Master of the Loop

Chapter 9

Princely Woes

The revelation that Boy was, in fact, Valen and that he was a Prince of the Kingdom wasn't as monumental to him as Sylas was expecting. It wasn't strange, however; he had no frame of reference as to what such a position and a title entailed here, and even then, he came from a world where those titles were either relics of the past or just legislative nightmares nobody wanted to tackle so they just left them alone.

Nonetheless, at the very least he now had a way to convince Boy—no, Valen—that he was not just an ordinary guard. As such, the Prince might open up a bit more and share some extra knowledge. With the rekindled fire, he rest the day happily and went back to the routine of navigating the castle, settling inside, and waiting for the ladies to move on before stepping out toward Boy—no, Valen.

Following the by now painful reintroductions where Sylas told 'his story' about the millionth time in a row, he finally decided it was time to unveil his secret card and pray and hope Valen wasn’t like the rest of the nutjobs in the castle that just immediately started swinging at even the possibility of an inconvenience.

“Anyway, Boy, now that the introductions are out of the way,” Sylas said. “I’ve something rather insane to say.”

“Hm?” the Prince arched his brows inquisitively.

“We’ve actually met before.”

“Oh? We have?”

“Yeah,” Sylas nodded. “We actually met quite a few times.”

“H-huh?”

"Following our introduction and a brief conversation," ignoring Boy's ever-more-awkward and confused expression, Sylas continued. "We get mauled by Ghouls and die. And my day starts anew. The last time, I asked you how could I make you believe me this insanity—and you told me something, something you said you haven’t told any other soul.”

"…" by now, the atmosphere between the two was at the peak of tension, stretched tautly, so much so, in fact, that it felt as though if one let go, the other one would slingshot back for miles.

“You told me your real name,” Sylas’ words, however, had a resolute impact on the Prince, shifting from confusion to alarm. “Valen Desdor, the Sixth Prince of Ethernia Kingdom.”

"… w-who are you?" rather than actually trusting him, the Prince immediately pulled back into a tortoiseshell. "Are you… are you an assassin? Did the Queen send you? I—I've already given up everything! What more does that… that thing want?!!"

“… what? No, no, I already told you,” Sylas said. “We met before. But our meeting always restarts because we die. I—I know it sounds insane, but come on, man. Even that is more feasible than someone tracking you down in this bumfucknowhere hellhole. Look, each time we do this, I have to redo like two hours' worth of conversation, and that leaves little room for anything else. As I said, Ghouls will invade in a couple of hours and—right, right! Do you understand Magic Circles?”

“M-magic Circles?”

"Yeah, yeah, this one's called 'Combustive Magic Circle' or whatever, I think," Sylas quickly explained. "It's embedded in the southwest wall near my post and it blows up and opens up a hole in the wall, allowing the Ghouls to enter! So, do you understand Magic Circles?"

“Y-yes. I mean, a bit. No, wait, that is insane

! Ghouls… Ghouls can’t do magic, even something as basic as drawing Magic Circles. The Circle would have to be drawn up by a human, not to mention the placement of talismans has to be almost perfect. Not to mention that they have to be triggered by someone within just a few hundred feet of the Circle.”

“Yeah, Tebek.”

“And because—who’s that?”

"One of the Guard Captains," Sylas explained. "He's responsible for triggering the Circle. He got paid off by some mysterious, hooded dude who placed the Circles or whatever. I know this to be true because, when I asked him, I had a sword scraping his balls. Now, I may not know all the men, but no man would ever dare lie under those circumstances. I don't think. Listen, just put up with all my nonsense and accept it as factual truth even under the guise of being terrified of me since I seem insane. Just afford me two hours of your knowledge so that we can figure out how to stop this thing, okay? Both yours and mine and everyone else's lives depend on it."

“… you weren’t even abused as a boy, were you?” the Prince asked with a strange look in his eyes.

“Oh, no, that I most certainly was,” Sylas said. “I may have slightly exaggerated the details, such as the scraping of my nipples, but most other stuff is true. Come on, just two hours. Share your knowledge of Ghouls with me. And, if nothing happens, you can just kill me. If I wanted to cause you genuine harm, I’d have just revealed your identity, no?”

