The Legend of the ruthless Empress Freya

Chapter 232 Act Four: How To Destroy A Kingdom

- POV General -

"I....no...."

Myles was on the floor, eyes glued to Kira who had revealed her original form for the first time for all to see. The Commanders recognized one of the two Demons Freya had faced in the crypt and even though they knew where their Princess came from, seeing it was more impressive. She looked just like the Empress and the Queen, like a divine creature that did not belong to this world, it was inexplicable.

Her three silver tails, her shiny fur, her crackling lightning, the symbols on her body, her carved horn, her eyes...everything was beautiful. If Freya looked like a terrifying black wolf, Gaya like a powerful dragoness, Kira looked like a graceful and equally hypnotizing demon. The crowd was silent, no one in the stands had any idea that the Princess possessed such a gift as she raised her voice to the human.

"You should never have come here and now the only thing you can do is bow your head, submit and try to fix even a little of the mess you've caused. Elysium will show no mercy to those who seek to destroy this Empire and every one of its warriors will fight with the strength of a hundred men if necessary."

The former knight had his back against the ice wall where the King was still imprisoned, who no longer had the strength to even tremble, still shocked by all the events. Myles was panting, he was stuck, the bottom of his pants was wet and the closer the beast got to him, the more he almost fainted. Kira didn't care and as her sharp fangs stopped inches from his face, she spoke the words everyone thought.

"The Empire...will never kneel to the human race."

The silver fox demon growled louder and louder after she spoke and her large mouth opened wide as if to tear the human's head off. The Princess's eyes had gone almost crazy, as if she had suddenly gone wild and ready to kill her prey. Everyone held their breath, no one could say anything, the whole atmosphere was heavy, the beast in front of the crowd making the scene intense.

After the incredible and frightening show that Gaya and her crimson flames had offered to Leto, Kira came to finish the job with a suffocating beauty. Even the young female commanders, who knew that the man's information was valuable, stood still. Freya's youngest sister was swept up in a frenzy and bloodlust and was about to savagely kill Myles before everyone's eyes.

"Kira"

Suddenly, the Empress, who had regained her night-black hair, appeared right next to the huge fox demon, uttering only one word. It had been instantaneous, Freya had her right arm behind her back and her left arm raised between her sister's huge teeth and the human's livid face. Her arrival had awakened everyone and especially Kira who now lowered her huge head towards her realizing what she was about to do.

"Forgive me, onee-san."

The moment the Princess had met the Empress' eyes, for the first time in this form, she felt an instinct from her race. For some reason she couldn't explain, a terrible urge to bow down was felt within her as she apologized. Gently backing up her tails and ears lowered, Kira then slowly returned to her humanoid form, her bestial form taking up too much space.

"Good work little sister~"

Unlike the Commanders who kept their clothes after their transformation, just like Freya and Gaya, for the young woman it was not the case. So it is by creating clothes of ice around the body of her little sister, that the Empress appeared again in front of her by pronouncing these few words. Caressing her silver hair, she nodded her head which caused Kira to swing her three tails.

Suddenly turning around, Freya clapped her hands, making the King's ice wall disappear, making him fall on his buttocks right next to Myles. With this simple gesture, everyone understood that things were about to accelerate since the Empress had descended into the arena. The next moment, twelve people appeared at her side without her even having to give a single command, eleven of them having one knee down.

There was Nixia, Naïa, Ralph, Emilia, Thorunn, Trioa, Luna, Caipy, Ynir, Persea but also Jade always chained and forced to prostrate, held firmly by Ralph. They had arrived accompanied by Gaya who had recovered from her tiredness and who was now standing on the right of her wife while Kira was on her left. A second later, it was the turn of the crowd to bow down while Freya finally spoke.

"My dearest warriors, I hope you have enjoyed the first part of the evening because it is time to move on ! We've learned a lot already about the Church and the Kingdom that attacked us but it's not over."

Thanks to Leto, they now all knew about the Supreme in more detail, even knew what its purpose was and even why Humanity hated the other races. But there were still some grey areas regarding how the Kingdom worked and how it was possible to eliminate the threat at the root. She hadn't said it yet, but Freya had every intention of destroying the entire Kingdom and the Church with it.

