When the light faded, he knelt before .
"I am reborn, my Lord," he said, his voice now a smooth, confident tenor. "I am Saburo. Your Vampire Noble. I swear my eternal, undying fealty to you."
The sincerity in his voice was actually... impressive.
Maybe this wasn’t a total disaster after all.
He was still an idiot. But now, he was a powerful, evolved, and surprisingly noble idiot.
And he was my idiot.
I looked at my newly promoted commander. At the smoking ruins of the dwarven forge. At the mountain that still stood between and my prize.
The distraction was over.
Now, it was ti to et the king.
Chapter 127: A Most Unreasonable Demand
The final gate of the Hakui mountain fortress lood before us.
It was a masterpiece of dwarven engineering, a single, seamless slab of shimring, silver-like tal that humd with a barely contained power.
My army, a brutal and beautiful collection of monsters, stood ready.
My commanders, a dysfunctional family of legends, stood beside .
But I was not here for a battle.
Not yet.
I was here for a negotiation.
A hostile, aggressive, and probably very one-sided negotiation. But a negotiation nonetheless.
I had learned my lesson from the war with Sarah. A kingdom conquered was good. A kingdom acquired, with its skilled personnel and infrastructure intact, was better.
I wanted this Dwarf King.
I wanted his forge, his skills, his glorious, magnificent beard.
And I wanted him alive.
"Pixia," I commanded, my voice low. "Broadcast my ssage. Full power. I want every dwarf in this mountain to hear it."
My tiny pixie advisor nodded, her eyes glowing. She held up a small, crystal amplifier.
My voice, magically enhanced, bood through the mountain, a sound like the grinding of tectonic plates.
"BEHOLD, YOU STUBBORN, ROCK-EATING HERMITS!" I began, deciding that a bit of theatrical flair was always a good opening.
"I am Ragnar Vhagar! The Tyrant of Aethelburg! The conqueror of Gorgon, the slayer of Alyssa, and the new, undisputed ruler of this entire godsforsaken prefecture!"
I let the silence hang for a mont, letting my impressive, self-aggrandizing resu sink in.
"I am here for your king," I continued. "I am offering him a choice. Surrender your domain, your forge, and your loyalty to , and you and your people will be granted a place of honor in my growing empire. You will have unlimited resources. You will have my protection. You will be the master craftsn of the new world order."
I smiled, a sharp, fanged thing.
"Resist," I purred, "and I will have my new friend, Grak the Unbreakable, punch your pretty little mountain until it is a pile of gravel. Then, I will sift through that gravel until I find your king, and I will use his beard to polish my boots."
"You have one hour to decide," I finished. "The clock is ticking."
The ultimatum was delivered. Now, we waited.
The hour was a tense, simring thing.
My "Troublemaker Party," as I had started calling them, was already living up to their na.
Takaharu, my Beast King, was arguing with Sarah, my forr Demon Queen, over the proper way to cook a goblin.
"YOU ROAST IT OVER AN OPEN FIRE!" Takaharu roared. "TO SEAL IN THE FLAVOR!"
"You braise it, you uncivilized brute," Sarah retorted, her voice dripping with condescension. "With a nice Chianti and so fava beans. It is a matter of basic culinary decency."
Saburo, my newly evolved Vampire Noble, was trying to diate, which mostly involved him striking dramatic poses and making long, pointless speeches about the "harmony of the warrior’s palate."
It was exhausting.
Just as I was about to order them all to be quiet, a low, grinding sound echoed from the final gate.
It was opening.
From the darkness beyond, a group of dwarves erged.
They were not a war party. They were a delegation.
And at their head was a figure so unexpected, so utterly contrary to every expectation I had, that I was montarily stunned into silence.
The Dwarf King was a girl.
She couldn’t have been older than twelve.
She had long, braided white hair that shimred like mithril, and eyes the color of molten gold.
She wore a pair of greasy overalls, and a bright yellow safety helt was perched on her head at a jaunty angle.
