Chapter 10: A King Too Weak to Rule
While Gajeel learned of a certain shinobi clan in the waking world, Albion drifted elsewhere, far from the flooded corridors and clashing magic of Phantom Lord.
He floated endlessly.
The space around him resembled water, yet it felt entirely wrong. It moved like a heavy current and pressed against his bare skin like the crushing pressure of a deep sea—but its color was absolute, suffocating black.
It was an endless ocean with no horizon, no sky, and no sign of life. He was fully submerged within its depths.
Yet, inexplicably, he could breathe.
"…Is this the end for me?" Albion murmured.
His voice echoed strangely through the void, swallowed almost immediately by the silent, predatory sea. He wasn't speaking to anyone in particular. He was just letting his heavy thoughts drift alongside the current.
"When that other me started bad-mouthing Mother…" His brow faintly tightened, a dull ache throbbing behind his eyes. "Why did I react like that?"
The memory surfaced with terrifying clarity.
The sudden, blinding surge of anger. The desperate, clawing need to win. The absolute instinct to crush the opponent standing directly in front of him—even though that opponent had been someone who possessed his exact face.
"The way I acted…" Albion muttered, his fingers twitching in the dark water. "It was the exact same way Gajeel acts."
His mind replayed the philosophy of the Iron Dragon Slayer.
[I fight for the love of the game.]
[Live for yourself. Your pleasures. Your hates. That's all that's real.]
Albion slowly exhaled, a small trail of bubbles rising from his lips. "If I'm being completely honest… I admire him," he admitted quietly to the void.
The black currents shifted responsively around his torso. "Not just for his monstrous strength, but for his mindset… and the absolute certainty of the way he lives."
More words surfaced from the depths of his memory.
[Good. Use that anger. When someone gives in to their rage… that's when they're truly strongest.]
[Compassion has no place in this world.]
Albion's crimson eyes lowered. "Maybe that's how he survives…" he whispered. "But that isn't who I am."
Slowly, he stopped drifting. His body tilted forward until the soles of his feet made contact with an unseen floor beneath the black sea. Rising upright, he stood firmly within the empty abyss.
"…Why don't I like fighting?" He asked the question aloud, desperate for solid ground. "There was a reason… right?"
Before he could search his fractured mind for the answer, a cold, sharp voice cut cleanly through his consciousness.
[Look at you. Sometimes I wonder if we're even related by blood.]
[Now you're useless. Completely, utterly useless!]
Albion's entire body stiffened, the phantom words hitting him like a physical blow.
[The only reason you ever mattered… The only reason I kept you alive… It was because I could sell you.]
His expression fractured. A wave of pure shock spread across his face as his hands instinctively shot up to his own neck. His fingernails dug hard into his flesh, dragging thin, ragged red lines across his throat.
He scratched harder, his breath turning shallow. "…Why did I get so angry…?" he whispered through tightly gritted teeth, his body trembling. "Why did I defend someone like her…?"
The irritation in his voice bled into something far deeper, far more terrifying.
"She sold me. She cursed me from the exact moment she adopted me."
The scenery of his mind shifted violently.
He remembered being physically exhausted, collapsed on all fours in a cold room, trying to make his small frame look as insignificant as possible.
He had been staring at the floor, breathing heavily, his sweat dripping onto the stone. And standing directly in front of him, looming like an immovable shadow, was his mother.
Her right hand was clenched into a tight, unyielding fist.
"…That's right." Albion's eyes darkened, the realization washing over him like acid. "How could I forget?"
He remembered the exact way she had looked down at him. It wasn't with explosive anger. It was something infinitely worse: pure, cold disappointment.
"I was a failure who could never meet her expectations."
Even after years of brutal, ceaseless training. Endless combat drills. Endless physical punishment.
"…To her, I wasn't a son." His voice turned entirely hollow, stripped of all warmth. "I was just a tool."
A weapon meant to be sharpened, and immediately discarded the moment it cracked.
Ironically, that savage upbringing had granted him something extraordinary—a flawless, lethal instinct for combat. Others who saw him fight called it "talent" or "prodigy." But that talent meant absolutely nothing in the world he currently inhabited.
Because in this world, magic stood above everything else.
Reaching upward, Albion slowly rose from the depths of the black water. The moment his head broke through the surface, he stepped onto it, his feet pressing against the liquid as if it were solid, unyielding ground.
