The Realm of Eternal Night.
A country isolated from the rest of the world. Its name was famous, but proof of its existence was fickle. It mostly came off as ghost stories used to scare children. The only people who knew of its truth were those who had met some of its residents.
Pale skin, youthful faces, blood red eyes and sharp blood sucking fangs. The vampires originating from that place were rare, but once a single vampire struck a village, there would be utter chaos with barely a single surviving member.
In a room, inside the biggest building in this fabled realm, there were six people.
One of them sat on a throne, high above the others, while the rest stood in front of a table with their arms behind their backs and their attention on the table.
These people were the highest ranked members of the Realm of Eternal night, the oldest generation of vampires to exist. They were dressed in noble attire and had features so flawless, one wouldn’t be able to call them human.
The table which they looked on, glowed with a blue hue. It contained a magical projection of the map of the Krione continent which they had lorded over the millennia. Currently, their focus was on the Eastern portion of the map, where the demon country Malachas laid.
Some of their hand selected judges had been sent to choose who the new demon lord should be. Five had been sent, all handpicked from the five vampires who looked down on the table.
Their faces were expressionless as they looked down on their chosen candidates, going about and preparing for the upcoming test.
Suddenly, the table flared up and a bit black flame appeared on one particular point on the map. The vampires still retained an expressionless face, then looked back to the one sitting on the throne.
The blood moon bounced off her silver hair as a warped grin formed on her face. She pointed at the table and the map expanded. The flame lit up from Larm, specifically the West of the Larm. She zoomed in on the specific location and a tree popped up. The grandest tree in the west seemed to be harbouring a great evil.
They all ignored the sight of monsters moving about in harmony instead of killing themselves and rather decided to focus on this tree. The inside of a dryad’s tree existed in a space separated from the current realm. One couldn’t force their way into a dryad’s home.
However, for the young lady sitting on the tree, such an action couldn’t be counted as breathing. The map zoomed in on the tree and now they were met by the sight of monsters seated around a large table, having a discussion. The one that caught her eye was the monster that sat on a throne and held a creature in their arms. Specifically, the creature in the arms of the little girl looked absolutely intriguing.
For the first time, one of the other vampires reacted to it.
“What the fuck is that?”
The others ignored him and looked at their queen to see her reaction. For the first time in ages, their queen moved her lips with a serious tone.
“I shall participate in this year’s Demon Lord selection.”
Her words, simple sounding, carried a weight that made the others feel their cold, dead hearts beat once more. A light that had long since died from their eyes was reborn as they stared at their queen.
“Tell Julian, his queen has yet use for him. He shall be my handpicked judge for the next demon lord. His target has been found.”
The others flinched once again. Julian was a name they did not expect to hear after so long. His name was practically taboo in this holy land, as the man had infuriated her to no ends.
“M-My queen? Are you sure about Julian?”
One of the vampires walked forward, asking her hesitantly. Her smile turned to a frown the instant he walked up to her and she scowled at him. The vampire instantly regretted his decision to even talk in her presence.
“Know your place, Augustine.”
Augustine, bent down on one knee, his veins snaking out and turning black. His blood red eyes bulged out of his sockets and he could feel the oxygen leave his body as an indescribable pain descended upon his ancient body.
He was saved as the doors leading to the room opened up, revealing a young boy. He was in tattered clothes and had chains binding his arms and legs together. He looked skinny, starved for days. His hair was a mess and he swayed from side to side weakly.
He fell to his knees before the queen.
“Now then, Julian. Let us begin.”
Blood shot out from her finger tip and pierced Julian’s forehead.
***
This year’s Odysseus had possibly been the most fruitful event Excelcior had hosted in his life. The introduction of the [True Hero], the lack of a need for him to be sub-servient to the New Kyoto Empire, the reveal of the Dark Church’s motives and so many other things.
All paladins had gathered up and the mood in the room was serious. There was no time for quirky remarks and useless rants.
They had finished their discussion on the New Kyoto Empire and a consensus had been reached. There would be a raid on the main head quarters of the Dark Church, which was somewhere close to the Oxaivalon Empire.
Rather than blindly attacking the New Kyoto Empire, they could use the leader of the cult as leverage to get the others to back down. This method sounded cowardly to the more muscle-brained amongst the group, but the smarter people agreed whole-heartedly with it.
It was efficient and would lead to little to no casualties. In fact, there would be no need for an army as the people seated in the room would be more than enough for a raid.
Now, the current discussion topic was the Dourean desert ruins. Veronica, who had been taking on the position of Head of the investigations spoke up.
“The mummies in the desert are becoming more active. Normally these mummies are powered by nether energy, life energy or souls, but these ones were different. A never-before-seen source was powering them up and they were stronger, faster and less predictable. A group of architects were killed and transformed into mummies themselves.”
“Any clues on what this energy is?”
Charlotte asked, genuinely interested.
“I’m not sure, but when I went to pick up Lady Veronica, I sensed something chaotic. It reminded me of the chaos beast from ten years ago, but even that creature disappeared without a trace.”
Neburis explained what she could feel to them. The mention of a chaos beast got them tense, as it would require at least three paladins working together to fight one on equal footing.
Naturally, all eyes fell on Hiro who seemed to possess all the answers. He coughed and stepped forward once more.
“Um, I d-don’t know what happened to the beast from 10 years ago, but the mummies are the results of the Chaos seal being released. It’s something you don’t need to think about.”
