Chapter 712: The Dreaded Question
The silence that had followed Alex’s invitation to ask questions did not break immediately into speech.
Instead, one by one, they rose from their seats, not out of formality, but out of the particular urgency of people who understood that some debts needed to be paid before anything else could be discussed.
Alex had been crowned Ruler years ago, but the title existed more in name than in authority. Though every clan leader had pledged their allegiance, each vow carried the same condition, he would first have to prove himself worthy of it.
Alex understood exactly why they made that decision.
A mortal, worse, one of the outsiders to whom their world was a game, who had nothing at stake, and now he was made the Ruler of the greatest domain, standing at the head of hundreds of millions of individuals, many of whom, even degraded by decades of the curse eating at their minds, still stood as Elemental Rulers.
Among the strongest figures the world had to offer. Alex was a child, by any reasonable measure, placed at the head of giants.
The other reason for their hesitation had never been personal. It had been arithmetic. The entire crisis had been inherited from Ahura, the Tenth Domain Ruler, and by the time it landed in Alex’s hands, so much time had already passed that the odds of survival had narrowed to something approaching zero.
There had been little practical reason to invest hope in a child who, even if exceptional beyond any reasonable expectation, would likely still find himself outmatched by odds that had been building against the Domain for the better part of a century.
Their decision had been a calculated one. Rather than allowing a young boy to be corrupted by the power thrust upon him, they had chosen to make him earn the authority that came with it.
Time had proven their judgment sound. Now, it was finally time to grant him what had always been his by right, something he had since earned beyond any doubt.
The Dragon Clan’s leader was a towering presence even seated, and standing he seemed to fill more of the room than his physical size alone accounted for, scales the deep, banked color of embers catching the ambient light, eyes holding the particular patience of a creature that measured time in decades rather than years.
He walked forth, stopping at the base of the stairs leading to the dark throne.
"I, Telarion Chelzrinth, Leader of the Dragon Clan, pledge allegiance to the Domain Ruler." He dropped to one knee, his voice carried across the chamber without effort, ancient and resonant. "On my life, and on my clan’s untarnished pride spanning a thousand generations. I pledge my entire clan, to its last drop of blood, to the cause of defending this Domain and ridding this world of the evil that threatens it."
Queen Bellatrix followed the gesture without hesitation, as the dragon king returned to his seat.
"I, Bellatrix Anaemis, Leader of the Vampire Clan, pledge allegiance to the Ruler. Hidden One."
Regrim Fernis rose with the particular crackling of bones, his hoarse voice carrying across the chamber with none of the smoothness of the living and all of the weight of an undead skeleton.
"I, Regrim Fernis, Leader of the Undead Clan, pledge allegiance to the Domain Ruler." A pause, the hollow sockets where his eyes should have been flickering faintly with cold purple light.
A man with skin the deep blue of ocean trenches stepped forward from among the seated representatives, moving with the fluid, unhurried grace of something built for water even while walking on stone.
"I, Terzogg Megek Abyssal, Leader of the Merfolk Clan, pledge allegiance to the Ruler. Hidden One."
One by one, the rest followed. Elf Queen, the Dwarf king, Giant, Winged Monarch, Beastmen, Fairy Queen, Elemental, each leader rising and bending the knee before speaking the same binding words in their own voice, their own cadence, until all twelve had renewed their oaths not as formality but as fact, freely given, fully meant.
Alex received each one without interruption, letting the weight of it settle where it needed to, before he spoke.
"I accept your allegiance," Alex said, inclining his head every so slightly. "So long as I bear the mantle of Ruler, I shall stand before you in every hardship and behind you in every triumph, and never betray the trust you place in me. This, I swear."
Regrim, the Undead Clan Leader, rose from his seat again. His skeletal feet clicked sharply against the dark stone floor as he stepped forward, hollow, inhuman eyes meeting Alex’s without a trace of emotion.
When he spoke, his dry, crackling voice carried the bluntness of one who had long abandoned the need for careful phrasing.