Yet the moment he shifted his weight, faint, concentric ripples spread out beneath his boots.
Water, yet also solid earth. Using the bizarre surface to steady his trembling frame, Albion stood upright.
"This place doesn't make any sense," he muttered, his voice echoing across the flat expanse. "How can the surface be solid like the ground… yet still behave like water?"
His gaze drifted across the distant horizon.
Nothing had changed. The same endless sea of pitch-black liquid stretched out in every single direction. No land. No sky. No signs of life. Just the silent, oppressive ocean.
"What is this place?" Albion wondered aloud. "Maybe it's just a dream…"
The explanation felt logical enough to cling to. If this really were nothing more than a dream, it would explain why he had suddenly materialized here the moment his consciousness faded in the waking world.
Slowly, he lifted his gaze toward the sky. And there it was.
The sun. Or rather, something that wore the shape of one.
A massive, hollow sphere floated high above the abyss. Its outer shell was a pure, blinding white—so intensely pale it actively hurt his eyes to look at it directly.
The center, however, was completely empty, forming a perfect, circular void of nothingness. Yet despite its unnatural structure, it remained the sole source of illumination in this dark world.
And just like before, encircling exactly one half of the hollow sun was a magnificent white Eastern dragon. Its long, serpentine body coiled through the air in a slow, eternal orbit.
But the other half of the sun's path was not empty.
Something shifted there in the shadows. There was no defined shape, no outline, and no sound—yet its presence was heavy, unmistakable, and deeply predatory.
"Assuming this place is a dream… what could any of this mean?" Albion wondered, his mind working frantically. "I'm not too sure about the black water… but the other two might have some kind of structural meaning."
A deeply thoughtful look settled over his features. His eyes remained fixed on the white dragon as it continued its rhythmic, half-circle loop around the hollow sun.
"The Eastern dragon most likely represents order… or harmony," Albion reasoned quietly to himself. "But what about the dark side? Why does the dragon only circle half of the sun's path?"
His gaze shifted to the empty arc the dragon never dared to touch. "…Maybe the unseen half represents an unknown presence?" he guessed. He quickly let out a tired sigh, shaking his head. "I have no way of proving any of that…"
His eyes moved in a desperate cycle. Dragon. Sun. Black water. Again and again.
Suddenly, Albion brought both hands up and sharply slapped his own cheeks.
SLAP!
"I'm such an idiot!" he exclaimed, the realization hitting him like a jolt of lightning. "The black water, the hollow sun, and the dragon… none of them are being governed by a ruler. They exist completely independently of one another—like different forces of nature!"
The sudden epiphany sent a visible shiver down his spine.
"Ruler…?" Albion muttered, the word tasting strange on his tongue. "Why does that sound so familiar…?"
Then, a jagged shard of memory sliced through his mind.
[Hey there, King.]
"That's right!" Albion's eyes widened, his pupils shrinking. "That other me… he called me a king."
But that realization only birthed a far more dangerous question. What did the title of "King" actually mean in a place like this?
His gaze slowly lowered to the glossy surface beneath his feet, where his own pale reflection stared back at him through the black water. "…Doesn't a king just mean the sole ruler of this domain? Or… if this place really is a dream…"
His thoughts suddenly ground to a violent halt as a terrifying theory struck him. His eyes narrowed, his heart rate spiking.
"If this place really is a dream… Why haven't I woken up yet? What if—and this is just a theory—but what if there are two kings? What if two distinct consciousnesses in this world are capable of claiming the throne? And if there are two entities trying to rule…"
Albion's breath hitched. "Then either one of them could drag the other down into the dark."
An absolute, heavy silence filled the endless sea.
Then—
"You really are terrifyingly smart." The voice materialized directly behind his left shoulder. The moment the words hit his ears, Albion's heart dropped into his stomach.
His entire body froze, pure shock paralyzing his muscles.
"To figure out so much… after only witnessing this domain a single time."
A slender figure stepped out from the shadows behind him, lazily coming to a halt at his side. Albion didn't even need to turn his head to know exactly who it was.
White looked out over the endless black ocean, his demeanor perfectly calm, composed, and utterly lethal. Then, he spoke a single, mocking word.
"King."
'It's him!'
The moment Albion violently spun around, he came face-to-face with White. Both of them moved at the exact same fraction of a second.
