A knock rapped against Kayode’s door.
He jumped, whipped around and heard the muffled voice that followed. Polite. Measured. Afraid. “Are you ready, my lord?” it asked.
What the fuck is going on? It was exactly what he’d said last time.
Kayode felt around his body and found no gaping holes, looked in the mirror and saw unharmed flesh where just a moment ago serrated magic had left ruination. Even his nose was uninjured.
He tried to remember the notification he saw and jumped again as it snapped right into view in front of him.
[Class Skill ? Loopforged — I — Passive: Your life is no longer linear. You are bound to one hundred lives. Each death returns you to the Point of Origin. What you carry forward is yours to decide.]
It was a system notification—something exclusive to those with Classes. And it just went to show how mad of a day he was having that it was the least jarring thing to note.
No, this had to be some sort of dream. Well, only one way to find out.
“Come in!” he called out, and Henry entered a moment later, meek, weary, hiding something.
“How can I help you, my lord?” the retainer asked.
Kayode chose his next words carefully. “What’s going on?”
“I—I don’t know my lo—”
“The King’s dead isn’t he? Suicide—killed himself—his last act was to summon the heads of the Great Houses.”
The man’s eyes widened as if he’d just had the breath punched out of him, and Kayode tried and failed not to wear that same expression—albeit for very different reasons. “H…how did you—I mean I cannot speak on royal matters, my Lord,” Henry caught himself.
Not a dream then.
Kayode stood there in silence, and Henry broke it with a reminder that left Kayode feeling like the walls were closing around him once again.
“The Hall of Seals awaits, my Lord,” he gestured. “Please, follow me,” and he began walking away, albeit with strides less sure than Kayode remembered seeing last time.
He still followed, all the while feeling like the world was spinning underneath his feet. He entered the hall, heard Femi shoot his barbs at him and barely felt the urge to reply at all. Just sat down.
Okechukwu entered next and their exchange was nearly word for word identical, with Femi altering a beat here or there, perhaps because he and Kayode had not had their brief conversation before his entrance.
Kayode saw it all happen but felt like an observer rather than a true participant in the room.
And then his murderer entered.
The Duke didn’t take him aside this time—perhaps because Kayode was already seated. He simply leaned over him and presented fake pleasantries before focusing on what he was really here for. “We must focus on what lies before us. Rather than unite in our trying times, our enemies have chosen to sow destruction. Still, I can assure you their resolve will take a blow—however shallow—if we all vote correctly.”
Word for word.
The Duke’s gaze lingered on him. Warm. Assessing. And when he did not get the reaction he had hoped for, a frown creased his features.
“Vote right, boy.” And he patted Kayode’s head.
The same gesture.
The same pressure.
Kayode’s vision blurred. Cold brown eyes above him. Blood pooling beneath him. The sound of his own breathing turned wet and broken.
So that was what he was. Not a rival, not a threat. Just a thing that obeyed. Or it didn’t.
“Get on your feet and let’s get this bloody over with!” Femi the younger snapped.
Kayode hadn’t even noticed Adjudicator Woodwick’s entrance. He came back to himself with a clenched jaw and the taste of iron in his mouth.
He’d bitten down hard enough to draw blood.
Soon the time for voting came, and like before both parties were split even down the middle. Then all eyes fell on him.
“Lord Kayode. Your Vote?” The Adjudicator asked expectantly.
Kayode’s eyes fell on the Grand Duke. They fell back on his envelope. For the second time, Kayode thought of his candidate, and slid the envelope over to the Adjudicator.
He opened it and read. “House Balógun votes in favour of Lord Oluwafemi Edward Adegoke the Younger.” And then he showed the letter saying as much to the room.
No one seemed surprised, and soon enough Kayode was alone in the room with the Duke and his son.
“Would you look at that?” Femi snickered. “I guess you are good for something.” And then he was out the door.
Kayode got to his feet, and before he could take a step forwards, the Duke took him in a hug. “Good lad!” he smacked his back. “I knew I could depend on you,” he laughed.
