Rise Online: Return of the Legendary Player

'Shit, why did I go and say that about troops?' Kaizen thought as he saw Thenomor coming out from behind the throne Queen Niah was sitting on.

Thenomor was a tall man with very white skin and black hair combed minutely to the right. His gaze was centered and his countenance serious. The fact that he was wearing a thick all-black suit made his severe aura even more pronounced.

In Thenomor's left hand he held a sheathed black Katana, and at the back of his waist was another Katana identical to the first.

"Do you really believe that you, such a chaotic man, could organize my troops better than I could?" Thenomor asked Psyker.

"By the way, Kaizen, that's the Captain and founder of the New Kingsguard, the one who is among the most powerful men in the Tretidian Army, Thenomor."

Using the Class Skill <Analyzing Eye>, Kaizen could see absolutely no information from this man, except that he was an NPC. All of his attributes were hidden by a question mark, as well as his abilities and weaknesses, which made Thenomor a complete mystery.

Still, all Kaizen needed to do was to buy more time, no matter what the method. So, since he was still managing to keep the dialogue going, he wanted to see how far he could continue and where this conversation would end.

"If it was you who arranged them to stay the way they are, that doesn't change the fact that I think I can do better than you." Kaizen replied.

"You are forgetting one thing, boy. Priorities are necessary when commanding troops. The borders need to be protected, as well as the nobles throughout the kingdom. The rest are... shall we say, the scum. Still, I've put some guards I trust on the great southern bridge, where the masses are, so there's nothing to worry about."

"If there's nothing to worry about, why use Taznaar to 'control' the adventurers?"

"Just a guarantee." Thenomor replied quickly.

"A guarantee that was simply discarded when another strong person showed up?" Kaizen asked, smiling defiantly from beneath his mask. The tone of his question made his strangeness clear. "I believe that in fact you, Queen, lied to me when you said that you were only using Taznaar's influence. In fact, you were using him for something else."

"How dare you accuse the great Queen of things like this under her own roof!" Thenomor inquired, irritated.

On the other hand, Queen Niah remained calm and said:

"Thenomor, it's okay. You're right, Kaizen, I lied to you. I could expect no less from the famous Kaizen. You Thenomor and I inside your mental board so fast that we didn't notice. You offended Thenomor's army as a trap to make him reveal himself and then made him contradict my words. Really very clever."

At that moment, Kaizen was internally surprised.

'Ehh? What? I did that?'

Luckily, his expression of surprise could not be seen because of his mask.

Niah continued to speak. "You are right about Taznaar. We used it for something besides keeping the city in order. Before we found you, we were looking for someone strong and he served perfectly for what we needed for a while, but when I first heard about you was when the Centaur hunt with Taznaar and other adventurers failed. Then I could personally see you fight so magnificently against Taznaar, so I knew I was betting my cards on the wrong person. Taznaar is powerful and thanks to his Guild he has gained the respect of multitudes, only in him and his men there is something missing that you have."

"Are you going to keep stalling or are you going to say right away what you want me to do?" Kaizen asked as bluntly as possible. He didn't want to make it too clear that he was trying to buy time.

Then Niah looked at Thenomor, who nodded, and then exclaimed to his guards in the throne room:

"Men, you may stand down. The Queen, Kaizen and I have private business to attend to alone."

Once all the soldiers in black armor had left, Thenomor looked to Queen Niah for her to begin with her explanation.

"Well, Taznaar and his guild obtained special contracts that no other guild had access to. By the way, for you it will be no different should we enter into an agreement. The mission of all these contracts was for his guild to explore various dangerous areas of this kingdom, places that many adventurers will never go. However, the real purpose of this was not just to gather resources, information and map the places like other guilds do, but to find an ancient dungeon that I am looking for."

"A dungeon?" Confused, Psyker asked.

"Yes, a dungeon. Not just any dungeon like those out there, but a special dungeon, full of riches and very ancient knowledge. I don't know if you know that eons ago elves inhabited the Kingdom of Tretidian in great numbers, only their skins were too sensitive to the constant change of time, so they built an underground city to live in. Since they disappeared from Midgard, the city has also disappeared, and if we find this, we can gain the knowledge of mana that only the elves had." The Queen replied.

As Kaizen listened to all this crazy nonsense from the Queen's mouth, he was wondering how much longer he would have to endure hearing all this quietly, without acting.

Two floors above the room where the Psyker was, Princess Lídia watched Petril Wyvernjack talk for a few seconds with the guard who was protecting the door to the King's chambers. As if it were easy, Petril managed to get this man to leave his guard position and accompany him somewhere else.

She didn't even want to imagine what the butler said to get the soldier to do this, but she took advantage of this moment to finally get to the door.

Her heart was palpitating with excitement and nervousness. This was the riskiest thing she had done in years. If her stepmother found out what she was doing, nothing could stop Niah from locking her up in the dungeons as she had already threatened.

The bunch of keys that Petril gave to Lídia was huge. There were at least twenty keys that were very similar to each other. Testing one by one, she finally managed to find one that fit perfectly, so she turned the key to the right and heard the classic pop of her lock unlocking.

At first, Lídia felt so overcome with emotion that her eyes almost filled with tears, but she took a deep breath and before she entered she looked back.

Petril was not coming back yet, only that she could hear him talking to the guard in a room a little further away.

Now she had a few precious minutes to finally find out how her father was doing.

She entered the room and closed the door slowly so as not to make any kind of noise.

Lídia remembered that her parents' room was truly splendid when she was a child.

In the old days, some walls of the room were filled with books and there were many shelves with encyclopedias that told about the heavens, the sea and the forests all over the world. Her mother had a taste for knowledge and the King also picked up the habit of reading a lot over time.

At that time, vases with the most fragrant and beautiful flowers she had ever seen in her entire life adorned the room. Her mother started to grow some flowers inside that very room and later built the beautiful garden on the first floor, which she dreamed of so much.

Entering this room for the first time after the death of her mother was exciting for Lídia, who had so many good memories of this place and didn't want to erase them.

However, this time when she entered her father's room, the place was not being illuminated by daylight as it usually was, nor was it being refreshed by the light breeze from the altitude. On the contrary, the whole room was partially dark, lit only by a few candles on some tables and chandeliers.

On her first step into this room, her foot accidentally kicked a book that was on the floor and then she saw that the whole floor of the place was a mess. There were books and more books lying around on the floor, as well as pieces of parchment and other debris. In addition, the place stank of a mixture of mold and dust.

This was a shock to her, who could not even in her worst imaginings think that her father's room could be in such a state.

Still, she remained calm and continued to walk around the room, looking for any trace of her father in the darkness.

Carrying a candle that she picked up from a table, Lídia looked at every dark corner of the room with apprehension to find her father soon, until she finally found his bed at the back of the long room.

As she approached the bed of white sheets, she saw that a very pale man lay there, and this man was breathing with difficulty, as if his lung was filled with dust.

"Dad!" she cried out unconsciously, shocked to see the state he was in, and then she approached him quickly, trembling. "Dad, what happened? What happened to you?!"

The King slowly opened his eyes, and as he saw his daughter standing beside his bed, a faint smile appeared on his lips.

"That voice... Lídia? It's you, isn't it?" He said, still weak.

...

Edited by: DrHitsuji

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