Tyrants of Earth - The Legend of Artigan

It should have been a day for celebration, a day where the Realmers collectively breathed a sigh of relief. The Realm had been settled, information blackouts had started lifting, and it looked like the evacuations might finally end

When the expansion settlement quest was completed, the monsters would have no incentive to move towards the center of The Realm. On regular days, it was the opposite. More powerful creatures tended to prefer inhabiting the more energy dense areas in the outer sectors. The only real incentive for them to push to the center was either because they were too weak for their Sector or they wanted more system portals.

It was the first time a Sector had taken so long to settle by the Tyrants before.

And so the celebration in Ulverra was bigger than it had ever been.

Most that lived there simply forgot about, or repressed the wave of dread that had passed them moments earlier.

Ignore the giant tree of gold that a few adventurers recorded, ignore the videos of the Witch Tyrant getting accosted by the Passive Tyrant. Ignore the rain of enormous fists that broke out of the tunnel that killed multiple adventurers, a drake tribe and caused ecological destruction everywhere.

That was why you lived in Ulverra of course!

Under the aegis of the Archmage Tyrant.

Though not everyone was celebrating.

A crotchety old man was in the office of an enforcer as she tried to yell at him.

“I don’t care what kind of sandwich you’re trying to bribe me with, Jecharim. Why do you think I’ll know more than you do?”

Leveled Zone Chief Enforcer Ami had a headache. After the kidnapping event with Artigan, she had continued to invite the old man to some social gatherings with other Realmers. She had been hoping that the old man would be able to find a community amongst some of the more stubborn uptight Realmers that worked for the enforcers.

And now she was paying the price for trying to do a good deed.

“I know you’ve got them private channels with adventurers and whatsit. I just wanted to know if the rumors are true.”

“Even if they were true, I wouldn’t be the first person to know about it, or be able to disclose it.”

“Bah! Who am I going to tell? My dead son, or my dead wife?”

Ami resisted the urge to throw something at the old man.

“Why do you care so much about it?”

“I care, cause I care. Whatsit matter to you?”

“Please get the hell out of my office.”

Jecharim tried to take the Reuben sandwich on her desk back. Ami quickly put a hand over it before he could.

“If you took this gift back because I refused to answer your questions, that would mean it was a bribe. That would add another black mark to your record, Jecharim. You wouldn’t want your license revoked, now would you?”

The old man bared his teeth at her then stomped away. Ami sighed as she unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite of that delicious sandwich.

Ami then turned on the private recordings that were getting regularly wiped out from the Realmnet. Someone in the Adventurer’s Guild was working overtime to scrub everything from anything that was coming from Vitalia. Though the fact that she had gotten it meant that it was already leaking out.

A giant tree of gold. A small dot flying against thousands of other dots. A bigger fold in reality than had ever been seen before. Manifestations from multiple sources.

Giant fists flying out from a spatial tunnel that stretched all the way from deep Sector Ten to Sector Eight. Giant fist imprints were even found in Sector Six.

The Passive Tyrant looked like she was ready to kill the Witch Tyrant.

How close had Vitalia come to annihilation?

For the first time in… ever, the Chief Enforcer of the Leveled Zone of Ulverra questioned the benevolent rule of the Tyrants.

——

Earth…

Adventurers, Tyrants, The Realm, the Trial System, that was what the privileged worried about, those that had some influence or money to have the capacity to worry about such things.

Those things were never something that Natnael worried about. Of course he’d heard of the Tyrants, of course he’d heard of the wars and the terrible power that dragonslayers wielded, but what of it?

Would it change anything he did in his day to day life?

Would a Tyrant come to Ethiopia and help push his oxen?

Of course not. He had to do it himself under the baking sun.

The idea of becoming a Destined was just a fancy dream for someone like him. The only name he knew was their country’s hero, Selam the Devout, their ninth realm. Something you hoped you could be when you first heard it as a kid, then forgot about as you realized you didn’t have anything special going for you.

No, the only dream Natnael had was to feed his family and hope his son would have a better life in his future.

So, he and his oxen plowed the farmland.

No access to the internet, no access to the realmnet and certainly no adventurers in his life. Nothing to be in turmoil over, nothing to excite his bones other than seeing a particularly healthy batch of crop.

A simple life.

At least until a bright light appeared from the sky. A grand multicolored portal blasted down in front of him, he jumped backwards as the rush of energy hit him like a static wave.

It gently caressed his body like a missing feeling that he never knew he was missing.

A screen popped up in his view.