The throne room of Rexia Kingdom existed in a state of perpetual tension, its marble floors polished to mirror perfection reflecting not just the ornate ceiling frescoes, but the fear that emanated from every soul present.

Gilded columns stretched toward vaulted heights, their surfaces carved with intricate depictions of past monarchs—rulers who had governed with wisdom and compassion, a stark contrast to the woman who now occupied their seat of divine authority.

Rexia Diane sat upon the Celestial Throne as if it were merely another tool in her arsenal of control, her posture relaxed yet predatory.

The ancient seat, carved from a single piece of star-touched obsidian and inlaid with precious metals that caught and refracted light in impossible patterns, seemed almost mundane beneath her presence.

What commanded attention was not the regalia of office, but the volatile energy she manipulated with casual indifference.

The tyrant of the Rexia Kingdom played calmly with energies that would have torn lesser beings apart, her delicate fingers conducting forces that even Claude—with all his incarnations’ accumulated knowledge—found difficult to comprehend.

The air around her fingertips shimmered and warped as she manipulated what the common people failed to recognize as a third fundamental force.

“Ki,” she murmured to herself, her voice carrying the satisfied tone of someone savoring a particularly fine wine. “Yet another form of energy distinct from Divinity and Mana as usually recognized by the populace, huh. Interesting.”

The crimson energy that emerged from her fingertips moved with liquid grace, flowing through the air like blood mixed with starlight.

It began to weave itself into complex patterns around her form, creating a barrier that pulsed with malevolent life.

The very atoms of the air seemed to sing in harmony with her will, responding to commands that bypassed the normal channels of magical manipulation entirely.

The assembled courtiers—nobles, ministers, and knights who had learned to school their expressions into masks of absolute neutrality—watched with the fascination of rabbits observing a serpent’s dance.

They had witnessed this display countless times, yet none had grown accustomed to the casual way their queen wielded forces that could reduce them to ash in an instant.

A moment later, azure energy joined the crimson dance, its cooler tones providing a counterpoint to the aggressive red.

The blue energy moved with different characteristics—where the red had been passionate and wild, the blue was precise and calculating, carving geometric patterns in the space around Diane’s throne.

The contrast created an optical illusion that made observers’ eyes water if they stared too long.

Then came the white energy, arriving like the first snow of winter, pure and terrible in its absolute clarity.

Unlike its companions, the white ki moved with serene purpose, neither aggressive nor calculating, but possessed of an inevitability that spoke of finality itself.

When all three energies were present, they began to orbit around Diane’s body like celestial bodies caught in the gravity well of a dying star.

The sight was undeniably beautiful—three streams of impossible light weaving through the air in patterns that seemed to follow some cosmic music only she could hear.

Like fireflies captured in amber, they danced around her form, casting shifting shadows on the marble floor that seemed to move independently of their sources.

Upon witnessing her celestial appearance, those who surrounded her felt the familiar chill of primal terror settling into their bones.

This was not the awe that subjects should feel when gazing upon their sovereign, but something far more primitive and honest.

Fear—raw, undiluted, and absolute—permeated their minds like poison seeping through cracked stone.

She smiled, the expression transforming her already striking features into something that belonged more in fever dreams than the waking world. “Isn’t this hilarious, my people?”

The question hung in the air like a blade suspended over their collective necks.

Her voice carried the melodious quality that had once enchanted suitors from neighboring kingdoms, back when such things mattered, before the transformation that had made her name synonymous with beautiful terror.

Rexia Diane possessed a face that could launch a thousand ships or end a thousand lives with equal ease.

High cheekbones and full lips framed eyes that held depths of intelligence and cruelty in equal measure.

Her skin seemed to glow with an inner light that had nothing to do with cosmetics and everything to do with the energies she commanded.

Hair like spun moonlight fell in cascades around her shoulders, each strand seeming to move independently in the currents of power that surrounded her.

Yet for all her physical beauty, those who looked upon her saw something else—the truth that lurked beneath the facade of divine perfection.

She held their hearts in her hands as surely as if she had reached into their chests and claimed them as trophies.

Every person in the room knew with absolute certainty that she could end their existence on a whim, and that knowledge colored every interaction, every breath, every thought in her presence.

As the lone monarch of a kingdom that had once been ruled by councils of wise nobles, Diane had consolidated power in ways that made neighboring rulers wake in cold sweats.

Her methods were as elegant as they were terrifying—she didn’t simply rule through fear, but through the complete psychological domination of those who served her.

Even her name had become a curse word in certain circles, whispered by criminals who had been foolish enough to test the boundaries of her patience.

Within the kingdom’s borders, crime had indeed fallen to nearly nonexistent levels, but this came at a cost that made the cure potentially worse than the disease.

