Chapter 1 #2
I traded one royal threat for a whole family of them, and that snowballed into having to convince the public that Purity was a goddess before I staged a coup to slay the whole royal family.
I splashed water over my face. I needed to think, but the number of variables to account for was maddeningly high. Leaving myself exposed to any one of my enemies, even in a seemingly minor way, could be the end of me.
“You are pathetic, viceroy.”
“Fuck off!” I yelled aloud as if Aurketzu could hear me.
She couldn’t.
She was locked in the soulstone that powered the barrier around Sanctuary South.
The Gol-Gol brothers were the only people known to have succeeded in delivering messages into and out of soulstones.
They had to design elaborate technology that no one else knew or understood to achieve that feat.
A sorceress from a forgotten time couldn’t accomplish that, especially from within the soulstone that bound her.
“Trust, trust, viceroy. My guidance will save us both.”
Her voice had to be my imagination. It never actually replied to me when I shouted back, but every time it snuck up on me to whisper in my ear, it threw me off balance, making thinking clearly all the more difficult.
Focus, Byron.
Breathe.
I fixed a truth in my mind, a North Star of sorts, that I came back to whenever I felt overwhelmed by the scope of my problems: Look to the dungeons.
Any challenge or threat could be overcome if I leveraged their power.
That was just as true for me now as it had always been.
The dungeons always had a solution to share with me if I looked closely enough.
“You overestimate yourself again, viceroy.”
Trust your connection to the dungeons, Byron. That’s where you thrive.
“You thrived because of my guidance.”
When you rely on dungeons, you can fuck over anything and anyone.
“Never on your own. I lent you my mind. I gave you viceroy. You have done nothing but dance when I tugged your strings.”
No one can stop you. Women. Demons. Dungeons.
The whole of the material plane.
Nothing is beyond your ability to dominate. You can kill them all if you have to, if you want to.
Ah, finally. A semblance of calm descended on my raging mind, so I asked myself again, what advantage did dungeons offer me that I could exploit at this point in time?
The dungeon core was my most powerful weapon. I knew that, but I still caught myself thinking of it as a tool, something with utility rather than a blade that I could sharpen.
The dungeon core had its own character sheet.
It could level and unlock new and better abilities.
It had a litany of obvious uses, and at least one impressive synergy had to be hiding in the 3,000+ unselected abilities, but I realized even that was shortsighted.
My dungeon would be the absolute best place to make a last stand, so why wasn’t I thinking about making the dungeon core as strong as I possibly could?
Looking for useful synergies was the least I could be doing.
I needed to do more.
Leveling it was something I already wanted to do, of course, but I now saw it as the focal point of my whole strategy. The dungeon core was my strongest weapon. Every effort I made had to feed into making it stronger and more useful.
And from that came the clear direction I needed: Complete and then open Penny’s, and then do the same with Sanctuary South to maximize the potential of my greatest weapon.
“Welcome home, Master,” Abby said, appearing before me in the rectory.
“Update me.”
“The celebrations for the wedding yet continue,” she replied.
“Mistress Purity and Mistress Invia have both said the ceremony was a smashing success. The people found the appearance of the Silk Goddess in the midst of the nuptials very moving and saw it as the ultimate sign of blessing and good fortune.”
Good. That was the intent.
“Stacey’s production of silk steel weapons and armor is ongoing, as is the production and sale of Byron’s Blessing.”
Byron’s Blessing was a dildo fashioned after my penis.
Every day, women around the kingdom prayed to me to receive the blessing the toy provided.
With several of my abilities benefiting from increasing the number of prayers made to me, Byron’s Blessing was good for Will points and for buffs.
I recently unlocked an ability where prayers to Purity counted as prayers to me, so the success of the Silk Goddess charade was immensely useful for the same reason as the dildo.
Philosophically, was there a commonality between women masturbating to the thought of me and using a wedding to manufacture faith and, therefore, prayers?
They both had the same outcome, but that was obvious.
I mean the emotional pieces. Was there something about having a spiritual moment of extreme clarity that was the same as an enchanted dildo nutting on your chest?
Abby continued, saying, “Drae would like your permission to test the machines you asked her to build. Her progress in duplicating the Gol-Gol golem continues. She is not ready to put a timeline on that, however.”
The Gol-Gol golem was the body the three demon brothers built for their soulstones.
It was the most powerful construct ever made, and it was immune to physical and magical attacks.
We got the original running again–it guarded my dungeon core, currently–but we still didn’t entirely know how it worked.