The Hundred Reigns

Chapter 41: The Stone Muse (1)

Lady Shabram was right about one thing. All of Simon’s paths led back to the Crimson Throne.

Simon’s soul faced it once again, the great artifact looming in the dark. The great dragon’s skull on it seemed to smirk at Simon like Vouivre had done, rejoicing in the great apocalypse he had witnessed and the holy blood he had shed.

This is the ninth of your Hundred Reigns.

You have earned the title of Simon the Herosbane.

The Herosbane: You have slain the Paladin in single combat, and practice makes perfect. You will gain some experience when killing a Paladin, even if you have already slain the current one once in a previous reign.

Those two Classes truly hated each other.

Slaying the Paladin should have felt like a monumental achievement, if a questionable one, but the implications barely entered Simon’s mind. That apocalyptic scene of dragons and demons dueling under a black comet remained seared in his memory, alongside the sight of Eole enslaved to Vouivre and possessed by a fiend on top of it.

Had she… had she been trying to free him? The presence of kish and elf warriors near his sealed form would imply she at least tried. Had she gone to Vouivre when her people failed, trading her soul for the power to help her lost friend? Whatever happened, Simon couldn’t let history repeat itself.

Vouivre would suffer dearly for her crimes, and Eole’s loyalty would be repaid in kind. Simon promised himself that.

But Vouivre was only part of a much, much larger problem. The chaos Simon witnessed had engulfed the entire western continent in miasma and unleashed thousands of monsters upon its shores.

Was that the ‘parade’ Elios Magnos had mentioned? A time when demons would walk the earth again in the glow of a distant, evil star? What was that ‘hidden Perk’ notification that popped up right before he broke out of the seal? How long had he been sealed in stone?

All these questions continued to haunt Simon’s mind as he woke up in his bedroom.

Alone.

Simon had lived through this familiar moment so many times that he immediately felt ill at ease when he noticed a rather significant difference: Lauriane wasn’t there.

Lauriane wasn’t there.

Simon bolted out of his bed in shock and looked around. His bedroom was empty, the door still locked, with no knight nor half-sister shaking him awake. Only silence and darkness welcomed him.

Something had changed.

That was impossible. Time and events had endlessly repeated nearly a dozen times already in an unalterable cycle, with Lauriane waking him up to announce their father’s death. How could things be different all of a sudden?!

“Keeper!” Simon called, the shade appearing at his bedside and thus confirming he still had the Overlord Class. “What hour is it?”

“One hour and thirty-five minutes in the morning, Your Dark Majesty.”

Simon had woken up over one hour earlier than usual, and five minutes after his father’s murder.

Why? Why this sudden change? What pebble had thrown the course of time astray?

Unyielding Essence III, Simon immediately guessed. His newest Perk had granted him immunity to the Sleep ailment. Maybe it interpreted his forced slumber following his obtention of the Class as something unnatural and woke him up early.

Which meant he had a chance to catch his father’s assassin!

Walking up to Balzam Magnos’ chambers would immediately alert the guards, and he had no invisibility spell or the like that would let him do so undetected, but Simon had an idea. His improved Lord of the Demon Castle Perk let him teleport to Castle Frightwall.

Could it bring him to any specific room within the castle?

“Lord of the Demon Castle,” Simon said, immediately testing it out. “My father’s bedroom.”

A storm of miasma swallowed him one second, and he found himself facing his father’s corpse the next.

Balzam Magnos’ remains still oozed blood alongside that of the poor concubine who had perished with him. The bedroom that had become their tomb remained eerily silent, with no trace of any intruder. Simon warily looked around and checked the other nearby rooms in the imperial solar, only to come up empty.

The assassin was gone.

Damn it, Simon hadn’t woken up early enough! The killer must have fled the instant he committed the crime and yet failed to gain the Overlord Class.

Well, it was worth a try. At least I confirmed I can teleport anywhere within the castle. Simon crossed his arms as he stared at his father’s corpse. The urge to spit on it remained rather strong. Come to think of it, the bodies won’t be found for an hour and a half. I could make them disappear or animate them.

