Minute Mage: A Time-Traveling LitRPG

Chapter 78: Welcome to Hell. Shut Up.

A Devil marched through the halls of a pathetic king’s castle. He was absolutely furious – just after he reprimanded them for failing to kill Arlan Nota, they went and fucked it up again. Morons. He’d even gone as far as to help them set up the plan, came up with the idea for them, and went along with the Humans to protect them while they set the fire. And they fucking blew themselves up.

Those stupid fucking Humans couldn’t do anything. One person. That’s who they were tasked with stopping. One fucking person. And even with the support of a portion of the Underworld’s Infernal army, they still couldn’t do it. He’d asked about those bombs they were using. ‘Tamper-proof’, they’d said. Sure, they didn’t blow up from outside sources of fire, but that didn’t make them tamper-proof. They should’ve known that. Fucking idiots. That king evidently needed his position to be spelled out. He was below the Devil.

The Human soldiers guarding the castle had long since learned their place. When they saw the Devil marching through uninvited, all they did was avert their gaze. They probably didn’t want to be turned into another corpse left in his wake. And he would’ve done it, too, if they tried to stop him. Fuck, he might’ve just killed one of them anyway. He needed to let off some steam.

But he fought off the temptation. It’d just make a mess. Instead, he marched up to the throne room’s doors, and took his anger out on them. His fist slammed into the brittle wooden doors, breaking them apart. So cathartic. Wooden shrapnel scattered across the marble floor.

Inside the room was a stunned-stupid Koinkar and a few greasy advisors that sat with him around a table. The king hastily got to his feet – or, at least, as hastily as his frail body could move him.

“D-Demon,” he shouted in his constantly-hoarse voice. “Why are you here?”

“Why am I here?” He marched straight toward the throne. “Are you fucking braindead or something? You didn’t uphold your end of our deal.”

“We allowed you to burn down our forest. What part of that was not up to our word?”

“The part where Arlan Nota is still fucking alive.”

The king just stared at the Devil.

“Listen,” the Devil continued, “we’ve basically had this conversation before. I walk in, I’m pissed because you failed, I demand you do better. So I’m honestly not even sure what I’m supposed to say to you. Evidently, you are fucking incapable of getting it through your thick skull that this needs to be your top priority. My interests are your interests.”

Once the Devil was finished speaking, the king glanced over to one of his advisors and nodded her over. She stood and walked to the king while he sat back into his throne. Once he was settled, they began whispering to each other, apparently having a private meeting right in front of the party concerned. The Devil’s scowl deepened as the seconds upon seconds of discussion ticked by.

“We feel,” the king croaked once they were finally done, “that your attitude and demands are making it difficult to cooperate with the Demons. We have lent you what it is possible to lend you, and even more still. Burning a portion of our land was more than enough help for us to give while receiving no compensation. If you–”

“Cooperation?!” the Devil interrupted, laughing incredulously. “Is that what you think this is? You don’t need to worry about your little patch of burnt land, I’m threatening to burn down your entire kingdom! Holy fucking shit! Are you stupid, or something? You are below me. You serve me. We are not equals, we are not peers, we are not best fucking friends. I will grind you to dust beneath my fucking heel if you don’t do everything in your power to kill this fucking kid.”

“That is hardly reasonable!”

“I’ll tell you what’s ‘hardly reasonable’, dumbass. You promise me that you can provide explosives and weapons to load the barricade with. You had it handled, apparently. You use these mines to fight back the Dragons from Kingdom’s Edge, so what could Arlan Nota possibly do? They’re Enchanted against outside sources of fire. ‘Tamper-proof’, you call them.”

“I–”

“They got tampered with, didn’t they?! And not just a bit. Tell me, just how many Levels do you think Alran Nota got from slaughtering my troops using your equipment? How much harder is my job going to be because you’re so fucking stupid and overconfident as to call a simple flame repellant a ‘tamper-proof’ design? Your moronic plan isn’t only costing us a success here, it’s making every single future operation we carry out harder, too. Your stupid fucking plan, and your incompetent fucking soldiers you lent us, and your broken fucking equipment they used, all contributed to a total loss. And that’s on you. So I’d love to hear what you plan to do to make it up to me.”