She was also, I noted with a flicker of professional respect, radiating an aura of power that made the very air around her hum.
She stopped about twenty feet away, her hands on her hips, her expression one of weary, adult exasperation.
"You’re the one making all the noise?" she asked, her voice a deep, surprisingly mature rumble. "I was in the middle of a very delicate calibration. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get the arcane resonance of a soul-forged axe just right?"
I stared.
This was Akira. The legendary Dwarf King. The master craftsman I had marched an entire army across a prefecture to find.
And she was a child. A very powerful, very grumpy child.
"I am Ragnar Vhagar," I said, recovering my composure. "And I have co to offer you a position in my organization."
"I’m not interested in a new job," she said flatly. "I like the one I have. It cos with a forge and a distinct lack of loud, dramatic vampires."
She looked at my assembled army, at my powerful, monstrous commanders. Her golden eyes lingered on Isabelle for a mont, a flicker of sothing unreadable in their depths.
"However," she continued, "I am a pragmatist. And you have brought a very large, very pointy argunt to my front door. I am willing to... negotiate."
"I am not here to negotiate," I corrected her coolly. "I am here to accept your surrender."
"And I am here to tell you that I don’t trust you as far as I can throw one of my golems," she retorted. "You’re a conqueror. A tyrant. Your promises are worth less than the slag in my forge."
She reached into a pouch on her belt and pulled out a single, intricate object.
It was a collar, forged from a dark, swirling tal, covered in glowing, complex runes.
"This," she announced, "is a Collar of Pledge. A binding magical contract. I will place it on the neck of your most trusted subordinate. You will then swear an oath, upon their life, that you will uphold your end of the bargain. That you will ensure the safety and livelihood of my people. If you break that oath, the collar will activate, and your most beloved commander will be... unmade."
She smiled, a small, cunning expression that did not belong on a child’s face.
"So, Tyrant of Aethelburg," she said, her golden eyes locking onto mine. "Who is it? Who do you trust with your life? Who is the one you would risk everything for?"
She surveyed my commanders. Her gaze swept over Chloe, over Saburo, over Sarah.
Then, her eyes settled on Isabelle.
She pointed a small, grease-stained finger.
"Her," she declared. "The Saint. Put the collar on her."
The world seed to stop.
The air in the cavern crackled with a sudden, impossible tension.
Chloe’s hand went to the hilt of her dagger, her eyes narrowing into slits of pure, murderous rage.
Sarah let out a soft, amused laugh.
And I stood there, caught in the jaws of the most brilliant, vicious, and exquisitely cruel trap I had ever seen.
She had just forced to publicly declare my most trusted subordinate.
To choose between my two secret lovers.
In front of my entire army.
This was not a negotiation.
This was an execution.
And I was the one on the chopping block.
----------------------------------
My na is Ragnar Vhagar.
And I was, for the first ti in a long ti, deeply, profoundly satisfied.
The Troublemaker Party, as I had ntally christened my new team of forr Demon Kings, was a beautiful, chaotic ss.
They were a walking, talking diplomatic incident waiting to happen.
And they were all mine.
We stood at the precipice of our next great conquest: the mountain fortress of the Dwarf King of Hakui.
The air was crisp, the sky was a hateful, burning blue, and my army of monsters was ready to commit acts of geological and biological violence on my command.
"This is the life," I murmured, leaning back against a cool, black rock.
Sarah, my newly acquired and perpetually unimpressed forr Demon Queen, was filing her nails with a shard of obsidian. She looked bored.
Grak the Unbreakable was using a small boulder as a stress ball, his massive hand squeezing it until it crumbled into dust. He looked happy.
Kevin, my newly evolved Vampire Noble, was practicing a series of dramatic poses, his cape swishing with an enthusiasm that was frankly embarrassing. He looked constipated.
"Our forces are assembled, my Lord," Isabelle’s voice, a cool blade of calm in the midst of my circus of sociopaths, cut through my thoughts. "What are your orders?"
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