Kayode killed the urge to flinch back and hugged the man just as warmly in turn. “What can I say,” he laughed. “You taught me right from wrong.” If this was real, and it seemed it was real, he was going to do everything he could to put himself ahead, even if that meant dancing along with the viper’s strings—at least for now.
It wasn’t going to be easy, but if he wanted easy, he would have voted for Okechukwu and thrown his lot in with him entirely—an appealing thought, given that Okechukwu had never killed him before. But Kayode knew better. He knew too little about the man or his camp, and siding with him now would leave Kayode just as powerless as he was under the Grand Duke—only this time, without any familiarity to exploit. Easy, maybe. And dangerous. If he actually did have another ninety-nine lives, that still didn’t mean he was in a hurry to spend them. Or experience another death, for that matter.
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The Grand Duke pulled back and smiled a moment. “Come with me, I have something to show you,” and the man was walking ahead of him with an almost excited pace under his feet.
It was a jarring thing to see the man who’d not even hesitate to send him to his grave be so chirpy with him, but Kayode decided that if he was going to get anywhere he would need to quickly get used to it.
They walked through the halls, past oathguards and entered a wing of the palace that Kayode had rarely ever been to and from the dust that lined its walls, neither had anyone else.
The Duke approached a door, opened it with a key, and found a second door waiting for him underneath—this one metal and glowing with runes.
“Place your hand upon it,” he gestured eagerly.
Kayode hesitated a moment, realized that if this man wanted him murdered he would be—he had and he was—stepped forwards and placed his hand against the metal.
There was a faint static crackle of mana in the air. The runes glowed, and then the door clicked open. Kayode stepped into an empty vault—save for a single sheathed sword resting on a table.
He unsheathed the thing and found that it was a leaf-like blade, double edged, and with a long handle. Along its length were the typical runes of a mana infused weapon.
Then for the third time today, a jarring sight flashed into his vision.
[Relic]
Name: Mercy
Type: Sword
Tier: C
──────────
[Material(s)]
— Zeritel Steel
— Relic Stone (C)
──────────
[Bound Skill(s)]
— Edge-Kindle (III)
— Bone–Breaker (II)
— Blood-Lust (I)
──────────
Kayode did not jump this time, though his nervous system definitely wanted him to. Due to being Blighted, he had never before been privileged enough to see the System-granted details of Relics written down anywhere that wasn’t a textbook or a diagram.
“An Ida sword?” Kayode asked.
“Your father’s Ida,” The Duke corrected, “Now that you are old enough to carry your House’s responsibilities, it is only right I hand over to you the one thing your predecessor left behind.”
Kayode dropped it instantly.
“I don’t want it,” he snapped, all fascination withering from him. In this moment, even knowing what he knew of the Duke, he was not sure who he hated more between him and his father. His father, Kayode decided after a second thought.
“I will not defend the man my friend became,” the Grand Duke sighed, voice distant, calling out to a time long past. “But this was one of his earlier blades. From before that. Before he lost himself.”
You mean before he beat my mother to death in a drunken rage, and ran a blade through his own neck a moment later.
Kayode wanted to spit on the thing, maybe try to break it, but he remembered the Duke was not a man overflowing with favour. If he was going to make the most out of his second chance then he must be willing to do things that made him sick.
It’s a good sword, Kayode told himself. And I’m not going to get another one just handed to me.
He picked it up.
“Thank you,” he told the man, and the Grand Duke looked simultaneously proud and pleased.
That made Kayode want to punch a wall.
###
Above, piercing the morning sky and soaring far to the south, was a skyship. A feat of engineering and magic that defied gravity, as well as most other natural laws for that matter . This one flew the blue and silver of House Okafor, its bellowing flag emblazoned with the symbol of a mighty hammer.
Somewhere on it was Okechukwu—Marquess of the Igansi Marquisate, on his way to prepare for the coming civil war.
Kayode was below, walking through the gardens of Asoburgh and plotting his next step. And now that he was alone, without the burden of voting or the matter of his father’s legacy on his mind, he suddenly realized what he had to consider was a lot.
