Chapter 75 — The Weight of the Crown
**[ZORDIS — PRIVATE TRAINING ROOM — 152 ]**
The sound was rhythmic.
Not music — repetition. The kind of repetition that has no planned end because the goal isn't to finish but to keep going. Sword slicing through air. Feet meeting stone. Controlled breathing that had been entering and leaving at the exact same interval for so long that Kuto had stopped counting.
The training room was small by the standards of Zordis Castle.
That was intentional. Kuto had asked for the smallest space available — not out of humility but logic. A small space forced precise movement. A large space allowed waste. And waste was a luxury he could no longer afford.
Not now.
Not after Thegg.
---
The memory returned the way it always did during training — not when there was distraction, but when the mind grew empty enough to receive what had been waiting.
The Noble Dungeon.
Kuto closed his eyes for a second without stopping the motion — the sword continued its arc through muscle memory while his mind went somewhere else.
Thegg.
Four meters tall. Runes carved into skin that were not decoration but a system — every line a lock, every symbol an amplifier. The kind of opponent who wasn't merely strong but *engineered* to be strong, centuries of violence refined into engineering.
And they had lost.
Not lost — been saved. The XP Festival had appeared at the exact right moment and pulled the group out before the result became final. Before Thegg could finish what he had started.
Kuto stopped.
The sword lowered.
*I was saved by the system. By a random event. Not by my own competence.*
His fist tightened around the hilt with more force than was needed to hold the sword, but exactly the force that needed somewhere to go.
Gunja. Sensi. Célia. Dimitri.
Dead. Not directly by Thegg — by the dungeon that housed Thegg, by the process of reaching Thegg, by every choice each battle on the way had demanded.
Dead while he remained alive.
*Alive because I was saved. Not because I was strong enough.*
Kuto resumed the training with more force than before.
Faster. Less elegant. The kind of training that was no longer technique but punishment — body collecting from body what the mind could not resolve.
---
The voice came from the entrance.
"Your technique is better than yesterday."
Kuto didn't stop. Didn't turn.
"I knew you'd been there for ten minutes," he said, sword still moving. "Haru."
A brief silence.
Then footsteps — discreet, almost soundless, carrying that specific lightness of an assassin who learned to move silently before learning to walk in a hurry. Haru entered the room and leaned against the opposite wall with his arms crossed, eyes fixed on Kuto with the expression Kuto had learned to recognize and still didn't know how to process.
Pride.
Not casual admiration — personal pride, the kind that belongs to someone who has invested something of their own in what they are watching.
Kuto ignored the gaze for another thirty seconds.
Then he stopped. Grabbed the towel. Wiped his face with the brusque motion of someone who prefers to keep their hands busy.
"You going to keep staring at me like an idiot or do you have something useful to say?"
"Neither," Haru replied, voice perfectly calm. "I'm just watching my brother train."
Kuto turned.
He looked at Haru for a long moment — at the seventeen-year-old face that looked older than it should, at the eyes that carried the quality of someone who had lost something large enough never to fully return to what they once were.
"I already told you," Kuto said, his voice neither harsh nor soft, "I'm not your brother. I never was. I never will be."
Haru didn't blink.
"I know."
"Then stop acting like you are."
"I know how to do that too," Haru said. "But I choose not to."
Kuto stayed silent for a moment.
Then he tossed the towel onto the bench, picked up the scabbard, and left the room without another word. He passed Haru less than a meter away — close enough for the young assassin to see there was no anger in the departure, only deliberate distance.
At the entrance, he stopped without turning.
"Leave me alone during training," he said. "It disrupts my concentration."
He didn't wait for a reply.
---
The corridor of Zordis Castle had that specific quality of architecture built by someone who never separated function from beauty.
The walls were pale stone engraved with runes — not decorative but active, pulsing faintly with passive magic that regulated temperature, lit the space without torches, and filtered the air. The floor reflected light gently, not from polish but from a material Kuto had never seen anywhere else.
He was two corridors from his chambers when the servant appeared.
Young. Blue-and-gold Zordis uniform. The expression of someone who had memorized what he was about to say but still delivered it with the slight anxiety of an important message given to an important person.
"Your Majesty."
The title still arrived with a tenth-of-a-second delay before Kuto processed that it referred to him.
"Lord Zenk requests your presence in the laboratory at your convenience."
Kuto thought of Zenk's smile. The smile that was always present no matter the context — political meeting, crisis, casual conversation. A smile that was neither nervous nor performative but genuinely satisfied, like a man living exactly the life he wanted to live and knew it.
*What does that man want now.*
"Tell him I'm coming," Kuto answered. "I need to wash first."
The servant bowed his head and disappeared.
---
The royal chambers' bathtub was larger than the bedroom Kuto had grown up in.
