Chương 10: I Upgraded My Kingdom

POV: The Dark Lord, Milo Miles I was mid-air, carrying Luke back to the hut, when I heard two pings. My Terror Level had gone up by two, which meant it should have hit ten. And that meant Nyx could finally upgrade the hut into something more appropriate. Then her voice cut into my head.

"WHERE ARE YOU?" I hadn't known she could control the volume of her thoughts. It was like someone screaming directly into my ear. I winced, nearly dropping Luke.

"I was doing things! I secured a sustainable food source, and I even got us to Terror Level ten."

"Really? So you're bringing something back?"

"Talk to you later." I cut the Mental Link. If I had kept it open, with how bad I was at suppressing my thoughts, she'd have figured out I hadn't gotten anything for tonight — and I couldn't focus on flying with her screaming into my skull anyway. Honestly, I felt like an oppressed husband, written off as useless by his own wife. If Nyx ever heard that, she'd probably kill me. She'd say something like don't you dare taint me by imagining me as your wife. It's an insult.

"Yes. It is an insult." I froze mid-air.

"We have a great many things to talk about when you arrive. You'd better speed up. My patience is thinning by the second."

"… Oh shit. Did I not disconnect the Mental Link?" This time, I felt it sever for real, cut from her end. For the first time in either of my lives, I was afraid to go home. When I landed, it was already evening. A campfire crackled in the clearing, and Nyx sat cross-legged on the grass beside it. I had no idea where she'd managed to find firewood. I set Luke down, and she immediately skipped off somewhere, as if she knew exactly what was coming. Like a kid slipping away before her parents started arguing.

Why did I keep thinking about being a family here? Was it because I had been too lonely in my last life? Nyx looked at me.

"So, what did you do?" I walked toward her, and just as I was about to sit down beside her, she said, "Sit across from me. I would rather not get knocked out by your foul breath again." So she knew. I aborted the motion, circled around, and sat down across the fire from her.

"Please hear me out. Let me finish."

"Whatever. Make it quick." Okay. Good first step. Then I told her everything — how I had accidentally hit her with the Sleep Gas, how I had threatened Milly Village into supplying us food every day, how I should have told them to start tonight instead of tomorrow morning, and how I had discovered Luke had a human form. That last one didn't land the way I expected. She just nodded, unbothered, like it was old news.

"You already knew about Luke?" I said.

"Of course." She gave a small shrug. Then her eyes narrowed at me, and something cooled in her expression.

"... Don't tell me you've got strange ideas about her." It took me a full second to understand what she was implying. When I did, my stomach dropped. What did she think I was? Some creep who was into little girls?

"No! Why would you even — I'm not a freak! She's a dog, like a pet!" Crap, that came out wrong. Nyx sighed.

"Well. At least you did something halfway decent for a Dark Lord, for once." That was it? No lashing out? No slaps, no kicks?

"Right. Umm… I figured you have done a lot today," I said.

"Come to think of it, I haven't even thanked you yet."

"Then do it," Nyx said, her face unreadable. I cleared my throat.

"Uh… thanks, Nyx. Really. I know I've been hopeless and useless and everything—""Good to know you're aware of it," she cut in. I paused, half-expecting her to keep going. When she didn't, I continued.

"But I'm learning. I screwed up at the destroyed village, and I'm sorry. But I'm getting better. Soon I'll be a proper Dark Lord, and we'll have a better place to live. Luke's useful, too. I've already got a few ideas for her." The moment it left my mouth, I realized I sounded like a husband promising his wife he'd land a better job and a nicer house, just so she wouldn't walk out on him. What was wrong with my head?

"You'd better," Nyx said.

"Because I can't go back until the fear-hope balance stabilizes." I blinked.

"What do you mean, you can't go back? You're an employee. Shouldn't you be able to clock out, go home, and come back the next morning?"

"It's complicated. And I'm not in the mood to walk you through afterlife bureaucracy right now." She poked at the fire.

"Bottom line, I'm stuck here for the time being."

"Don't you have parents? Won't they worry about you?"

"I said no backstories. We're not close enough for that." She didn't look up.

"You've clearly read too many stories where the girl spills her whole life to the protagonist five minutes after meeting him." That stung, n ot that she was wrong. She sighed.

"Anyway, I got a notification that you'd hit Terror Level ten. Which is, what, the bare minimum for the first day, I guess." I shot to my feet.

"So it's time for the upgrade? No more pathetic huts?" She gave me a tired look, then went back to staring at the fire.

"Unfortunately, it's still a hut. Just… slightly better." Silence. Only the crackle of the fire and the occasional rustle of leaves. Somewhere in the woods, a girl's voice was humming — Luke, playing around in the dark.