A hundred lives. A hundred.
So he had a hundred lives left.
[Loopforged: You have 99 Loops remaining.]
The notification flashed in his eyes, and Kayode found himself unsurprised.
Ninety nine then—as the first had already been spent.
He also had a class now. An impossibility, not just because he was Blighted, but because he did not remember burning a Class stone.
[You are The Kingdom Maker (S+)]
And there was that.
Kayode felt his throat dry at the reminder—in all the hecticness of the past hour he had barely even let himself confront that impossibility.
‘Kingdom Maker’. The class that Abayomi the Kingdom Maker wielded when he landed on Velúndian shores. The same class that let him, with nothing but the Seven Great Houses, conquer the entire continent of Velúndara in a single reign.
An impossible feat—one that had never been mirrored in all of history and that all had long since come to accept would never be again replicated.
It all made sense now. His forefather had a hundred lives. A hundred chances. And he lived and died as the greatest King Velúndé had ever known. Kayode had never even heard that Classes went beyond S tier—that there even was an S+. But it made sense that if there was any, it would be the Kingdom Maker. And now…that Class was his to wield.
The implications came crashing down like a tidal wave. The possibilities as well. All his life he’d been weak, all his life he’d been nothing—wait. He could interact with the system now. Did that mean… Uh, Status? he thought, and the System responded. A golden screen, larger than all the others he’d seen before phased into view right in front of him.
──────────
[Identity]: Kayode Nathaniel Balógun
[Age]: 20
[Race]: Human
[Class]: Kingdom Maker (S+)
[Level]: 1
──────────
[Inventory]
— [C] Mercy
— [F] Ayédan garbs
──────────
[Skills]
- Class Skills
— Loopforged (I)
──────────
Level 1, and with but a single Skill.
That dampened his spirits somewhat, but the recollection that he had ninety-nine lives to strengthen himself brightened them right up. If I die, do I take my gained skills and levels to my new life? The answer had to be yes, because he still had Loopforged and was Level 1 despite only gaining both right before bleeding out last time.
Oh, the Grand Duke.
He was going to fucking kill him. He was going to first make himself useful to the rat bastard, become his closest ally, his closest confidant, learn all he could about the animal while being under his foot, and then he was going to hang him by his shriveled ballsack and wring his wrinkly old neck.
And then another realization hit him.
I can finally have my own life now.
Kayode paced—and then he laughed. The sun seemed to shine brighter. The birds sang louder. He lifted his gaze to the sky, to the flawless blue canopy above, and there,at the edge of Asoburgh’s rooftop, stood a figure. Too distant for any features to be made out, save for the bow in their hand and the arrow already nocked, its point aimed straight down at Kayode.
He tried to form a thought, they let go of the arrow…
..And Kayode was standing right in front of his mirror. And the man staring back at him from within it was a shocked and confused mess.
“Are you ready, my lord?” a familiar voice asked.
[You have 98 Loops left.]
I was assassinated…
###
“Lord Kayode. Your Vote?” The Adjudicator said expectantly.
And this time Kayode thought long and hard. It wasn’t the Duke that killed him, that much he was confident in, and he doubted Femi had the balls to go against his father like that and kill a loyal ally, even following a moronic impulse. But he was still killed, on palace grounds, under the Duke’s watch, where he’d hoped to be safe. So he had to do something different.
Kayode pressed a finger against his envelope and slid it over to the Adjudicator.
The man opened it and read. “House Balógun votes in favour of Lord Oluwafemi Edward Adegoke the Younger.”
###
Kayode’s Ida rested calmly in his hand, and he sat alone in a large bedroom. Waiting.
The door opened, and the newcomer looked enraged to see him there. Okechukwu glared, hand resting on the hilt of his blade, ready to split Kayode in half at the slightest hint of a reason. “What are you doing in my quarters?”
“Depending on how this talk goes…” he began. “...Helping you bring down the Duke.”