Simon had the intuition that this situation would open up new paths, but he’d rather have more time to think this through rather than coming up with something in the spur of the moment. He quickly teleported back to his bedroom rather than risk leaving a hint or evidence that could be traced back to him being there.

I’m too late to ambush the assassin, but this is still an incredible opportunity. Simon had a short window of time where he could walk around Castle Frightwall relatively unsupervised or question the Keeper of the Throne. A precious hour and a half to gather information.

‘I still have her skull stashed somewhere in Castle Frightwall, if you know where to look.’

Simon clenched his teeth. “Keeper, do you know where my mother’s skull is located?”

“It was placed in a hidden room in the castle’s depths, beneath the dungeon,” the shade answered.

“Is there any hidden danger I should be aware of about that room? Like a trap of some kind?”

“No.”

Odd. Could his Father have put another archive near his mother’s skull as a breadcrumb? Balzam Magnos had been a cruel man, but he did leave his son with an inheritance…

Simon had no idea how precise the teleportation prompt had to be, but he guessed now was as good a time as any to check. “Lord of the Demon Castle: the room where my mother’s skull is located.”

Simon learned two very important things on that special morning.

The first thing was that his Perk could indeed trigger with very vague instructions.

The second thing was that his mother’s skull had been placed atop a spike in a hermetically sealed room almost entirely filled with acid.

Simon barely had time to glimpse his mother’s gilded skull looming above green waters before they began to devour his naked flesh and melt his eyes in their sockets.

He once thought fire was the most painful way to go.

He was wrong.

His dead father was laughing.

Simon couldn’t hear it, but he imagined it all the same so very well. The feeling of amusement pervading the Crimson Throne just poured salt on his wound.

This is the tenth of your Hundred Reigns.

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You have earned the title of Simon the Pranked.

The Pranked: You were the butt of a deadly prank. You can now craft Traps, but only those designed to kill their targets.

Simon woke up alone again, his mood so foul he wanted more than to punch a certain someone in the face.

“Keeper!” That treacherous spirit appeared as usual. “Is there a trap in the room where my mother’s skull is kept?”

“No,” the shade replied.

“Did my father order you to lie to me about it?”

“Yes.”

Simon’s teeth ground so hard it hurt. Of course that awful bastard would turn his mother’s corpse into a trap to murder her son. That was the only reasonable, rational decision a sadistic dictator with too much time on his hands could make in such a situation.

Moreover, this meant that any of the Keeper’s information could have been falsified. Simon never had time to properly interrogate it for long in previous reigns, but he would keep that in mind from now on.

“I order you to tell me the truth from now on, overwriting all of the previous Overlords’ commands,” Simon said. Being the current Overlord should let him do that the same way he had changed his father’s testament and removed Belzemine’s Brand of Pride. “Did my father order you to lie to me about anything else? And if so, what?”

“Your Dark Majesty’s predecessor did not compel me to lie about anything besides the trap in the acid room. However, I was also ordered not to tell you how I might assist you unless explicitly asked to.”

Oh? Simon’s head perked up with interest. What did his Father try to keep from him? “Let’s correct that then. What can you do to assist me?”

“As Castle Frightwall’s castellan, I am able to appear and travel anywhere within its confines unimpeded,” the Keeper explained. “Although I lack offensive capabilities, I may interact with physical objects. I also possess a perfect memory stretching back to my creation.”

Simon’s heart skipped a beat in his chest. “Including past reigns?”

“I am aware of Your Dark Majesty’s past reigns and their number, but I do not recall events overwritten by them. I am also limited to my senses and what I personally observed.”

Of course, that would have been too easy… but the fact remained that this entity likely understood the Crimson Throne better than anyone not named Elios Magnos. Simon had never been able to interact with the Keeper for long in previous reigns. He only had minutes to ask it to edit Balzam Magnos’ testament to prevent a bloodbath and then break contact to avoid discovery. Waking up early extended that time from minutes to over an hour, enough to grill it on important details they couldn’t discuss before.