"So when are you going to upgrade it?" I asked, breaking the quiet. Nyx turned to me.

"Not today. I'm hungry. In fact, I'm going to sleep now, since someone didn't bring back any food." She stood, brushed the grass off her skirt, and walked toward the hut. But there was only one bed.

"Are you taking the bed?" I asked. She glanced back.

"Duh. Where else would I sleep? You get the floor. Consider it a penalty for today's failures." Then she stepped inside and shut the door. What was I, her underling? She got the bed while I settled for the floor? I was supposed to be the Dark Lord here. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. But as much as it grated, I had messed up a few times today. And if I confronted her about it now, things would only escalate in a direction I would regret.

Come to think of it, I leveled up. I should have new skills. I pulled up the skill window. SKILLS PASSIVE Mental Link, Intimidating Aura, Flight OFFENSIVE Sleep Gas, New Skill Available! DEFENSIVE Smokescreen SUMMONS None Sweet. A new offensive skill. Sleep Gas had turned out to be awkward to aim, but I couldn't deny it was strong, if it really could knock out anything that breathed. I tapped the new entry. Telekinesis [Lv. 1] Move objects with your mind without needing to physically touch them.

I couldn't believe it. Telekinesis, on the first day. In movies, this was basically one of the most broken powers there was—characters lifting people off the ground, turning loose pebbles into deadly projectiles, cool stuff. But it said Level 1. Which probably meant there were limits. Maybe on how much weight I could lift, or how many things at once. So I decided to test it. I called out for Luke, hoping she would hear me. She did.

A few seconds later, footsteps came rushing in, and she burst out of the dark treeline with leaves stuck in her hair and clothes. First test: could I lift Luke in her human form? I pictured the skill in my mind and focused on her. A faint purple light wrapped around her, and she rose off the ground. I could feel her weight, sort of. Different from carrying her physically. This time, the higher I lifted her, the heavier my own head felt, like the strain was landing somewhere behind my eyes.

She floated about three feet up before the ache set in. She did not seem to mind in the slightest—she flailed around midair, grinning ear to ear, having the time of her life. When I set her back down, she looked around, almost disappointed it was over.

"Thanks, Luke. Sorry for springing that on you. Oh, if you're tired, you can sleep inside. Though Nyx took the bed, so it's just the floor." Luke shook her head and pointed at the grass with one dangling sleeve.

"You want to sleep out here? On the grass?" She nodded. Well, she is a Cerberus, after all.

"Okay then. If that's what you want." She gave me a thumbs-up through her sleeve and bolted back into the forest. I spent a while longer testing the power. I tried lifting pebbles and managed about twenty at once without much trouble. I tried flinging them, too. They shot off fast enough to at least hurt someone. This felt like the first genuinely useful power I had gotten, aside from flight. I sat by the fire a little longer, turning over ideas for how to raise my Terror Level tomorrow.

By the time I went inside, Nyx was already fast asleep. I lay down on the wooden floor, closed my eyes, and hoped morning would come quick. It was hard to sleep, though. Between Nyx's stomach and mine, something was always growling. I woke up with no sense of the time. For a moment I lay there, disoriented, then I stood up and hurried out the door. Luke was outside in her full Cerberus form, guarding the hut like an oversized dog. The moment she noticed me, all three heads turned and started growling in unison.

If I hadn't known better, I would have thought she was about to eat me alive. The sound wasn't friendly in the slightest—a low, layered rumble, three throats grinding out the same warning at slightly different pitches, the kind of noise you felt in your chest before you heard it. Then the growling cut off all at once, and the center head's tongue lolled out. Just a greeting, apparently.

"Morning, Luke, if this is still morning." I exhaled.

"The people from Milly should've dropped off some food by now. Probably at the edge of the forest, the side closest to their village. Think you can go get it?" I considered going with her, but if the villagers were still hanging around, they would see the Dark Lord hauling away groceries himself, and that wouldn't do my image any favors. Far better to send a Mythical-Class beast to collect tribute on my behalf. That sounded appropriately ominous. The three heads nodded.

Then Luke turned and prowled off into the trees. Nyx was not awake yet. I had wanted to wake her up, but I figured if I did that without the food being ready, she would complain. In less than ten minutes, I think, Luke came back, one of her heads holding a cluster of food baskets by the handles. Her heads were big enough that the handles just dangled from her teeth, the baskets swaying with each step. She set them down in front of me, and I crouched to look through them.

The first basket was packed with fresh produce — leafy greens still beaded with dew, plump red tomatoes, a bundle of carrots with the dirt barely brushed off, onions, and something that looked like a cousin of a potato. There were even a few waterskins. The second held fruit: apples, a few clusters of grapes, pears, and a couple of fat melons wedged in at the bottom.

