Chapter 85: The Architect of Ruin (Part II)
The Seraphim King's Audience Chamber was less a hall of power and more a gilded madhouse. The air wasn't thick with glorious magic; it reeked of stale panic and the crushing weight of negative numbers.
King Valerius, usually a monolith of stern, kingly pride, looked like a forgotten marionette, deflated and sinking into the royal velvet. Before him, the assembled lords and barons—their robes worth small fortunes—were engaged in an utterly undignified squabble, waving worthless ledgers like frantic, wounded birds.
"Fifty percent loss in three days! My grain acquisition accounts are worthless!" Lord Telian shrieked, his voice splitting like old wood.
"Fifty percent? I lost seventy! I had to liquidate half my estates just to manage the sudden currency plunge!" Baron Krell roared back, clutching his financial records as if they were the last life raft on a sinking ship.
They shouted about gold coins and market shifts, but Valerius knew the true, chilling name of the catastrophe: Leornars.
Valerius's weary gaze tracked past the chaos to his children. Princess Louis, whose quiet disappearances had been lost in the roar of the market collapse, stood perfectly still. Her face was a masterwork of complex, hidden resolve. Beside her, Prince Luiphonia, irritatingly immaculate, tapped his heavy signet ring against a mahogany chair.
"This panic is beneath us, Father," Luiphonia declared, effortlessly cutting through the noise. "A simple loan from the Elarian Empire will stabilize the currency. I can fix this crisis."
The nobles around him exchanged glances—silent, scathing, and full of mockery. A simple loan? They knew the truth: a temporary patch wouldn't stop the predator who was currently devouring their kingdom's heart.
"Go play with your demi-human slaves, boy," Lord Keith muttered, his face tight with contempt.
Meanwhile, in a manor acquired with obscene haste and expense, the atmosphere was one of terrifying, deliberate serenity. Leornars was not engaged in the messy business of conquest. He was reclining in a supremely soft armchair, utterly absorbed in a dense, historical tome detailing Istran woodworking and lacquering techniques. The rise and fall of nations seemed less important than the quality of a bygone era's finish.
Stacian, his financial manager, entered with the silent efficiency of a phantom. Her cyan hair, caught in the afternoon sunlight, shimmered as she placed a slender file on a carved table.
"My Lord, the acquisition is complete," she reported, her voice a model of composure. "We successfully purchased the remainder of every merchant's goods contracted within the Seraphim capital for the next three fiscal years. Total investment: $500 million gold coins."
Leornars gave a low, barely perceptible nod, turning a page. "A successful arbitrage, I assume?"
"Immensely so. Profit projections, after shipping these assets to Lurtra and our core territories, are expected to reach $60 billion within three months." Stacian sighed, a rare display of exasperation. "The Seraphim economy simply imploded. It lacked the diversified capital to absorb even a minimal liquidity shock. It truly baffles my team that King Valerius thought his position was strong enough to even contemplate invading Lurtra. My Lord, we dwarf their economy ten-to-one. It is almost... sad."
"We made it easy for them to fail," Leornars mused, tracing the outline of a decorative fretwork design with a pale finger. "Entropy is the most powerful weapon, Stacian. It requires only a nudge."
He let a cold smile touch his lips. "They focused their resources on trivialities—aphrodisiacs and slaves—barely glancing at the schematics. A foolish kind of mistake that is fatal."
He was about to flip the page when a muffled, distant explosion rattled the windowpane, quickly followed by the rising sound of a panicked, roaring crowd.
Leornars rose slowly. A porcelain cup of steaming black tea had materialized magically in his hand. He walked to the window overlooking the capital's central hub.
"I guess Phase II has begun," he said, his expression utterly blank.
In the Central Plaza, a massive human tide of commoners, laborers, and starving demi-humans had gathered. At their head, mounted on a ferocious black warhorse, was Hyugo, the rebel leader. He brandished a scorched banner, his voice amplified by sheer, raw desperation.
"Look around you!" Hyugo's voice cracked like thunder across the stone. "The King's coffers are full, but your stomachs are empty! The forensic economic review I was provided shows that your taxes, your labor, have funded the reckless debt of these lords for generations!"
He held up a meticulously detailed parchment—the one Zhyelena had given him. "They have accumulated debts their grandchildren will be paying to the Elarian Empire while hoarding wealth! In the Kingdom of Avangard, a loaf of bread is affordable, and a citizen is housed! Here? We starve for their pride!"
The crowd surged, their desperate chants escalating into a revolutionary fervor.
"Our children are drafted into wars none of us want just for them to fill their pockets! The Seraphim Kingdom was a nation envied even by the Elves, yet two hundred years later, we are one of the poorest, a whore nation! Everywhere we look, it's whores and orphaned children because we failed as a nation! A nation is a foundation of the people, not the crown! Side with me to liberate Seraphim! Liberate our homeland!"
"Ooh, he has a silver tongue," Leornars murmured from his window, a flicker of cold amusement in his crimson eyes. Excellent job, Hyugo. Straight for the jugular—the tax records.
He lowered his cup and summoned his Second Servant. Zhyelena materialized silently from his deep shadow, bowing so low her spectral silver hair brushed the floor.
"Go," Leornars commanded, his voice turning to cold steel. "Ensure the coup is effective, but precise. The King and the Princess are to be contained. And Luiphonia…" A dark, self-satisfied twist touched his lips. "He is mine. Do not allow anyone else to lay a hand on the Prince. For all the evil he's done, even hell will reject him after I'm done with him."
Zhyelena vanished, moving faster than the eye could follow. She was seen only once: a silver blur landing lightly behind Hyugo. She whispered a sharp command into his ear; the rebel leader nodded once, his expression hardening with renewed purpose, and Zhyelena was gone, melting into the shadows of the rooftops, heading toward the Royal Palace.
