Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel - Chapter 719
Chapter 719: Audience (2)
There was a saying among the people of this world that talking to a barbarian was like talking to a brick wall. Even if one were to lay every detail of an explanation in a calm and logical manner, barbarians never quite seemed to get the picture.
However, from my point of view, that saying fit the knight before me more than it did the barbarians.
It really did feel like I was talking to a wall.
“Knight, what is your name? I’ve never heard of someone like you.”
Zip.
“Will we really be able to meet the King of the New World if we follow you?”
Nada.
“From what I heard, he’s bedridden due to illness? But it sounds like he’s actually healthy?”
Zilch.
Tsk, just because he was a knight…
He kindly answered Raven when she was the one asking questions.
Just in case he was weak to women, I had Raven try to talk to him, but nothing came of it.
“Um… This might be presumptuous of me, but is His Majesty healthy and at peace? Ah! I… I’m not asking because I wish otherwise… My apologies…”
Bupkis.
“See, look,” she blurted to me. “I-It didn’t work… So don’t ask me again.”
The knight just silently kept walking in front of us, and with that, we followed without another word.
Well, I didn’t say anything aloud, but my mind was abuzz.
There isn’t a single window, so I’m guessing we’re underground.
Since he mentioned an audience hall, we were probably at the Palace of Immortality, the palace among the twelve that was said to house the king.
The core of the city was Karnon, and the core of Karnon was the palaces. And among the twelve palaces there, the Palace of Immortality was the one at the center of it all.
What were they calling it now? The Palace of the New World?
I never knew that a place like this existed underground…
As we followed the knight, I made sure to keep a close eye on our surroundings. I memorized the path and tried to look for any escape routes I could use in a dire situation, but my search didn’t bear fruit.
There really wasn’t anything here.
Step, step.
That said, there were still a few things I learned as we traveled down the empty hallway.
It’s a spiral.
I didn’t notice it at first, but we weren’t walking in a straight line. The hallway was bent ever so subtly, more or less forming a circle. In short, we were climbing up a spiral staircase.
“Why not just put a lift in if you have to walk this far? Last I saw, you guys had a pretty good one back there.”
Dead silence.
Second of all, there were no elevators here, meaning that in order to get back to the elevator we came from, we would have to walk all the way back down this long hallway.
Why bother designing and building something so inconvenient? It wasn’t as if the palace was running low on funds. In fact, installing an elevator would have been the far more economical choice.
The answer came to me after a moment’s thought.
It’s for defense…
If an outsider force were to invade, this long hallway would be more than guaranteed to buy them time, far better than any traps or obstacles would.
Sometimes, the most primitive methods were the most reliable.
And so, after walking for three hours in near silence, the spiral pathway finally came to an end at a huge, open area.
Raven raised her head in awe. “This is…”
The space itself was nothing special, but the structure at its center ensnared our attention.
A large vat. A transparent tank reminiscent of what we’d seen in the Panthelion Research Center on basement floor one was situated at the very center of the room.
There was one noticeable difference from the one I saw at the research center, however. This one was gigantic, larger than even most Lords of the Floor.
Everything else was in line with what I saw at the research center. Hundreds of wires were connected to the base of the vat, and the vat itself was filled with a mysterious liquid.
As I stared up at it with my mouth agape, the knight who was guiding us finally said something.
“Follow me. His Majesty is waiting for you.”
Although that was all he said, the underlying message was clear: Don’t get curious about things that don’t concern you.
I skipped asking the knight what the vat was for.
Ding!
We followed the knight over to an elevator on the opposite wall of the open area, and we took it upward.
Ding!
When the elevator doors once again dinged open, I knew.
“Your lowly servant greets the master of the new world.”
I had finally arrived at the audience hall I had never been able to reach even after thousands of tries.
***
The throne was situated on an elevated step.
A strange feeling overcame me as I looked at the throne.
I had attended many ceremonies, such as the ennoblement ceremony, and through them all, the throne had always been empty. Not even the prime minister, the second most powerful man in the kingdom and the proxy for the king, would even dare to entertain the thought of sitting upon it, let alone actually attempt to do so.
And so it was for the first time, someone was sitting on that throne.
Was that why?
Ba-dump!
My warrior heart, the one which had endured countless life-and-death trials, squeezed with nerves.
Well, not as much as Raven next to me, it seemed.
“I, I, I greet His Majesty!” she stammered. “Your lowly servant… N-no, I, I— Your lowly servant greets His Majesty!”
The second she realized someone was sitting on the throne, Raven dropped to the carpeted floor in a bow. Although her stomach was the one facing the floor, she was the spitting image of a puppy who rolled on its back in submission. Her body language screamed it even louder than the words she spoke.
“M-Mr. Yandel! What are you doing…?!” Raven whispered at me, glaring at me with her forehead still touching the floor.
Only then did I realize I’d been disrespectful. With me being a barbarian and all, I hadn’t needed to do any of this before.
However, there was a clear and definite reason that barbarians were able to speak plainly and not follow customs even when talking to a noble, and it was because one of our ancestors had been granted that right after accomplishing a great deed.
And that right had been granted by the very king sitting on the throne.
“Q-quickly!”
