Lewd King's Bucket List

The thrall he'd hitched a ride on was a short young woman who barely fit into the smallest standard patrol uniform.

The small thrall made her way across Catatran's streets and to the house containing Drath's body and mind, coincidentally arriving at the same time as two others.

Creaking open the wooden door, the thralls entered and made for the far corner of the room. Then, they all knelt, placed their hands on the fake floor, and were sucked into the Memory Realm.

'Oh?'

Unlike last time, Ixion had not been spat out in the royal garden. Instead, the three thralls had been summoned directly into the throne room. In front of them, two Despairs stood.

One of these Despairs was pinching the bridge of his nose as he said:

"Get on with it."

Ixion's thrall spoke first.

"Go die in a hole."

The two others added on:

"You smell like shit."

"Leave Catatran, dumbass."

Before Despair could send them away back to do their duty, Ixion's soul slipped from the small thrall. A moment later, just like he expected, the three disappeared.

The real Despair turned to his memory clone.

"Ixion should really learn to keep to himself."

"Yes, he should."

Ixion couldn't help but let his soul dance wildly through the air.

'Talking to himself?'

The big and scary Despair made idle chatter with himself.

'And the world calls me mad?!'

When Ixion calmed down, he began to think of his prerogatives.

This may be the only time he'd be able to sneak in with minimal to no suspicion. On this excursion, he had four agendas: find out what the jester did, who all was in the dungeon, a hint to Despair's plan, and then, finally… talk to Dia.

Ixion didn't exactly know what steeled his resolve, but he knew he'd internally decided when talking with Joe about love, a decision rooted in something inexplicable; something which only became more elusive as Ixion searched for it.

Watching two new thralls enter, Ixion decided to float around the throne room, inspecting it. Or more so…

"Ixion is cooler."

"Your stories sucked."

Ixion decided to try to delve below the throne room, the room where the soul collecting Chest lay.

Thankfully, his soul slammed into an invisible barrier and rebounded off it.

Next, Ixion left the two Despairs behind and began searching the memory palace's halls, focusing on sensitive areas, but areas Drath would have known well.

As his soul floated through the halls, he thought to himself:

'Where are those two…'

The two alive people he'd seen last time were nowhere to be found.

Eventually, Ixion found himself in the archive.

Sadly, all the scrolls and books were neatly tucked away, so he couldn't read them; however, most were probably blank. Still, overall, everything looked in order.

The next place Ixion visited was the chancery…

'Good gods… what happened here?'

The place was wrecked. Shredded paper was strewn across the floors. Tables and chairs were flipped.

And in the center of the room was a playing card, similar to the one the jester had sunk into his armor.

'J.'

So, the jester had indeed visited the Memory Realm and had trashed this room… but why?

Ixion thought back to the happenings of that day. The day Despair left, Drath disappeared.

What he was trying to drum up was…

'What was I doing?'

Before Andrea took over all of his work, he'd spent a lot of his time in the chancery doing logistical work and filing papers.

'Drath had probably been in the chancery that day and read some files…'

It didn't seem like something he'd do, but going off the fact that the papers had words on them, Drath had been inside the chancery on the day this memory was pulled from.

Either he snuck in of his own volition, or something had led him to enter.

'But what would I have dictated that he saw?'

Ixion, if he had a body, would have flipped as the realization hit him.

A case file on Despair…

'That's how he learned Despair's true nature.'

Not only that…

Files on Marlowe, Hope, Ixion himself, and many more high-class profiles, all of them kept in the chancery and safely guarded by Ixion himself. Files which Despair had probably been using for his research and planning.

'Wait—'

'That bastard?!'

Ixion's soul tightened.

The puzzle pieces clicked into place.

The loyal and noble Drath would have never stooped to something as low as subversion. Therefore…

'Despair, that deplorable man, somehow made Drath go into the chancery.'

When in there, Drath read all the horrible files of Marlowe and Despair. Files which the King had been hiding, making Ixion just as guilty.

And what would cause more unwavering distraught agony to a stalwart knight than to learn he'd sworn loyalty to a dirty nation with dirty leaders?!

Then, Drath, with all of this fresh in his mind, Despair first created this particular Memory World. Not only had Despair recreated the palace and taken Drath out of the picture, but he'd also had invaluable recorded intel.

'Ah, I see…'

There was probably more to what happened that Ixion hadn't gleaned, but he now saw the bigger picture.

He'd already figured out Despair had been planning his treachery for a long time, since Ixion was a kid, but something about this pissed Ixion off to no end.

Mainly… Drath didn't deserve this, not at all.

No, that wasn't it.

'That man…'

He lives on only in ‌perpetual memory.

'Knowing that I was a terrible man who turned a blind eye to Despair's human experiments and Marlowe's human enslavement.'

Not just any human enslavement…

Simply because Marlowe was keeping the economy alive, Ixion looked away from what he was doing to his slaves.

Sexual assault, fighting rings, organ trafficking, selling their bodies — That was just some of what Marlowe was doing while millions fought and died to the Scourge.

Ixion's soul dimmed.

'I hate who I once was.'

The Ixion before he lived‌ countless lives, was a coward, enslaved by an ideal.