I Will Become Emperor
Head north from Indigo, the city perched at the southernmost tip of Gaiarium, and you come to Chinnimoni. Unlike Indigo, which had severed every last thread of trade with the outside world, Chinnimoni dealt eagerly with other cities — and the result was a metropolis so vast and so developed that Indigo could not even begin to compare.
"....."
Heh. She's adorable.
I didn't say it out loud, but I couldn't help smiling at Aquaril as she took in the city with her eyes gone perfectly round. The sheer scale of the place, the crush of people — all of it so much greater than anything Indigo had to offer — had clearly left her stunned.
"Shall we find a room first?"
"Pardon? Ah — yes, Master."
I led Aquaril toward a nearby hotel. I still had over 1.9 billion Gold on hand. As long as the money held, I had no intention of pinching coins when it came to food and a bed.
Living this lavishly from the start would come back to bite me later, sure — but that was a problem for future me. Suffer well, future me! Present me is going to flex.
"That will be seven million Gold."
"...Wow."
Of course, I hadn't entirely shed my ordinary-citizen mindset. When I handed over a week's worth of hotel fees, my hands — and other things — trembled a little. A million Gold a night? For a hotel?
Still, you got what you paid for. The room was excellent — far better than the one where I'd rested after killing Hwaryongwang back in Indigo.
"What do you intend to do from here, Master?"
Aquaril asked once we'd unpacked. Come to think of it, I had never told her what I planned to do next, or what I was even aiming for.
Is it because she's a Fairy?
She hadn't heard a single word of explanation from me, and still she had followed without a murmur. Loyal to her Master unto death — a Fairy through and through.
"From here on out... well. Nothing too complicated."
I smiled as I answered her.
"...Did you just say Emperor?"
Aquaril went rigid at the word.
Emperor.
This world is full of Masters who style themselves king or queen. Gather enough Fairies, build a faction, seize a city, and the title is yours for the taking.
But the title of Emperor belongs to one person in this world. Only one.
Play through the story of Fairy Masters and the player eventually topples the Emperor of Gaiarium's sole empire and takes the throne for themselves. There had been rumors that the story after the coronation would drop as Season 2... but I died before I could see with my own two eyes whether that was true. Fuck.
The point is this: if I can follow the storyline properly, I can become Emperor — and I have no intention of letting that chance slip. I'll need Fairies powerful enough to match the ambition, of course, but that part I am sure of.
I never cracked the top ten, but among the whales dropping hundreds of millions a month I still sat twentieth in the country and four hundred thirtieth in the world. That ranker was me.
"Anyway, that's a long way off. No need to get tense about it already."
I grinned, trying to put her at ease. The stiffness in Aquaril's face did not ease at all.
"I will do everything in my power to see that you become Emperor, Master."
No — if anything, she burned even hotter.
"Right. Thanks. But you don't need to push yourself harder than you already are. You're doing plenty as it is."
I meant it. From the moment she became my Fairy, Aquaril had given me everything she had. And she would keep giving me everything she had, for as long as there was a future to give it in.
"Hmm... Aquaril."
"Yes, Master."
"Then the future Emperor will give you a command."
"Yes, Master. I will obey any order."
"Let's have sex."
"Yes, I shall have se— ...pardon?"
Watching her burn with that much resolve was so pretty, and so damn sexy, that I couldn't hold back. I took Aquaril by the hand and headed for the bed.
We spent a very pleasant stretch of broad daylight together. I kneaded the soft give of Aquaril's chest while she slept like the dead, and I turned Chapter 3 over in my head.
First — the boss of Chapter 3...
Just as Hwaryongwang had ruled Indigo and called himself a king, Chinnimoni had a man who styled himself a king as well. And that man was the boss of Chapter 3.
The Blood Axe King.
In Fairy Masters he was a 3-star Master. As the title suggested, he was a Voodooist who fought with an axe, and he kept no fewer than eight Fairies at his side.
Beyond the Fairies, he had two princes and three princesses under him. Their Fairies, all told, numbered thirteen — which meant the enemy roster, Blood Axe King included, came to a clean twenty-seven.
They called him the Blood Axe King because a single swing left the blade so soaked it looked as though the axe itself had been forged from blood.
And he isn't the only problem.
Chapter 3's enemies did not stop at the Blood Axe King.
In the shadows of Chinnimoni there existed a secret organization even he knew nothing about — and they, too, were enemies the player had to bring down.
The organization did not confine itself to Chinnimoni, either. It turned up across every stretch of the story except Chapters 1 and 2. In other words, I was going to be sick of looking at these bastards.
Their goal was to topple the Ferdium Empire and build a world where everyone was equal. A pack of lunatics, in short.
A world where everyone is equal. The banner itself is a fine one.
The reason I still call them lunatics is that every single thing they do in the name of that banner is nauseating. Plunder is the baseline. Human trafficking, human experimentation — they run the full catalog of atrocities.
Fairy Masters is a game rated for fifteen-year-olds, so none of it is shown in detail, but the clues are scattered through the entire playthrough. You can feel it.
In the extreme late game, before the player ever faces the Ferdium Empire, you fight the leader of those maniacs. Cut him down and he says this:
I nearly quit the game on the spot when I heard that line. In the end they were just another breed of monster, moving for their own profit and their own appetites.