A sharp, echoing crack rang out through the empty world. Their clash lasted barely a heartbeat, and then Albion was forced to violently leap backward, his feet skidding several feet across the surface of the black water. Heavy ripples tore outward from his landing stance.
White barely had time to reset his posture before a sudden, intense flash of agony shot up his left arm.
"…My hand." His crimson eyes lowered to his own wrist. It was bending at an unnatural, broken angle.
'He dislocated it.'
Without so much as flinching, White grabbed his own fractured hand with his right fingers and brutally twisted it back into place.
POP.
The bone slid back into the socket with a dull, sickening snap.
In that single brief moment of physical contact, White had attempted to strike Albion with a lethal, decisive blow.
But Albion's combat instincts had reacted faster. He had slipped past the strike by a hair's breadth, driven his palm sharply into White's wrist to shatter his alignment, and immediately used the momentum to leap backward.
All in one fluid, seamless motion.
White flexed his pale fingers slowly, a cold curiosity washing over him. 'Interesting.'
Meanwhile, Albion's face tightened with stern, defensive alertness as he instinctively took another step back, his muscles coiled like a spring. 'Where did he even come from?!'
His mind was already racing into a downward spiral.
'I can't win.' The thought arrived instantly, a deeply ingrained mechanism of survival. 'I have to run. Let's face the facts… I'm not like Gajeel.'
His mind flashed back to their previous encounter—the first round of their fight in the guild. How completely overwhelming the Iron Dragon Slayer had been. How easily his defenses had been dismantled.
'Am I going to lose to this thing again…?'
Without even realizing what he was doing, Albion's fingers drifted back to his throat. He began scratching aggressively. Thin, ragged lines formed under his nails as they dragged across his skin.
'Lose…'
The memory replayed in a vicious loop. Gajeel standing over his broken body. The humiliation. The absolute defeat.
'Lose…!'
"Look at you."
Albion's eyes widened. White's voice had suddenly materialized right beside his ear.
"Getting completely lost in your own pathetic thoughts."
Before Albion could even attempt to pivot, White's hand shot forward like a striking viper. He grabbed Albion by the throat, effortlessly lifting his entire weight high into the air.
SLAM!
With monstrous, localized force, he drove Albion straight down into the solid surface of the black water.
A massive explosion of pain detonated across Albion's back as the sheer kinetic impact completely knocked the oxygen from his lungs.
"—GHK!" His chest spasmed violently as he instinctively gasped for air, his vision swimming.
The cold, disorienting surface of the strange liquid threatened to swallow his senses. But before he could even begin to recover his posture, White planted his boot firmly against the center of Albion's chest, pinning him mercilessly to the floor.
"Only one King can exist at a time," White explained, his grin widening to a cruel degree. "This place is your Inner World." He gestured lazily with one hand toward the vast, empty black sea surrounding them. "Within it, there are two beings capable of claiming the title of King. Despite how it feels, this isn't a prison."
His vivid, predatory red eyes shifted back down to the boy beneath his heel. "Either one of us can pull the other into this domain whenever we choose. When that happens, the physical body on the outside becomes completely still… as if time itself has paused for our convenience."
He paused briefly, enjoying the sheer terror in Albion's eyes. "The throne of the King is never permanent. It can change hands at any given second."
White tilted his head upward toward the hollow sun and the white dragon coiling around its pristine shell.
"This realm is the direct manifestation of your psyche. Your consciousness, your memories… your deepest, darkest emotions. Everything that exists here is a direct reflection of something rotting inside you." His smile sharpened, the edges pulling tight.
"As you grow… so do I. It isn't a matter of which one of us is fundamentally stronger." His crimson eyes gleamed with an unholy light. "It's simply a question of who proves more worthy… of becoming King."
"But don't get it twisted," White whispered, his voice dropping an octave.
Suddenly, he threw his head back, his mouth opening wide as a loud, mocking laugh ripped from his throat.
"Ahahaha—!"
The laughter carried absolutely no joy. It was drenched in pure, unadulterated cruelty. When he finally lowered his head again, his burning red eyes locked directly into Albion's trembling gaze.
"Once I officially become King… that absolute worm will be the very first person I hunt down." His grin widened, exposing both rows of teeth. "Because unlike you… my heart won't waver for a single second. I'll make that woman pray for the sweet release of death."
"Please… stop…" Albion's hands shot to his neck, his fingers scratching desperately, frantically at his own flesh. His voice trembled, completely broken. "You don't understand what you're saying…!"