The common people, those who worked the fields and tended the shops, might have found her rule beneficial in its way.

Crime was low, trade routes were secure, and tax collection was ruthlessly efficient.

But the nobles, the merchants, and anyone with enough power to potentially threaten her authority lived in a constant state of barely controlled terror.

Her method of rule had effectively enslaved the aristocracy without chains or dungeons.

Instead, she had created a system where every noble family knew that their continued existence depended entirely on her capricious goodwill.

Children were raised to understand that their parents’ survival hung by threads that only the Queen could cut.

No one dared resist her, not merely because of her overwhelming power, but because of the methodical way she had eliminated every form of opposition over the years.

Occasionally, seemingly at random, she would order the execution of a maid who had displeased her, or a knight who had looked at her the wrong way, or even a noble whose only crime was possessing something she coveted.

She could annihilate entire districts of the royal capital without batting an eye, justifying the act with explanations as simple as “I found their laughter annoying” or “Their architecture offended my aesthetic sensibilities.” The unpredictability of her violence was perhaps its most effective aspect—if there were clear rules, people could learn to follow them, but chaos was impossible to navigate safely.

Having such a superior, the people of the palace had developed a hyper-awareness that bordered on the supernatural.

They could sense her moods from the way she breathed, gauge her intentions from the angle of her head, and predict violence from the slightest change in her expression.

It was a survival mechanism born of desperate necessity.

Was it feasible to remove her through violence? The question had occurred to every thinking person in the kingdom, but the answer was written in blood across multiple generations of would-be revolutionaries.

Every assassin sent against her returned as a message—their heads delivered in ornate boxes to those who had hired them, while their employers and three generations of their families were executed for treason.

The Queen’s definition of “generations” was notably inclusive, encompassing everyone from great-grandparents to unborn children.

Age provided no protection; infants died alongside the elderly in her purges.

The hangings were public spectacles, carried out with ceremonial precision that transformed justice into theater.

The message was clear: opposition was not merely futile, but would result in the extinction of entire bloodlines.

Crossing her legs on the Celestial Throne, Diane looked down at her assembled vassals with the expression of a gardener examining her carefully cultivated plants.

The three types of energy continued their orbital dance around her form, serving as both a display of power and a practical training exercise that required constant attention and refinement.

Controlling multiple energy streams simultaneously demanded a level of mental discipline that would have driven most practitioners to madness.

Each type of ki required different techniques, different mental approaches, different emotional states to maintain properly.

A single moment of inattention could result in catastrophic feedback that would reduce both caster and surroundings to component atoms.

Yet she maintained the display with the casual ease of someone humming while performing routine tasks, her attention apparently focused on the political dynamics playing out before her while simultaneously maintaining perfect control over forces that could reshape mountains.

Without warning, she stopped the energy manipulation entirely, the three streams of light dissipating into nothingness as if they had never existed.

The sudden absence of the dancing lights left afterimages burned into the retinas of those who had been watching, creating phantom patterns that danced across their vision like the ghosts of deceased stars.

Rising from her throne with fluid grace, Diane descended the steps toward where her court waited in terrified anticipation.

Each footstep echoed in the sudden silence, the sound seeming to resonate not just through the air but through the bones of everyone present.

She approached the head knight—Sir Marcus, a man whose distinguished service record and unwavering loyalty had earned him the dangerous honor of serving as her personal guard.

His weathered face remained impassive as she drew closer, though the subtle tension in his shoulders betrayed the fact that proximity to the Queen was never entirely safe.

With movements too quick for the eye to follow, she drew his sword from its sheath.

The blade—a masterwork of Rexian steel that had been blessed by three generations of court mages—sang as it cleared the leather, its edge catching the light from the crystal chandeliers overhead.

Without hesitation or warning, she pivoted and drove the weapon through the chest of a butler who had been standing near the Prime Minister.

The man—a middle-aged servant whose only crime had been his proximity to power—had no time to even register surprise before the blade punched through his sternum and emerged from his back in a spray of crimson.

The sound was wet and final: a single slash followed by the liquid splatter of blood hitting marble.

The butler’s body crumpled to the floor, his life extinguished before he could even cry out in pain or confusion.

“What is a rat doing here?” Diane asked conversationally, as if commenting on the weather rather than the life she had just ended.

She flicked the sword through the air with practiced ease, sending droplets of blood in a perfect arc that spattered against the nearest column.

The knights who served as her personal guard moved with the mechanical precision of long practice, producing cleaning supplies and body disposal equipment with the efficiency of a well-rehearsed dance.

They had performed this ritual too many times to show shock or hesitation; their faces remained blank as they began the process of erasing all evidence of what had just occurred.

“Ryan,” she continued, addressing the Prime Minister with the same casual tone she had used to justify murder, “you must hire better employees than this. I don’t want to find another rat under my nose.”

