Chapter 603: King of the East

Mason woke up to the sound of crying women, and arguing voices. Being dead was apparently a lot like being alive, just with more pain. OK

different

pain. And the added perk of lying on some stupid, shitty battlefield like a corpse. He tried to take his first breath and found it surprisingly pleasant. Though it stunk like used magic and dead bodies.

“What are we gonna do?”

That was maybe Carl.

“We shouldn’t tell the easterners. Let’s get him outta here and pretend he’s wounded. They’ll turn on us like fuckin’ jackals if they know.”

Garet. And yeah, good call.

Mason opened his eyes and sat up, and a bunch of dead looking flower petals dropped into his lap. He picked one up and opened his profile, trying to figure out what the hell was happening amidst a tidal wave of messages. He eventually found it.

[Hidden feature of item {Great Tree Necklace of Spring} activated. You have warded and dispelled an unnatural death effect. Item destroyed.]

[Title gained: Life for a life. Your life was directly saved by a Great Tree hidden reward. +2 luck.]

“They can fucking see the system messages. They’ll know what’s happening. What

is

happening, by the way? I still don’t see anything. I mean…” Carl was rubbing his bald head so much it looked like a sweaty bowling ball. “What the fuck do we

do

?”

“Be ready for anything,” Mason said, clearing his throat and spitting blood. Apparently they’d dragged him back to the wall. ‘Dying’ also seemed to have transformed him back from his Shapeshifting and Transformations.

His people were all standing like a defensive line, blocking him from view of the easterners. They spun and went wide-eyed at his voice, a few shrieks and gasps before Streak came running like a furry blur and smashed him into oblivion.

He groaned, trying to get a hold on the wolf’s head as it licked and battered him.

“I’m alright. Yes I’m also happy I’m not dead. Now stop licking me.”

He grinned as Becky hurled herself next. He caught her and pulled her in for a literal death squeeze hug, putting an arm out for Demi. She came a lot slower, eyes already looking bruised with pain. She eventually just put her head in his lap and gripped his hips like he might float away.

“God damnit, kid.” Carl dropped forward and put his hands on his knees like he’d run a marathon. “Why do you do this shit to me. You’re such a drama queen.”

“Sorry, Carl. I’ll do better.”

Phuong took a squat, giving him a wink like he’d never been worried. Alex came over and picked up one of the dead petals from his ruined flower necklace in inspection.

“Did you know that was gonna happen?” Mason said, watching him. Everyone turned to stare at the Belarusian, who glanced at the group expression and shrugged.

“No. I am very surprised.”

Mason glanced at a few faces, but he had no idea if that was a joke. He really didn’t.

“Alex, we need to work on your facial expressions. I owe you a necklace. That’s for God damn sure.”

“Not problem.” The man stood up after a shoulder slap from Phuong, just wandering off with the dead petal, like he’d put it in a vase. Mason decided now wasn’t the time to try and comprehend the complicated man. And also that such a time would probably never come.

“Well.” He stood up and groaned, lifting his girls and doing his best to push Streak back. “I’ve got about ten thousand blinking messages. But I better let the ‘jackals’ know the lion’s alive.”

Garet grinned. Carl rolled his eyes.

“How long were you down there listening? Did you even go unconscious? Were you just fucking with us?”

Mason pat the older man’s arm as he walked by, feeling stronger with every step. He at least went through his personal messages en route, seeing Apex Predator and Transformation had started back up with a kind of exasperated, flashing yellow before they eventually went green. He had the weird urge to apologize to his magic powers, but fought it off.

Bits and pieces of his conversation with ‘Gaia’ or maybe their alien invader played through his mind. The look in the thing’s eyes as it watched him. The almost human way it was speaking, when before it had always sounded so…synthetic.

Was the fiction helping it communicate? Or was it just pretending to be bad at the beginning?

It isn’t my dream

, it had said.

It isn’t me who makes you suffer. It is yourselves.

He wasn’t much for deep literature or reading into things, but those words had felt like a big slap in his stupid face. He thought about how he felt with Transformation. How he’d learned to enjoy it all in some twisted way. How the ‘new’ world was more suited to him than the old, how he felt from victory and surviving terrible things. But he did his best to put it from his mind.

“Well,” he said, stepping out in front of the hundred, kneeling eastern players.

Most looked at him with miserable expressions, all the fight gone from their eyes. They’d been living with a tyrant so long, he imagined they assumed the worst—that he’d kill them right then, or at least imprison them somehow.

