There was an option too funny not to do it.

  It was unlikely to work, but why not try?

  Rykard stepped out of the illusionary curtain. It took the watchers on the wall nearly half a minute to point at him and another full minute to get defensive preparations in position. All that time, the king walked forwards, dragging his hands through the air. Arcane motions left a trail of glowing runes in his wake.

  “We demand you halt!” the apparent guard of the captains shouted.

  Rykard just smiled. He could feel the Conjuration Realm ripple with amusement. The dimension was turning a fragment of its endless attention to him and committed it absolutely. It shared his sense of humour.

  His magical might pierced through the veil. Not like a thread and a needle, not like a net, but like a hand reaching for that of a friend, his mana extended. The Conjuration Realm grasped it in kind and he pulled the eldritch might into this realm.

  “Run for your lives!” Rykard shouted back.

  Behind him, the runes tore open into massive gateways. Thousands of bugs poured out, each two metres in length, ft, and equipped with two stingers that threatened everyone who could not keep proper pace on their turning spines.

  The treadmill bugs poured over the grass. Chitinous legs hooked into the runes that covered the wall, scaling the fortification with ease - to the abject horror of the ones atop the walls. The sight of the accursed bugs that made the fat elves run just a week before created such an intense, visceral panic, that not a single shot from the wands they wielded was ever fired.

  “Thank you very much,” Rykard said, when an especially rge bug walked up to him. The king stepped onto the back of the creature and held onto its tall horns. It carried him up the walls.

  It was a scene straight out of a horror story for fat people. All around, the treadmill bugs forced elves onto their backs and once the men were there, they could only run. Rykard ughed with obscene loudness, while the bug he rode skittered up to the one of its kin that held the captain of the guards hostage.

  “Are you having trouble over there?” the king asked, casually jogging in the now turning back of his steed.

  “Y-you… mo– mon…. Mon… phew… hew…”

  “You really ought to do more cardio,” Rykard stated.

  Down below the horrified screams of the men echoed all around, more and more of the bugs spilling into the city. There would not be enough for everyone, sadly, but the pure psychological damage already inflicted made Rykard confident he could make this city surrender without spilling any blood.

  ‘All of the letting loose with none of the consequences,’ he thought with a grin. “Alright, let’s find that leader of theirs!” he said, still running effortlessly. He was doing it just to prove a point. The bug underneath him clicked its mandibles with approval, then leapt into the city below.

  Unexpectedly, there was something like order among the remaining defenders.

  “NOW!” a shout preceded the loosening of several dozen bolts of saved magic. For all their physical ineptness, their skill was evident in the lightning, fire, and ice that turned two dozen of the treadmill bugs into chitin shards and dispersing mana. Their prime target had been Rykard himself - and they hit true.

  First the bug under him, then his own chest was peppered with magical projectiles. The victorious nding was turned into a painful crash. Pavement grinded open the expensive sleeve of the king’s uniform. His shoulder nearly popped out of its socket.

  Groaning, he came to a halt.

  “ICE WANDS!” Another shout was the only warning he got.

  Still dazed, Rykard felt the air around him chill into solid blocks. Arms and legs were frozen to the floor. He struggled, but the frigid prison remained strong. ‘Focus,’ he told himself, instead turning his attention inward. He had taken damage that needed to be mended.

  “Well, well, well,” the commander of this unit stepped forward. “If it isn’t the cur that thought he could humiliate us. Admittedly your… parlour trick,” he snarled at the scene still ongoing all around, “is going to be annoying. As, if you wanted to win, perhaps humiliation was not the strategy you should have gone for!”

  The commander brought his boot down on Rykard’s head. The dirty heel met with the king’s bck hair. Despite that, his head did not move. Not even when the commander put his weight behind it, did the king budge. “Do you people ever listen to yourself?” he wondered.

  Healed muscle fibres tensed with fresh strength. Ice shattered, releasing hands and feet from stinging cold. “FIRE EVERYTHING!” the commander shouted, as he stumbled away from the rising sovereign.