To do this, she needed more information, about the number of forces available, the Princes, the number of inhabitants, diplomatic relations and more. And for that, what better than to ask the Captain of the Knights and the King themselves ? They were both in a state where their completely traumatized brains would let them answer any questions the Empress had to ask.

"Get up. Let's not waste any more time."

At her words, all would rise, ice seats created for Kira, Gaya and Freya while the Commanders and Jade would move to stand behind them. The Princess and Queen sat down, but the Empress went straight to the King, on whom she had used "Death Gaze". The first activation of this skill had blinded her for several minutes, but she understood its full potential the next moment.

In the Empress' mind, she wanted to subdue him completely, to have the ruler of a Kingdom under her boots fearing her as much as he was willing to serve her. She didn't just want to scare him and torture him mentally, the she-wolf wanted to possess him body and soul, to make him her faithful puppet, ready to die and live for her. The King of Zal sat in the dust with a haggard look on his face, not knowing that she had a fate worse than death in store for him.

"So tell me...during the war, when you collapsed...what did you see ?"

Freya had crouched down in front of Theophylactus grabbing his jaw with her right hand and looking into his tired eyes. Before being attacked by Kalaa, she had seen snippets in her mind of what the King imagined once trapped in her skill. Death Gaze, allowing her to make someone who feared her experience the worst fears and subjective deaths of the target under the control of the illusion on a loop.

"Kingdom...end of the world...poverty...dishonor...power..."

The gray-haired man no longer formed a sentence, he felt as if his body had instantly gone cold when the black-haired woman had touched him. He didn't know that she had been responsible for his visions but his instincts were screaming at him and apart from a few words, nothing came out of his mouth. So it was with an ominous smile that Freya activated Death Gaze once again to shake him slightly, without breaking him.

"UUURG !!!"

In an instant her mind was filled with various fragmented visions and this time devoid of a headache and intense eye pain. She could concentrate, The Empress was seeing the King's worst nightmares and especially the death that scared him the most repeated over and over again. In the vision he was stripped of his crown, in the middle of his own Kingdom, lynched with stones by his own subjects who looked at him with disgust.

"Interesting~..."

It was easy to understand that this was the entire ego of a King, a King fallen and killed by the people who had once respected, adored and believed in him. Freya didn't even see his children, his family, only a scene that was considered horrible for a narcissistic and self-important mind. Letting go of Theophylactus' jaw, she would suddenly stop her skill in front of a panting, shaking but not yet broken man which was perfect.

"P-Please...no more...I...I can't...I don't want to see this again..."

The human had fallen on his back as he finally managed to utter a more or less complete sentence to the delight of his tormentor. Getting up, the she-wolf looked at what was at her feet, pleading and already far from the sovereign who was riding with his golden armor. Without even a glance for Alayna who was looking a little further, Freya was gently crushing her right boot on the man's face, asking him a question.

"What are you willing to do to make this stop, human king ?"

He silently raised his glassy eyes as best he could, his face crushed to the ground, looking once more into the Empress' eyes. At a glance, Theophylactus knew he had no choice, and he never had from the moment he had entered the forest. His daughter had joined Elysium, his army had been wiped out, he would never see his kingdom again and his life now depended on one answer.

The King did not want to relive these visions, for him, a few hours had seemed like days and the few seconds they had just lived, hours. Death was a solution, but he was a coward and could not claim it like a proud warrior. Only servitude remained...only submission was a solution for the man that could guarantee his survival, even if it meant throwing away his dignity as a ruler.

"To...I...I am ready to...serve you..."

"To serve you who ?"

"Y-Your Hi...Highness the Empress."

Theophylactus had said those last words through clenched teeth, his gaze still very slightly burning with hatred towards the one who walked over him. This did not escape Freya who with a smile crushed his cheek a little more in the dust making him moan little by little in pain. She was almost there...the human under her eyes still had a rebellious glint in his eyes but he was almost...the King would be hers.

