The night breeze was freezing at this altitude.
Altrouge sat on the edge of a rusted water tower, swinging her pale legs over the abyss. She looked over at Rimuru, who was leaning against the railing with his eyes closed.
"You realize you're breaking the absolute highest taboo of the Mage's Association, right?" she mused. "You are the strangest magus I have ever met."
"Traditional magi are obsolete," Rimuru replied, lazily opening his eyes. "I used to think I'd have to sit in a Lord's chair at the Clock Tower for a decade before I could start pulling the strings of this world. But you expedited the process."
He didn't originally care about this universe. But his past life as a corporate elite had ingrained a toxic perfectionism in him, he refused to be a background extra, no matter what world he was in. Since he was already swept up in a paradigm shift, he didn't mind giving the wheel a violent spin.
"You're going to make an enemy out of every single magus on the planet. You aren't just cheating at the game; you're flipping the table," Altrouge said, her crimson eyes gleaming with amusement. "Rules established over millennia aren't broken so easily."
"They aren't broken because the weak lack the power, and the strong lack the motive." Rimuru was surprisingly patient. It was rare to find someone who didn't instantly write off his modern economic theories as pure heresy. He actually wanted to talk about it.
"Top-tier magi only care about reaching the Root. Once they get strong enough, they don't give a damn about the rest of the world. And guys like the White Wing Lord? Ortenrosse has the ambition, but he doesn't have the guts to completely burn the system down." Rimuru sneered, his voice dripping with aristocratic rebellion. "This world needs a revolution. And it's going to get one, sooner or later."
He kept his true motivation to himself.
If humanity wanted to avoid the apocalyptic fate of extinction, they had to save themselves. The reason Phantasmal Species and Dead Apostles were so overwhelmingly powerful was because they were inherently tied to Mystery from birth. They were a unified front of power, not a scattered mess of backstabbing aristocrats like humanity.
Primates ruled the world through sheer numbers, but those numbers bred infinite, paralyzing political complexity. Rimuru couldn't fix human nature. He couldn't force a global utopian alliance.
But!
If an absolute, overwhelming superpower stepped onto the board? A monopoly capable of crushing all competition? At the very least, it would drag humanity kicking and screaming out of stagnation.
I don't truly belong here, Rimuru thought. But Riddell does. Erol does. And the Dean...
He decided he could give it a shot. A real, all-out shot. It would suck to finally find a way home, only to look back and realize he'd let an entire planet burn just because he was lazy.
Rimuru stretched his arms overhead, shedding the last remnants of his lazy traveler persona.
The sheer, piercing conviction in his eyes caught Altrouge off guard. She blinked, then let out a soft laugh, deciding not to pry further. She liked this. He was arrogant, rebellious, and insanely ambitious. He was fun.
"Tell me," she asked, her voice dropping into a soft, intimate purr. "Are you truly loyal to me now?"
"Of course," Rimuru answered without missing a beat. "As long as you are useful to me, and as long as you keep my curse suppressed, you have my absolute loyalty."
Sleeping with tigers, or temporarily bowing his head, wasn't shameful to Rimuru. It was just business. But…
"And if I can no longer suppress you?" Altrouge asked, thrilled by his brazen honesty. "Will you eat me? Like you did to Vissela?"
Rimuru glanced at her. "What do you think?"
"Hmm... then I look forward to it."
Altrouge turned her gaze back toward Cornwall. High above the sprawling, doomed estates, a brilliant blood moon hung in the sky.
"Let's see who ends up eating who."
…
Under the heavy, suffocating cover of night, the Duke of Cornwall issued his final decree. He formally rejected the mandates of both the Mage's Association and the Holy Church.
He abandoned the light. He threw himself and his territory into the abyss.
Cornwall became the first human city in modern history to openly declare its allegiance to the Dead Apostles and accept the absolute protection of Altrouge Brunestud.
The world reeled.
The Black Princess, the nomadic, capricious Queen of the Bloodsuckers, had never claimed physical territory before. She didn't choose a sovereign nation or a sprawling metropolis. She chose a nameless, rural county on the edge of the British Isles.
But the geopolitical significance was explosive. To the Dead Apostles, it was a rallying cry. A beacon that whipped them into a fanatical frenzy.
To the magi and the Executors, the intelligence reports were a death knell. The underworld was violently shifting. A second White Wing Lord was rising, and neither the Church nor the Association was going to sit back and watch a literal city of vampires take root in Europe.
Cornwall was no longer just a battleground over a mythical scabbard. It was a cancer. It had to be excised. Justice demanded it.
And all of this chaos, this apocalyptic shift in the balance of power, was intrinsically tied to the newly crowned White Knight.
…
Elsewhere in the city, the fog parted.
A young girl stepped softly onto the cobblestones of the newly claimed vampire territory. Ten opulent, heavy rings adorned her delicate fingers, glinting in the pale moonlight.
She looked up at the crimson-tinted sky, her nose wrinkling in profound disgust. She raised a hand to cover her face.
"How utterly revolting. It reeks of Dead Apostles everywhere."
…
High above the streets, sitting on a rusted weather vane.
"If I'm going to publicly spit in the face of the entire magus world, I really can't risk my identity leaking," Rimuru mused, resting his chin in his hand. "A title isn't enough. The White Knight needs a name."
