The next two days passed like a blur for Ashoka.
Honestly, if Ashoka had to, he would divide his time in Casamir into two very distinct categories: days where something tried to kill him or he tried to get himself killed, and days where he simply had to clean up after that had already happened. The next two days belonged to the second category.
The first of these was spent almost entirely on logistics. With the Crown's warning about the Corrupted Devil still fresh in the mind of everyone important enough, and with Alariv's cohort still unaccounted for somewhere deep in the wilderness, the palace had moved quickly to assemble a reinforcement team. Ashoka spent most of the morning sitting through meetings he barely understood, listening to Ascendeds and senior Awakened argue over formation compositions, supply routes, and which cohorts could be spared without leaving Casamir's borders dangerously thin. Even Rurik, who still vehemently refused to join the team, gave his own input. Ashoka nodded along where appropriate and stayed quiet everywhere else, grateful that no one seemed to expect much input from him on matters of military strategy.
By early afternoon, a team of a dozen Awakened and two Ascendeds had been finalized, their departure scheduled for dusk. This team specialised in extraordinary speed, and would theoretically reach their destination by the next dusk.
At the same time, a second and considerably smaller expedition was organized, this one tasked with recovering whatever could be salvaged from the corpse of the Corrupted Tyrant that Gaius had slain during his own expedition. A handful of Awakened, led by a Master, were sent out with the express purpose of harvesting soul shards, monster carapace and bones, glands, and whatever other valuable remnants hadn't already been devoured by the abomination's own scavenging kin.
Beyond that, the day mostly consisted of paperwork. Endless paperwork. Requisition forms, supply manifests, formal notices that needed his seal or Eldrin's signature or both. Ashoka's head ached by the time evening came, and not from the wound on his head this time.
That night, Ashoka had a feeling that the end of the Nightmare was rapidly approaching. So, he decided to triple the amount of soul shards he consumed daily, bringing it up to nine. That wasn't the ideal number according to Gaius, but frankly, Ashoka didn't care.
The second day was quieter, at least in terms of new crises, though it came with its own particular disappointment. Oswald's funeral, originally scheduled to be held that afternoon, was cancelled in the end. The reason was simple enough. With Alariv still missing and unreachable, and with royal tradition apparently demanding that all three princes' families be present to properly lay one of their own to rest, the ceremony couldn't proceed with only Gaius and Eldrin in attendance.
Additionally, by the young king's own words, it felt disrespectful for either Oswald or Alariv to be laid to rest while the other was still far away at such an important moment.
Ashoka didn't have the heart to tell him the truth, because even now, the guilt still clung to him, even if he'd at least learned to hide it well.
One thing that surprised him that day was Sera's absence. She had not been informed about the funeral's cancellation, yet had still not appeared. It almost felt like her heart was content as long as the culprit for her husband's death was caught. Ashoka wasn't sure what to feel about that, considering he was one of those culprits, but in the end, he kept his mouth shut.
On the topic of Sera and Oswald, there was another thing of importance he had noticed, this one related to Corvin.
That night, the Ascended had come to visit the palace to inquire something with Gaius. Ashoka didn't know what they had talked about, but he happened to be there when Corvin was on his way out.
Although they hadn't conversed, Ashoka had felt an unmistakable tension burdening his expression. Seeing that, Ashoka knew he had already achieved what he'd set out to with Corvin.
Finally, the third day arrived, officially marking Ashoka's 12th day in this Nightmare.
He still wasn't entirely sure a first Nightmare was even supposed to last this long. If anything, he'd expected his to run for at least a month, which was, if he was being honest with himself, one of the few things about this entire ordeal he'd allowed himself to feel good about. There were still around 20 out of the 35 days left before the Corrupted Devil was due to reach Casamir, and by his own rough estimate, his Nightmare would take no more than another week to conclude.
Small comfort, but comfort all the same.
The 12th day was also the day when things finally began to change.
As the morning sun slowly climbed toward its zenith, four Awakened arrived in front of the northern border gate of Casamir. They were the Awakened from the two expedition teams sent into the wilderness two days ago, and they had come back with both strange and terrible news.
