CHAPTER 100: A BEAST IN A CAGE

My kingdom was a well-oiled machine.

A beautiful, gleaming engine of conquest, humming with the quiet, efficient thrum of impending world domination.

And at the heart of that engine was a catastrophic, ticking time bomb of sexual jealousy that was going to get me killed.

I ran a hand through my hair, a gesture I had perfected for moments of profound, kingly stress.

Isabelle Thorne, my First Sword, my former-hero commander, my brilliant and dangerously possessive lover, was asleep in my bed.

The moonlight, filtered through the massive crystal windows of the Spire, painted her in shades of silver and shadow.

She looked peaceful.

She looked like a goddess of war, momentarily at rest.

She also looked like the kind of woman who would castrate me with a rusty spoon if she ever found out about Chloe.

My eyes darted around the room.

My heart, which was currently not beating because I am a vampire, still managed to perform a spectacular, panicked plummet into my stomach.

On the floor, half-hidden under a pile of my discarded, dramatically black clothes, was a single, elegant, and utterly incriminating object.

A dark elf’s dagger.

Chloe’s dagger.

She must have left it here after our... vigorous... strategy session last night.

A session that had involved a lot of whispered commands, a lot of fanatical devotion, and very little actual strategy.

My mind raced.

I imagined Isabelle waking up.

I imagined her seeing the dagger.

I imagined the questions. The suspicion. The inevitable, bloody conclusion where my two top commanders tear each other apart before teaming up to turn my royal jewels into a fine red paste.

I had to move.

Slowly, with the stealth of a creature that could literally turn into mist, I slid out of bed.

I crept across the cold crystal floor, my feet making no sound.

I reached for the dagger.

My fingers were inches away.

And then, Isabelle stirred.

"Ragnar?" her voice was a sleepy murmur, thick with the warmth of our recent exertions. "Is everything alright?"

I froze.

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

I needed an excuse. A lie. A brilliant, flawless, and utterly convincing piece of bullshit.

"Just... admiring the... structural integrity of the floor, my love," I said, my voice a smooth, confident baritone that I did not, in any way, feel. "It’s a marvel of demonic engineering. Truly."

She murmured something that sounded vaguely like "You’re a weirdo" and rolled over, her back to me.

I snatched the dagger, my hand closing around its cool, familiar hilt.

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

Close call.

Too close.

This juggling act was going to kill me.

I needed a distraction.

A big, violent, and preferably very far-away distraction.

"Pixia," I whispered into the comms device on my nightstand. "Status report on the Hakui situation. Find me a target. I need to hit something."

"One moment, my Lord," her tiny voice squeaked back. A moment later, a holographic map appeared in the air. "I have cross-referenced the {Laplace} forums with our own scout reports. The primary obstacle to the Dwarf King is a high-level Beast Demon King named Grak the Unbreakable. He controls the canyons that serve as the only viable approach to the Hakui mountains."

"Grak the Unbreakable," I purred, the name tasting like a challenge. "Tell me about him."

"Body-specialized, my Lord," Pixia reported. "Extremely powerful. His fighting style is... direct. He appears to punch things until they stop moving. He has no known ranged capabilities, no complex strategies. He is, to use a term from your old world, a ’meathead’."

"A meathead," I repeated, a slow, predatory smile touching my lips. "The perfect palate cleanser."

I needed to see this Grak for myself. But I wasn’t going to risk my own neck on a scouting mission.

That’s what minions were for.

"Yori," I commanded through the comms. "Assemble a scout team. Zix and his Goblin Snipers. I want them to probe Grak’s domain. Tell them to be discreet. And tell them to record everything."

An hour later, I was in my throne room, watching the live feed on the main holographic display.

The screen showed a desolate, jagged canyon.

And in the center of that canyon, Zix and his two goblin comrades were trying very, very hard to be discreet.

Which, for a goblin, meant hiding behind a rock that was slightly smaller than they were.

Then, he appeared.

Grak.