Prime Minister Ryan—a man whose political acumen had kept him alive longer than most in his position—bowed his head in acknowledgment. “Yes, sister.”

The familial address was not mere formality; Ryan was indeed Diane’s adoptive brother, a relationship that provided him with marginally more security than her other subordinates enjoyed.

Only marginally, however—family connections had never prevented the Queen from ordering executions when the mood struck her.

A rat. The term could mean many things in the coded language of the Rexian court: a spy planted by enemy nations, a corrupt official skimming from the treasury, a noble plotting rebellion, or simply someone whose existence had begun to irritate the Queen.

The ambiguity was intentional—it allowed her to eliminate anyone for any reason while maintaining the fiction of justified action.

No one would ever know the truth about the dead butler’s alleged crimes, because the Queen never provided evidence beyond her own word.

Her subordinates had learned not to ask for clarification; such questions were interpreted as challenges to her judgment, and challenges were met with swift and final responses.

Most of the time, when brave souls dared to investigate the Queen’s victims posthumously, they found exactly what she had claimed to see—evidence of minor corruption, suspicious contacts, or questionable loyalties.

Whether these discoveries were genuine or carefully planted after the fact was a question that no one dared voice aloud.

The majority of her targets were guilty of something, even if only minor infractions that would normally merit censure rather than death.

This pattern of partial truth made her pronouncements impossible to dismiss entirely, creating a psychological trap for those who served her: if she was right most of the time, how could they be certain when she was wrong?

Growing bored with the political theater, Diane flicked her finger in a gesture so small that most observers missed it entirely.

The result was anything but subtle—a miniature explosion rippled through the air near the throne, its concussive force rattling the windows and causing several courtiers to stagger.

The display served no practical purpose beyond demonstrating that her restraint was a choice rather than a limitation.

She could have leveled the entire palace with the same casual gesture, and everyone present knew it.

Without another word, she strode from the throne room, her departure as sudden and inexplicable as most of her actions.

The assembled court remained frozen in place until the sound of her footsteps faded entirely, no one daring to move or speak until they were certain she was truly gone.

Two days later, in a secure facility hidden beneath the capital city of a neighboring kingdom, Division leaders Charles and Lucas stood over communication crystals that remained stubbornly dark and silent.

The magical devices, which should have been pulsing with regular reports from their network of operatives within Rexia, had been inactive for longer than any contingency plan had anticipated.

“Our spies and shadows have been eradicated by the Tyrant,” Charles said, unable to keep the frustration from his voice.

He was a compact man whose appearance suggested middle management rather than the coordinator of one of Arbalest’s most sensitive intelligence operations.

The deception was intentional—his unremarkable features and bureaucratic manner allowed him to move through political circles without attracting attention.

The secured chamber around them hummed with defensive enchantments and communication arrays, its walls lined with maps, reports, and magical monitoring equipment that represented years of careful intelligence gathering.

Now, much of that network lay in ruins, victim to a single woman’s paranoid efficiency.

“Lucas, your shadows ought to be invisible surveillance equipment. How can they be destroyed to begin with?” Charles continued, gesturing toward the silent crystals with barely controlled agitation.

Lucas—tall, gaunt, and possessed of eyes that seemed to see too much—shook his head slowly. His shadows were his pride and professional signature, magical constructs so subtle that most targets never realized they were being observed.

Their destruction represented not just operational failure, but a fundamental challenge to techniques he had spent decades perfecting.

“I’m not sure about that,” he admitted, the words tasting bitter in his mouth. “Even the observer I trained on the adoptive prince Ryan was unable to detect anything unusual. However, based on the timing, it appears that the shadows vanish simultaneously with the Tyrant’s exit from the room.”

The implications were staggering. If Diane could detect and destroy their most sophisticated surveillance methods without apparent effort, then their intelligence capabilities within Rexia were effectively zero.

Worse, the simultaneous destruction of multiple assets suggested a level of awareness and control that bordered on prescience.

“However, to imagine that there would be a third type of energy master that neither Claude nor any of his incarnations had ever encountered,” Charles mused, his analytical mind working through the broader implications of their discovery.

The existence of ki as a distinct force separate from mana and divine energy represented a fundamental gap in their understanding of magical reality.

If one person could master all three, what other assumptions about the nature of power might prove dangerously incomplete?

“According to our observations, this information must be conveyed promptly to all division personnel. Master Claude and the others might benefit from studying these energy manipulation techniques,” Lucas said, already mentally composing the reports that would need to be dispatched across multiple kingdoms.

“I’ve already begun those preparations,” Charles replied, moving to a wall-mounted chart that displayed the current deployment status of key Arbalest operatives. “Looking at the situation, Matthew from Metallurgy Division and Edward Morgan from Judgment Division should be sent, wouldn’t you agree?”

