Chapter 151.1: Welcome to the Kingdom: Executing

Chapter 151.1: Welcome to the Kingdom: Executing

PART 1/2

Asmo sat at a desk in a dry, dark room. She sat at this desk alongside Winic, the table sprawling with magical implements and ingredients that she didn’t understand. Beneath those objects were papers covered in haphazard scribbles, ink bleeding out onto the old table. The must within the underground cellar made it somewhat difficult to breathe, and the clutter certainly didn’t help with Asmo’s feeling of claustrophobia.

This place was his study, where he not only created magical items himself, but also had his students work for him on things he wasn’t Classed to create on his own. Currently, they were there alone, with Asmo giving Winic instructions on what items they’d need to create for this first mission. She was planning on sending out Carison, Keiki, and Jon out to three cities, but first she’d need Winic’s expertise in making preparations.

Asmo looked over the mess of a desk they were sitting at. In the wide room, full of random shelves and tables thrown about and absolutely covered in more scraps of metal, wood, paper, and ink—plus even more covering the floor—she felt like she barely even had room to exist there, herself. As Winic tinkered with a small machine in his seat, Asmo pulled out some sheets of Message Paper she’d gotten from the kingdom’s stores.

“Where should I put these?” she asked, looking over the completely covered table.

“Hm,” he glanced up from his gadget, surveying the desk for a moment, before he pointed to a seemingly arbitrary spot near Asmo, where the table happened to not have anything on it, except for a few sheets of scribbled-on paper. “There.”

“...Okay.” She reached over to set them down. “Should I just move some stuff over so they’re closer to—”

“No,” he interrupted. “If you do that, I’ll lose track of where everything is.”

“Have you not already?” Asmo gazed around the cluttered room. “It seems as though it would be impossible to find anything here.”

“Of course not. If I put something somewhere, I’ll remember where it is.”

Asmo frowned. “If it works for you, I suppose.”The roots of this story extend from novell bìn origin.

He shrinked away from her. “Er...”

Asmo took a deep breath, collecting herself, and sat back down. “I apologize for the emotional outburst. That was unprofessional of me. What I mean to say was, I have vested interest in getting these tasks complete as quickly as possible. And as such, waiting for you to take them one by one would go directly against that interest. As such, I encourage you to find a way to complete this more quickly than you normally would.”

Winic continued staring at Asmo cautiously. “Do you...Why do you care? Is it not the same whether we take control of the Kingdom within thirty days or within thirty-five? I understand not wanting to wait around forever, but I wouldn’t think a few days’ delay would be such a...problem.”

Asmo took another deep breath, her face twitching at Winic’s continued insistence of delaying the operation. “As I said, I have a vested interest in completing this as quickly as possible. There is a...thing I must collect, and the Demons are preventing me from doing so.”

“A thing?”

“And as we speak, that thing could be in danger, it could be dying on the streets, could be losing its way, getting turned against me, could be running off to never come back.” Asmo started losing control of her breathing once again. “I cannot allow that to happen. That fake Koinkar will not prevent me from keeping what I care about safe! I will—”

She stopped herself, pausing to collect herself once more. A deep breath, clear the mind, clear the emotions. She counted backward from thirteen in her head. Calm.

She opened her eyes to see Winic staring at her as he would a crazed beggar in the streets, but paid him no heed. “As I have said, I encourage you to move as quickly as possible. If you delay in your work, I will face further risk of permanently losing something that I care about. In that case, I will ensure that the people I relied on—the people who failed to do what I asked of them—will lose something that they care about. That way, we all have equal encouragement to succeed.”

“I...” Winic frowned. “Are you threatening to not pay me if your...thing, perishes?”

“Something along those lines. Now please, find a way to make this happen quickly.”

He sighed, breath brushing papers on the desk aside. “Yes, of course. Just, a few more questions about these items you want me to make.”

“Go ahead. I can answer anything you want me to.”