He was a mountain of muscle and fury, a ten-foot-tall behemoth with skin like granite and a face that looked like it had lost a fight with a bag of hammers.

He didn’t walk. He stomped.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The ground itself trembled with each of his thunderous footsteps, the camera on the goblin’s helmet shaking violently.

The wind shrieked as he moved, a pressure wave of displaced air blasting ahead of him.

He saw the goblins.

He grinned. It was a terrifying sight.

"FRESH MEAT!" he bellowed, his voice a guttural roar that shook the very rocks of the canyon.

He charged.

It was not a battle. It was a demolition.

BOOM!

The ground exploded as Grak became a blur of motion, a living avalanche of rage.

Zix, to his credit, was a veteran. He and his snipers loosed a volley of arrows.

They were fast. They were accurate.

They bounced off Grak’s chest like raindrops.

He didn’t even seem to notice.

He was upon them.

BOOM!

His fist, a sledgehammer of flesh and bone, connected with the first goblin.

The impact was an absolute detonation of force.

A massive shockwave of white energy erupted from his knuckles, and the goblin simply... ceased to exist. Vaporized into a fine red mist.

CRACK!

The force of the blow ran through the very bones of the canyon, and a web of fissures spiderwebbed across the ground.

Zix screamed, a sound of pure, goblin terror, and turned to run.

The feed cut out.

I leaned back in my throne, a thoughtful expression on my face.

"Well," I said to the empty room. "He seems pleasant."

The tactical problem was clear. Grak was an A-Rank Body-specialist, at least. A walking, talking natural disaster.

But he was also a fool.

He charged in a straight line. He had no ranged attacks. He relied on pure, overwhelming force.

He was a hammer.

And I was about to build him a very special, very sharp, and very, very pointy nail.

"Isabelle. Chloe," I commanded, my voice echoing in the vast chamber.

My two commanders appeared, one from the main entrance, one from the shadows.

"We have a new target," I announced, my voice dripping with a newfound, glorious purpose. "A Beast King in the Hakui canyons. He is strong. He is stupid. And he is in my way."

I looked at them, at my two beautiful, deadly, and dangerously jealous lovers.

"We will use his own stupidity against him," I explained, outlining the plan. "We will send in a wave of our own brutes. The Orcs and Ogres we... acquired... from Gorgon. They will be the bait. The meat shield. They will absorb his charge."

I then looked at my two most elite assassins.

My true weapons.

"You two," I said, "will be the trap. You will lie in wait. And when he is overconfident, when he is surrounded by the carnage of our lesser minions, when his back is turned... you will strike. You will be the blades that sever the head of the beast."

The plan was simple. It was brutal. It was perfect.

The canyons of Hakui were a monument to brutalist nature.

Jagged spires of black rock clawed at the perpetually gray sky.

The wind howled through the narrow passages, a low, mournful sound that was probably very atmospheric if you were into that sort of thing.

I, personally, found it drafty.

We stood on a high cliff, looking down into the main arena of Grak the Unbreakable’s domain.

It was a vast, circular pit, littered with the bones of whatever unfortunate creatures had wandered in.

A proper, no-nonsense fighting pit for a proper, no-nonsense meathead.

"He’s down there," Isabelle said, her voice a low murmur. She was peering through a pair of high-tech, magically enhanced binoculars that Yori had whipped up. "He’s... practicing."

I took a look.

Grak was, indeed, practicing.

He was punching a solid granite pillar the size of a redwood tree.

BOOM!

The ground trembled, even from our vantage point a thousand feet away, as his fist connected with the stone.

The wind shrieked, a vortex of displaced air swirling around the point of impact.

CRACK!

A massive shockwave of white force erupted from his knuckles, and a web of fissures spiderwebbed across the surface of the pillar.

"He’s going to be a problem," Chloe stated, her voice a flat, cold whisper from the shadows beside me.

"He’s a challenge," I corrected her, a slow, predatory smile touching my lips. "And I do so love a challenge."