Lucas studied the chart, considering the capabilities of each potential operative against the unique challenges presented by Rexia Kingdom. “I am aware that we cannot maintain a secure supply line within the Kingdom of Rexia, but would it be prudent to deploy our people from the M and J divisions there?”

The question highlighted one of their most pressing tactical concerns.

Operating within Diane’s sphere of influence meant accepting complete isolation from normal support networks, with operatives forced to rely entirely on their own resources and skills.

“Matthew is the best person we have for producing any type of equipment under any circumstances,” Charles explained, his finger tracing supply routes on the tactical map. “He should be able to provide all the items necessary for this operation regardless of local limitations. And Edward, as the possessor of Libra-based hereditary magic, would be uniquely suited to deal with the Tyrant directly.”

The hereditary magic systems of Rexia remained largely mysterious to outside observers, but Edward’s background gave him insights that could prove invaluable.

More importantly, his specific magical abilities offered potential countermeasures to Diane’s overwhelming power advantage.

“Since his Libra magic permits power equalization between user and target, Edward should be the only person who might move freely within the kingdom besides Master Claude himself,” Charles continued. “The magic creates a level playing field that could neutralize her conventional advantages.”

“Right, I had forgotten that he has ancestry tracing back to Rexia,” Lucas said, nodding as the tactical picture became clearer.

Hereditary magic represented one of the most poorly understood aspects of Rexian culture.

Even within the kingdom, practitioners were rare enough to be considered almost mythical, and their resemblance to conventional magical techniques made identification difficult for outside observers.

The abilities themselves were remarkable in their specificity and power.

Oracle magic provided glimpses of possible futures, though the visions were often cryptic and unreliable.

Teleportation magic allowed instantaneous travel across vast distances, but required precise knowledge of destination coordinates.

Eternal youth magic could halt or reverse aging, but demanded increasingly complex rituals to maintain its effects.

Edward’s Libra magic was among the most tactically useful of the known hereditary abilities.

Named after the divine principle of balance, it allowed the caster to equalize power levels between himself and a chosen target, effectively neutralizing overwhelming force advantages.

“A enhancement spell that matches the target’s strength initially,” Lucas mused, recalling Edward’s early training records. “Most people assumed he was simply using standard augmentation magic until he reached Saint-level mastery. That’s when the magic’s true nature became apparent.”

The evolution of Edward’s abilities had been remarkable to observe.

What began as simple power matching had transformed into something far more sophisticated—a complete system for manipulating the balance of forces between individuals.

“A debuff that makes the target as weak as any object chosen by the caster,” Lucas continued, a note of professional admiration creeping into his voice. “It’s truly something incredible, isn’t it?”

He spoke from personal experience, having been subjected to Edward’s magic during training exercises. The sensation of suddenly finding oneself reduced to the physical capabilities of, say, a house cat, was both humbling and terrifying. The magic bypassed all conventional defenses, working on fundamental principles that seemed to operate outside normal magical theory.

“Indeed,” Charles agreed, already mentally drafting deployment orders. “So let’s prepare the proposal for Master Claude’s approval and ready the necessary resources. I seriously doubt the request will be refused, given the strategic importance of understanding this new threat.”

“Understood,” Lucas replied, moving toward the communication arrays that would carry their recommendations across the continent. “I’ll deliver the orders to both operatives once we receive authorization.”

As they worked to coordinate what might be Arbalest’s most dangerous intelligence operation to date, both men were acutely aware that they were sending their people into the domain of someone who had just demonstrated the ability to detect and eliminate their most sophisticated surveillance methods.

The Tyrant of Rexia had proven herself capable of casual murder, systematic oppression, and now the manipulation of energy forces that defied conventional understanding.

Sending agents into her kingdom was essentially a death sentence, but the intelligence they might gather could prove crucial to understanding threats that went far beyond a single megalomaniacal ruler.

In the shadows of geopolitical maneuvering, the chess pieces were being positioned for a game where the stakes were measured not in kingdoms, but in the fundamental nature of reality itself.

___________________________________________

✨ Enjoyed the chapter? Dive deeper into the story world!

I’ve started to share my source here, and thinking to create a AI based video by story telling the story, I already had a testing video for another fanfiction of mine.

Check them out and let me know what you think! Your feedback really helps me grow.

📺 YouTube: EternalLibrary
🎵 TikTok: @library3550
📸 Instagram: @libeternal

☕ Love the story? Support and read ahead!

Help me keep creating by becoming a patron:
💖 Patreon – EternaLib

Read up to 50 chapters ahead + get early access on my site:
📚 Eternal-lib.com

__________________________________________