  Dozens of fresh ice projectiles flew past the retreating captain and straight at Rykard. “If you’re going to boast, you need to be able to back it up!” the king shouted over the crackling of arcane snow.

  The reach of his hand extended by his will, the mage swiped up all the projectiles coming for him. In a whirl, he turned around. By the time his rotation had completed, the magical matrix of the spells had been overwritten, their owner and direction changed.

  The rows of elves only had a split second to express their surprise, then the wall of spells they had loosened came down on them. Chunks of solid ice attached to limbs and clothes caused the trained spellslingers to fall over from the additional weight or simply be locked in pce as Rykard had been a moment ago.

  The commander had both of his feet caught mid sprint. Toppling forwards, he nded hard on the pavement. Rykard wasn’t sure if the belly made the impact better or worse. The bigger they were, the harder they fell, but the inbuilt cushion probably helped?

  Rykard walked forwards, brushing debris and bits of ice off his shoulders. As casually as he could, he put one foot under the commander and turned him around with a warning kick. Once on his back, the commander received the same foot onto his squishy chest.

  “What’s your name?” Rykard asked.

  “O-olgoth.”

  “...Yeah, that’s what you look like,” the king stated. “Congratutions, Olgoth, you are the first person in history to actually put their boot atop my royal head. How does it feel, to have had that privilege?” While he spoke, lightning crackled between the sovereign’s fingers.

  “I-I’m ss-s-s-ss-”

  “Too te.”

  The electric strike came down on Olgoth, making the commander spasm where he id. The boot on his chest kept him pinned down, as more and more of the screaming lightning arched into his rge form. Just a little more voltage, and the air would start smelling like long pig.

  Rykard clenched his fist and the electricity abated. “I’m a generous liege,” the king stated. It was the st words the commander heard before he bcked out. Even if what he had done was humiliating to the king, it was not quite enough to kill him - not when the rest of the battlefield was making his case already.

  The chaos was absolute. The open field between the walls and the main city, where the majority of farming happened, was in utter disarray. In that mess, the king alone ran willingly, pushing the magic strengthening his muscles to the limit to make what usually would have taken hours take minutes.

  Leaping atop a house, he used the chimney as his perch. Eyes drifted around the beds of enriched soil that he had seen the first time around. The runic craft was impressive and even if these people were of little use in the field, they clearly knew how to prepare. Which meant that…

  ‘There,’ he thought and jumped off. Another five minutes of running ter, he smmed through the window of an unassuming shed.

  He had expected some kind of guard to keep watch at least. Instead, he was met with a barely hidden energy node and nothing else.

  “Really?” he asked out loud and scratched the back of his head. “Alright then.”

  Squatting down, he got to work. Since there was energy flowing to the fields, it stood to reason that the energy could also be rerouted to create a protective energy barrier. The yout had certainly looked capable of it.

  ‘Now it’s not,’ Rykard thought, after sending a shockwave of disturbing mana through the system. After stepping outside, he could see the dispersing energy unload harmlessly into the air as the pulse advanced through the network. It would do some damage to the infrastructure, but not enough to be worrisome. ‘No sense in ruining my future property.’

  For a few minutes, he just followed the light show and let it settle in with the elves who must have formed lines of defence further in the city. Everyone with a beginner’s understanding of enchantment must have known what just happened, which would make this another serious blow to their morale.

  How many more could they take?

  ‘Let’s just see how poorly they’re doing,’ Rykard thought and did the most dastardly thing he could think of.

  He just walked.

  The foreign king that they were resisting walked alone down the mainroad. All the conjured bugs were far back at this point, left by the walls, either occupied or destroyed. Between there and here was a gap and beyond that gap id the reserve.

  Lines of elves had held their positions behind the defensive perimeter they had put up and that Rykard had now destroyed. Their ck of defenses was apparent on their faces. Their ornate armour glistened in the divine daystar that was keeping this world at a pleasant temperature in pce of the sun.

  Hundreds of wands pointed at Rykard and he kept on walking. Several commanders stood behind the line. The highest ranking of them, marked by a red feather on his cap, licked his lips.