Even so, they hadn’t run, hadn’t fought with everything they had left. He wasn’t sure which part was more depressing.

Also his hand felt suddenly empty. Like it was supposed to be holding something. Streak growled beside him, and he looked over to see Jeong’s head in its fangs. He took it and sighed.

“It’s over,” he said, tossing the head away. “I don’t want any more blood. Do you?”

The men and women all looked at him, or at each other. A few shrugged or squeaked out a little sound. Like they were afraid he was just toying with them. Apparently he’d need to prove he wasn’t malicious.

“I’m not Jeong,” he said with a bit more volume, doing his best to cycle through messages at high speed.

He desperately needed Haley in that moment, in more ways than one, to help him navigate the million icons. But what he really needed was some kind of…gesture. He could see the House of Jeong wasn’t disbanded—that there was some internal method of picking new leadership. And also that he still had a very large and growing number of ‘enmity points’ and other issues. He took a deep breath, looking for some kind of…

There.

A general ‘peace’. He set the terms as ‘non-violence’, ‘all house members’, ‘major penalty’, and after a moment of hesitation, clicked accept. He saw every kneeling player’s eyes glaze as they inspected their profiles at the incoming message. A few exchanged glances. But he saw some kind of ‘general, anonymous vote’ started as the system waited, and a swift acceptance. He nodded.

“Alright, then. Peace. Don’t start anything, and you won’t be hurt. Now if you…”

A few of the eastern players turned and took off running, which was kind of rude. And also maybe bad. He stared after them trying not feel like he’d just fucked something up.

“Uh.” He raised a brow as he watched. “What are they doing, exactly?”

One of Jeong’s council members—and the leader of the so-called Arcane Order—Erik ‘The Swede’ stood and looked after them, too.

“There are many items in Jeong’s palace. There is also a kind of physical currency used in this city. They may also be seeking other advantage I haven’t considered.”

“You don’t seem very upset that I just killed your boss,” Mason said. The man turned and looked at the emperor’s severed head, his usually expressionless face cracking into a sneer. He met Mason’s eyes and returned to normal.

“I don’t like people, Mr. Nimitz. But that was a monster. He brought out the worst in others who straddled the line. There will be hatred. And there will be retribution in this city.”

Mason took a breath. He watched the men still running, and the increasingly cagey eyes of the people all around him. He heard the whispers, the little groups forming their plans, the confusion and animal terror of chaos. A part of him had been hoping that the general fear of him would be enough to keep order. But it wasn’t. It had to be…direct.

He swiped back through his profile until he found the ridiculous list of settlements all up for grabs in a matter of minutes. He didn’t need to rule or destroy the House of Jeong to keep people in line. He just had to control everything that mattered.

“No,” he said with a sigh. “There’s gonna be peace. And everyone’ll get over the past few months cause they have no choice. And because there’s an army of demons coming to eat us all. Really puts things in perspective.”

He swiped the acceptance of control—the ‘right of conquest’ under some category of patron claim. A hundred little settlement lights went from yellow to green, moving to his House and his patron page.

The points rolled in like a tidal wave. Titles flashed and then broke down, as if whatever classification system Jeong had used was still in place but pending review. The system froze it all, giving him the option later of re-assigning or creating new titles— assigning control in a kind of feudal hierarchy.

But the end result was obvious, considering the title he’d gotten for killing Jeong.

[Title gained: King of the East. You have gained control of the majority of the settlements on the Eastern Continent. Personal and House prestige earned. New Patron options available. +3 presence.]

Again he saw the easterners eyes glaze as they all got the memo. Some looked disappointed. But the main impression he had in that quick glance was relief.

His ‘new patron options’ scrolled, with one big, red button announcing itself as a kind of ‘hey, new conqueror dummy, push this first’.

The name was familiar enough. A piece of him didn’t want to push it. But he needed to get things under control. To keep these people from killing each other.

He looked through the options and picked pretty much the most draconian version possible, a thing that limited movement and behavior to basically ‘sitting tight until new orders’.

If they were breached, the person had only two options: leave the settlement, or be officially eligible for Mason’s punishment. People might run, but that was alright. If they were hiding somewhere in the wilderness they weren’t killing each other.

He pushed it.

The system voice blared over the holy city, and he tried not to hate everything that had put him in this situation. Being some kind of world ruler was the last thing he wanted, nevermind a tyrant. But here they all were. He supposed it was why people just couldn’t have nice things.

[New Settlement Ruler: Temporary effect: Complete Martial Law.]