Chapter 71: A King’s Desperate Bet

Chapter 71: A King’s Desperate Bet My name is Ragnar Vhagar, Demon King, Lord of Chaos, and currently, the most bored man in the afterlife. The war against Queen Alyssa had devolved into the most tedious, soul-crushing stalemate I could possibly imagine. For three long, miserable days, my two elite teams, the Wrecking Crew and the Shadow Strikers, had been throwing themselves against her crystalline fortress. They were making progress, technically. One bloody, expensive, agonizingly slow inch at a time. I sat on my throne. The glowing green icons of my forces moved with the speed and urgency of a snail crawling through peanut butter. "This is not a war," I announced to the quiet Throne Room, my voice echoing with profound disappointment. "This is tedious. This is like trying to level up by killing tutorial slimes for a week straight. My soul is starting to atrophy from the sheer, mind-numbing boredom of it all." Pixia zipped over to my shoulder. She had been meticulously alphabetizing a pile of newly acquired, evil-looking scrolls, a task she seemed to find more thrilling than our current military campaign. "My Lord, our strategy of attrition is statistically sound," she squeaked, her voice a beacon of obnoxious optimism that grated on my very soul. "My projections indicate a 91.4% probability of victory if we maintain this course over the next twenty-seven days." I turned my head slowly to stare at her. My eye began to twitch. "Twenty-seven days?" I repeated, my voice dangerously quiet. "Pixia, in twenty-seven days, I will have died of boredom. My ghost will then haunt this dungeon, complaining about the terrible ergonomics of this throne for all eternity." I pushed myself up from my seat of eternal suffering and began to pace, my long, dark coat swishing around my ankles. I had started wearing the coat because it felt very "Demon King." Now, it just felt like I was a goth teenager with a mortgage. "She’s a queen. A schemer," I muttered, thinking aloud. "She’s not just defending; she’s waiting. She’s letting me bleed my forces against her walls, waiting for me to make a mistake, to overextend, to give her a single, exploitable opening." I stopped in front of the map, my eyes locking onto the single, pulsating red icon at the heart of her kingdom. The Crystal Spire. Her throne room. Her last bastion. "She’s not trying to beat my army," I whispered, the realization hitting me with the force of a physical blow. "She’s trying to find me. Her entire defense is a giant, glittering mousetrap, and I’m the cheese." Pixia’s wings froze mid-buzz. Her tiny glasses, which were somehow still on her face, nearly vibrated off. "My Lord! To expose yourself would be... statistically catastrophic!" she shrieked, her voice a high-pitched teapot whistle of pure, academic panic. "She is a Level 10 magic-specialist! Your personal combat metrics, while impressive for your level, are insufficient to guarantee a positive outcome! The variables are too high!" "Her magic is the problem," I mused, completely ignoring her frantic, buzzing protests. "She can sit on her throne and blast my armies from a mile away. My forces can’t touch her. My commanders can’t get close enough to land a decisive blow." A cold, terrible, and utterly brilliant idea began to form in the darkest, most reckless corner of my mind. It was the kind of idea you get in a video game when you’re stuck on a boss, and you decide the only logical solution is to sell all your equipment, your house, and your firstborn child to buy one, single, ridiculously overpowered potion that will probably only work once. It was a stupid plan. It was a desperate plan. It was the only plan I had. "Pixia," I said, my voice dangerously calm, cutting through her panicked squeaking. "What is my current Bonus Point total?" "You have... twenty-five, my Lord," she stammered, clearly taken aback by my sudden change in tone. "Five from your recent level-up, and twenty you have been diligently saving. For long-term strategic investments in your Creation stat, as you said. For the future of our empire." "Long-term strategy just got cancelled due to a terminal case of me being about to lose," I said, pulling up my status screen. The glowing letters hung in the air before me, a testament to my pathetic beginnings. Body: D. Mana: D. The stats of a glorified tutorial slime with delusions of grandeur. I had been saving those points. For a rainy day. For a big, game-changing upgrade to my Creation skill that would let me build an army of even bigger, angrier morons. For a sensible, long-term plan for victory. But my kingdom was on fire now. And it was time to cash in the insurance policy. "You can’t win a war of attrition if you’re the one who runs out of resources first," I murmured to myself, a grim resolve hardening in my chest like cooling steel. "Sometimes, the only way to win is to flip the table over and punch the other player directly in the face." I looked at my pathetic D-rank stats, then at the 25 glowing points beside them. It was time to stop being a general hiding in the back lines. It was time to become a monster. My finger, long and pale, hovered over the plus sign next to ’Body’. "My Lord, are you certain?" Pixia whispered, her voice filled with a genuine, heartfelt panic that was almost touching. "This is irreversible. You would be sacrificing your long-term growth for a short-term gamble! My models do not approve!" "This whole new life is a short-term gamble, Pixia," I said, a slow, predatory smile spreading across my face. "And I’m all in." I tapped the ’+’ next to Mana. A confirmation box appeared, its blue light a stark contrast to the red warnings flashing in my mind. [Allocate 5 BP to raise Mana to C-Rank? Y/N] I pressed ’Y’. A pleasant warmth filled me, the low hum of my inner power growing from a gentle buzz to a steady, confident thrum. It was like upgrading from a cheap laptop to a decent desktop. Better, but not game-changing. Then, my finger, steady and resolute, moved to ’Body’.