He stayed inside it with the hot water easing the tension from training — muscles releasing accumulated resistance, breathing steadying without conscious effort. The ceiling above held that bioluminescent moss of Zordis that produced a soft greenish-blue light, completely different from any artificial light source he had known in the real world.
*This world feels more real every day.*
The thought came uninvited — the way thoughts arrived in hot water when the defenses lowered.
It wasn't the first. In recent months the same reflection had come with increasing frequency. The details piled up. The texture of the stone. The smell of subterranean rain drifting from fissures in the northern mountains. Raimi with the specific warmth of a human presence — not an avatar, not a system-generated character, but someone who breathed and thought and chose.
*But I must not deceive myself.*
He sat up straighter in the water.
*In the real world, technology already exists that can produce this. A simulation advanced enough is indistinguishable from reality. That doesn't change what I need to do.*
Level one hundred. Return. See his mother. See his sister.
Everything else was context.
---
Zenk's laboratory was in the north tower of the castle — the highest space available, chosen not for symbolism but for access to specific air currents that certain magical experiments required.
Kuto opened the door without knocking.
Not out of rudeness — from prior observation. Zenk never heard knocks when he was working. The state of concentration he inhabited during research processed external stimuli as irrelevant background noise. It was more efficient to enter directly.
The interior was the organized chaos of someone who knew exactly where everything was, but whose organizational system was entirely personal and untransferable. Books open at specific angles stacked on one another. Crystals of varying sizes placed in positions that probably followed logic Kuto had no reference to understand. Flasks containing liquids of colors that didn't exist outside magic — not blue but the *idea* of blue, not green but the *memory* of green.
Zenk was turned away, bent over a wide table, fingers tracing lines on a map covered in small, dense annotations.
He was talking to himself in a low voice — not conversation but verbal processing, thought made audible so it could be evaluated from outside.
"Or—" Kuto said.
"Zenk, you're not alone."
Zenk didn't turn immediately. His fingers finished the line they were tracing between two points on the map before he lifted his head.
"Ah," he said, in the tone of a man returning from a far more interesting place but not annoyed by the interruption. "Yes. I noticed you arrived."
He turned.
The smile was there. Natural. As always.
"You can sit there." He gestured to a chair beside a side table. "I'll serve coffee."
Kuto sat.
Zenk snapped his fingers.
The coffee appeared — not instant materialization but a fluid motion of a tray coming from a side shelf, a cup positioning itself, hot liquid pouring in a precise arc. Everything in sequence, like choreography performed by invisible things that knew exactly what to do.
Kuto lifted the cup. The aroma was different from real-world coffee — more intense, with notes that had no name but that the brain immediately filed as *good*.
Zenk abandoned his research — completely this time, turning his chair to face Kuto directly — and looked at him with that specific attention of someone who is genuinely interested in what they see.
"Sorry to disturb you," he said. "I imagine you were busy."
"I'd already finished my tasks," Kuto replied.
"Excellent."
Zenk laced his fingers on the table with the gesture of someone about to say something he had organized beforehand.
"I don't have anything terribly urgent to share," he began. "But I'll be absent from the kingdom for some time and it seemed correct to inform you directly."
"Absent why?"
"There's a city in the kingdom of Kelvis — Kend — that recently suffered significant events. Involving dragons, shadow-operating groups, and someone actively conspiring against it and its governor." Zenk paused briefly. "Kend was negotiating an alliance with Zordis. The conspiracy was meant to prevent exactly that. Given the circumstances, my presence to support the governor in the post-crisis period seemed the right decision."
Kuto processed the information with the speed of someone accustomed to evaluating political moves.
"How long?"
"I don't know yet. It depends on what I find there." The smile remained. "But any situation that directly involves Zordis, I return immediately."
"Have you told Raimi?"
"Yes. She's used to it." A brief pause. "My sister learned very early that I appear and disappear according to what the world needs. She was never completely comfortable with it but she accepted it."
Kuto set the cup down on the table.
"Then I can only wish you a good journey."
"Thank you." Zenk tilted his head slightly. Then, in the same casual tone as if commenting on the weather: "Ah — you should try smiling more, you know. Otherwise you'll end up scaring my sister."
Kuto felt something tighten in his jaw.
Not exactly anger — controlled irritation, the kind that recognized itself as a reaction to truth spoken in a tone he hadn't asked for.
He held it in.
Zenk laughed — a genuine, short sound, completely satisfied with himself for the reaction he had provoked.
Kuto stood up.
"See you later," he said.
"Likewise," Zenk replied, already turning his chair back to the research. "Take care of my kingdom while I'm gone, Your Majesty Kuto Zordis V."
