The next day…
The king returned.
His arrival was announced in advance, gathering nobility and royalty in the throne room for his arrival.
Shortly after.
His arrival was announced in the throne room.
Trumpets echoed.
The giant double door opened for His Majesty.
And then… his figure was revealed… half of it in this case… perhaps even less.
The king was little more than two legs and a piece of torso connecting them, devoid of organs and blood.
There was no heart.
Nor brain.
I doubted my own eyes, thinking it was some kind of prank, until those two legs moved toward the throne with strangely confident steps.
Suddenly, flesh regenerated along with the organs right before my eyes; with each step he took, he was closer to his perfect state.
Bones, flesh, blood vessels, brain, heart.
I saw all of that forming from absolute nothingness and could only think, what the hell was this idiot made of?
If I took a blow to the head, I would die; I was made of flesh, and without my brains I wouldn't exist.
My thoughts were made of brain synapses and my feelings of hormones.
But what the hell was he made of?
I had the strange impression that even if he were turned into a pulp of blood, he would still survive.
After all, he didn't depend on a brain to think or a heart to survive.
At last, he sat on the throne with the same smile as always as his ink-black eyes analyzed his servants and then settled, with satisfaction, on me, who was becoming increasingly surprised.
Even his hair was already combed after regenerating his body.
What followed was a round of questions asked mainly by the nobility.
Clearly, the royalty—his children and wives—cared little about his absence.
But that didn't mean the nobility was made of good people.
In fact, I could see horror written on their faces. They wanted confirmation of the letters they had received from far away with completely absurd news, and that I was certain of.
The king laughed amusedly before recounting the reason for his absence.
Apparently, after the discovery of the cubs, everyone was doing their job exceptionally well, just as he expected and wanted.
He was proud of everyone involved.
The project was being a success!
And as expected of a successful project…
Andras of the Bloody Infernal house, responsible for chaos, as the cub assigned to him had been named, requested the extermination of some houses and their respective territories for the simple purpose of watching everything burn.
He wanted to show chaos what chaos was. In what he himself described as poetic.
He even asked that heinous criminals be released in the area before or after the main destruction to increase the chaos even further, expecting them to do whatever they wished with the vulnerable citizens.
The king pondered the matter for a few moments, according to himself.
But then…
He readily agreed.
The result was the annihilation of seven noble houses and their respective territories with hardworking citizens of the kingdom of Axel.
The room fell silent.
However, the king said not to think of him as a chaotic sociopath and that everything had been very well planned to avoid waste.
It was organized chaos, in his and Andras's words.
First, the chosen houses were those that paid little tax to the kingdom and contributed few soldiers to the war against Condor.
Besides that, they also brought Agares and Ghosty, the specter cub, with them so that they could use ghosts and rancorous spirits for their purposes.
Flesh and blood were used to the fullest by Bloody Infernal while the souls were used by Macabre Tree.
The survivors of the disaster were then converted into pills for use by the royal family.
That way Agnes and his royal children could progress in cultivation and take better care of Kai, since they were having many problems until then.
Kai even attacked them!
Kai was untamable!
However…
The pills, made of dozens of people each, would be vital for finally being able to handle Kai.
This, in fact, was one of the reasons he agreed to annihilate the houses. His proposal benefited the three tigers.
As could be seen, there was no waste at all and this would not weaken the kingdom in any way!
All this was done with the best intentions in mind!
He repeated that several times in succession.
Suddenly, I felt like vomiting.
I.
I.
I.
I, too, was guilty…
My siblings and I are the reason for a massacre.
As if that weren't enough.
As soon as he finished speaking…
Eternal Light delivered a letter from Íris, who was taking care of Lucy, the elemental cub.
The letter described in detail that some of the elemental houses were uniting for a revolt, as they refused to hand over their main and secret techniques to Eternal Light and the royal family.
The king only sighed lightly at that and said he would soon take care of the matter urgently.
After all, Kai needed the techniques just as Lucy and Gravis, the lightning cub, did.
The king would ensure the development of all of them, he said, tapping the throne.
He then went on to complain about the houses and how they had been insubordinate recently despite having no power to assert themselves.
At that moment, I couldn't remain quiet and asked about his wounds, hoping they came from the confrontation with the houses and that perhaps it would bring him some sobriety.
However, apparently he took advantage of the journey to go to Condor, the neighboring kingdom, and fight their king and his hydra.
The fight ended in a draw.
And here he was now, having to deal again with his own kingdom, which had never even managed to scratch him.
My stomach churned again.
Only the neighboring king could do anything against him.
After that meeting it was once again decided that the royal family would keep me.
After all, Agnes would grow stronger with the pills, as would her siblings, and would soon be able to handle me better.
Unsurprisingly, Agnes had a breakthrough in her cultivation that very day and decided to isolate herself again, expecting another one soon.
However, in the meantime until she finished her cultivation session, I would be sent to the house of the lightning tiger to train with its guardian beast and Laxus.
Alone…
The king ordered me to cross the kingdom alone to get there, which apparently is a zone of intense conflict…
Lightning Tiger has constant clashes with Sun Eater, who—despite belonging to the same kingdom—fight freely against each other.
The king encourages their conflict, as well as that of their guardian beasts of the same name, who have been in this endless feud for ages.
Besides that, the area, being somewhat chaotic, is full of opportunistic bandits.
As well as scavenger beasts that violate the corpses of the dead, being one of the regions of the kingdom with the most ravens and rats, as well as other mutant carrion beasts.
As part of the ecosystem, owls are also abundant and one of the greatest dangers of the region.
According to the king himself, the owls there were so large that they stopped hunting rats and started eating people.
As if that weren't enough, it is near the border with Condor and scouts are frequently found there…
With the meeting concluded, I relayed the information to Euphy through my transmission necklace.
Ignoring her series of laughs about how screwed I was and how this was one of the worst regions of the kingdom.
She then said that it was also an opportunity… that she would accompany me.
Euphy ended by saying that we would perform a nighttime ritual and that she would give me more details later.
But she warned me…
That I was cursed.