“If you set your expectations too high, it would be far too easy to end up disappointed. On the other hand, by setting your expectations as low as it could get, you will find it either met or exceeded most of the time, which is preferable, I would say.” - Saying attributed to the Silver Maiden.

“What do we do, then?” asked Kino with some doubt in her voice. The girl was clearly at a loss on what to do in the situation, which was probably not helped with how her affinity resulted in a situation where for her, all she had was a hammer so she had no choice but to treat most problems as nails. “Do we just… wait that thing out?”

“It would be safer for the rest,” said Aideen with a nod. “The mana is still unstable, so if you provoke it, it might react… explosively, which would be bad for any survivors.”

“I see,” acquiesced Kino with some disappointment as she lowered her hand.

The two of them fortunately didn’t need to wait that long. Within less than five minutes, the cocoon of Life mana stabilized upon itself, then coalesced and shrunk. The blindingly bright cocoon shrunk until it was roughly a human’s height before it began to adhere to the shape of a human body, one around average height or so, and slowly turned into a human shape before their eyes.

While at first the shape had been rather indistinct, just a general humanoid shape of blindingly bright mana, it slowly took on more details. The blinding mana slowly dimmed down, replaced by the pale bronze skin common to the natives of the region, while facial features came to be on the figure’s face, replacing the previous blank canvas.

The figure was male, naked – no real surprise there –, and completely hairless, and Aideen felt that she had seen the face on the bald head before. It took her a while before she finally remembered where she had seen its like. It was on the face of the Vitalican prince she helped capture back in Antemeia decades ago. Not the exact same face, but similar enough that she bet they were close family or some sort.

Immediately, her mind thought of the current King of Vitalica, Ver’dun Slovak, who was nephew to the aforementioned prince she met, but then she thought again and felt that it shouldn’t be the case. The current King of Vitalica should be an old man in his sixties if she remembered right, while the figure that emerged from the cocoon was clearly in the prime of their life.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Was it perhaps an effect of whatever ritual that was used that de-aged him? Or was it a younger relative instead?

The figure’s eyes slowly fluttered open, at first his eyeballs nothing but radiant orbs of Life mana, before they slowly coalesced into more normal-looking brown eyes, albeit with a visibly radiant quality to them. He looked to his left and then to his right, rubbed his eyes with his hands, then repeated the act once more, his eyes scrunching up as he spotted Aideen and Kino to his side.

“It would appear that the so-called barriers that would ensure the safety of the people in here were bogus or flawed, after all,” said the figure with a rather wistful tone as he looked at the direction where most of the dust piles lay. “A shame. They had been competent minions. Hard to get competent minions in this day and age…”

“But no matter,” said the figure – still floating a short distance over the floor – as he cut short his lamentations. “Minions can be found and trained anew, and now I have all the time in this world. A pity about Zabibah… She was a good concubine, and shame on the brats too, but oh well. Women are aplenty and children are just a matter of time anyway.”

“And who might you be?” asked Aideen from the side, though she already had a good guess as to the identity of the figure.

“Hm? Right. So there were people strong enough to survive that, after all,” said the figure absent-mindedly as he turned to face them directly. “We are Ver’dun Slovak, First of His Name, King of Vitalica, Slayer of the Undead, Protector of the Wastelands, Of Hallowed Origin, Blessed of Vitalis, and soon to be the Eternal Sovereign of the World,” stated the man grandiosely as he spread his arms to the side. “But you may refer to us as ‘His Eternal Majesty’ instead.”

“Yeaah, I think we’ll pass on that, sorry not sorry,” said Aideen nonchalantly in the face of the man likely responsible for the entirety of the rituals they had to deal with just earlier. At the same time, Aideen subtly gestured a ‘go ahead’ to Kino, and the girl reacted immediately.

A sphere of void consumed the head of the “Eternal King” a moment later, but to their surprise, once the void faded, the entire head just reformed within seconds.

“Tsk, too much mana,” Kino complained as she frowned. “I can’t even try to take out more of him, he has far more mana than I posse-”

Her words were cut off when Ver’dun Slovak moved with such alacrity that he barely registered as a blur and slammed his fist against Kino’s chest, hard enough to hurl the girl directly against one of the marble pillars of the room. The sound of shattered bones echoed along with the impact, and Aideen knew that such a blow would have likely killed Kino had she not been Unliving.

Meanwhile, the perpetrator of said blow hovered lazily a short distance from the floor and turned to face Aideen with a mocking smirk on his smug face. The way he looked at her was as if he was merely looking at an ant, an inconsequential insect that he could dispose of with just a mere thought on his part and no more. It was a rather infuriating, condescending look, to be sure.

“What now, mage? Are you disappointed? Did you perhaps come here expecting to find a madman, a lunatic lost to the throes of power, only to find yourself in the face of a God?”