Despite his close-lipped start, the prince was surprisingly loquacious once he got started. Not to the point of Tooru. In fact, he gave very little of his operations away, and said very little worth listening to, but he definitely liked hearing himself speak. Someone really had to sit down and invite these princes to talk a little more, because, between the damage from Tooru and this guy, Rhys’s ears were about to KO.
This guy seemed way more depressive and far les obsessive than Tooru. Half the things he said implied deep self-hatred. It wasn’t the most interesting one-sided conversation Rhys had ever listened to, so he really started zoning in and out after the first few minutes, but it got the points across. Homeboy was super cereal, he owned like half the street, he was so cool, but he was super depressed about it.
He’s the ultimate goth-grunge-druggie aesthete, Rhys realized, looking the guy over. If he’d been alive during the ‘90s and late ‘80s, he would’ve been drowning in pussy. He imagined it in his head: the hair gelled into aggressive spikes, a dozen rings on his eyebrows, lip, and nose, the same languor and hollow gaze, ripped sleeves to display the tattoos crawling over his arms, studded denim… no, black leather—with the same ripped sleeves, the layered bracelets and necklaces, lots of studs, chains, safety pins—oh, a dozen of those in one ear, no question—maybe a gauge? Or was that too ‘00s—and definitely ripped black jeans, maybe a few bonus safety pins down there.
The guy had the vibes down, he just hadn’t been introduced to goth or grunge and couldn’t properly execute the look. It was a look that, as far as Rhys was aware, existed solely in the form of bad boy villains in early ‘90’s action films, but it was a look this guy could’ve nailed. Not far enough to be punk, not depressed enough to be pure grunge, not artistic enough to go full goth, but something floating around all three in a muddy aesthetic that became its own thing. He leaned on his hand and nodded emptily, picturing the prince in his head. Everything the guy said made so much more sense when he was a bit part in an action movie.
“—listening to me?” the prince demanded.
Rhys startled. “No,” he admitted. He was going the aggressive route, so might as well commit; not to mention, he was done with this conversation, if the one-sided lecture even qualified as such.
“No?”
“No. I was too busy undressing you in my head, big boy.” And redressing you in a goth-grunge aesthetic, but we can leave that part out. “Let’s skip the talk and go straight to business, huh?” By which I mean, holy fuck, shut the fuck up. I came here to kill you, not hear your manifesto. If I could quicksave/quickload to skip the dialogue, I’d be mashing it right now.
Real life speedruns were hard, Rhys reflected. You couldn’t boundary-break, skip dialogue, or shoot someone once so another person wouldn’t talk to them, you could skip a conversation, and get on with the quest. Well, I guess you can do the last one. It’s just not very ethical.
You know, come to think of it, I read quite a few timeloops back in my day. Where’s all the unethical time loopers, huh? I don’t mean the usual bullshit, killing people, ignoring consequences, whatever. I want to see the petty asshole who kills some random unrelated civilian so he doesn’t have to wait two seconds for the guy’s friend to order extra crème in a coffee shop, because the friend is at the first guy’s funeral. I want the dude who slaps a baby because then the mother doesn’t stand in the wrong place and get in the way of him taking the perfectly optimal, shortest-time route to the next objective. Where’s the guy who litters because finding a trash can is non-optimal, who learns the best opportunities to snitch free food from passing vendors so he doesn’t have to spend thirty seconds to pay the salesfolk? That’s the timelooper I want to see!
It was all basic speedrunning tactics, but somehow, timeloopers thought they were all above that kind of behaviour, while simultaneously deleting entire civilizations without the blink of an eye. What was the greater crime, huh? Slapping one baby, or ignoring the stop-the-nuke sidequest this time so they could gain one more level of woodworking?
He understood, of course. That kind of protagonist was going to be deeply unrelatable, and the book would probably get all of three reads. But man. The concept in his head was golden.
Speedrunning My Timeloop In Another World? I’m Not An Asshole, I Swear, This Is Really The Optimal Path! Building A Harem in Another World.
He wasn’t really sure why they always tacked on the ‘building a harem in another world’ part, but man, in late game isekai, they sure did. And it was a real crapshoot whether the manga was actually a harem and nothing but ecchi trash (looking respectfully), or it was a normal isekai with all the sex appeal of a cardboard box that’d duct-taped it on to the end of its title because that was what sold, or something.
Late game isekai. That’s some good trash, Rhys thought, nodding to himself. Absolutely no gems to be found. Nothing but pure, exploitative, repetitive bullcrap. Looking at a cover and having a 50-50 shot at guessing exactly everything that was about to happen, and if it wasn’t actually a harem, then the other fifty percent was right, and it was the same crafting/base building/also catgirls are here plot as ever. Glorious.
“Excuse me? Hello?”
“Oh, sorry. Another rabbit hole called. What were we doing?” Rhys stood and clapped. “That’s right. Getting down to business.”
“We were not,” the prince insisted. “I was just about to—”
Rhys looked at him, and for a split second, the urge to use his trash-reality-manipulation skill to force this guy out of his hole in the middle of the well-populated bar and into a nice quiet bedroom welled up. But it would take too much mana, and legitimately, dearly, from the bottom of his heart, this guy wasn’t worth it, so he slammed his hand down on the table and leaned in instead. “You were about to?”
The prince shivered. “I, I was…”
“About to go upstairs? Out back? If that’s not the answer, I don’t want to hear it. Look, you’ve been sitting there so long you’ve worn a hole in the chair. Get up and live, honey. Come with me, or I’m leaving.” Rhys turned and strutted away, leaving the depressive brat behind him.
