Titan: A LitRPG Adventure (UnderVerse Book 4) Jez Cajiao (top ten books of all time TXT) 📖

“But why?” I asked, confused, thinking over the rules against slavery that Amon… Then I paused and searched my memories, feeling his silence and his grim shame.

I reached in deeper, searching. Forcing him to share what I knew was there, somewhere. I held up a hand to Tenandra, stopping her as she started to talk, as I wanted to know this for myself, to understand it as only one who had made the decision could.

I remembered then, as Amon grudgingly gave it up, the memory surfacing slowly.

It had been early in the Empire’s history, literally thousands of years ago, long before the Empire that people now regarded as ancient history was born. In those days, it had just been Amon and his followers.

Back then, things had been quite different, despite what the history would say later. It was Shustic that had mellowed Amon’Ita , that had taught him right from wrong. When he’d started out, he’d not been a noble man, sacrificing to rise the sentient ‘good’ races out of the quagmire that life was in those days.

He’d been a conqueror, a greedy warlord, a man who’d been named the Demon of Dai’Shiier after he’d put every man and every second child to death for defying him. He’d not been trying to save the innocent; he’d been demanding the supplies the town had labored over to feed themselves through the winter.

He’d forced the survivors to serve him, in his army and in his pleasure houses, and it wasn’t until he’d had his forces smashed in detail, his followers slaughtered in retribution, that he’d seen the truth.

I remembered his first meeting with Shustic, after he’d lost everything, staggering through the fierce winter snowstorm up to the great dragon’s nest, barely alive, dead inside, and almost out, and he’d demanded a bond from her, demanded the ability to kill his enemies, in his unbelievable arrogance.

For reasons all her own, she’d agreed, but she’d made him serve her first: thirty years in the nest, learning at the clawed feet of the Elder Dragons, the Greater Dragon’s leaders, even as the Lesser Dragonkin, Wyrms and their ilk, had mocked and belittled him.

As the years passed, he was broken and reforged anew, no longer the merciless conqueror with a heart of stone, not after Shustic used her magic, forcing him to live the lives of those he’d oppressed.

He’d seen the world through their eyes, lived the nightmare of his invasion and depravity, until he’d been truly broken. Then he was gifted a rescued elven child, a child who no magic could save, who was dying of a rare condition, incapable of knowing the touch of magic. The child would never reach its tenth birthday, he was told.

This child was to be his, his penance and his reward, and he spent the following years raising the boy, making him the best he could be.

When the child, named Shel’Aviir, or ‘Repentance,’ in the old tongue, died finally, Amon sat over his still body and wept tears of fire and ice. The final part of Amon’Ita, Demon of Dai’Shiier, had died that day along with his adopted son, and the man that was left, Amon, rose to conquer the known world.

In the beginning, there were corners cut; the laws he would uphold were bent and broken frequently, and he hated himself for it, burying the truth under layers of golden lies.

He did things, or gave orders for others to do them, such as the subjugation of the wisps, seeing them as necessary evils for the greater good. He hated it, but he assuaged his fears and self-recriminations with the old line that it was for ‘the greater good’.

“You sanctimonious asshole,” I shot at him, and I felt his anger, and his acceptance of the title, even as I shut him away and reopened my eyes, looking into Tenandra’s in turn.

“Amon did it. He hated that he did, but he believed that, for the ‘greater good,’ it was necessary, as was forcing you to serve and obey the Imperial line. I crossed that line when we first met, and I ordered you to obey because we didn’t have time for a discussion. For that, I’m sorry. I’ll make you a deal, though, if you’ll have it?” I offered, and the look of curiosity was clear on her face.

“I will listen… but I am required to obey you…” She said haltingly.

“Yeah, well… the deal is this, same as I offered to the others, of any of the races: swear fealty to me, to accept me as your lord, and I’ll do my best to rise you up, to make you into the best version of yourself you can be. You can’t disobey me, so I won’t ask you for an Oath of any kind. Instead, I’ll give you one.” I took a deep breath, then injected my mana into my words as I spoke them, forcing them to bind to me and to reality as I made a declaration for the entire realm to see.

“I, Jax, Lord of Dravith and Imperial Scion, swear that I will not cross the same lines that my ancestor did, in harming the wisps, for ‘the greater good’. I will strike those down who oppose me, but never will I enslave the innocent and force them to serve for eternity. Furthermore, if they can be healed and freed, then, provided they assist in developing a replacement for their role, I will free them, but unless they swear to me, they will not be permitted to retain physically bonded items.”

I felt the mana being burned from me, examining the words as I spoke them and searching my heart for hidden meanings. Finding none, the Oath was affirmed, and Tenandra stared at me in shock.

“I’m sorry to have to add in the last bit…” I said, taking a seat and catching my breath. “But if I let you bond with the Battleship, or the Prax, or whatever, and then I