The first piece of news came from the scavenging team, and it was strange to say the least. The team had arrived at the place of the Corrupted Tyrant's death sometime in the afternoon of the second day, expecting to see a mountain of flesh and rock-like carapace. Instead, they had found nothing at all. The signs of battle and the dead minions were still there, including the dried-up lake, but the Tyrant itself was nowhere to be seen, as if it had risen up from death and simply walked away.
It wasn't as though Gaius hadn't killed it — he still had the transcendent soul shards to show for it. In the end, no one knew what to make of this new information, and they could only increase the kingdom's defenses for any unexpected situation.
The second piece of information the Awakened had brought back was the most terrible.
It was the news of Prince Alariv's death.
After departing from Casamir, the large reinforcement team had followed Alariv's initial cohort's path in hopes of meeting up with them. The journey had lasted almost a day, and eventually they came across a devastated section of the forest, almost a kilometer wide, turned barren and flat by fire that still seemed to be eating through what remained of the trees.
All that was left was an expanse of ashen plains, with burnt and broken stumps twisting toward the sky like spires. Signs of a dreadful battle were present throughout the ruins.
Finally, they arrived at the monster-infested heart of the place, only to come across the corpses of the fallen Ascendeds, as well as the Prince. In the end, they could only bury the bodies in the wilderness.
Eldrin broke down after hearing of Alariv's death, eventually locking himself in his room and refusing to talk to anyone.
Of course, Ashoka hadn't been there to see any of it transpire, which might have been for the better. In fact, he hadn't even been in the palace when the news arrived, only being briefed about it by Gaius afterward.
That was because he'd been roaming the streets of Casamir, meeting with the farmers who'd been wronged by Oswald, and with those who were dissatisfied by the current state of the kingdom and the Royal family.
All of this was because Ashoka planned to end this Nightmare with a massive protest movement across Casamir, targeting the Royal family — an effort to form a Council in the government whose power was second only to the king himself, with Ashoka seated as its head. This was, in fact, the most important part of his plan.
From the start, the goal of this trial had been evident to Ashoka: to somehow usurp the Obsidian Crown, the Uniqueness of the Black Emperor pathway, from the current king.
There had been many obstacles in his way, mainly the Rules of the Crown, but there had also been many clues and tools at his disposal.
The first clue he'd received came in the form of a hint from the spell.
[Hint – You are the hidden 4th heir to the Black Crown]
Soon after studying the rules of the Crown, he'd surmised that the reason he'd become an heir was that he was a beyonder of the Lawyer pathway — perhaps the only one in this entire world — and also a proxy of the Nation of Disorder, which caused the convergence effect to act up on its own.
This also told him that convergence was a valuable tool for him as well.
The rest was less clue than accumulated information — things he'd gathered rather than been straightforwardly given. This included the history of Casamir that he'd studied, the function of the Pillar and the Crown, and how an heir becomes king, along with the required conditions, all pieced together using his Innate Ability.
The criteria for an heir to become King, something Ashoka had wondered about before, turned out to be quite straightforward. It was simply the acclamation of the people — how much they favoured one prince over the others. This also explained how Eldrin had ended up King in the end.
During the Great Raid two years ago, feelings of despair and exhaustion had been rampant within Casamir, and people were desperate for a ray of hope in that hopeless period. Throughout that time, the king and his three princes — Alariv, Gaius, and Oswald — had been far off in the wilderness, fighting to keep the horde of monsters at bay. Because of that, they'd become more akin to the distant walls of the far outskirts, things people took for granted, rather than what the people actually wanted in those dire days.
That was why the fourth prince, Riven — already a favourite among the commoners — became the focus of the people's hope. And when he eventually died in a manner heroic enough for his tale to be sung in distant realms, the people's love turned into empathy for the newly orphaned child he'd left behind. That empathy, in turn, quickly deepened into adoration, and eventually into love.
That was why, when the king finally died, it wasn't one of the surviving princes who inherited his mantle, but young Eldrin.
That was how Ashoka had decrypted this small mystery, and the information he'd gathered from it became one of his tools.
Finally, there were the tools already at his disposal: his status as a lawyer, his connection to his Sefirah, his close relationship with the Royal family through Alariv, the case with the old farmer, and — most important of all — his Innate Ability, the centerpiece of his entire plan.
The method he'd settled on to usurp the Crown was, in the end, to reenact what had happened to him at the start of this Nightmare — becoming an heir through convergence — just on a much grander stage. He planned to do this by meeting every condition required to become king, without killing Eldrin, and letting convergence do the rest.