If he is a ‘90’s bit villain, this is where he tries to reassert his power by calling in his guards, Rhys thought, and almost on cue, big men stepped forward, emerging from the crowd. The ordinary patrons got the message and fled, or were quickly removed by the men, and in the space of a few seconds, it was just Rhys, the prince, and all his bodyguards in the bar.
“You’re going nowhere,” the prince growled. “No one treats me like that.”
“Then stop getting all hot and bothered every time someone does. You’re encouraging bad behavior,” Rhys said, turning over his shoulder to look at the prince. He knew he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t resist resting a finger on his lower lip as he said it and shooting the prince a very provocative look. Get your ass up. Come on, dude. I’m bored here. Let’s do something. Anything. Get this show on the road.
“Subdue her. Don’t kill her. I just want her defenseless,” the prince said, his voice suddenly very cold.
Rhys laughed. There’s the absolute moral right I was looking for. “You know, kid, derogatory, you’re never going to understand your own fetishes if you keep desperately masking like this.”
“Shut up!”
The men closed in, encircling Rhys from all sides. Rhys took a deep breath and sighed. “I guess we’re doing this the loud way.”
One of the men scoffed. “Don’t you mean, the hard way?”
Some of the other men tittered in the background.
Rhys looked the prince dead in the eye and smirked. “After that boring, long-ass lecture? I’ve never been more flaccid.”
The prince jumped in his seat. “Wait, wha—”
Before he finished the word, Rhys launched into a blur of motion. He charged at the prince rather than taking on any of his bodyguards. As a result, rather than charging him, half of them moved to block Rhys from the prince. It gave him just enough room to maneuver, which was exactly what he’d wanted.
Rhys stopped dead, and the charging bodyguards lurched past him as they overshot him. He grinned. “Special Weapon: War Crimes Edition! Chemical Warfare!”
He emitted a thick wave of impurities, the filth heavy enough that it was visible on the air as a grayish haze. It rapidly filled the room. As mages, everyone present naturally stopped breathing, but it wasn’t enough to save them. The impurities soaked into their skin and seeped in through their eyes and noses. Within moments, Rhys could feel them all in bright relief, every single person in the room inundated with the impurities.
“So you’re a demonic mage! I knew it,” the prince said, half scared, half excited.
“I’m not. Actually, I keep forgetting that you guys have impurities users,” Rhys informed him.
“You guys…?”
“I’m not from around here.”
The bodyguards had paused momentarily at the prince’s signal, but at Rhys’s words, they charged once again. Rhys drew The Hunger. “Are you ready to kill?”
“Always,” The Hunger replied.
“We really need to work on that. Or… not. You’re a sword.”
The first two bodyguards closed in on Rhys from opposing sides. He lunged at one, lashing out with his sword, and threw an impurity dart underhanded at the other. The first guard raised his sword, clashing with Rhys, while the second took a dart to the face and fell backward. The first guard’s sword shattered, and Rhys cleaved through it to slash his body in half.
Another set of guards closed in. Three this time. Rhys threw The Hunger into the air and sent it flying at the first of the guards with Impurity Manipulation. Sweeping his hands, he called the impurities he’d thrown into the air to them, forming rudimentary daggers, then stabbed out in opposite directions. The other two guards fell to the daggers.
Before they’d fallen, another guard slammed a huge hammer toward Rhys’s head, his blow hidden behind his fallen comrades. There was no time to dodge, and he’d just thrown The Hunger away. Rhys released the daggers, turning them back into impurities, and thrust a blast of powerful raw impurities at the hammer as it swung toward him. The impurities ate through the hammer like tiny burning-hot embers through ice. Rhys blocked with his forearm, and the hammer shattered against it. The man had enough time to look stupefied before The Hunger pulled a U-turn in midair and pierced through his head from behind. The Hunger’s long, bloodied blade emerged from the man’s mouth, tip-first, severing his tongue on its way to taking his head. Its hilt tore apart the flesh the blade hadn’t cut, and the top half of the man’s head hit the floor seconds before his body collapsed.
“Sheeeesh,” Rhys muttered, lifting his hand to catch The Hunger. The bloodslicked blade smeared crimson over his palm for a split second before Rhys and The Hunger both reflexively absorbed all the trash around them, vanishing the blood at the same time.
Two bodyguards remained. One rushed him, while the other fled for the back door. Rhys immediately threw The Hunger again, sparking it toward the fleeing guy’s back at high velocity. The other guard snapped his fingers, and a transparent red dog emerged from the floor to lunge Rhys as he closed in with a pair of daggers.
“You’re not the only one with a summon!” Rhys snapped his fingers, and a pair of spectral, bony hands rose out of the ground around the bodyguard. A wave of his hand in the other direction, and a skeletal rider sans horse materialized in the path of the dog. The dog bounced off the rider and yelped in confusion as the cold curse bit into its body, while the man dropped to the ground as the hands bore down on him.
The Hunger took care of the fleeing bodyguard, and with a flick of his fingers, Rhys called it back, directly through the path of the dog. The impure sword bit through the materialized magic and corroded it to death, and Rhys barely dismissed the skeletal rider before the sword took it on, too.
On his other side, the bodyguard flexed, and the skeletal hands creaked. Pain rolled through Rhys, and he quickly dismissed them before the bodyguard could break them. They were a relatively low-rank curse, and while they could surprise someone of the bodyguard’s tier that Rhys had weakened with his impurities, they weren’t going to finish him off. The man immediately flexed his arms, pushing himself back upright. Rhys patiently waited for him to regain his feet, then slammed The Hunger through the man’s heart.
“Thanks. I appreciate it,” he said, patting the man on the back. The man’s mana flared as he tried to use a spell, but Rhys used the friendly pat to forcibly inject more impurities into his body, and his mana spluttered and died. He stared at Rhys in awe and fear for a split second, then died.
And then it was just Rhys and the prince.