fuming. Then she stopped. "What's this?" her voice was closer to my ward. "Oh, shit. You've been listening the whole fucking time! Damn, we underestimated you. Tell you what. I won't attack you no matter what. You attack that uppity bitch, and I'll make sure the dwarves don't fight you. I'll exterminate them and then we can be friends." She'd probably change her mind when she cooled down. I didn't do "friends" and she'd remember that. She'd see that taking out the dwarves while I claimed the surface was only something a fool would do. After that, there were only two directions I could go. Up and down. Eventually, owning the whole surface world, I'd conquer heaven. Finishing that…there was only one direction left; through her. Unless she wanted to rule under me. Then it would make sense. It would be nice to get a nation without having to conquer it, though. That would be really nice.
That whole issue was driven from my mind as I landed. Vyktor was waiting for me. "The Empress requires you. Immediately." Oh, shit. I'd left her to wake up alone. That was never a good thing, from what I understood of the situation. I hoped I wouldn't get stabbed. Lethe liked stabbing people. Getting a dosage of that poison once was plenty.