“… fine,” Valen relented with a sigh; he’d never quite met someone as strange as this guard, Sylas, before him. Nonetheless, it might be fun to indulge a madman for a couple of hours.

“Fantastic! So, how would you go about disabling the Magic Circle? Or even just moving it outside the wall so that it explodes on the Ghouls?”

“It depends,” seeing as he agreed, Valen sat down with a heavy sigh and began talking. He had a lot of knowledge that he’d accumulate during the first fourteen years of Princely education that was mostly rotting inside his head. It was about time he put it to use. How good of a use? Not that good, but use nonetheless. "If the Circle is detached on some kind of padding or carved directly into the stone. If it's the latter, you can't move it unless you move the entire wall. If it's the former, it's still going to be difficult since even the lightest of padding weighs over a ton. Can you, Sylas, lift a ton?"

“A ton of bullshit, maybe. A ton of stone? Fuck no. What about changing the direction of the explosion?”

“What do you mean?” Valen asked.

“I mean, can you, like, modify the circle so that it directs the explosion outward, so that it basically acts like a cannon while the wall is a cannonball. That way, it shoots its shot at the Ghouls and not at us.”

“… aren’t explosions naturally omnidirectional?” Valen looked at Sylas as though he was a moron. “Unless you have physical confiners, such as pipes of the cannon, you cannot direct it. And even then, the amount of control you have is minuscule."

“What kind of a shit magic system doesn’t even allow you to control the direction of the explosion?” Sylas mumbled aloud, feeling faintly frustrated. All of his ideas were being shot down like bottles at a redneck rally. “Alright, disregarding using the Magic Circle. The walls are tall and sturdy and there are plenty of people manning them. But, without a fail, Ghouls always manage to get in, even without the exploding wall. Why?”

“In this scenario, how many Ghouls are we talking about?” Sylas didn’t notice, but ‘Boy’s’ demeanor had completely shifted from that of a hapless boy to that of a confident, young man.

“Thousands?”

“Well, of course it would,” Valen scoffed in a matter-of-fact tone. "This castle has, what? Twenty, thirty? guards with any experience against Ghouls? And all are stretched thin as it is since this thing is too big anyway. Besides, most people are only used to fighting Ghouls from range. If the gap is closed, they just shit themselves and die.”

“Oh, kinda like you did the first time I met you?” Sylas mused aloud, remembering the moment. “You glanced from the room, saw the Ghouls, and just died on the spot. He he. It was kinda funny, actually.”

“…”

“Khm, anyway,” noticing the Prince’s darkening expression, Sylas moved on. “So… taking those numbers into consideration, is it just an inevitability that the castle falls?”

“No, not necessarily,” Valen corrected. “You can still use that supposed Magic Circle embedded in the walls. Before the invasion, you do quick, makeshifts moats to funnel the Ghouls into the chokepoint. They’re dumber than a bell and will follow it, regardless. You, then, form a barricade on the inside as the Ghouls overflow until they’re stacked on top of one another like the commoners were during my Brother’s coronation as the Crown Prince. And then—”

“And then a boom!” Sylas’ eyes shone for a moment before he realized the issue with the plan. “I’m already having an impossible time getting you to buy my story. How the fuck do you expect me to convince the entire castle?”

“… if it’s true what you say,” Valen sighed. “I could help you, I suppose. As far as I know, the castle is equipped with medium-range maguscope.”

“…”

“Right,” Valen sighed yet again, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “It’s a magic-stone-powered scope of sorts that’s used to scout out nearby terrain, usually before a battle or invasion. However, it costs a good penny to power up even for a few seconds and nobody will do it on the word of a tiny guard.”

“Oh, yeah, and they’ll totally do it on the word of a boytoy librarian,” Sylas fired back, having finally noticed the shift in personality. Valen’s eyebrows twitched for a moment as he composed himself.