  The king stopped right within shooting range. “Well?” he asked and spread his arms. “I’m waiting!”

  The truth was that, if they all fired together now, they would have hit him. Whether it would have been lethal or even bothersome was up to debate, but they would have hit him. Rykard did not crouch. He had no magical defenses ready. All they had to do was pull the trigger as one.

  For a few tense seconds, it looked like they would.

  Then, Rykard took another step forward.

  “RETREAT!” the officer in charge yelled and the line broke instantly.

  ‘So they can run on their own,’ the king thought and wandered on. The rgest, most opulent building of them all was in front of him. “Oh, Buldoriiiiiiiiiiiil!” he shouted in half-song. “I’m hee-eeeeeeeeeeeeeere!”

  One firm kick broke the front gates open.

  “NO!” The elf inside the building shouted, immediately throwing several projectiles at him.

  “Come on, you think a marginally better wand will stop me at this point?” Rykard flicked each of the Destruction spells aside as if they were balls flung by a six-year-old. Buldoril kept on flinging them anyway, stumbling further and further into the building. From the entrance, to the cathedral-esque hall where they had met before, and then into the depths of his office.

  “Get away!”

  “You know, that was my pn,” Rykard answered. “Just wrap this up and get away. I had this whole thing pnned, with a conference, maybe some xenophobic shouting between the three of you. Instead you fat fucks are wasting my time.” One st step and Rykard was close enough to grab the tip of the wand. One more spell was shot point bnk into his clenched fist.

  The wand shattered from the arcane reverb.

  Rykard shook his hand, getting the bothersome feeling of stiffness out of his wrist. Bits of wood and ash rained from his fingers. Buldoril was just staring wide-eyed at this point. “Yeah, exactly, I don’t get why you thought this would work out either. You know what happens next, right?”

  “Please just kill me,” the elf whined.

  “No.”

  Rykard pushed his arm through the veil, gripped another one of the bugs, and yanked it into the office with the same ease someone filled a gss of water. The creature threw Buldoril up into the air with its rge horns. With perfect accuracy, it positioned itself underneath. The fat elf hit the ground running.

  “Look at you jiggle,” Rykard stated.

  “Don’t you have other jokes?!” the elf asked.

  “Why would he come up with others when it’s just such easy pickings?”

  Rykard raised an eyebrow at the third voice. It had been alluringly female and echoed from the ink bck tear that his yanking motion had left. Out through it stepped a woman with a curvy figure entirely cd in bck tex. Her pale white skin glistened like polished marble. Initial interest Rykard felt for the arrival was diminished by the presence of a short whip in her hands and the sheer sharpness of her heels. It was fully eliminated when he met her yellow gaze.

  He knew a fellow dom when he saw one.

  “You can call me the Shaping Lady,” she introduced herself. “The Conjuration Realm decided to give you a little more aid, king Rykard.”

  “You seem like more than a little,” he complimented. “Too bad that salty and salty go poorly together.”

  “Too bad indeed,” the Shaping Lady purred, then cracked her whip. “You, worm, can call me Mistress!”

  “W-wha- OW!” She smacked his hand.

  “You heard me! I’ve been sent here by higher forces to make sure you and all of your people stop causing earthquakes as you walk! You think elfdom deserves representatives like you?! Sweat out those pounds! Faster!”

  Rykard scratched the back of his head and, after a minute, decided to just leave. This was more humiliating for Buldoril than even he had pnned, but he wouldn’t compin about it happening. ‘I suppose my realm should have room for the dominatrixes too,’ he thought as he walked back out.

  The city around him was broken. None of the infrastructure, save for the defensive grid, had been touched and no one had died, but the city most certainly had succumbed to his siege. The Shaping Lady would assure it stayed that way. He felt no energy drain from her, which meant she, like the Cosmic Stag before, was here on her own dime.

  ‘Summoning gets weird on the higher levels,’ Rykard thought and began his trip to Lyvia.

  Submissive women were just more pleasing to be around.