CHAPTER 123: A VERY WILLING PRISONER

The Forest of Trials had become a theater of the absurd.

My two most elite, deadly, and serious commanders stood frozen, their weapons half-drawn, their faces a mask of pure, unadulterated horror.

Before them, Hibiki, the Demon King of this bizarre, muddy domain, stood in a pose that was a crime against both nature and good taste.

He was a mountain of muscle, clad only in a pair of crimson briefs, a fluffy white bunny tail, and a pair of long, twitching rabbit ears.

His smile was one of pure, blissful ecstasy.

"Come, my lovely executioners!" he chirped, his voice a high-pitched, cheerful sound that made my teeth ache. "Deliver unto me the sweet, sweet punishment I so richly deserve, pyon!"

I ran a hand over my face, a feeling of profound, cosmic exhaustion washing over me.

This was my life now.

I was the king of a traveling circus of freaks, and I had just found our new star attraction.

"Alright, that’s enough," I said, my voice a flat, deadpan sea of disappointment. "Show’s over. Everyone put your pants back on."

Well, he wasn’t wearing pants. But the point stood.

Hibiki’s face fell. The blissful smile was replaced by a look of profound, childish disappointment.

"But... but the punishment has only just begun, pyon," he whimpered.

"The punishment," I said, my voice now a blade of ice, "is that you are going to stand there, in your ridiculous bunny costume, and you are going to listen to me talk. And if you interrupt me, I will order my commanders to not hit you. At all. For a week."

The look of pure, unadulterated terror that washed over his face was a beautiful thing to behold.

He snapped to attention, his hands clasped respectfully in front of him.

"I require a tank for my army," I began, my tone now that of a CEO conducting a very strange, very naked job interview. "A subordinate who can stand on the front lines, absorb punishment, and draw the enemy’s attention. Your... unique... skillset appears to be perfectly suited for this role."

Hibiki’s eyes widened, a flicker of something—hope? excitement?—in their depths.

"I am offering you a position in my organization," I continued. "You will surrender your domain. You will become my subordinate. You will be my shield."

I leaned in, my voice dropping to a conspiratorial purr.

"In return," I said, "I will put you on the front line of every single, bloody, glorious battle from now until the end of time. I will have the strongest monsters in the world try to turn you into a fine red paste on a daily basis. I will give you an eternity of beautiful, endless, and profoundly satisfying punishment."

His breath hitched.

His eyes, which had been a strange, empty blue, now burned with a fire of pure, unadulterated joy.

A single tear of pure, ecstatic happiness rolled down his cheek.

"You... you would do that for me?" he whispered, his voice cracking with emotion.

"I would," I said solemnly. "It will be a hard life. A life of pain, of suffering, of being repeatedly and violently hit by very large, very angry things."

"I accept!" he blurted out, dropping to one knee in a gesture of profound, tearful loyalty. "I, Hibiki, the Punished One, swear my eternal, undying fealty to you, my magnificent, benevolent, and exquisitely cruel master! I will be your most loyal, most durable shield!"

I had just recruited the most powerful masochist in the world.

And I had done it by promising to beat the ever-loving shit out of him on a regular basis.

I was a genius. A twisted, manipulative, and deeply, profoundly disturbed genius.

With the negotiation concluded, and Hibiki now happily putting his suit back on, a new problem arose.

The problem of Suzu.

The human fortress.

The final, great obstacle to my complete and utter domination of this prefecture.

"My Lord," Isabelle said, her voice cutting through my moment of triumphant, if slightly creepy, satisfaction. She had finally recovered from her state of horrified paralysis. "Suzu remains. We have the tank. We have the army. But their numbers are still... overwhelming."

She was right.

Twenty-eight thousand of them.

And at their head, the Sword King.

A man who could, according to the reports, kill one of my elite subordinates every sixty seconds.

A frontal assault was still suicide.

"We cannot break their walls," I mused aloud, the gears in my mind, once dedicated to optimizing video game character builds, now spinning with military deception. "So, we will make them come out."

I looked at my commanders.

At Isabelle, the divine and deadly Blade Saint.

At Chloe, my beautiful, fanatical shadow.

And at Hibiki, my new, deeply unsettling, and unbelievably durable meat shield.

"We are going to give them a target they cannot possibly ignore," I explained, a slow, wicked, and utterly glorious idea beginning to bloom in the dark corners of my mind.

"We are going to give them a villain."

I pointed a long, pale finger at myself.

"Me."

"I will personally lead a small, elite force to the very gates of Suzu," I declared. "I will be loud. I will be obnoxious. I will be the most arrogant, most hate-able target in the history of the world. I will taunt them. I will mock them. I will challenge their precious ’Sword King’ to a duel he cannot possibly refuse."

"And while their attention is on me," I continued, my smile all fangs and no humor, "the rest of you, with the bulk of our army, will be waiting. Hidden. Silent. A hammer poised to fall."

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

It was a classic, beautiful, and profoundly stupid honeytrap.

And I was the honey.

"It is a high-risk maneuver, my Lord," Isabelle said, her voice tight with a concern that was both professional and deeply personal.

"The greatest rewards," I replied, my voice a low, confident purr, "are reserved for those who are willing to take the greatest risks."

I looked out at the horizon, in the direction of the distant, defiant human city.

The stage was set.

The players were in position.

And the final, glorious, and probably very messy act of this little play was about to begin.

The Sword King was waiting for me.

And I was about to give him a show he would never forget.