“I still have some pull,” he said. “I could get them to do it. The question is, though, will I?”

“I’m guessing no for this run,” Sylas said without hesitation. “Alright, let’s play that game again.”

“What game?”

“Tell me something that would convince you everything is true,” Sylas said. “No, wait, you have no incentive. Alright. Ghouls should be here in an hour or so. In the meantime, wanna chat over why you were banished?”

“…” it truly was a sour topic—even if Sylas was completely socially inept, he’d still have picked up on the constant stream of signals that it was a touchy topic.

“Alright, how about I venture a guess,” Sylas continued, seemingly oblivious to everything. “From what little you ‘told’ me, I’ve gathered some clues. It seems that the direct reason you were banished was the Queen which tells me, well, she isn’t your mother. That means that you’re either a son of the former Queen or, more likely, a son of a concubine. The Queen's son, likely that crowned douche, is either an incompetent moron or a narcissistic cockhead, and since you seem like you have a good head on your shoulders, they saw you as a potential threat in the future. Perchance, some nobles even tried rallying behind you. Oh? I'm on point?"

“That there,” Valen said. “Tells me that you’re someone sent by the Queen. Only she enjoys torturing me so.”

"… I wasn't sent by her," Sylas said. "The reason I know is that it's common."

“Oh? My situation is common?!”

“No,” Sylas shook his head. “Usually, you’d have been killed. Silently. I may know the outs of the story, but I hardly know the ins. Corruption is the same everywhere, I’m afraid.”

“Humph, for a lowly guard, you sure are eloquent.”

“Alright, I know that your brain is automatically buffering it out,” Sylas said. “But what part of ‘I get reborn when I die on this day over and over again’ did you miss?”

“That’s impossible,” Valen immediately dismissed the idea without hesitation.

“I actually agree with you. For all I know, this entire castle is a figment of my imagination and you all are my demons.”

“I assure you, I am very much real,” Valen scoffed.

“Humor me, and then kill me if you’d like. Tell me another thing.”

“You’re a persistent one,” Valen said, chuckling helplessly. “Fine. You were right—I’m a concubine’s son. No, even that’s a bit of a stretch—she was a common maid, really, forcibly made concubine when she got pregnant. She was already married, in fact, with two children. Though she told me they managed to escape, I am certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that they’ve been killed. You were also right when you mentioned that some nobles rallied behind me.

“It wasn’t because of my ‘good head’,” Valen scoffed at himself. “Nothing that decent. They were just greedy, power-hungry maniacs like the rest of them. My Eldest brother is hardly incompetent, and as for the narcissism… who isn’t a narcissist in the palace? Hell, here we are, at the edge of the world and I even managed to meet a guard who is a narcissist. All else aside, Raght isn’t a bad man. He’s merely someone driven by ambition. And his mother, Queen Lea, is quite good at using her whispers to fan that ambition.

“She managed to label my little gathering as a rebellion and literally forced him to bear banners of war against me,” Valen’s countenance dimmed and downed, the young man seemingly aging a lifetime in the span of a moment, blending into the chair that looked to swallow his tiny carcass. “By the time Father got the wind of it, a week would have passed, hundreds would have died… among them my mother.”

“…”

“The King sent me here,” Valen continued. “Secretly. Virtually the entire court was in favor of executing me simply as a political showcase to ease the waters. However, he took pity on me, I suppose, and sent me here, told me to change my name and who I am, and live out the rest of my days in peace and quiet. Haah… it’s been, what? Over a year already? Man, the time sure is slow as all hell up here.

“So, there, you have heard my entire story. As for what detail would make me believe you… none. It doesn’t matter how many times we do this, my paranoia will always kick in and I will persistently doubt you.”

“What if I brought you the activation talisman?” Sylas suddenly got an idea.

“Huh?”

“Would you be able to set it off?”

“Why in God’s name would I set it off?!!”

“So you would,” Sylas cackled lowly. “Alright, I got an idea. Oh? Is that the bell? Looks like our Ghoulish friends are here. Well, I’m gonna kill myself real quick. See you soon!”