Eisen stepped into the meeting hall, where the small celebration of the treaty's finalization was currently ongoing. Some of the envoys were trying to approach the old man, but he was simply headed straight toward a specific individual, ignoring everyone else.
"Aaron," Eisen said, staring at the young man. He was currently socializing with the others, acting as if nothing happened, but the old man was sick and tired of acting like they didn't know Aaron was somehow related to this.
"Your majesty! Where were you, everyone was looking for you earlier! Is everything alright?" he asked with a smile on his face, but Eisen himself didn't smile whatsoever. His expression was completely blank.
"Come with me."
"Uhm... again, is everything alright?" Aaron asked, appearing a bit concerned, but Eisen didn't buy it.
"No, it's not. I won't say it again, Aaron, come with me, right this second."
The crown prince looked at the other envoys awkwardly for a moment, and then excused himself. He followed Eisen out of the meeting room and down the hallway into a separate space. It was just a small office, though, and it wasn't even inhibiting Samuel's observation anymore, but the old man couldn't care less right now.
"Did something happen? Can I help you somehow?" Aaron asked, and Eisen snapped his finger. His domain was immediately deployed within the office, and only within the office. Everything in here petrified immediately, forming flaming cracks on their surfaces. Aaron took a step back toward the door, but it was already blocked off.
"Why? Why would you do something like this? Has everything just been an act? Are you proud that you've been able to trick us so far?" Eisen asked, sitting down at the desk. He motioned toward the chair across the desk, and Aaron slowly sat down on it.
"I don't... I don't know what you're talking about," Aaron stuttered out, but Eisen could see the flow of his magic. He seemed maybe a little nervous, but not even particularly so.
"Don't act stupid, Aaron. You know that I can see through any lie you speak," the old man said, leaning back in his chair, "All of us know. You had something to do with the Filth appearing. And you had something to do with the bombs that were placed on the train tracks. And, more importantly, you had something to do with the bomb that killed my baby brother."
Aaron stayed silent. His heart... skipped a beat. He was actually becoming nervous. Eisen was confused, staring at the flow of Aaron's mana, which hadn't changed even as he was faced with a literal monstrosity from a world that he shouldn't be able to understand, but now... he was nervous.
"No, not by you, but... as I just said, whenever I would tell others about the quests, I would get hurt, and the next punishment would get worse. This time, I should have..." Aaron grimaced, not even wanting to think about it, "But this time, nothing happened."
Eisen stared at Aaron. He was still telling the truth, so he figured he should be a bit more patient here. But still, why was the punishment not activating.
"Unless..." the old man muttered, "Aaron, try opening your status window."
Aaron was confused, but he did as asked. But then, his expression showed even more confusion, "I-It's... what's going on here? The window isn't... It's broken, it's not showing up properly, just... fragmented, and..."
A loud laugh that shook the room left Eisen's mouth as he turned toward the fake system message that wouldn't disappear no matter what. The message related to the 'System Resistance' skill. Eisen's demonic domain was a skill that filled a space with the old man's own qualities; Eisen wanted to use it to pressure Aaron and get him under control in case he had some weird card up his sleeve, but it was even better now.
Within Eisen's domain, the system was 'broken'. And with that, Aaron's quest clearly didn't realize that he broke its rules.
"Don't worry, it will start working again when you leave this room," Eisen responded, glaring at the young man in front of me, "You don't need to worry about the quest. So tell me."
Aaron hesitated. Clearly, this was something that never happened before, and after living a lifetime of not being able to tell anyone, it wasn't easy for him to start divulging it all now. But even so, Eisen didn't care.
"That wasn't a request. I'm sorry, but you have lost the right to secrets right now," Eisen said bluntly, and Aaron grew even more nervous.
"I-I'm sorry... Okay, let me... let me start at the beginning. When I was three, my first quest appeared. It told me to befriend some specific noble's kid at a social gathering, and spill food on another. I didn't want to do it, obviously, but more importantly, I was just confused. I had never gotten a quest before. So, I told my maid about it. The moment I did, the maid's eyes rolled in the back of her head. She grabbed me, and with a strength I knew she didn't possess, broke my arm."
Eisen's eyes widened, as Aaron continued, "She... was killed for the crime. I didn't understand anything at the time, I just knew that my maid broke my arm. The quest I had gotten obviously failed, and that had its own punishments. At the time, I was friends with the son of a viscount that lived near me. Him and his father came to visit me when my arm was broken, sort of to cheer me up I would assume. And then, when the timer for the quest was officially over, that friend had a stroke and died right in front of my eyes."
"So..." Eisen started, "When you fail a quest, those around you would get hurt, and when you tell others about the quest, you yourself would get hurt?"
"Yes. And every time, the punishment would get worse as well. Though the quests got harder too. Reaching a certain level before a particular point in time. Attaining a specific class. Killing specific monsters. Creating conflict around me. Getting certain nobles on my side, while ostracizing others. It got to the point where there was not a day when I didn't have quests. Actually, now that I think back on it, a lot of them were rather mundane. I got quests that told me to act in particular ways and go to specific spots and nothing else, but overall, the quests became harder to complete. When I told others, they would be possessed and hurt me. They would strike me, break my bones, strangle me, stab me... no matter what they did, I would never die, even if I should have. One time, the punishment was to have my head cut off, but I just woke up a moment later in a puddle of my own blood," Aaron stared down at the floor, "I started acting only as the quests told me to. And then... when the aritficials appeared, they quests? They disappeared. Until the date for the peace summit was set."