“Sit.”
I pointed down at the carpet beneath my feet while glaring at King Euclid balefully.
I watched his tense jaw working, his teeth grinding as he fought to find the words to rebel against me. A single bolt of my [Lightning Armor] lanced out and scoured a line of charred fibers near his feet, and he dropped in panic.
After a long pause, I started pacing back and forth, all extraneous things forgotten. Long term planning mode—engaged.
Main goal? Get the weebs back home, win the contest. Which meant we’d need a teleportation ritual that could get us there. A massive burn of spatial magecraft. Like… summoning people as heroes was far easier than returning them to their home. Planets moved around. It wasn’t as easy as returning to sender.
So unless someone on Earth invented magic, accumulated the resources, then performed the ritual to seek out our group… I’d have to do it myself. Which meant I’d need a new Aspect. And not a Minor Aspect, either. A Major Spatial Aspect would require dedicated followers and a steady stream of worship.
Aspects tended to fall into two common categories. The tangible, and the intangible. My primary Aspect, regardless of what anyone believed, fell into the tangible category. Chaos or Avarice, my two oldest Major Aspects after Magic, both fell into the intangible category. Picking up intangible, Minor Aspects? Easy mode. While relaxing, a deity can just gather up the belief of their followers and turn it into a tiny part of themselves. Major Aspects? Those required more attention. I had to learn them, know them on a fundamental level, and then become the Aspect just as much as it would become me.
I strolled back and forth across the dais, all while people tried to interrupt my train of thought left and right, just beyond the perimeter of my [Lightning Armor]. Couldn’t they see that I was busy? Rude, much?
Chin in hand, other arm folded under my chest, I just kept pacing. Plotting. Pontificating within my own mind.
Right. I’d have to build a following. While hiding from the children who oversaw whatever world we’d landed on. I had a lot of Aspects already. I’d been a little bored playing the villain, so I’d collected minor ones like they were vinyl records. Destruction, fear, storms, the usual things. What was one more Major Aspect after all that? I just needed like… a decade or two to build that size of devout following.
“Um, excuse me?”
“I swear,” I began, turning on my heel and fuming internally, “the next person who interrupts me while I’m thinking—“
I paused. RioRio was blinking at me, more surprised than scared by my outburst.
“Are you okay? You’ve been pacing for ten minutes. Everyone is getting tired of waiting.”
I finally looked around. If I took a poll on everyone’s reactions, I had a feeling the results would come back dangerously similar to a hostage situation, with me as the hostage-taker.
A few of the girls were crying. Mostly, they were the children mixed into the group of conventioneers—as young as their early teens. A handful of the boys were crying, too, but I had my priorities straight, and they could take a back seat. I had planning to do.
I’d left the king yammering at me like a small dog, and it made me want to punt him. Nobody could actually do anything to stop me, and I’d yet to react to any threats made towards the heroes. Eventually, the guards in the throne room had realized that taking hostages against me meant nothing at all. One less problem to worry about, and I hadn’t even really meant to do it!
Damn, I’m good.
It seemed nobody knew what to do, so the girl with the Hero result had decided to make an attempt to talk me down or whatever.
The only missing people were the injured guards from my armor spell and the Court Mage that had become Minion #1. I hoped he had the room arrangements handled. The number of people who’d need beds was a daunting figure, though.
Hopefully, he’d accept head pats as a reward for his service. I couldn’t pay him until I seized the royal treasury’s assets, after all.
We’d gained an extra twenty guards, even.
“They’re waiting for your magic to run out,” RioRio said, seeing my gaze turn to the armored contingent.
Nobody had even once tried to get the king to safety, either. That was curious, but really not my problem. I mean, I caused that problem, but it wasn’t on me to figure their issues out. Countdown until they realized summoning me was the exact prophesied calamity they were probably trying to avoid.
“Run out?”
Rio nodded. “That’s what they said.”
“It doesn’t run out. It’s really basic spell casting.”
“Can you teach me?” The woman sounded younger than she looked. Almost bashful, too. I’d never spoken to her out of costume, actually. I always thought she was better about wanting to stay in character.
I dropped my tone low, turning on the charm. “What would you offer in return for that?”
Rio swallowed, shivering slightly. “What do you want? It’s not like I brought much with me when…”
She gestured across the throne room. Point taken. Probably shouldn’t just say I wanted the trophy when we got back, though. I had to look righteous or something.
“There’s a phrase I really want to use here about paying in other ways, but it really doesn’t feel like the right place and time.” I made a little dramatic performance of musing aloud and shaking my head at the ceiling.
The woman giggled, high and genuine. Yup, I still had the theatrics down. People’s tendency to find me attractive was entirely natural, and had nothing to do with the Lust Aspect I’d definitely made a Major component of my power.
I eyed the woman before me carefully. Okay, intensely.
She was tall for a Japanese woman. Well rounded curves that suited Tsubasa’s costume, too. She’d clearly worked out and kept her waist slim for the outfit, and it clung to her like a glove. The blue hair was definitely a wig, and I faintly recalled her eyes not naturally being blue, so she had colored contact lenses in.
Her shivering probably meant she was a little cold, actually. I idly pulled off my costume’s cloak and tossed it to her. Hopefully it would keep her a little warmer, given how it must’ve soaked up some of my generally warmer body heat.
Rio could be a pleasant distraction. I didn’t specifically go for women, but who didn’t find a beautiful woman superbly exquisite?
That brought me back to my quandary. How to acquire a Spatial Aspect? Disguise my cult as a harem. The idea was fool proof. Surely that choice would have no consequences.
I added a harem to my to-do list. Right below keeping all my subjects alive.
“So much to do, so little time. Hey, RioRio, would you like to go shopping in a fantasy world with me later?”
She blinked, dumbfounded. I didn’t blame her for the reaction. Hell of a tangent, that question.
“Sure. But first dates are usually over food, LiLin.”
Well, that was a fast answer, I mused internally.
“About that… food is about to be a lot less impressive than you’re used to. Dinner dates while suffering over unseasoned food was never going to be a pleasant date for people with our palettes.”
“Of all the things you insufferable wretches could think to talk about, the subject is an insult too far, and I won’t stand for—”
“Sit.” I bolted the king’s throne into gold-painted splinters with a flare of my armor.
“No! Worse even than wasting my time and taking me hostage, women courting one another is obscene! Both the crime of wasting my time and such disgusting acts as female courtship are punishable by death. You’ll hang from the gallows, mark my words.”
I looked at the king. I looked at Rio. Then I looked down at the faces of the spectating otherworlders.
“At what point am I justified in killing a king for abusing his authority and threatening my life through his petty little legal system? I really don’t want people being scared of me, either.”
Rio hummed thoughtfully nearby. Tough girl, seeming totally unfazed through everything. She’d even put my cloak on, so she was a keeper indeed, just for being cute. “While murder is extreme, he is a very vile man. To think anyone could call something so precious as the blooming of yuri ‘disgusting’ like that. Jealousy is so ugly. It makes it hard to feel bad for whatever punishment he receives.”
Oh. Oh yes. I think I will keep this one. If I steal a kingdom for her, I wonder if she’ll agree to step out of the cosplay competition for me.