"I understand perfectly!" White snapped back, his calm demeanor instantly twisting into sharp, biting venom. "The way you are right now… you're far too weak to keep holding the title of King! You're nothing but a half-baked, delusional, naïve little puppet! A puppet that doesn't even know how to think for himself!"
White's foot shifted, moving from Albion's chest and pressing down heavily against his throat, cutting off his airway.
"A puppet that only knows how to live for other people," White hissed, his eyes narrowing to razor slits. "I refuse to play the role of servant to a weak, pathetic King. People with hesitation and weakness like yours… will get us both killed."
Albion's eyes widened to their absolute limits, his pupils expanding until they swallowed his entire gaze. Tears pooled heavily at the corners of his eyelids before finally spilling over, tracing hot lines down his cheeks.
His face twisted into a grotesque grimace of pure agony, exposing his teeth as he suffocated beneath the boot.
"T-this wasn't… this isn't supposed to happen…"
A cold, familiar voice echoed from the darkest corner of his memory. A voice he knew all too intimately.
[Albion… It symbolizes purity and innocence. How beautifully ironic. A name so clean… forced into a life of absolute violence and corruption. I like that contrast.]
White slowly lifted his gaze away from Albion's suffering, staring out into the flat, empty expanse of the black sea. Following his line of sight, Albion forced himself to look as well.
"Memories that manifest within this realm behave like temporary physical structures," White explained, his tone shifting back to an eerie, narrative calm.
Right before their eyes, the black water began to stir and rise, slowly shaping itself like clay. Within seconds, the rigid, imposing silhouette of a laboratory materialized from the liquid.
"You were raised inside a facility. A laboratory," White narrated calmly. "You never learned how you arrived there… or why you had been brought to such a sterile place. For as long as your pathetic mind could remember, the cold white halls of that building were the only world you had ever known."
White's voice carried through the empty realm like a narrator reading a tragedy. "Those scientists studied you. Observe you. Tested you day in and day out."
"H-how do you know about that…?" Albion choked out weakly from beneath the boot.
"I am you. Remember?" White replied without even granting him a glance. He lazily flicked his wrist.
The laboratory shifted instantly. The liquid walls dissolved before rapidly reshaping into the distinct figures of several faceless scientists.
"They weren't forced to do any of it," White continued, his voice dripping with dark amusement. "They did it entirely willingly. You had no friends. No family. No parents. That laboratory was your entire universe, Albion. And within those sterile, unfeeling walls, you slowly began developing a fragile sense of self."
"During that time, you were constantly monitored. Constantly experimented on. But the experiments were rarely designed to cause physical pain. Sometimes they would draw small samples of your blood. Sometimes they simply stared at you through glass for hours on end. It always felt like they were searching for something sleeping inside you. Something even you didn't understand."
White paused, his grin slowly returning to his face. "Back then… you were nothing but an infant. Then, one day, everything changed."
"The laboratory was violently attacked," White said flatly.
Albion's scratching grew manic. His nails dug deep into his throat, breaking the skin entirely. Thin, hot streaks of blood began running down his neck, staining the black water beneath him.
"You never learned why they came, or what they were searching for," White continued. "There were three of them. Two boys… and a single girl. One of the boys wore strange clothing—something that reminded your childish mind of a ninja. The three of them defeated the facility's security and the scientists with absolute ease."
White paused, his red eyes dancing with malicious delight. "But then, something… entirely unexpected occurred."
"The girl betrayed them. Without a single shred of hesitation, she turned on her own allies… and slaughtered them where they stood."
Albion's breathing grew incredibly heavy, his chest heaving.
"After that… she approached your containment unit. She looked down at the helpless child trapped inside the laboratory chamber." White finally looked back down at him, his face twisted in a mocking sneer. "And then, she granted you a name. Albion."
"From that exact moment forward, the woman became the person you desperately called Mother. You had never known love. Never known family. Never known a single shred of human kindness. So the very first person who acknowledged your pathetic existence… became your entire world. That alone was enough for you. It was the sole reason you devoted your entire life to her."
White waved his hand lazily, as if discarding trash.
The laboratory dissolved into mist. The scientists vanished. The black ocean returned to its endless, flat form.