The king waved another advisor over to him, who rushed to his side and began whispering in his ear.

The Devil groaned and stomped his foot on the tile floor. The force of his strike cracked the tile and shook the room around him. “Shut the fuck up! Get away from him!”

The advisors looked fearfully at the Devil, who was now marching up to the king lazing in his cushioned throne. They backed away as the Devil got closer.

“I’m asking you, Koinkar. Not these lackeys that you have sitting around to do all your thinking for you. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Koinkar looked to his sides, where the advisors were long gone, having fled from the Devil’s aggressive approach. He looked back at the Devil and stared him in the eyes. “What do I have to say for myself? I say that this failure was just as much caused by your mistakes as it was mine. You were the one who proposed the idea of razing my kingdom to the ground. Not me. You have no right to speak to me as though I am some underling. I am the rightful ruler of this territory!”

The Devil grinned in a way that made it obvious he wasn’t smiling with happiness. He bit his lip hard enough to draw blood and nodded along to the king’s little speech. “That’s quite the defense. Really, I’m impressed. You somehow managed to say the dumbest thing that’s ever been uttered in this room. I swear to the lord below, you could take a chicken, cut off its head, and have a deaf girl listen to the gargling the blood makes as it spouts from the corpse’s throat. And whatever gibberish she hears would still be more intelligent than what you just said. I need you to listen to me. You. Do. What. I. Say. Or you die.”

The Devil looked back at the table where the advisors sat. They were still there, obviously afraid of making any sudden movements with him in the room. He reached out to them and snapped his fingers.

You have cursed Unclassed Human with Inferno. He has been set on fire.

You have cursed Unclassed Human with Inferno. She has been set on fire.

You have cursed Unclassed Human with Inferno. He has been set on fire.

You have cursed Level 3 Swordsman with Inferno. He has been set on fire.

You have cursed Unclassed Human with Inferno. She has been set on fire.

You have cursed Level 5 Wizard with Inferno. She has been set on fire.

Every advisor at the table was set ablaze, and a cacophony of screams filled the room. Koinkar tensed when the Devil looked back at him. They both stayed silent as the advisors cried in pain and tried desperately to put out the fire. The Devil knew their efforts were hopeless, of course – you couldn’t put out magical fire using mundane methods – but he liked listening to the struggle. Once the howls of agony died out and he got the last of his kill notifications, the Devil raised his eyebrows at the king.

“Oh, look at that. We’re alone in the room together. Hey, what was it you said about this whole thing being my fault, and how I’m such a failure? I’d really love to hear more about that.”

Koinkar shakily got to his feet, seemingly unfazed by the display of power. “You can barge in here uninvited. You can insult me. You can even kill my citizens. But if you think you can harass me into prostrating before your feet, into becoming your lapdog, you will find I have more pride than you can break!”

“I’m not interested in breaking your pride, old man,” the Devil stood against the king, getting within arms reach of him. “I’m sure that any you have is misguided, anyway. No, I’m interested in getting results. And the fact is that you seem incapable of doing that. You are so fucking stupid and incompetent that I genuinely can’t think of a use for you, other than the resources your kingdom has access to. But even then, your soldiers are so weak that I can barely imagine they could do anything even if we put the entire kingdom’s worth in a room with Arlan Nota when he has his arms cut off! So I think you see the issue!”

“If you are so dissatisfied with the performance of my men, then why don’t you go and kill this fugitive yourself? You seem so confident in your strength as to use it to solve every problem you have, why not use it here?”

“Oh, why not kill him myself? Why didn’t I think of that?” the Devil laughed and paced around the room, before storming back up to the king and slamming his fist into the golden throne behind him. “Maybe, it’s because I’m not a fucking footsoldier!”