Their organization had a name. I'm sure of it...
Palos's Bird. That was what they called themselves. Every member carved a tattoo into their skin — a bird with claws and a beak of bronze.
The spine of Chapter 3 is the clash between the Blood Axe King and Palos's Bird.
Originally, the Blood Axe King has no idea that a tumor called Palos's Bird is growing inside the city he rules. He only learns they exist when he falls into a trap they prepared while clearing a newly formed dungeon on the outskirts of Chinnimoni.
And it is the player who pulls him out of that trap — who saves the Blood Axe King from dying at Palos's Bird's hands.
Which raises an obvious question. If that's the case, why is the Blood Axe King the boss of Chapter 3?
Because that Blood Axe King son of a bitch turns around and backstabs the player who just saved his life.
The lunatic slaps the player with the completely baseless charge of being a Palos's Bird operative and tries to have them killed.
Of course, the one who actually dies is the Blood Axe King himself.
Even so, the difficulty climbs from Chapter 3 onward. Lose focus and the player can die. Most of the enemies, the Blood Axe King included, are 3-star or close enough to taste it.
And the ones I'm about to meet will be far stronger than they were in the game.
Indigo's trio had already outstripped their game counterparts. I had long since thrown away any hopeful little notion that this place would play out the same as the version I remembered.
Which means what I need to do is...
There wasn't even a plan to draw up, honestly.
All I had to do was sit quiet and build my strength until Palos's Bird sprung their trap on the Blood Axe King.
They wouldn't be running that same fucked-up dungeon-control racket here too... right?
A thin thread of unease crept in.
We spent a full day at the hotel working the fatigue out of our bones, then went walking through the city to gather information.
"It truly is... a developed city. The palace is far larger and far more imposing than Hwaryongwang's."
"Yeah. It is."
Aquaril said it as we looked up at the palace where the Blood Axe King lived, and I agreed with her.
It stood a good five meters taller than Hwaryongwang's palace, and from the peak a flag snapped in the wind — the Blood Axe King's own mark. Two hand axes crossed in an X, blood dripping from the blades.
So is the Blood Axe King not coming out? I'd settle for a prince, a princess, even a Fairy. Anything.
I wanted a clean read on his faction's actual specs. Without that, I couldn't build a strategy for fighting him.
But we parked ourselves at a café across from the palace for half the day and never caught so much as a glimpse of anyone from his camp.
"What a waste of time."
If I'd spent these hours in a dungeon I could have walked out with Growth Stones. The thought stung.
"Mmph... pardon?"
"Nothing. Is it good?"
"Yes, Master."
Aquaril nodded with a smile, whipped cream smeared at the corner of her mouth. Looking at her like this, she could have been a child. Her body, of course, was anything but.
"You should have some as well, Master."
"Sure. Oh — want anything else? I'll get it for you."
"Ah... th-then, the same as this, if I may..."
She fidgeted at my offer, eyes sliding away in embarrassment as she pointed at the cake she'd been eating. I smiled and stood to buy her another.
"I-I will go place the order."
"It's fine. Ordering a cake isn't exactly hard."
"That isn't what I—"
"I know what you mean. Sit tight."
I ruffled Aquaril's hair and went to order another slice. Watching her eat with that much honest appetite made buying it for her a pleasure all its own.
"Aah~ I'm so tired~ so tired~"
Hm?
I was on my way back to the table with the cake when a woman stretched her arms over her head and walked into the café.
She stood a little shorter than Aquaril, with a thick fall of pink hair that reached her waist. Over clothes that clung to every line of her she wore leather armor, and strapped across her back was a spear longer than she was tall.
The body was already enough to look at. The face matched it. Those pink eyes, heavy with a slow, liquid allure, were especially something.
A princess — or a Fairy.
Masters and Fairies alike, men and women, were all beautiful. Looks like that meant she was one or the other.
Status window.
I looked at her and pulled it up.
1. Pierce(Lv. 8)
2. Magic Javelin(Lv. 7)
3. Flow of Wind(Lv. 5)
Oh, fuck.
Just as I'd guessed — she was a Master.
And the status window punched a startled breath out of me. A full 3-star, and level 44 on top of it. She'd poured everything into her main stats, and her class and skill levels were nothing to sneeze at either.
I know her. I'm sure I do...
The instant I confirmed the name Kanisia Lora, everything I knew about her surfaced on its own — or rather, everything Fairy Masters had ever shown of her.
Kanisia Lora was one of the Masters who followed the Blood Axe King, but her appearance in the story was brutally short. The reason was simple. When Palos's Bird sprang their trap on the Blood Axe King, she died trying to get him out.
She was a Master. A human being. And her loyalty to the Blood Axe King still ran as deep as any Fairy's.
...There has to be a way to use her.
That kind of loyalty is not easy to come by when you aren't even a Fairy.
I need to start building a real faction sooner rather than later...
As things stood, I couldn't just summon Fairies whenever I felt like it. That left stealing them off other Masters — and one look at Kanisia Lora was enough to guess the level of the Masters and Fairies living in Chinnimoni.
At my current strength, ripping the ownership of a Fairy away from any Master in this city was impossible.
Which left one option. Join hands with another Master.
And given the loyalty she had shown in the game, Kanisia Lora made an extremely attractive candidate for an alliance.