CHAPTER 128: A MOST HUMILIATING RETREAT

The park on the outskirts of Suzu was a sad, forgotten place.

A rusty swing set creaked in the wind. A slide, faded and cracked, looked like a monument to a happier, long-dead world.

It was the perfect spot for a high-risk, high-reward intelligence gathering mission.

"Alright, big guy," I said to Grak, who was looking at the swing set with a profound, philosophical confusion. "You’re the distraction. Go... swing. Or something. If anyone shows up, your job is to look big, angry, and too stupid to be a real threat."

"I AM NOT STUPID," Grak roared, a statement that was immediately undermined by him trying to sit on one of the swings and getting his massive ass stuck.

I ignored him. I had work to do.

I walked to the center of the park, the overgrown grass tickling my ankles. I took a deep, theatrical breath.

"[Reign]," I commanded.

BOOM!

The world lurched. A vast, invisible dome of power, three kilometers in radius, erupted from me, washing over the city of Suzu like a silent, invisible tsunami.

The map in my mind solidified. A beautiful, three-dimensional display of my impending conquest.

And it was a horror show.

Red dots.

Thousands of them.

Tens of thousands of them.

They were a seething, angry swarm of red, concentrated within the walls of the city hall and the surrounding administrative buildings.

My heart, which was currently on its lunch break, still managed to perform a spectacular, panicked plummet into my stomach.

"Pixia," I whispered into my comms, my voice a dry, reedy sound. "Run the numbers. Now."

"One moment, my Lord," her tiny voice squeaked back. A beat of silence. Then, a sound that was dangerously close to a tiny, pixie-sized gulp. "My Lord... my preliminary estimate is... twenty-eight thousand. Plus or minus a few hundred."

Twenty-eight thousand.

I had an army of a few thousand.

Most of them were goblins.

"Well," I said, my voice dangerously quiet. "This complicates things."

A timer appeared in the corner of my vision: 179:59.

Three hours to eliminate... well, to not get eliminated by an army that outnumbered mine ten to one.

"Alright," I said, my mind racing. I had the intel. Now I just had to get out of here alive. "Screenshots. Pixia, take a thousand of them. I want a picture of every red dot, every street corner, every suspiciously empty-looking alleyway."

"Screenshots saved, my Lord," she confirmed.

Now for the fun part. The psychological warfare.

I pulled out the megaphone, the beautiful, rune-etched masterpiece that Akira had forged. It hummed in my hand, a promise of glorious, intimidating noise.

I raised it to my lips. My voice, amplified by dwarven craftsmanship and demonic magic, boomed across the city, a sound like the voice of a very angry, very well-spoken god.

"GREETINGS, MORTALS OF SUZU!" I began, my voice dripping with a magnificent, condescending arrogance. "IT IS I, RAGNAR VHAGAR! YOUR NEW, AND INFINITELY MORE STYLISH, RULER! I AM OFFERING YOU A SIMPLE CHOICE! SURRENDER NOW, AND YOU WILL BE GRANTED THE HONOR OF POLISHING MY BOOTS! RESIST, AND... WELL, YOU’VE SEEN WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LAST GUY WHO RESISTED."

The red dots on my map, which had been in a state of organized readiness, began to move.

They were converging on my position.

Fast.

"They seem... unpersuaded, my Lord," Pixia noted dryly.

"Their loss," I grumbled. "Plan B, then."

The plan was simple. We had the intel. Now we ran.

But as I turned to signal Grak, who had finally managed to free himself from the swing set by simply ripping it out of the ground, I saw them.

Two red dots, moving with a speed that was far too fast for a simple patrol.

They were on a motorcycle, a single, angry hornet buzzing towards us from a side street.

"Interceptors," I snarled. "Grak! Stop them!"

My beautiful, simple-minded engine of destruction roared in delight. He loved stopping things.

He charged.

BOOM!

The ground itself seemed to shatter as he became a living avalanche of muscle and rage.

The two humans on the motorcycle saw him. They swerved, their faces a mask of pure, unadulterated terror.

They were fast. But Grak was faster.

He was upon them.

He raised his massive fist.

And then, the lead human did something clever.

He threw a grenade.

Not at Grak.

At the ground in front of him.

BOOM!

The grenade exploded, a flash of light and a cloud of thick, black smoke.

Grak, blinded and disoriented, stumbled.

The motorcycle swerved around him, its engine screaming, and sped past us, right into the heart of my Reign’s effective radius.

They had seen me.

They had seen the source.

The alarm was raised.

"We have to go," I said, my voice a blade of ice. "Now."

We scrambled back to our own motorcycle. The retreat was a frantic, chaotic blur.

The sound of horns and sirens echoed from the city behind us, a promise of a very large, very angry army that was now very, very aware of our exact location.

We made it back to the Crystal Spire, the familiar, cool air of my domain a welcome balm to my frayed nerves.

The mission had been a success. We had the numbers. We had the intel.

But it had come at a cost.

A cost I didn’t realize until Pixia, her face grim, showed me the live feed from the hero forums.

The two scouts on the motorcycle had made it back to the city.

And they had a story to tell.

A story that was now the top trending post on the entire network.

The headline was a monument to my own, spectacular failure.

"TYRANT OF AETHELBURG FLEES IN TERROR! THE SWORD KING’S MIGHT SENDS THE VAMPIRE LORD SCURRYING BACK TO HIS CAVE! SUZU STANDS STRONG!"

The post was accompanied by a blurry, helmet-cam image of me, looking vaguely panicked, getting onto the back of a motorcycle being driven by a ten-foot-tall monster.

It was not my most flattering angle.

I stared at the screen, at the thousands of triumphant, mocking comments.

I had won the battle for intelligence.

But I had just lost the war of perception.

Spectacularly.

I had handed my enemy a massive, glorious, and completely unearned morale victory.

A slow, furious, and deeply, profoundly humiliated growl began to rumble in my chest.

This was no longer just a war.

This was personal.

I was going to burn that city to the ground.

And I was going to do it with a smile on my face.

But first, I needed a plan.

A real plan.

And a very, very large army.