And speaking of the reigns… the Keeper might finally answer a burning question that had been on Simon’s mind for a while.

“How many reigns did my predecessors have?” he asked.

“The First Overlord, six,” the Keeper answered flatly, even as the magnitude of the statement hit Simon like a punch to the face. “The Second, thirteen. The Third, seventy-five.”

It took Simon a full minute to process what he had just heard. He had assumed his father had simply forgotten to note the thirty missing reigns in his journal, and had simply toyed with the possibility that they might have different numbers of retries, but to have it confirmed challenged a lot of assumptions.

It did explain a few things. A centuries-old dragonlord like Gargauth ought to have been invincible with a hundred reigns of preparation behind him. Having only thirteen lives better explained why Balzam and Euphemia’s revolution managed to overthrow him.

Two things bothered Simon. One, each new Overlord somehow had more reigns than the last, with a very large and unexplained increase from Gargauth to Balzam.

If the trend continued, then the White Unicorn movement was doomed from the start. Every Overlord would become better prepared than the last to deal with them.

Second, Balzam Magnos only listed seventy deaths. Counting this final one, this meant four of his reigns remained shrouded in mystery. Simon doubted his father would have forgotten them—especially as a look at his Titles in his stat screen ought to have jogged his memory—so he either failed to record them or didn’t want his heir to learn about those deaths.

Why did every mystery Simon solve then reveal two more?

Moreover, another threat now loomed over him: the unyielding march of time. Simon only had an hour’s or so worth of interrogation time with the Keeper before he would have to send it away to keep his secret. Lauriane had confirmed the various imperial factions could track down its movements with divinations, so merely establishing any form of contact with it would bring scrutiny.

“Can you receive a Devil Brand?” Simon inquired.

“No. His Dark Majesty’s brands target the soul, and I lack one.”

Simon frowned. “Aren’t you a spirit?”

“I am a magical construct serving as an extension of Castle Frightwall itself. I was never alive.”

A pity. This meant Simon had no way to secretly interrogate the Keeper beyond the current given time, at least until he figured something out. Each minute counted.

“In that case, let me ask you a question.” Simon stared into the spirit’s hood. “What do you know of the Zodiac Fiends?”

Simon learned much less than he would have liked by the time Lauriane arrived to ‘wake him up.’

While the Keeper had indeed existed since the Crimson Throne’s creation, its memory actually had a crippling flaw: namely, the Keeper only recorded what it had been present for, and since it was mostly used to deliver messages or for administrative purposes, its knowledge was surprisingly lacking in many areas. The creature apparently existed in a state of limbo unless summoned by the current Overlord or running an errand. For example, it knew almost nothing about its masters’ Perks because they never bothered to show it their stats or demonstrate much of their powers in its presence. The fact that the Overlords usually spent a lot of their reigns outside Castle Frightwall also limited the Keeper’s usefulness.

It did, however, provide a key piece of information.

“A black comet shone in the sky in the days when the Crimson Throne was created?” Simon inquired.

“It shone bright among the stars of the Serpent-Bearer’s constellation until its departure,” the Keeper confirmed. “The First Overlord believed his powers would be at their apex during this period, and Lord Elios Magnos stated it would happen again in four centuries.”

The Keeper had confirmed Elios Magnos indeed served Mardok after the Doom and was already a lich back then. Considering the Serpent-Bearer was another name for Mardok Endymion and that the Fish Zodiac Fiend called him a traitor, Simon could reasonably venture that the First Overlord had also been part of that little club. The ‘revolution’ Elios Magnos mentioned had thus to be the comet’s return.

Lorimor theorized that this meteor would cross each of the zodiac constellations and resonate with the associated demonbarrows. If it indeed strengthened the Zodiac Fiends, then that would explain the scene of devastation Simon had witnessed. All of them had escaped by the time the Serpent-Bearer concluded the constellation parade.

