Slowly, the line ahead of them dwindled. Rhys and Ryota floated forward. At some point, Rhys had gotten bored, and spent his time reading one of the books he’d acquired from his last run-in with Az while Ryota nudged him every time he got too wrapped up in the book and forgot to move forward. Rhys was a little shocked that Ryota didn’t have some kind of secret princes-only entrance, but then, they were trying to be a little stealthy. Using the princes’ entrance, if such a thing did exist, would announce their presence in a big way. At least using the normal entrance was kind of low-key. And he wasn’t going to encourage his future religious icon to be more full of himself. A little humility was a great thing to have in someone like Ryota.
“Wish I still had my ship. We could’ve docked already,” Ryota muttered.
Oh, Rhys thought, as it all fell into place. The ship docking probably moved much faster. Fewer people had ships, after all, since they were so expensive. Compared to having a princes’ entrance, it made so much more sense that they simply did the same quiet-luxury thing all the other rich mages did, buying a ship so they could access the ships-only expedited entry. He and Ryota could’ve been over there, too, if a certain someone in stasis in Rhys’s core hadn’t exploded Ryota’s ship. This wasn’t humility or stealth; this was simply the results of the events that had happened so far.
Ah, whatever. Incidental humility still counts, so long as Ryota has to suffer through it. Maybe he’ll learn something. Who knows!
It was a kind of trashy way to acquire humility, but that just meant it was right up Rhys’s alley. His best shot was to make Ryota a trashy god one way or another, so incidental humility was a perfectly fine form of humility in his book. If Ryota’s shoddy godhood barely held together for just long enough for him to ascend to the throne, that was exactly what Rhys was aiming for.
I don’t think the story of the noble god Ryota waiting in line for the gate is going to make it into his canon, but who knows? Weirder stories have made it into religions before. Maybe if we spin it… I dunno. I’ll throw it into the compendium of ‘events to reference later.’ Tagged: Ryota shows humility.
Really, he just needed Ryota to do something cool, and then he had the shape the religion would take, whether Ryota was a humble savior or a fierce warrior. The problem was, aside from go berserk a few times and fire projectiles ineffectually, Ryota really hadn’t done much cool stuff. He was like the character in the party whose defining characteristic was wearing glasses. He wasn’t big and buff with wings tattooed on his arms, or the twiggy blond twink with the camera, or the cool main character with teleport powers and a billion swords. He was the glasses guy. He drove the car. He could be replaced with a fast travel button and no one would miss anything.
Rhys froze. Wait, hold on. That’s… actually way more true than I thought? So far, Ryota’s mostly driven me around in his ship! If I replaced him with a fast travel button, what would change? I mean, sure, a few things would change, but damn! He really is my glasses-guy driver!
Maybe I should get him some frames.
Ryota turned back. “What?”
“Huh? Nothing.”
“You looked up from your book.”
“Well, we’re getting close, aren’t we?” Rhys deflected, pointing.
They were, in fact, drawing close to the gate. The bearded man ahead of them was talking to the guard right now. Now, it was also true that each person had taken anywhere from ten minutes to an hour to clear the guards, but it was totally possible that the man would move on any time now, and they’d finally get to move forward. It was the exact same purgatory of waiting in line to dump luggage at an airport, except instead of a family of seven with fifteen bags, two dogs, a grandma who wasn’t really with it, and at least one free-ranging toddler who was on the verge of vanishing off to the wrong country all taking the attention and time of every single attendant at once, somehow, and freezing the entire line, it was just one old man. It wasn’t even the old man’s fault, either; the guards were just really thorough.
It was a far cry from the protocols Rhys was used to. All the mage cities he’d been to, including the capital of his previous region, were pretty much free entry and exit. Though maybe to their detriment? After all, he’d successfully overthrown the head of his previous region thanks to the lasseiz-faire movement throughout the region.
Then again, it’s not like the Empire’s lockdown stopped me, either, he mused, and shrugged. What could he say? At the end of the day, bad people were going to find a way to do bad things. Sometimes he was those bad people, so he knew the lengths bad people would go to in order to gain access to the spaces they needed. All this city had done was delay the inevitable.
Though he had to admit, none of his previous regions had hosted region-wide succession battles between twenty-odd princes. Maybe the door guards were less to stop bad people from accomplishing evil, and more to stop some idiot prince from leading an army through the city. It wasn’t like two guys could stop that, but the gates sure could, and two guys could easily hop back and close the gates.
In that case, though, these guards are just being assholes. It’s not like any of us are princes bound on exterminating our blood relatives. Well. I’m not. And Ryota is a prince, but he hasn’t committed any fratricide… that I know of. He crossed his arms, annoyed, then snorted at himself in amusement. Town guards with an inflated ego abusing their authority? Never heard of that happening before.
Man, some things just never change, huh?
