After the emperor's trembling hands rose in surrender, the Trickster god began his approach. He didn't stride like a conqueror; no—he strolled with a lazy saunter, like a man arriving late to a dinner he owned. Each step echoed softly against the vast marble floor, and yet it thundered in the emperor's mind like the beating of a war drum.
His golden eyes gleamed with mischief and madness as he tilted his head to the side, studying the pair of trembling women behind the emperor. The courtesans—once radiant in their silks and adorned with jewels—were now pale and shivering, clutching at each other like frightened animals cornered by a predator they could not comprehend.
"You're such a useless guy," the Trickster began, his voice syrupy and light, but each word landed with the weight of a sledgehammer. "I like it."
The emperor blinked.
"You run your empire with reckless abandon," the Trickster continued, circling him now like a wolf appraising a wounded deer. "You throw yourself into pleasures like a moth into flame. You crush anyone who dares interrupt your fun. The starving? The dying? The broken? Pfft…" He waved a hand carelessly. "None of it moves you. If a being as mythical as me waltzed into your sacred empire—or something even worse—you wouldn't care. Not unless it messed with your wine or your women."
He laughed. A laugh that twisted through the air like smoke and poisoned incense.
"I like it…"
The words were oddly rhythmic now, hypnotic almost, like a curse spoken in honey. The emperor's eyes twitched involuntarily. Was he… being insulted or praised? The tone was ambiguous—mockery wrapped in admiration, or perhaps admiration laced with scorn. It was maddening.
He thought again... 'Was that… a compliment? Or the most twisted insult he'd ever received?'
Groa's eyes narrowed, sweat forming at his temples. His hands shook slightly, not from fear of death, but from a madness creeping up his spine. The Trickster's words were laced with something—an enchantment, a curse, or perhaps a truth too heavy for the sane to carry.
He summoned every ounce of focus he had, even with that, he was barely able to steady his thoughts. The air around him shimmered with pressure.
His thoughts began to fray. Memories slipped like water through his fingers. He could feel his mind unraveling, strand by strand, as though someone were humming a lullaby inside his skull and plucking at the threads of his consciousness.
Desperately, he dug inward—into the sea of his cultivation. Level 6 of the Ocean-Flooding Realm. A place of immense internal pressure and spiritual resonance. He grounded himself in it like a drowning man clawing for a rock beneath the waves. Only then did he stabilize his breath.
But the two women beside him were not so fortunate.
Their eyes fluttered, rolling backward. Their lips parted in confusion and fear as their bodies went limp and crumpled to the floor like discarded puppets. The Trickster god's words had formed a psychic hook—too potent, too surreal. Mortals were never meant to withstand the echo of such a being's voice.
The Trickster god stopped walking and glanced at the fallen beauties with a smirk.
"Ah," the Trickster god said with mild disappointment as he looked down at the unconscious women. "Apologies about your playthings. Don't worry—they'll recover… in time. Or they won't. You can always find more."
He straightened his back and dusted off the invisible lint on his robes. Then his grin widened—if that were even possible—and his tone shifted, suddenly becoming sharp, businesslike.
He paused again as he tilted his head, gazing curiously at the two beauties passed out behind Groa. "Hmm. Pretty ornaments," he mused aloud. "Fragile minds, though. That's the trouble with mortals—they break so easily."
He looked up again, locking eyes with the emperor, and this time his grin widened, something darker stirring behind it.
"But enough about them. There's something I want you to do for me…"
The emperor's trembling stopped—not out of strength, but confusion. His lips parted slightly, his breathing shallow.
His thoughts, once again, stumbled.
Was this… a task?
A test?
Or the beginning of a pact with madness itself?
His eyes twitched, not from fear this time, but conflict. Because despite everything—the insult, the threat, the overwhelming power—there was something in the Trickster's voice that stirred a dangerous curiosity.
And perhaps, a sliver of temptation.
The Trickster God leaned in slightly again, his grin lowering just enough to suggest something conspiratorial.
"It's nothing too difficult… for a man who already does whatever he wants."
The Trickster God strolled even closer to the trembling emperor, each step echoing in Groa's mind like the toll of a funeral bell. That grin—eternal, eerie, impossible—never once faltered.
His laughter slithered through the room like smoke, seeping into the walls, coiling around Groa's spine.
"When I arrived on this... planet—" he began, voice dipping into a strange cadence as though reciting the laws of madness, "—or should I say dimension... or perhaps both? Ah, the quantum latticework that binds this realm together is deliciously chaotic."
He gestured lazily at the ceiling, as if addressing the cosmos itself.
"The mechanisms that govern your reality—space, time, thought—they are fragile. So delightfully rigid... yet they whisper to me of how easily they can unravel. Did you know that? That your entire existence is built on assumptions? False constants? I've already walked its seams, peeked between the numbers, laughed with the silence that holds atoms apart."
Groa's eyes were starting to twitch erratically, the sword he'd dropped earlier now entirely forgotten.
The words—those cursed, looping, impossibly heavy words—were folding into his mind like jagged glass. There was no spell in the air, yet his very soul recoiled.
It wasn't magic. Not exactly. It was the essence of the Trickster's nature. Every syllable carried the weight of anti-logic, of reality bent at a wrong angle—subtle and corrosive. Even the greatest mages would've started bleeding from the ears by now. Groa, though powerful, was mortal... and mortals crack.
The Trickster paused mid-monologue and studied the emperor's expression.
Groa's pupils had dilated unevenly. A thin line of sweat crawled down his temple. His legs twitched. His jaw locked. His breath came in short, shallow gasps.
"Hmm," the Trickster said with mock concern, "I see... I've overestimated you. Even you cannot handle the strain of that little portion of knowledge."
He exhaled slowly and rolled his neck.
"Fine. No more cosmic truths. I'll make it simple, for the sake of your sanity—or what's left of it anyway."
Suddenly, all the oppressive tension in the air vanished, like someone had exhaled the room.
The Trickster's voice dropped into a smooth, conversational tone—as though he hadn't just been unraveling a man's mind.
"I need something from you, Groa. Something small, something easy. For someone like you who already betrays trust and kills casually, this will be second nature."
Groa blinked, the world slowly settling back into color. His head pounded like war drums. But he nodded—just once.
He had no idea what was about to be asked of him.
But he knew two things for certain:
1. Refusal wasn't an option.
2. This wasn't the beginning of a negotiation… it was the beginning of his descent.