The king tensed and looked at the fist that crumpled the metal beside him.

“I don’t get what you don’t understand about this! Your bombs blew up in the hands of your own men, dumbass! That sort of feels like it’s your fault.”

“You will get no more of my kingdom than what you’ve already taken,” Koinkar growled through clenched teeth.

“Oh, I won’t, will I?!” The Devil was shaking with anger, by now. He withdrew his fist from the throne, grabbed the king’s arm, and ripped it clean off.

You have struck Level 31 Human Paladin for 356 damage using your Hand.

He tossed the limb aside while Koinkar gasped in pain from the dismemberment. The king was technically high-Level, but he was no good at fighting. The Devil had done his research on this place, and he knew that this king Koinkar was the same man who founded the kingdom hundreds of years ago. He’d stayed alive by dumping all of his Stat Points into Endurance and neglecting all else, which meant he had great survivability, but old age had still atrophied his muscles and dampened his reflexes.

“Oh, look! The hubristic king finally shut the fuck up!” the Devil shouted into Koinkar’s face. “Cat got your tongue, moron?! Or maybe a Demon,” he hurled his fist into the king’s torso, “has got,” he struck again, “your arm!” He grabbed Koinkar’s other arm – his own hands covered in blood from ripping into the man’s frail body – twisted around, and flung him across the room.

The king tumbled across the floor helplessly, coughing and groaning in pain and fear. He slowly reached out with his only hand, trying to pull his broken body to the exit that lay a couple dozen paces away from him. The Devil marched over with a scowl on his face, not bothering to count the damage he’d done to Koinkar – somewhere in the thousands.

Once he got to the battered king, the Devil grabbed him by the collar and roughly lifted him up. Blood covered the floor and the clothes of both of them.

“You are a fucking insect,” the Devil growled. “You are nothing. The only reason your entire kingdom is still standing is because of my own plentiful mercy.”

“Fuck. You.” Koinkar groaned.

“Shut the fuck up!” Spittle flew from the Devil’s mouth across the king’s face. “You’re pathetic!” He slammed the king into the tile floor, cracking it. “You’re insignificant!” He slammed again, and the crunch of bone told him that the king’s face had broken against the marble. “You’re worthless!” He slammed again, and dug the king’s body through the floor, and into the dirt. “And most of all, you are pissing me the fuck off!” He turned and flung Koinkar into a wall with his full strength. The entire building rattled and blood splattered across the throne room.

You have struck Level 31 Human Paladin for 4.11k damage using Bricks.

You have slain Level 31 Human Paladin.

The king’s corpse fell and impacted the floor. A wet splat echoed through the room.

“Get up,” the Devil said to the corpse.

It didn’t move.

“Get up!” he yelled and held out a hand, then snapped his fingers.

You have cursed corpse with Inferno. It has been set on fire.

The scent of burning flesh emanated through the chamber. But the corpse didn’t move. The Devil walked over and stood above the flaming pile of flesh and clothing.

“Get up!” he screamed and stomped on the corpse. “Get up, get up, get up, get up, get up!”

The corpse was disfigured further by his mutilation.

“Fuck!” he screamed at himself, rubbing his face with his hands. He was on the verge of tears in a mixture of anger, stress, and frustration with himself. “Fuck, fuck, fuck! Fuck this shit!”

The Devil paced through the room, his voice echoing across the empty walls. The only sound accompanying him was the quiet burning of Koinkar’s corpse behind him. He bit down on his finger, drawing blood, and kept biting down, harder and harder, until it snapped.

You have been dismembered.

The Devil’s entire finger crunched off the knuckle in a burst of pain. He drew his hand back, the finger he just bit off still sitting in his mouth. He spat it out and stared down at his now four-digited hand.

“Fuck it,” he said. “It’s a temp vessel. I’ll just get a new one next time I come back.”

He turned around, looked at the burnt corpse he’d created, and sighed. That was an issue that couldn’t be solved as easily.

“This is going to be so much fucking paperwork.”

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