He tried to brush it off as if it wasn’t important. However, to those who valued the lost lives, it wasn’t an issue they could ignore.
“Explain in more detail.”
“You know what the Chaos Seal is, right?”
“Of course, we do.”
The only one in the room other than Hiro who knew about the chaos seal was Yvon. The others kept quiet, presuming that everyone else knew so they’d ask about it later.
“Without the gods being here, the seal has been weakening for a while now. And the creatures hiding behind it will break free. No. They must break free or humanity is doomed.”
“But why would you want to release the enemies of the gods? That’s insanity.”
“Well, the enemies of the gods will serve as mankind’s failsafe against the angry gods. There’s actually a lot of factors at work here and it’s a headache having to explain it. Anyway, if we can stop horizon from being broken, we’ll have to work on the seal. But from the looks of things, that’s impossible so we need to break the chaos seal.”
“That sounds awfully retarded and premature.”
Veronica narrowed her eyes at his illogical plan.
“I know. It sounds quite dumb, but there’s somethings I can’t explain and others I can. It’s hard having to filter myself.”
“Why are you filtering then? Giving us all the information is better than you controlling what we should hear.”
Agitated, Charlotte started to complain
“Yes. Without hearing the full story, we can’t make proper plans.”
Veronica supported her.
“Hiro, I’ve been listening to your requests for the past year. I think it’s time you told me why.”
Seiko chimed in with a mundane tone.
Confronted by all their complaints, Hiro just let out a sigh. He didn’t like being in such positions which was one of the reasons he stayed away from most humans during his time away from home. Still, he couldn’t refute their points.
Rather, him filtering information could be seen as a form of manipulation. He didn’t want to have to do this, but it would look like he had to use his [Unique Skill] in this situation.
“Trust me, you don’t need that information. Let’s move on to the next topic.”
His voice sounded similar, yet different.
“The black knight.”
The mood in the room completely switched up. Almost everyone in the room had had the unfortunate experience of facing that one being and they had all been shaken to their core by the insurmountable gap in power.
They had all dedicated themselves to gaining strength enough to match him, however there was no real information on him. Motives, past, operations and identity. Nothing was known about the infamous Black Knight and that was more than enough to kill the mood of the room.
Realising that the conversation wouldn’t go anywhere, the paladin of power changed the topic. For a moment he wanted to brag about how much stronger he had gotten through his encounter with the Black Knight, but chose to do so later.
“What shall we talk about next?”
“How about the swarm of monsters that invaded Keimen a few weeks ago?”
Fubuki, who recently visited Boulderdane had heard tales of a swarm of dark monsters tearing up a noble man’s house and causing it to disappear. It sounded all too familiar to stories she had heard before and couldn’t help but talk about it.
“Oh that… the end of noble man Percy McAllister and the last time the organisation known as The Sub-Circle reared its heads in Keimen.”
“So he was connected to them.”
Having been forced to investigate them, Neburis scowled at the fact that her suspicions were right on the money.
“We still have no proof of that.”
Jeanne argued as if to antagonise Neburis.
“Oh really? The richest man in the kingdom has his home attacked by monsters and disappears, and ever since no word of the Sub-Circle has been heard? The dots connect almost too perfectly.”
“Well, that doesn’t matter. That event was almost too beneficial to us. It’s one less problem to deal with. The state of living has upped, prices gone down, rumours of stray demi-humans have died and the people are happier. The church played a massive role in recovering the state of things.”
“You mean, the church would have played a huge role if Dhijan didn’t step in first. There was no way we could abandon a former ally nation in its most dire states.”
Excelcior corrected her with a shrewd grin. The others in the room held back their sighs, knowing that they were slowly entering the political side of things.
“That’s just Keimen though. Shandel city got taken over by a new lord who only made living there harder.”
Fubuki told of her experience.
“That new lord is a soldier of mine. Don’t worry, he really will make the state of living there better. In fact, we’re currently using Boulderdane as an experiment. It shall be the first of its kind. A kingdom that chooses its own leader. We decided to call it the Boulderdane State, a kingdom with an experimental style of government called Democracy.”
Excelcior explained.
“Eh? Demo-what? What’s that? Sounds interesting.”
Fubuki’s eyes lit up. Excelcior, obviously pleased with the various reactions he got, had a smile on his face as he responded.
“A system in which the people choose one representative. This person will perform the duties of a king, however he can be removed from power once the people determine he is useless after a set period of time. Also, this person cannot make rules without the agreement of the people in the kingdom. He is basically their servant in a sense. In fact, it doesn’t need to be one person in charge. A council of people would work fine, but we want to start out small.”
He explained in detail what he meant. A new form of governance other than a monarchy sounded weird. The first one to complain about this was Jasmine with an innocent tone.
“What do you mean the kingdom chooses its own leader? What if they choose a scumbag?”
“Don’t worry about that. We manipulate the voting so it’ll be the person we choose all the time.” S
“That sounds more like you manipulating an entire country rather than saving it.”
Charlotte found a major issue with it.
“Sorry, but heroes don’t manipulate the world as they see fit. Heroes only save the people and leave them to do as they will.”
The morally upright Silas added.
Unfortunately, most of those sitting in the room knew the true state of affairs of the world. It wasn’t as simple as the more innocent members were thinking and at the end of the day, all they could do was cough and try to get past this conversation topic.
“Ok then. We shall talk about the death of Larm’s Guardian, then we can start telling stories of our adventures over the year. What say you?”