The Keeper knew nothing about miasma crystals, let alone Mardok’s… if he even left one behind. Simon strongly suspected it had to be embedded into the Crimson Throne somehow and intertwined with the Overlord Class in general. That would explain why Simon had a hidden Perk that would only activate when the comet crossed the Serpent-Bearer constellation.

Unfortunately, checking his stats provided no information. He simply couldn’t access that information until the world ended, and the only person who could probably enlighten him was his murderous lich ancestor.

The imperial civil war, Vouivre, whatever is going on with the elves… and the Zodiac Fiends. Simon had a lot on his plate. I need to become stronger. Much stronger. And more than strength, I need knowledge.

As much as he wanted nothing more than to retire to the Berwick Islands with Anna, Eole, Belzemine, and whoever else he could bring with him, Simon couldn’t stand idle when a potentially global disaster loomed on the horizon. Not to mention that Elios Magnos all but confirmed that a Zodiac Fiend would escape and destroy Castle Carcas in the future.

Hence, he ordered the Keeper to change the testament to name Casval Ashmodai as heir—to both screw him over personally and ensure the imperial factions focused on Vouivre’s conspiracy—and to bequeath slaves as his inheritance. He would take Eole, Belzemine, and Lorimor away from Frightwall. Then, once the pieces were in place, he arranged a meeting with Lady Shabram as he did in the previous reign.

“A homing beacon?” she asked him, once he explained to her how the elves planned to strike at Castle Frightwall.

“Whatever spell they will use requires an anchor to guide it,” Simon explained. “Patriate Malphas is involved somehow. I foresee that his and or his daughter’s demise would prevent the disaster, but I do not understand why or how.”

Like the previous reign, Lady Shabram took his words at face value. “If Your Majesty would allow the use of extreme measures, there is a very simple way to check Lord Malphas’ involvement in this scheme.”

Simon raised an eyebrow. “Which one?”

“Feeding him to Gourmand.”

Oh.

Oh, true, Gourmand could learn much from the souls he consumed. Simon had never been in a position to make use of his services since one of his early reigns, so the monster jester had fallen out of his mind.

Simon didn’t particularly relish the idea of feeding someone’s soul to that creep, but if Patriate was involved in a plot to worsen the civil war and his demise prevented a disaster, then… then sacrifices could be made. Simon still had ninety reigns ahead of him. If he had guessed wrong and Patriate Malphas was entirely innocent, then he would make up for that mistake in his next life.

“Can you arrange this, hypothetically?” Simon asked.

Lady Shabram thoughtfully stroked her chin. “Unfortunately, Lord-Treasurer Patriate is no common courtier. He is the Merchant, with plenty of high-level bodyguards, and is a cautious man on top of that. Taking him unaware in a way that will let us feed his soul to Gourmand will be no easy task.”

“Can’t we simply arrest him on trumped-up charges to defang him?” That was how his father dealt with courtiers who displeased him.

“I could, if Your Majesty would take the throne and give the official command,” Lady Shabram said with a vulpine smile. “Otherwise, I suspect he will simply threaten to blow the whistle on the loss of our Overlord should I try to arrest him. Your stepmother and half-brother will either cave in or, more likely, silence him in response.”

Simon scowled. True, the man could bite back. “I cannot take the throne yet,” he said. “In that case, keep him and his daughter under close surveillance, then try to locate that homing beacon for the spell. We have roughly three weeks before the deadline. If no substantial progress has been made…”

“Gourmand?”

“Gourmand… if possible.” Simon took a long, deep breath. “Patriate cannot live to see the deadline. I won’t take the risk. Too many lives are at stake.”

Lady Shabram studied him for a moment, then nodded with a knowing smile.

Something about her expression rattled Simon. “Why do you look so pleased?”

“I am simply reassured to learn that our nation will be in good hands.” Lady Shabram chuckled to herself. “I will make the necessary arrangements. Does Your Majesty need anything else from me?”

“Yes, I do,” Simon said. “There is a hidden room in this castle’s depths. In it, you will find a lone skull surrounded by acid. See that it is properly buried.”

Simon owed his mother that much.