Tainted Salvation

Author's Note:

Fantasy, parallel world, dimension travel-kinda story, with a selfish and toxic king as the male lead.

This chapter is PG-13, I think.

I previously published this story on another platform. Now I've unpublished on that platform, edit the names, and publishing it here in webnovel.

I assure you, the author in that platform is also me, so this is not plagiarism.

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What Rainier wanted, he always got.

Life as a King was lonely. His father was murdered when he was 10, by his own uncle. His mother died when he was three years old.

He had become a king since he was 10. He had advisors, but when he was fifteen and they reprimanded him for playing with a certain game console instead of reading the reports from his provinces, he beheaded them all.

He had been meticulous and read everything he had to. All he wanted was ONE Sunday undisturbed, and they wouldn't give him that!

They criticized his decisions for seven years, and he had enough, so off with their heads!

He was astounded to find out that no one condemned him for what he did. Who would? He was God in his land.

What he didn't figure out until it was too late was that those old advisors were his only intelligent companions. He had no one else to talk with about Math or dissecting other Heads of Countries' decisions.

He killed them all too soon.

Of course, there was Jake Angevin. They had become friends even before his father died. But Jake saw him as an idol. The farthest thing he would do to reprimand him was to look at him in a judging manner. And that's all.

So he was all alone, again.

He did his duties. Oh yes, he did. Because he had nothing, except his kingdom. And he had none to be proud about, except his abilities as a King.

His reign was famous as one of the most prosperous times for Galsbourg. The King held absolute authority, yet they also reached the third-highest GDP in the world.

All was done in strategic manners, and in terms of economic growth, the King had never done any sins against his citizens.

Behind the walls of the palace, the King hid his sorrows with iron will and hands.

Because he had no more advisors, he seek solace from women. He had a room dedicated solely to bed those he deemed pretty enough.

He wanted no children from them, though. He had never seen anyone as fit enough to be his queen. He might never find one.

They were mostly too willing to satisfy him, too obedient and too uninteresting.

When they reported their pregnancies, he ordered them to do abortions.

Those who insisted to be his queen by announcing to others they had slept with him, got a death sentence threat.

He had no wish to deal with their idiocy. He gave them enough payment for their service anyway.

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He discovered he owned a key to open the doors of parallel worlds when he was 20. Well, half of the key, that was.

It didn't take long for him to realize that the murderer of his father could be somewhere in the parallel worlds.

He had never believed the body drifting ashore Oriel Beach was really the body of his uncle, Dominique Hansen, discovered only a year after the murder of his father.

Yes, the body had the correct DNA, but the man was frail and had many health complexes. The real Dominique was fit and strong.

He didn't have any grounds to refute the discovered body, but now he had it.

He took it upon himself to journey to different worlds whenever he had free time.

By the time he was 25, he found Dominique in one of the worlds. Then he brought Jake and his team of bodyguards to drag him back to Galsbourg, and beheaded him at a public event.

The occasion cemented his reputation as a tyrant and a dictator. No one even dared to voice anything negative about the King. Not even in their own homes.

He let the belief grow and spread. He even believed it himself.

And so life went on.

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He had stopped travelling between worlds after beheading Dominique. However, a week after Thanksgiving on his 24th year as a king, he got really bored, despite how the whole kingdom was celebrating it merrily.

Instead of going to his bedroom where another pretty and willing woman waited, he travelled to the last world he visited, the country where Dominique stayed.

He exchanged a piece of diamond with the local money and travelled to the capital city on the subway train, enjoying freedom and anonymity, until he randomly got out at a station.

He then chose another random path, until he arrived at a random police station.

There, he saw an unusual scene.

From what he could see, a team of detectives were playing football together. They made makeshift goalposts with benches on both sides of the parking lot. Five male detectives and a female one were busy running around, trying to defeat each other.

"Enough!" someone who looked like the chief said, "I'm too old for this! Hey, Gwen, I don't need a great result in my medical checkup! Let's just call it quits!"

"Oh, Chief!! This is cheating! You stop this when you're winning!" said the girl called Gwen.

"Ten more minutes!" one of the guys asked.

The Chief groaned and the match continued. The girl was swift and witty, her ponytail was dancing in the wind, and her laughter rang in the air.

Rainier was mesmerized.

He had never seen a woman like her. So carefree and unbothered about her image.

He wasn't surprised when the girl's team won.

"Yeah!! We'll have steaks for dinner!!!"

Rainier followed her to the restaurant, where he saw her and her friends enjoying lots of steaks and beer.

When he went back to his world, his heart felt warm.

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Rainier ceased bringing women to his bed for the sake of it and spent his weekends tailing Gwen Hamilton.

She might be a great detective, but he also knew how to blend with the shadows. Black clothes and enough distance helped, too.

He watched her spend time with her father, watched her work hard as a detective and watched her telling about her recent days to her mother, in a graveyard.

There's something satisfying in this weird obsession. She made his days a lot more interesting.

He didn't even feel the need to touch any other girls. At least, until he saw her wearing a dress to attend a colleague's wedding.

It was navy blue and she had her hair down.

Back in his own Galsbourg Kingdom, it was the first night in nearly a year he brought a random woman to his bed.

The whole time, he was imagining he was bedding Gwen. He even called out her name when he climaxed.

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His obsession turned into madness, to the point where he couldn't even sleep at night. So instead of travelling to her world weekly, he turned to travel to her world daily.

It made him unable to focus on his work during the day.

The deciding factor finally existed one night, when he watched Gwen and her so-called best friend, Kevin Miller, watched a movie together.

From the first glance the previous year, he knew the guy liked her more than mere friends but hadn't had the courage to pursue her.

Until that evening, it seemed.

He took her to a movie, and then they bought supper and had it beside the Heddle River.

Rainier thought Kevin would take her to a hotel at the end, yet he didn't.

He had enough, though.

Another Thanksgiving passed, and he decided, for his 25th year as a king, he'd give himself a queen as a present.

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