At last, the guards nodded, and the old man passed through into the city. They gestured, and Rhys and Ryota stepped forward, Rhys deftly sliding his book into his storage ring as they approached. Ryota raised his hand. “Greetings. I—”
“Excuse me!” A powerful aura physically pushed both Rhys and Ryota to the side. Rhys turned, startle. He was a high enough tier that people rarely pushed him around anymore, let alone so pompously and thoughtlessly.
A powerful, tall woman with a muscular body and a sword almost as tall as she was strapped to her back stood nearby, her arm out. Behind her, a roly-poly man who was about as wide as he was tall waddled forward, somehow waddling despite the fact he was flying. He had a high aura, higher even than that of the powerful woman, but it felt almost artificial. Rhys frowned, confused. Artificial? No, that wasn’t the right word. Inflated, maybe? As if he’d pushed himself up to this tier without earning it, or maybe as if he’d done whatever it took to gain a high tier, without actually building up his strength or firming his foundation. He felt like a house of cards, in summary, one breath from blowing over.
Noticing Rhys staring, Ryota quickly grabbed his arm. Leaning in, he hissed, “That’s Ebi Sutaro, one of the most powerful merchants in the region. He’s… not much of a fighter. Famously, he’s inflated his tier through imbibing the most potent herbs and potions available, and has barely practiced at all… but the fact that he was effectively able to buy his way to such a high tier shows just how powerful of a merchant he is. You can probably defeat him… you in particular. But you’ll make an enemy of the most powerful factions in the region, and enrage his entire merchant empire and vast network of bodyguards at the same time. Do not stop him.”
Rhys frowned. “Why’s someone that rich down here with the plebians?” Didn’t he just deduce that the rich folk did their quiet luxury thing by riding in on boats? He should be doing the equivalent of floating in on his private jet and therefore bypassing TSA and everything else shitty about airports at the same time.
Ryota grimaced. “He’s, er. Known for his ba… his habit of flaunting his wealth in the most unpleas… in rather unfortunate ways.”
“Oh, got it. Yeah, I know the type.” Rhys eyed his bodyguard. She was big. Borderline giantess. Big enough that he couldn’t help but wonder if she was from the northern region back home. She was certainly strong enough, based on aura alone, to make it through the storm. She caught his gaze and exerted her aura a little, and a chill swept through the air. Rhys raised his brows. And she likes the cold? I bet she is from the north, back home.
It wasn’t like he had much to say to someone from a region adjacent to his, but he felt a kind of camaraderie anyways. He tossed her a nod. She paused. Her eyes swept over his body, and she raised her brows, then nodded back, a small smile on her lips.
She recognized that we’re from the same larger region. Rhys turned his attention to the fat man instead. He wore the finest of silk robes. Gems and gold encrusted every part of his outfit, and his fat fingers were thick with so many rings that Rhys wasn’t sure how he bent them. He sported more necklaces than double chins, which was impressive, and his earlobes were sagging from the weight of his earrings. His belly jiggled with every step, which only drew attention to the gold chains and glittering gems twisted around his opulence. He caught Rhys looking at him and sneered, revealing a mouth full of gold teeth that glittered with diamonds.
Damn. Rage welled up in Rhys’s heart, the anticapitalist buried deep in his heart after a lifetime of getting ground under the brutal, unfeeling wheels of capitalism welling up with great force. Who decided that wealth should be consolidated in the hands of the few, huh? What gave billionaires, arguably the worst kind of people, the right to literally decide the life and death of millions by either refusing to step in and help, or worse, and far more commonly, aggressively pushing forward a project that would net them 0.00001% more profit that they didn’t need anyways and poison millions for decades as a byproduct? Bullshit! He raged. Raged against the machine! Raged against capitalism!
One could, of course, argue that Rhys, with his potato-chip empire, had been a capitalist, and they wouldn’t be wrong. However, what Rhys hadn’t done was aggressively misuse his fortune by investing in the way that maximally injured the little guy and the planet writ large while benefitting only him, or only the absolute 0.00001%. No, he’d merely hoarded his wealth, a much less harmful outcome of gaining wealth. He hadn’t helped anyone, but he hadn’t harmed anyone, either. At least not with his wealth.
Besides, he didn’t flaunt around pushing poor innocent lower-tier cultivators out of the way because he was rich. Morally, he had the upper hand. Morally, he had the right to rage against capitalism!
Though none of that was in Rhys’s mind at the moment. In this moment, he wasn’t truly Rhys, but instead the corporate drone from his first life, once more trapped under the weight of making someone else richer while that someone else used the time he gave them with his hard work to calculate the absolute minimum amount they could pay him to get him to keep working. This rage welled up from a deep place, from an earnest spot deep in his heart, a bruise left over from a lifetime of suffering that would never truly heal.
And that fury, that bone-deep wrath based on an entire lifetime of getting shat upon and stepped on, manifested in Rhys stepping forward, holding out his arm, and obstinately blocking the fat man’s path. “Excuse me, sir. We were here first.”
“Rhys, don’t—” Ryota sighed. He put his face in his hands. “What did I just say…”