Intermission – A Holy Lord’s Controlling Desire

    To Holy Lord Meruria... Control was the goal.

    Control over emotions.

    Control over actions.

    Control over lives.

    If there was an aspect that could be altered, she wished to control it. She had started developing this mindset early—when her father was thrown out of the house when he couldn''t his lust for his youngest daughter after her body matured faster than her siblings. Yet her mother eventually let him back in after he directed the narrative and convinced her his daughter had seduced him.

    At just twelve years old, Meruria had lost everything because the man she should’ve trusted the most couldn''t control his actions. Ne?ww chapters will be fully updated at novelhall.com

    For five years, people would use her to quench their lust. It didn’t matter if it was at a brothel, on the side of the road, or in an alley behind a bar. Eventually, she was snatched by vile criminals who craved her body for themselves. But they also desired her magical prowess after she was revealed to be a prodigy of sorcery. These bandits were at war with rival camps around the country, yet even though the battles were her to control, a leash was always clasped around the spiky collar drilled into her neck.

    But then? Someone else controlled the narrative. It was a fight—the same as always. Meruria was using a makeshift staff to spread her magic across the battlefield. Thick roots burrowed upwards, impaling slaves sent to fight the first wave.

    Killing them was nothing special. Meruria had been tortured to where she was forced to feel euphoria from pleasing her leash holder. She stared out at the field of corpses as the second division ran into battle, naked and wielding clubs and swords. And again, she participated, using her spells to thin out the fools that dared to challenge her Master.

    It was all standard affair. The young Meruria merely watched and did what she was ordered to do until a group of horseback soldiers rushed in from the left. Their steeds rode hard and fast, their hoofs slamming into the blood-soaked battlefield as mounted riders cut and cleaved their way through, killing enemies on both sides.

    Meruria’s Master gave the order to fight. An aged wizard with a thick, white beard canceled her spells and restrained her, controlling and binding her movements as he summoned a portal to teleport in an army waiting a few miles away.

    That was Holy Lord Sajun—ruler of Cridia.

    Meruria’s narrative had been controlled, so she looked to him as a Master. He didn’t know what to do when he told her she was freed, and after some time, the Holy Lord took her under his wing. He vowed to help her find a purpose in life.

    The years flew by, but the healing process didn’t help. Lord Meruria quickly learned to appear as the perfect, prim, rehabilitated woman who somehow rose from her painful past and became a force to be reckoned with. Her charisma, beauty, and grace were legendary amongst the people—noble and peasant. She often traveled with Lord Sajun around Cridia, helping whenever she could...

    ...but it was all a ploy.

    Meruria’s twisted, turbulent time in which she was controlled by all birthed a stark desire to hold the reigns herself. She had everyone fooled, but there was one man—the Dark Lord of Justice—who couldn’t be deceived so readily. She hated it when he was around. She despised his friendship with Lord Sajun and had to be on her best behavior, but after the Dark Lord of Justice left to conduct business elsewhere...

    Meruria always acted.

    She was curious about what she could control with the spells she developed in her personal time. Making someone strip and run naked was rudimentary. Grasping a man’s mental fortitude and churning it into butter until he couldn’t speak was simple if given enough time. But this control was futile. It wasn’t what her heart desired.

    Meruria wanted more. She wanted to truly understand what made a person a person-- even if it meant using people like lab rats-- to obtain more masterful control over them.

    Meruria was in attendance in her 7th year as Lord Sajun’s assistant when she saw a true miracle. Summoning others from another world? They were like newborn babes, surrounded by mystery—lost and afraid after being terribly stolen from their familiar reality.

    It was easy to bring them into her world, lock away their sense of self, and slowly churn their memories and feelings like butter. Yet it was a learning process. She had been too ambitious and shattered six minds, which left her with four brain-dead 1-Star Soul Warriors.

    That generation was a bust. At the following Lord Conference, Lord Meruria knew rumors about her capabilities were spreading. She inferred it from their sneering and hushed whispers. She felt piercing stares stab daggers into her body. The sense of inferiority infuriated her more than failing.

    Lord Meruria redoubled her efforts, spending the next few generations mastering her craft. She didn’t neglect the void, either. She had access to Lord Sajun’s research and did what he couldn’t-- manipulating the void to imbue its abstract power upon a living organism.

    She had her best success in a young Wolffolk and her half-sister, although the latter had drastically suffered, becoming a puppet of flesh without conscious thought. The girl wouldn’t breathe without being explicitly ordered to do so.

    The Wolffolk used that strength to enact her revenge on the ones who had wronged them and willingly offered her and her sister’s lives to forever serve their savior.

    Decades passed until it was time for the latest summoning session. Lord Meruria had learned much and believed this would be the moment. She had studied and knew why her previous efforts had failed.

    There couldn’t be any logical errors. Her alterations couldn’t handle paradoxical situations—even something as the color of a shirt being different in two modified memories was enough to shatter consciousnesses. It became a fun puzzle—the kind Lord Meruria enjoyed more than life since she became the puppet master.

    The world her new Soul Warriors came from was competitive, but Lord Meruria wasn’t happy. She altered fragments to suit her ideal reality—turning it into a twisted, extreme, heavily exaggerated caricature of a meritocracy pushed to the utmost extreme.

    Lord Meruria felt like a corrupted genie—maybe a surgeon was more apt in how she fine-tuned the appropriate details as if she wielded a scalpel. In the past, her changes were akin to a butcher maliciously carving a carcass to size.

    Oh, but it was worth it. After weeks of intense focus and verifying every addition multiple times...

    Her work was done... Lord Meruria gazed at her finished products. And now?

    It was time to act. A Holy Lord like her desired the perfect entrance. She filled the ceiling with Holy Mana, flew to the high ceiling, and released her trance spell.

    Once she heard people talking...

    It was time for Holy Lord Meruria to descend like an angel. Her anticipation mounted more and more.

    Lord Meruria felt pure euphoria course through her body when Tokko and Mia turned out to be 6-Star Soul Warriors! Their minds were hers. She had the ultimate control over their actions! Her long-awaited hypothesis had been proven!

    That boy, ‘Shuuta...’ His primary use was discovering the existence of 0-Star Soul Warriors.

    One sibling stood at the top.

    The other?

    At the very bottom—alive only to entertain her with the short time he had left before she threw him to the void to recycle the energy used to summon him.

    Everything was happening according to her plan... Oh, how she loved to become involved as an actress. Lord Meruria had ''fun'' using her Lord Armament to try and force Shuuta''s mind open. The way she acted ''concerned'' to Mia when she asked her about her brother''s past would''ve impressed even the most experienced actresses at the famous playhouse in the Kingdom of Aquanis.