An Audience

Rent was used to working until late into the night, he didn't have to, it just happened in its own, he was too passionate about his work too leave it unfinished.

His work was never over however, so he was always forced to rest at some point.

This time, he stayed the whole night up.

His eyes grew itchy from staring at poorly illuminated papers so much, he would sometimes stare into the dark to ease them a bit, multiple times, he thought he was what looked like a person's shape in the dark.

His office was always in a mess however, and his habits of overexerting himself led to such things pretty much all of the time, he just chalked it up to him seeing things.

However, one of the strange shapes he saw was very much real, it was Axiolypito, standing perfectly still right in front of him, squatting on a pile of books resting on a small table.

Anyone else would have also thought that it was just their imagination due to the monster's uncanny stealth and lack of any sort of activity.

When he wanted to go unnoticed, much like how he could achieve great speeds, it seemed like certain fundamental laws stopped functioning for his sake.

Not only that, but he turned into what was closest to a corpse as something alive could achieve.

He stoppedbreathing through his mouth and nose, instead absorbing little bits of air directly through his skin.

His heart stopped beating entirely, his blood coming to a near halt but mysteriously continuing to move even if only barely.

This phenomenon only applied when he wanting to sneak around and no be discovered, much like some of his abilities, it was limited in a strange manner.

Soon enough, the sun rose, still, Rent had kept everything shut, only a single ray of light shone through the closed flaps, in this singular trickle of light, the dust flying in the air was perfectly visible.

The light landed perfectly where Axio was, however, before the exhausted Rent could realise that a monster was in the room with him, Axiolypito was gone, much too fast for the treasurer to even suspect something.

Axiolypito moved around the halls for a while longer, silver knights could be seen moving around amongst the more typical guards, the fact that even a mere rookie of these knights had once been a threat to him seemed hard to believe.

None of the ones remaining could even cause an inconvenience, it seemed like they had lost their best, though they were far from falling apart, they appeared as radiant as they had ever did, seemingly all waiting for something.

Axio narrowed his eyes but didn't investigate much further, the one holding the answers was the king.

'Here he is' 

King Roderman seemed a bit different from before, Axio had last seen him a while back but the changes were still clear to him, he wouldn't forget a man of his caliber so easily.

Even though he had appeared weak in his fight with Faceless Lord, Axiolypito knew that this wasn't a fair comparison, at least back then.

He now seemed, bigger and bulkier somehow, the man had lived for long time and constantly trained to try and become worthy of wielding the bright golden energy, so such noticeable changes in just a few years was eyebrow raising.

Still, although strange, it wasn't so much so that Axio was going to change his mind.

The king of Roderst sat upon his throne, some of his advisor taking their own seats on the sides of the room.

Judging by the man beside the king that was shuffling through some papers and the way the guards had positioned themselves, it seemed like they were going to be receiving people from all walks of life for audiences.

Axio couldn't get the need to hear out even the dirtiest of peasants but he could understand the advantage for the king.

Certainly, he wanted to give the impression that he cared even for the most meaningless of his subjects, perhaps he did care but that thought didn't cross Axiolypito's mind.

Not wasting any time, he rushed in position before anyone could even exhale, standing in the center of the room with his hands behind his back.

The advisors seemed confused at the thing that had suddenly appeared within their sights without giving any signs of arrival, the guards reflexively tensed up and pointed their spears at him even though they were confused as well.

"Greetings" saluted Axio with a small nod of the head.

'As expected' he thought at the same time, pleased with that fact that his evaluation of Roderman was on point, he hadn't shown any surprise or even slightly tensed up, even though he had definitely not seen Axio coming.

But it only took him a brief moment to realise that Axio was a monster and that since he hadn't done anything after appearing into the room like a ghost, that he wasn't mindless and most probably an envoy from the Obsidian Queen.

The envoy thing was wrong but he wasn't to blame for not being omniscient.

He calmly rose one hand from the armrest of his throne, causing all of the guards to return to their positions without any fuss, the advisors also straightened their backs, now also believing that this was a messenger from the monster army.

They had conversed with various monsters since they had been conquered, it wasn't anything novel or worth panicking about.

"King Roderman, you wish for the monster queen's death and for Roderst to be freed from her shackles, correct?" now everyone could actually act with fear, even if not all knew that Roderman was waiting for an opportunity, they knew that hearing these words coming out of a monster's mouth wasn't good news.

Even if they were one hundred percent loyal, they would have been severely shaken up, it was equivalent to putting a knife against their throats.

"I want her dead as well"

Now, it was time for confusion.