"A world war is coming." Regrim’s crackled voice carried easily across the stone chamber, addressed to the gathered leaders as much as to the throne. "This much, none of us need reminding of. We have watched it building for years now, in the movements of the Eldravian Empire, in the silence of the Demon King’s forces." His hollow eyes flickered, the cold purple light within them pulsing faintly with the rhythm of his words.
"This Domain’s responsibility has always been to stand against it, because their victory, however distant it seemed, would eventually mean our own defeat, no matter how far into the shadows we chose to retreat in the meantime."
He paused, letting that settle.
"A day ago, we were drifting slowly toward exactly that outcome. Our own destruction, delayed, perhaps, by years of quiet and careful hiding, but inevitable all the same."
He let that settle before continuing.
"Our only hope was the Domain Ruler." His hollow gaze moved across the room briefly before returning to Alex. "We were waiting for you, Domain Ruler, to return from the Ancestral Realm, expecting you had grown in power and in turn in authority, so you could secure a cure for the Devourer’s Curse."
"But the true plan, a few days ago, was simply to hide within this Domain and endure for as long as we could. To prepare and recover from the decades of damage done to us until the war inevitably found our doorstep." His voice carried no shame in the admission, only honesty.
"Cowardly, perhaps, but it was the only path that seemed to offer any chance of survival for us and what would remain of the outside world."
He paused.
"Now, everything has changed, because of you. Your mysterious ways, and a strength that, frankly, defies every reasonable explanation I have available to me."
"Domain Ruler, you have overcome impossible odds." Regrim continued, his voice carrying something that hadn’t been there before, a genuine, unguarded surprise. "Done better than anyone could reasonably have expected."
"In a span of time that, frankly, makes very little sense when I attempt to hold it up against everything I understand about power and its acquisition - give or take twelve years, by my count - you went from a mortal with no Rank at all to an early Ninth Rank Elemental Ruler."
He shook his head slowly, the motion carrying a disbelief that clearly had not fully settled even now, even having witnessed the evidence firsthand.
"And from what I observed today, under certain circumstances, you stand at the threshold of Tenth Rank. A half-step away, if that."
The room held its silence, letting him continue.
"In a single day, our circumstances have improved immensely. As you can imagine, this leaves us with a great many questions." A pause. "I have only one, for now."
The room went quiet in the particular way that happened when everyone present understood that the next question was the one that mattered most.
"I watched you explain to the world how you struck a pact with the Demon King. Five years during which he infects no new souls. Five years in which none of his Generals participate in the coming war. Five years without demon armies coming to the Eldravian Empire’s aid." Regrim’s hollow eyes flickered with that faint purple light again.
"This deal... essentially means the destruction of the alliance between the Eldravian Empire and the Demon King, by his own hand." Regrim’s voice fell to little more than a whisper as he spoke the final words, so quiet that one could have mistaken the change for fear.
He leaned forward slightly.
"I would not have seen such a thing happen in a thousand centuries, but then again, in a single day, you have shown us several impossibles." His voice dropped, carrying the weight of what came next. "Still, I do not believe you simply asked, and he agreed."
"Not even with the means to kill one of the strongest beings in existence in single combat and walk away merely fatigued, a one-sided victory made undeniable by the headless corpse of Envy sitting as proof."
"Even accounting for that." He had no lungs and still exhaled a breath. "Even accounting for the fact that you could, in theory, threaten his life within his own domain. I do not believe the Demon King would agree to such impossible demands."
He held Alex’s gaze steadily.
"My question is simple. What did you offer him to make him agree to five years of peace that essentially dismantles his entire strategy? That destroys his closest ally, should we win this war? That leaves the Devourer horde he has spent seven decades building to get used as cannon fodder and be butchered?"
The silence that followed was absolute, and the tension in the throne room could be cut with a knife. Every clan leader found themselves leaning forward, their eyes fixed on Alex.
They longed for an answer, even as they dreaded the one he might give.
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