The third was heavier, lined with cloth; cuts of raw meat, deep red and marbled, alongside a string of plump sausages and what looked like a whole dressed chicken. Okay. We'd have to do some cooking. But this was great. Genuinely great. If we could get this every day, life out here might actually be nice. Like a lavish picnic, every single day. After drinking from one of the waterskins, I gathered the leftover firewood, along with a pile Nyx had somehow stockpiled the day before.

I stacked it up, told Luke to blast a small fireball onto it, and before long, we had another crackling fire going. I couldn't find any proper sticks for skewering, so I used my new Telekinesis skill to levitate the meat over the flames instead. It took some focus, and my head started to throb if I held too many pieces up at once, but soon enough, we had a pretty good meal coming together. I left the vegetables alone, though.

Something told me just hovering them over the fire wouldn't work the way it did for the meat. I would have to ask Nyx about it later, assuming she actually knew how to cook. She opened the door before I could go wake her, probably drawn out by the smell of roasting meat wafting through the holes in the walls. Her eyes went wide as she took in the sight of me and the floating skewerless meat. Before she could say a word, I gave her my smuggest grin.

"Pretty great, right? I would say I did a solid job." She walked briskly over and crouched down beside me.

"Not half bad, I suppose." Then she crooked a finger, and one of the hovering pieces of meat drifted toward her. She took a bite. I swore I saw her eyes widen. She pressed a hand to her cheek.

"Mmm. This is good." For a second, she looked like a completely different person. I floated a waterskin over to her.

"Figured you hadn't had anything to drink since yesterday." She took it, tugged the stopper loose with her teeth, and tipped it back, throat working as she drank in long pulls. When she lowered it, she let out a slow breath.

"That hit the spot," she said, like she'd just downed an ice-cold beer after a long shift.

"I'm still waiting for my praise, you know."

"Yeah, yeah. You did well, Mr. Dark Lord." She took another bite without looking at me. I had hoped for a little more sincerity than that. But I would take it. It was a good meal, all things considered. Luke just chewed straight through her share — meat, fruit, and vegetables, all raw — which was honestly a relief. Cooking for a third mouth would've taken forever. After the meal, Nyx and I sat out on the grass. The fire had burned down, leaving nothing but scorched firewood behind. Luke kept watch nearby.

I figured Nyx was already in a good mood. The day before, she hadn't even let me sit beside her. Yet, through the whole meal, she had stayed at my side without complaint. So I guessed now was as good a time as any to bring it up.

"So, Nyx. About that upgrade to the kingdom…"

"I know. It's about time we had a proper shower anyway." She stood and snapped her fingers. The pathetic hut was swallowed in white light, collapsing into a featureless silhouette. After a few seconds, the silhouette swelled outward—longer, taller, wider—and the light dissolved into drifting glitter. It was still a wooden hut. But it had grown, broader and longer than before, and every hole in the walls had sealed itself shut. There were three windows now, too. I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The layout was a world apart from the single bare room I had been sleeping in. There was an actual living space, a door leading off to one room, and a second door to a smaller one. One was probably a bedroom; the other, I hoped, a bathroom. Nyx slipped past me.

"I'm going first," she said, already moving. She opened the smaller door, stepped through, and locked it behind her with a decisive click. A moment later, I heard water start to run. I hadn't seen any pipes or plumbing outside, but in a world with magic and afterlife bureaucracy, I had long since stopped questioning how things worked. They just did. I checked the other room. Sure enough, a plain square space with a single bed in the corner.

Still just one bed, but now I had a whole separate room, and I could probably figure out a way to extort a second bed, or even a sofa, out of Milly Village. Finally, a proper residence. Then Luke growled; t his one was different from the morning's — louder, sharper, with a real edge of hostility underneath it. Not a warning to me this time. Three throats snarling low and hard, the dissonant pitches climbing, hackles-up sound of an animal that had spotted something it did not like. I rushed back outside.

Luke was fixed on the treeline to the left of the hut, all three heads lowered. Beyond her, I could hear branches shifting, leaves dragging, footsteps drawing closer. A moment later, she stepped out of the trees. The Hero. I braced for the sword; for the glow, for the blade that would burn me to a crisp the second it touched me. But Mooncleaver stayed at her hip, sheathed, her hand nowhere near the hilt. Her eyes stayed on mine. There was no anger in them.

No holy resolve, none of that send-the-darkness-to-oblivion fire. Just… uncertainty. She looked at me the way you would look at the one person who might have an answer to a question you couldn't bring yourself to ask out loud. She took a step forward. No hostility in it. If anything, she looked lost. The sigil on her elbow flared a deep, violent purple. I should… probably welcome her, right?