CHAPTER 126: A CURSED DILDO GHOST

The throne room was a tomb.

The holographic screen was dark, the silence broken only by the faint, almost inaudible sound of Isabelle’s ragged breathing.

The revelation had hit her like a physical blow.

The Sword King of Suzu, our greatest enemy, the man who had just effortlessly annihilated two of my Bloodkin, was her grandfather.

My brilliant, beautiful, and profoundly complicated commander was a mess.

"This changes things," Chloe stated, her voice a flat, cold whisper from the shadows. She was not looking at the screen. She was looking at Isabelle. Her amethyst eyes were narrowed slits of pure, undiluted suspicion.

"It changes nothing," I countered, my voice a blade of ice. I needed to control this. Now. Before it spiraled into a full-blown civil war in my own throne room.

"The mission remains the same," I declared. "Suzu will fall. The Sword King will be... dealt with."

I looked at Isabelle, my gaze hard. "Can you do what needs to be done, Commander?"

She looked up at me, her divine eyes swimming with a sea of conflict. The warrior. The granddaughter. The lover.

"I... I don’t know, my Lord," she whispered, the words a confession of weakness that I had never heard from her before.

"Then you are relieved of command for this operation," I said, the decision instant and absolute. "You will remain here. You will oversee the defense of the Spire."

It was the smart move. The only move.

But as I looked at the raw, human pain on her face, a part of me, the part that was still a lonely university student, felt a flicker of something dangerously close to empathy.

I pushed it down. Empathy was a luxury a king could not afford.

"We are outmatched," I announced to the room, my voice pulling the focus back to the strategic problem. "A frontal assault is suicide. His personal combat ability is off the charts. We cannot break his walls."

Pixia, who had been running frantic calculations, zipped to my shoulder.

"My Lord, I have a proposal!" she squeaked. "A war of attrition! We can use the [Reign] ability to establish a forward base, and then send wave after wave of our disposable, low-cost subordinates! A goblin zerg rush! We can grind them down through sheer numbers!"

I stared at her.

"That," I said, my voice dripping with contempt, "is the single stupidest idea I have heard since Kevin suggested we rebrand our entire army as the ’Angels of Eternal Sorrow’."

"But my Lord! The statistical probability..."

"The statistical probability," I interrupted, "is that we would be giving them a free, all-you-can-kill experience point buffet! We would be leveling up their entire army for them! We would be training the very soldiers who will eventually come to kill us! It is a profoundly, catastrophically idiotic plan."

Pixia wilted, her tiny wings drooping.

"So, what then, my Lord?" Chloe asked, her focus now back on me, her loyalty a comforting, terrifying anchor in this sea of chaos. "If we cannot attack, and we cannot wait, what is our move?"

I was trapped. I had no winning strategy. I was out-thought, out-maneuvered, and facing an opponent who was not just a powerful king, but a personal demon for my most important commander.

The stress was immense. The pressure, unbearable.

I needed... a release.

"This meeting is over," I declared abruptly. "I need to... meditate. To commune with the abyss. To contemplate the dark, unknowable void of my own magnificent soul."

I dismissed them all. Isabelle retreated to her chambers, a ghost in her own armor. Pixia went back to her data streams.

I waited until the throne room was empty.

Then, I turned to the shadows in the corner.

"Chloe," I whispered.

She appeared before me, a silent, beautiful promise.

"My Lord," she breathed, her amethyst eyes burning with a possessive, fanatical fire. "You are troubled. Allow me to... ease your burden."

She knelt before the throne.

The stress of the day, the weight of a kingdom, began to melt away under the skilled, devoted attention of my beautiful, fanatical shadow.

It was a quiet, stolen moment of absolute, soul-crushing pleasure.

It was, of course, too good to last.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

A frantic, clumsy scrambling sound echoed from the hallway outside the throne room.

It was getting closer.

My blood ran cold.

I recognized that sound.

It was the sound of Gary the kobold, my lovable, idiotic, and profoundly unstealthy mascot, chasing something. Probably his own tail.

Right towards the throne room door.

The door I had foolishly left open.

Thump. THUMP. BOOM!

He hit the doorframe. He yelped in surprise. He stumbled.

He was about to fall headfirst into the room.

Into the throne room where I was currently receiving a legendary-tier blowjob from a subordinate who was not the woman everyone assumed I was sleeping with.

My mind went into a state of pure, adrenaline-fueled panic.

I had to act.

A flick of my wrist. A whisper of shadow magic, a low-level telekinetic shove so subtle it was almost an afterthought.

Gary, who had been about to perform a spectacular face-plant onto the crystal floor, was suddenly and inexplicably diverted sideways. He yelped in confusion as he was shunted down a different corridor, his frantic scrabbling fading into the distance.

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I had been holding.

Close call. Too close.

But I was not alone.

Chloe was looking at me, an amused, knowing smirk on her beautiful face.

"Quick thinking, my Lord," she purred, her voice a low, throaty sound.

"Yes, well," I said, trying to regain some semblance of my kingly dignity, which was difficult when my pants were around my ankles. "One must always be prepared for... unexpected intrusions."

She giggled, a sound like the tinkling of tiny, silver bells.

"Perhaps, my Lord," she whispered, her eyes gleaming with a possessive, fanatical light, "we should continue this... report... somewhere more private? My chambers are just down the hall. They are soundproofed."

I was about to agree, to follow her into a night of glorious, stress-relieving debauchery, when a new, terrifying thought hit me.

Isabelle’s chambers were right next to Chloe’s.

I was juggling knives.

I was juggling live grenades.

I was a degenerate circus clown, performing a high-wire act over a pit of very angry, very pointy monsters.

"No," I said, my voice a bit too loud. "I have... I have a plan. For Suzu."

The lie came to me in a flash of pure, desperate inspiration.

"We cannot attack their walls," I declared, pulling up my pants with as much dignity as I could muster. "So, we will not attack at all."

I began to pace, the plan forming in my mind even as I spoke it.

"I need information," I said, my voice now filled with a genuine, strategic fire. "I need numbers. I need to know exactly what we are facing. Their troop deployments. Their patrol routes. Everything."

I turned to Chloe, my eyes burning with a new, mad brilliance.

"I am going there myself," I announced. "A covert, high-risk, high-reward intelligence gathering mission. I will use [Reign] not as a weapon of conquest, but as a radar. A three-kilometer-wide snapshot of their entire fortress."

It was a stupid plan. It was a reckless plan. It was the only plan I had.

And it had the added benefit of getting me the hell out of the throne room before my love life exploded in a spectacular, bloody fireball.

"It is too dangerous, my Lord!" Chloe protested, her earlier passion replaced by a cold, professional concern.

"The greatest rewards," I replied, my voice a low, confident purr, "are reserved for those who are willing to take the greatest risks."

I strode towards the exit, my long, dark coat swishing dramatically.

I had a city to scout.

I had a war to win.

And I had a very, very complicated love life to somehow survive.

This was going to be fun.

In a horrible, stressful, and probably very messy way.