The title came out with Zenk's specific inflection — neither ironic nor reverent. Just real. Factual. As if it were the most natural thing in the world that the man sitting at the table drinking coffee was king of the only kingdom that King Kelvis IV feared.
Kuto left without answering.
---
The royal chambers' balcony faced south.
At night — and it was night now, Zordis's stars visible through the absence of light pollution the real world never allowed — the city spread out below in a pattern of light that was simultaneously familiar and completely different from any city Kuto had ever known.
Not electricity. Runes. Thousands of them, placed in positions calculated over decades by Zenk and generations of Zordis mages before him, creating a lighting network that responded to movement and need instead of burning constantly and indifferently.
The city breathed light.
Kuto leaned against the parapet with his arms crossed, looking down without really seeing, his mind still in the Noble Dungeon, on Thegg, and on the seven levels he had gained since then that somehow still felt insufficient.
Hands covered his eyes.
Delicate. Warm. Carrying Raimi's specific perfume — not heavy, not artificial, that scent of something natural that simply *was*.
"Guess who."
Her voice held that playful tone she used when she wanted him to answer with humor, something he still hadn't learned to produce naturally.
Kuto took her hands — gently, without urgency — and pulled them away.
Raimi stood beside him, the light of the city's runes below catching her platinum-blonde hair in ways that changed with every angle.
"Zenk left," Kuto said.
"I know," she replied. "He never stays long. If I had married him…"
The sentence ended with a small smile.
"I would have forced him to stay tied to royal affairs," she finished. "That would have been unfair to him."
"So you married me for convenience?"
Raimi laughed. A low, genuine sound.
"A little, yes."
Kuto turned his head.
She met his gaze without looking away — with that directness he had learned to recognize as her own characteristic, not a role she played but the person she was.
"But when I found you that night," she continued, the playful tone fading from her voice, "it was different."
She fell silent for a moment, looking down at the city as if organizing words that weren't used to being spoken aloud.
"There was something about you I can't quite explain. As if I already knew you. Without realizing it, I started thinking about you differently."
Pause.
"Before I knew it, I was in love."
Kuto didn't answer right away.
He looked at her — at the blue eyes that held their own quality of light, which he still hadn't fully decided was magic or simply Raimi — and felt that specific sensation of standing before something that deserved an honest answer and not having one to give.
*She genuinely believes it.*
*And I used that.*
"Is there something on my face?" she asked, slightly embarrassed by the silence.
"Nothing," Kuto said.
And for a reason he didn't examine closely in that moment, he didn't pull away when she rested her head on his shoulder.
They stayed like that — the city of Zordis breathing light below them, the cold night wind moving Raimi's hair, the silence that was not the absence of conversation but the presence of something that still had no name.
---
In the morning the castle woke with a different kind of movement.
Not the usual rhythm of servants, guards, and the silent bureaucracy that kept a kingdom running. There was a low urgency — not alarm, but acceleration. Faster footsteps than normal. Voices communicating in contained tones.
Kuto felt it before he knew it.
The servant appeared before he had finished dressing.
"Your Majesty." Voice controlled but with visible tension in the hands. "Princess Raimi requests your immediate presence in the royal hall. Representatives have arrived."
"From where?"
"They presented themselves as envoys from the Church of Nellis, sire."
Kuto adjusted the sword at his waist with an automatic motion.
*Nellis. Now.*
*With Zenk absent.*
*The timing is no coincidence.*
---
The royal hall of Zordis had been built to impress without intimidating — a subtle but real distinction in the architecture. The columns were tall but not overwhelming. Light entered through high windows creating a pattern that warmed without blinding. The throne — where Raimi sat with the posture of someone born to it — was elaborate but not absurd.
Kuto entered through the side corridor, took his place beside Raimi, and assessed the three visitors in a second and a half.
Three people. Two men, one woman.
The man in front was the one that mattered to evaluate first — always the one in front. Large. Muscular in a way that came not from a gym but from real work, decades of use. Armor marked by genuine use, not ceremony. Sword at his waist — not decorative. Short black hair. Scar on the upper lip.
The other two behind — a woman with a staff, a younger man with the posture of someone trained to be invisible but still present.
All three bore the marks of travel. Not the marks of comfortable travel but of travel done with urgency and purpose.
*Royal knights don't have that expression.*
*These do.*
The man in front took a step forward.
His gaze swept the room with an assessment Kuto recognized immediately — not the assessment of a diplomat reading the political atmosphere but the assessment of a warrior identifying exits and threats.
When Garrett's eyes met Raimi's, he inclined his head in a reverence that was correct in form but lacked the fluidity of someone who did it regularly.
And he declared, in a voice that did not ask permission to be heard:
"The Church of Nellis has a political request for the kingdom of Zordis."