"I doubt any ruler would accept a servant with a look like that fufu~ perhaps I should show you again how precious life is and that your total loyalty is ultimately not much."

"N-NO, I..."

Without even letting him beg any further, with her right hand the Empress made a black amat appear, made of both shadows but also of a material that seemed alive. In her hand, she had just materialized one of the two elements with which she was born: the chaos. Indescribable black matter, slimy, liquid and solid, in an instant, had crashed into Theophylactus' face encompassing his entire head in this unfathomable black mass.

Freya used her "Storage of Chaos" skill but without using "Devouring Chaos", so the man could still breathe but was deprived of all his senses. With his brain encased in this thing, he couldn't see, hear or smell... locked in a black desert. The she-wolf, on the other hand, had removed her foot and while no one understood, she used her "Telepathy" skill to speak to the man directly into his mind.

"I am Death, the Beast of Judgement but I am also the Darkness...the darkness at the end of all that has existed and preventing any form of matter or radiation from escaping. I can trap your soul here for eternity, human. Only your spirit will wander in this silent nothing, devoid of all life."

"..."

"You will begin to sink into despair, alone, far from everything...then you will end up destroying your own spirit to survive. In the end, the great Theophylactus, once King of Zal, will be nothing more than a forgotten soul, destroyed but unable to die, trapped forever in pain and darkness."

Freya's words had echoed softly in the man's mind, like a soft whisper capable of freezing your blood instantly. As he felt the Devil tempting him, he needed no further explanation to abandon everything as if nothing mattered anymore. With his head in that mass, deprived of all sense, the Fallen King could already feel and imagine what this life of wandering would be like.

"Mmmmh."

He couldn't feel it but to the crowd in the coliseum, out of survival instinct, his body had begun to slowly gesticulate as he squeaked. To the black haired woman this was the signal, so it was with a slight movement of her hand that her skill gently withdrew from the human's face. To the eyes of all, appeared eyes and an expression that had changed completely, as if by magic.

The face of the man with the gray hair and beard was neutral, his eyes no longer carried hatred but was extinguished and his body waited there without moving. As if he had suddenly become a puppet, the King not wanting this worse-than-death spell had as if switched off and restarted his brain. Smiling cruelly, the she-wolf put her boot against the cheek of the unfortunate man again, asking exactly the same question as before.

"What are you willing to do to make this stop, human king ?"

This time, the answer was immediate, as if her voice had turned on the puppet, he opened his mouth to answer words that no one expected. Saliva flowed from the corner of his lips, Freya's boot was pressed into his mouth, and despite the choking it caused him, the human continued to speak. His voice had become submissive, his eyes were those of a tamed animal as he finally gave a satisfactory answer.

"I will only serve her Highness the Empress now. I would be at your disposal whenever you wished and you could use me as you saw fit. I will be your slave, your object b-but....for pity's sake...everything but...but not the black void..."

"Hahahaha~ I have only one word. From today you belong to me and you officially lose your status as a King and even as a human being. Your life belongs to me and it can be said that in the eyes of my Empire you are now only...my pet ?"

At the Empress' words, the entire crowd began to laugh at the behavior of the former ruler of Zal, even his daughter giggled shyly in her seat. With a snap of her fingers, an ice collar appeared around Theophylactus' neck, connected to a chain that the woman held tightly in her hand. Removing from his mouth the boot that he had begun to lick like a perfect idiot submissive, Freya resumed speaking.

"Well, now that you have a nice collar...you'll answer all my questions."

"Y-Yes your Highness."

"No no. That's not how a dog talks, is it ?"

Pulling on the chain with a jerk, the man was propelled forward crashing his face back onto the ground right next to her feet. With a trembling voice, slowly raising his head, the human with the collar rectified his sentence to the delight of the entire arena.

"I-I will answer all your questions...Mistress."

Freya finally had what she wanted, thanks to her actions she and her Empire could finally have a reliable source of information regarding Zal. Everything was going as she had planned and the first question that had been on her mind since the war was answered tonight. How to destroy a Kingdom ? By subduing its ruler, by possessing its King...body and soul.