As for the conditions: the first was to be an heir in the first place, included within the Crown's personal domain. This had been achieved at the very start of the Nightmare.
The second was to be the only eligible heir to the Crown, ensuring there'd be no resistance from its connection to any other claimant. This was why the princes had needed to die — and now, only Gaius remained.
The third was the acclamation of the people, which he already had in abundance thanks to the court case and the subsequent rumours that followed Oswald's death.
And finally, the last condition: gaining a position within the Crown's domain hierarchy equal to, or second only to, the King's own — higher even than the Crown's remaining heirs.
This was why he needed the protests to begin — there was realistically no other way to secure a position of that level and satisfy the final requirement. He wanted a post backed by the Crown's own authority, and a protest was the simplest way to justify creating a council meant to oversee and guide the king's authority.
It would also let him hide behind the cover of a legitimate movement, acting as its figurehead rather than its architect, safely out of the Crown's suspicion.
After that, it would only be a matter of using his Innate Ability at the right moment and letting convergence do the rest.
Ashoka recalled the description of that ability once more.
Innate Ability – [Conduit of Power (Sealed)]
Ability Description – The Nation of Disorder holds the authority of Power, and as its Quasi-Proxy, you can use various methods to channel power greater than your own.
What he wanted to do was simple: channel one of his attributes to its maximum — specifically, the [Quasi-Proxy of the Nation of Disorder].
Attribute – [Quasi-Proxy of The Nation of Disorder]
Attribute Description – You are the Quasi-Proxy of the Nation of Disorder. Your aura is comparable to a king's.
By strengthening his connection to the Nation of Disorder, he wanted to turn "comparable to a king" into "that of a king." After all — if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. And in this case, he was literally the proxy of the Nation of Disorder. No one technically held more right to its Uniqueness than he did.
Actually, the plan that Gaius was following was exactly the same as his own — after all, Ashoka was the one who designed it for him — trying to become the only heir to the crown, increasing his popularity in the kingdom by slaying a Corrupted Tyrant, and finally, getting a high position in the Crown's domain which had yet to happen. Ashoka couldn't really risk lying about how to become the king, since Gaius might see through his eloquent lies, but the one crack in his plans was that Ashoka couldnt use his innate ability for someone other than himself. Ashoka had lied that he had found a backdoor into the pillar's function, instead of saying it was his innate ability. As a result, Gaius had always been set up to fail in his attempt, like a cruel joke from fate itself.
There was still a chance his Innate Ability would fail him — he hadn't forgotten it remained marked [Sealed] for some reason. But he'd planned around that too. Even if it failed at the last moment, he'd still have at least a week before the Devil arrived. In that time, he could simply tear down the entire Pillar of Brass, destroying the artifact to free the Hand of Order and collapse the domain system entirely. After that, there would be nothing stopping him from simply picking up the Crown by hand.
Of course, there had been a much easier way to conclude this Nightmare from the start, a simpler way. It was to kill Eldrin, before immediately using his innate ability to channel the Crown's authority and become the king. This way, there wasn't even a need to do anything else like eliminating the other prince, but Ashoka did not want to do that.
He wanted to complete it the way he wanted.
And so he'd gone through this entire tiresome, pointless charade — because this was how he wanted things to go, because he refused to bend and warp himself into whatever shape this Nightmare, and this world, wanted him to become.
In hindsight, it sounded truly stupid. But he could accept that. He cherished the kind of person he was, and he didn't want to become someone cruel or heartless.
Someone like Gaius.
'Wait, that sounds kind of familiar... Hmm. Someone who refuses to change. Now who could that be.'
That was the plan, at least — laid out in full, for the first and only time, inside his own head.
There was only one piece left to place, and it wasn't his to place.
That same afternoon, Ashoka and Gaius entered Eldrin's chamber together, where the boy still sat curled and hollow-eyed over his uncle's death. It was Gaius who spoke first, without any preamble at all—
"This kingdom is doomed."
And just as that conversation was beginning, another, much quieter one was taking place somewhere far away, between Ascended Rurik and Ascended Cathal.
There was another reason this day mattered so much — not for something that had already happened, but for something about to happen very soon.
On this day, Ascended Gaius, also known as Prince Gaius…
Was going to die.