"It's really quite hilarious when you think about it," White said, lowering his face until it was only inches away from Albion's. "All that absolute nonsense you spout… about the sacred value of life… about protecting people…" His grin stretched wider, nearly touching his ears. "…was just your pathetic, cowardly attempt to protect yourself from reality."
White burst into a roaring fit of laughter. "Ahahahaha—!"
He pulled his foot away from Albion's throat and staggered back a few steps, clutching his stomach as if he had just witnessed the funniest spectacle in human history.
"Oh, but don't worry," White wheezed between sharp breaths. "That wasn't even the best part."
A predatory, monstrous smile slowly carved its way across his face. It stretched far wider than any human anatomy should allow, revealing a terrifying full row of teeth. The thick stitches running across the corners of his mouth strained violently under the pressure of the expression.
The threads pulled taut… and then, with a wet sound, they tore slightly. Fresh, dark beads of blood formed along the ruptured seams, trickling slowly down his chin.
The black water behind him began to violently churn. Something rose from the depths.
It was another figure of Albion—a perfect physical manifestation of his memory from the fight with Gajeel.
The imitation spoke with the exact, desperate voice Albion remembered using.
[I can feel what others feel. But being human… taught me something much deeper.]
[What my mother gave me wasn't real love… I just desperately wanted to believe it was. I'm so lonely… and I don't want to be alone anymore.]
[I want to matter. I want to be needed. I want to know it's okay for someone like me to exist!]
Before the memory could finish the sentence, White flicked his hand carelessly. The water shifted. That version of Albion collapsed back into the dark sea, only for a new manifestation to immediately rise in its place.
This one stood within the quiet, dusty expanse of a library.
[So I guess… I just wanted to know if it's alright for me to keep living…]
"HAHAHAHAHA—!"
White's thunderous laughter exploded across the empty void, completely shattering the memory with another careless wave of his arm.
"You were cursed by those faceless scientists!" White declared, his voice suddenly dropping its playful edge, turning razor-sharp and absolute. "And you were cursed by the very person you claim to love the most in this world!"
His grin returned, darker and more twisted than ever before.
"YOU are the true curse of humanity, Albion Ebonveil!"
Albion's shoulders began to violently tremble. At first, no sound escaped his throat. "Hhh—hic…! Nnngh…! Hhh… hic…!"
Then, the ragged sobs forced their way out of his chest. He tried to draw breath, but every single inhale broke into another choking, pathetic cry.
Suddenly, he lifted his head and slammed his forehead violently forward into the solid, black surface beneath him.
THUD.
Heavy ripples tore outward across the dark water. A memory echoed with deafening volume through his skull.
[If you had never existed… maybe I could have actually become something. Maybe my life wouldn't have completely rotted away like this!]
"Ahh—hh…! Hic…! Nnngh…!" Albion slammed his head down again. And again. And again.
[I curse the exact day you were born!]
[You should have never been brought into this world at all!]
"Hhh—hic…! Hhk…! Nnghhh…!" Finally, his movements stopped.
Slowly, agonizingly, he lifted his bruised head. His fingers dug deep into his scalp, scratching violently against his hair. Yet despite the thick tears streaming down his fractured face, a wide, completely unnatural grin began to stretch across his lips.
His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and locked in an obsessive, entirely unstable focus.
"I can't handle it anymore…!" Albion cried out through violent, shaking breaths, his sanity fraying at the seams. "My mind is breaking… it's tearing completely apart!"
"I—I want it all to go away!"
"I want everything to just end!"
White's maniacal smile vanished in a fraction of a second. The playful cruelty completely evaporated from his features, replaced by eyes that were sharp, serious, and intensely focused.
"If being the King is too much for your fragile mind to bear," White said, his boots clicking against the surface as he began walking forward, "then I will gladly become the King."
Step by step, he closed the distance. When he finally came to a halt directly in front of the broken boy, he slowly extended an open, pale hand down toward him.
"I'll carry all the burdens for us. All the sins. All the hatred. So your pathetic soul doesn't have to suffer anymore. If you fall… if you truly aren't fit to hold the throne…"
White's eyes gleamed in the darkness. "Then I'll fight for both of us. I'll protect both of us."
Albion stared blankly at the hand extended before him.
'If I can just say what I want… just this one time…'
Slowly, hesitatingly, his trembling hand began to lift toward White's open palm.
'Then I…'
'I…'
And at that exact microsecond—
A long-buried, pristine memory surfaced with absolute, blinding clarity within the deepest recesses of his mind.