Needless to say, even a barbarian would die if he spoke plainly to the king.
I kneeled and lowered my head, adopting the stance that I had seen countless times before yet never once taken myself. “Your lowly servant greets His Majesty…”
Because I was a titled noble, I didn’t need to go flat to the ground like Raven did. Thanks to my higher sightline, I was able to take a closer look at the interior of the audience hall.
Heavy silk cloths were draped around the throne, obscuring the king’s face. There were no windows, probably to prevent any potential assassination attempts or to block any wandering eyes from outsiders, and the only entrance was the elevator we had taken up here.
Lastly, standing in front of the king were two knights. Unlike the nameless knight who had guided us here, the insignia on their armor made them easy to identify.
The Order of Guardians.
They were the most elite fighting force in the kingdom, with each individual member possessing the strength of a rank three monster or higher, and they were only found inside the Palace of Immortality.
The seated throne must have shocked me more than I thought. It wasn’t until I saw the Order of Guardians that the reality of the situation hit me.
So I really am inside the Palace of Immortality… First thing’s first.
I immediately lowered the priority of planning an escape through brute force or any physical clashes to the very bottom of the list. If we really were inside the Palace of Immortality, then fighting needed to be my very last resort.
When I played Dungeon and Stone, I entered the Palace of Immortality a few times. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it was when I was taking the traitor route.
Even then, I never saw the king’s face once…
Even ignoring the ridiculous specs of the Order of Guardians, the Palace of Immortality had countless gimmicks in place to oppose enemy incursions, and it was practically game over whenever they fully activated.
The Palace of Immortality was the one place that I could never fully conquer in the game, and that was back when I had better specs and countless more teammates than I had now too. In a sense, this place was more difficult than the tenth floor, especially since I was never able to clear it no matter what I did.
Of course, with the king so close, I could probably find a way out if I took him hostage…
But then, the words the previous chieftain left to me echoed in my mind.
“There is no existence in this world who is not afraid of him. If there comes a day that you meet him, you will understand.”
Taking the king hostage probably wouldn’t be an easy time either, what with the knight who had guided us here standing in front of the king as his guard—
“Tell me.”
The long silence was broken by the sound of the king’s voice.
The voice was honestly quite the unique one.
“I can’t remember. I can’t even remember what age he was, whether he was really a man or actually a woman, or even the voice that I heard…”
That was what the previous chieftain had told me.
“You were able to enter my forbidden abode. How?”
And yet, the king’s voice was most definitely that of a young male. It didn’t sound particularly old, nor did it possess any inflections that suggested he was sick or tired.
“Tell me everything, my servants.”
It was the voice of a ruler, a domineering force that left no room for anything but submission in the minds of his servants.
“We didn’t know this was the forbidden abode, and we didn’t come here with ill intentions either,” Raven rushed to answer. “The way we were able to come here…”
Her explanation was long and detailed, but it covered everything well enough. As soon as the royal capital was attacked, we headed to the fifth underground floor to capture the insolent Noarkans. They escaped, and we were swept up in the collapse and ended up in this so-called abode. Throughout her narrative was the running theme of how we tried our very best to be the best servants to the kingdom we could be.
From what I could tell, those words were nothing but wasted breath.
An uncomfortable silence filled the room after Raven wrapped up her explanation. A few moments later, the King of the New World began speaking.
“My servant, Baronet Bjorn Yandel.”
It was “Baron Bjorn Yandel,” not Baronet, but I didn’t correct him and instead continued to listen. I might have been a barbarian, but I at least knew how to read the mood—
“As your king, I command you.”
Huh?
“Kill the girl next to you.”
…What?
I was suddenly charged with executing a royal decree.
I didn’t need to say it, but I had no intention of following that command.
The man before me could take away all of my authority, everything I had accomplished in this world, and even all the allies I desperately wanted to protect.
But no way.
I just paused, shooting glances around the room.
However, the king seemed satisfied with that answer.
“Take the girl away.”
With that one sentence, the knights of the Order of Guardians stepped away from the entrance and approached us, causing me to reflexively stand straight. The knight who had been standing in front of the king gave me a short warning.
“Stay still. His Majesty only wishes to have a private conversation with you.”
I glanced at Raven, and she nodded vigorously. She desperately wanted to tell me to not cause a scene since she was fine.
In the end, I just stood there awkwardly while the two knights took Raven outside the audience hall, and finally, I was alone with the king.
Well, the king and that one guard knight who was still here. But he was just a fly on the wall.
That aside, it was as close to a private conversation as I could ever get.
Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump.
The king didn’t say anything and just stared at me through the silk. Dread crept over me.
Hah… Should I have just acted like I was going to obey the order? Thinking back on it, I think it was a test.
“Haha, don’t be so scared.”
As soon as regret began to overtake me, it was washed away by the king’s words.
“You were chosen by her, no? She’s bound to get angry if I kill you, so what can I do?”
His voice was much more relaxed than before.
Even with those vague allusions to “her” and me being “chosen” wasn’t an issue.
“Bjorn, son of Yandel.”
The problem was the language itself.
“Since we’re here, let’s just be open with each other.”
The King of the New World was speaking Korean.
English
samet
”
The King of the New World was speaking Korean.”
The fuck?