"Then just call yourself Leviathan."
Altrouge flashed a brilliant, wicked smile. She stopped swinging her pale legs over the edge of the tower and stood up, her crimson eyes locking onto a specific, distant shadow in the town below.
"The White Knight, Leviathan. It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?"
"…It's alright, I suppose. Why?" Rimuru followed her gaze, sensing the sudden shift in her aura.
"Have you ever heard of the Burial Agency?" Altrouge pointed toward the dark streets, a giddy thrill in her voice. "The first real test of your new authority is here. If my nose isn't failing me… an old friend of ours just arrived. The infamous Executor of Justice, who also happens to hold a seat among the Twenty-Seven Ancestors."
…
"Teacher… Teacher…"
Inside Rimuru's private lounge at the Clock Tower, Erol was relentlessly tugging at the hem of his pristine coat. The little silver ahoge on top of her head bounced frantically with every pull, a desperate attempt to drag his attention away from the paperwork on his desk.
After a solid minute of this, Rimuru finally let out a defeated sigh. He looked up.
With a flick of his wrist, a gentle current of water wrapped around Erol's waist, hoisting her up and depositing her right onto the center of his mahogany desk.
"If you want something, just say it," Rimuru said, fighting back a laugh. "Stop trying to pull my coat apart."
"Uu…" Erol clasped her hands behind her back, suddenly acting incredibly shy and twisting her foot against the wood. "Well… I heard…"
"I heard the hunting grounds are fixed!"
"…"
Rimuru's mouth twitched. He immediately scooped her back off the desk and dropped her on the floor.
"Absolutely not."
"Waaaaah! Then… then Teacher has to come play with me instead!"
Rimuru paused, then gave a slow nod. Ah. The classic door-in-the-face technique. Riddell had taught her well: demand something completely unacceptable first, so your real, smaller request gets approved out of compromise. Erol's eyes lit up like fireworks.
"I can do that," Rimuru agreed. "However. Have you finished your assignments for the week, Erol?"
He turned his attention back to the stack of legal documents on his desk, uncapping his fountain pen. They were the final property transfer deeds. With these signatures, he was fully liquidating the last physical estates of the Tempest family. He'd sever his ties to the old land, but in return, he'd gain a massive injection of liquid capital.
Combine that with the lucrative patent royalties from his modernized hydro-mancy spells, and Rimuru was perfectly positioned to ride the exploding financial wave of the late 1980s. The magus world was stagnating, but human capitalism was booming.
"A-assignments?"
Erol's ahoge went completely limp. Her bright smile instantly collapsed into a look of sheer panic. She tilted her head, trying desperately to play the cute, oblivious card. "What… what assignments, ducky?"
"Mm. Playing dumb is a valid strategy. But if those assignments aren't finished, you'll be spending the next month locked inside the Clock Tower on house arrest."
Rimuru chuckled, tapping her lightly on the forehead. He gathered up the signed documents and stood. "Alright, go find your Big Sister Riddell for a bit. I have some business to…"
"RIMURU!"
The enraged, primal roar shattered the lounge's high-tier soundproofing wards before Rimuru could even finish his sentence.
BANG!
Riddell Archelot kicked the heavy oak door open with enough force to crack the hinges. The sudden, violent entry terrified Erol, who instantly scrambled up Rimuru's leg and buried her face inside his coat, refusing to come down.
"…"
Rimuru looked down at the shivering, highly dramatic little girl clinging to his chest, then looked back up at the doorway.
"You seem a bit upset, Riddell."
Riddell's face was dark as a thundercloud. Her brows were knitted so tightly together they looked like a blade, giving her delicate features an aura of absolute murder. Her chest heaved violently with every ragged breath, a movement that, unfortunately, really only served to highlight her complete lack of curves.
She stared at the trembling Erol for a split second, forcing herself to take a deep, shuddering breath to compose herself in front of the kid.
Then, she gritted her teeth, spitting the words out one by one.
"Was. It. You."
"Yes." Rimuru blinked, offering a mild, entirely unapologetic smile. "Assuming you're referring to Cornwall."
"I knew it…"
Riddell dragged a hand down her face. Only this idiot would pull a stunt of this magnitude. Ever since he was a child, his entire worldview had been steeped in this terrifying, reckless rebellion, or 'foresight,' as he liked to call it.
"So, the White Knight is…"
"Me," Rimuru confirmed. There was no point in hiding it from her. She already knew too much.
"You're incredibly well-informed today. Let me guess, the Lords held another emergency meeting behind my back?" Rimuru tapped his chin. "Look, next time a meeting adjourns, try not to storm directly into my office. It makes it incredibly easy for the other factions to connect the dots."
"You don't need to lecture me on operational security!" Riddell snapped, her voice pitching up in sheer exasperation. "There wasn't a Lords' meeting! I was notified directly by the Dean!"
"The Dean?" Rimuru blinked, genuinely surprised.
"Yes! Be honored, Rimuru!" Riddell took a furious step forward, her voice dripping with a terrifying, bitter sarcasm. "Because of your little stunt, the Association has been forced to act."
"They are convening a Grand Resolution."
….
+20 chapters on my p@tr3on: Kazuma_trash
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