Moments later, a formal invitation was delivered to Leornars—a panicked summons from King Valerius for a "King-to-King Meeting."
Leornars arrived in the grand audience chamber dressed with casual, almost insulting simplicity: a plain white t-shirt, tailored blue trousers, and a pair of soft red slippers that tap-tapped dismissively on the marble floor. His appearance was jarring: pale skin, white hair tied into a wolf-cut with a blue crescent moon pin, and those piercing crimson eyes. As he entered, a crown of brilliant red light coalesced briefly, settling as a physical, dark-red crown upon his head—an unambiguous declaration of his sovereignty.
He stopped, used Earth Magic to swiftly form a colossal, unpolished earthen throne, and raised it several feet higher than King Valerius's seat, ensuring he literally looked down on the Seraphim monarch.
The surrounding nobles were immediately outraged.
"Barbaric! An insult to tradition!" roared Lord Telian, stepping forward.
Leornars didn't even spare him a glance. His crimson gaze, cold and surgical, pinned the noble to the spot.
"If I were not on this throne, respecting the pretense of this meeting, I would have killed you for daring to talk to me as if we were peers, you disgusting baboon," Leornars said, his voice level and dangerously calm.
The chamber fell into an absolute silence, broken only by the loud, relentless tick of the royal clock.
Leornars leaned back on his earthen seat and yawned, the gesture radiating contempt.
"What do you want?" he asked plainly. "I don't have all day."
King Valerius, humbled and destroyed, finally lowered his head. "We require an emergency loan... to govern our nation, to stabilize the economy."
Leornars stared at the broken King, his contempt palpable.
"A loan?" Leornars's voice was laced with poison. "How many demi-humans have you made feel insignificant? How many innocent lives did you ruin by funding slavery and reckless wars? You seek money, which grants power, yet your paranoia and your moral rot destroyed any semblance of stability."
"So you admit it," Valerius choked out, as the nobles rose as one. "You came here specifically to ruin us!"
"I did it because it was my choice, and no one else could or would do it," Leornars stated, emotionless. "I did what the world demands: change."
"Change?" sneered a noble, his face contorted. "You think you are righteous? You believe you are invisible behind that crown?"
"Change is a concept, just like time. It is needed for stability," Leornars corrected. "You and the rest of your parasitic class were nothing but stains that needed to be... extinguished. Did you listen to the voices of your people? Your citizens have more power than you. You benefit from their taxes, and yet you and your foolish ancestors turned the great Seraphim Kingdom into a whore nation! History records this nation once held the same prestige as the Empire—you have tarnished it!"
"So what now? Are you going to kill us?!" the King shouted, his last thread of dignity snapping.
Leornars simply smiled—a dark, patronizing expression. "Kill you? Your sad excuse for souls would be a stain on my hands. I'm here not out of hatred, but because someone here has profoundly wronged the world. Killing you would be equivalent to killing a toad."
"Then we can do a business agreement!" interjected Lord Keith, desperate. "We take a loan and pay it back in a few months, with interest!"
Leornars tilted his head. "That is the single most stupid thing I've ever heard in my entire life. That kind of idea sounds like something ten dead goldfishes would think of."
He paused, letting the silence twist the knife. "Even before my sudden appearance in your kingdom, you were suffering from debt you had accumulated from the Empire and struggling to pay it. There's no way you'll be able to pay me. And that, I'm certain of."
Suddenly, the noises outside grew violent—the unmistakable clash of steel and desperate shouts. Leornars walked leisurely to the window, sipping his tea.
The rebel forces, energized by Hyugo's speech and Zhyelena's guidance, were clashing with the Royal Knights. Captain Kael, the head of the knights, was a whirlwind of deadly silver, his swordsmanship masterfully cutting down rebel after rebel.
Leornars sighed, a genuine, sad sound. "If you were not working for them, Captain, I'd probably let you live and work for me." He returned to his throne.
A messenger, covered in dust and panting, burst through the chamber doors.
"Your Majesty! An inferno wolf! A colossal shadow-and-flame beast has destroyed the trade route going to and from the Holy Kingdom! The last caravan... it's all gone! We will be starved at this rate!"
The King was mortified, looking frantically at Leornars. "I ordered seven thousand bags of grain and a hundred horses for transport... how?"
"I guess my assumptions were right," Leornars said, the triumph cold in his eyes. "I have already bought all the available merchandise from your remaining trade partners. The only thing left is for you to surrender."
He leaned forward, his casual posture gone, replaced by the crushing weight of a King offering a terrifying salvation.
"We don't need innocent people dying in the streets. Your knights don't deserve to die for your foolish pride. If you resign from the throne and allow the third prince to become King, I will stabilize this nation."
"LUIPHONIA IS AN IDIOT!" shouted a noble, unable to contain his disbelief at the demand.
Leornars fixed the man with a look of pure disdain. "I did not ask for your thoughts. Keep it to yourself."
Valerius looked down at the documents of debt and losses. He knew it was over.
"Those grains and fruits will spoil in two days, after all. The journey from the Holy Kingdom is roughly seventy miles west," Leornars said, his voice dry with sarcasm. "Even with magic, I'm not sure you can resurrect spoiled fruit."
He rose, his earthen throne dissolving into dust.
"I have already bought two guilds and established three new Avangard trade shops in this nation in six days while you were twirling your mind. I am doing what benefits my citizens of Avangard as their King. I will let you decide: either side with me now, or fall to unpayable debt and I will invade, tearing the Seraphim Kingdom piece by piece. Your choice, King Valerius."