The castle torture room was like an unwelcome trip down memory lane, the basic outline being nearly exactly like the city dungeons I’d found myself in when I’d first appeared in this shithole world. Various torture devices and racks and unfortunate looking wooden spiky things which I doubted felt pleasant adorned the walls with shackles and chains hanging from the ceiling the whole length of the area. No one, at the moment, seemed to be home, which suited me just fine.

“At least if we fail, we’ll die in battle rather than ending up here,” Carrisyn observed quietly, shaking her head.

“You are a walking demotivational poster,” I marveled. “Instead of a cute kitten in a field of flowers with the caption ‘Today is What You Make It’, you’re a vulture on a tombstone with the caption ‘Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter.’”

“Would you rather I lie to you?” Carrisyn glanced over at me.

“Uh, yeah,” I admitted. “Kind of a lot, really.”

“Then if we fail, we’ll end up here to be tortured and executed at the king’s leisure,” Carrisyn shrugged, following after the others as they headed toward the far door.

“Who hurt you?” I muttered darkly under my breath, shaking my head. “And why are you paying it forward?” I trudged after the others, bringing up the rear of the group as we moved into the dungeon hallway beyond the torture chamber.

Once beyond the prisons lining the main walkway of the dungeons, we climbed a staircase into a wide hallway heading both north and south. I’d never before heard of decorating something angrily, but the shields and swords and severed animal heads hanging on the walls, the guttering lanterns swinging from cast iron chandeliers, and the carpets depicting vicious battles all bespoke of an interior decorator trying to work through some not insubstantial anger issues.

We hurried down the north hallway and ducked into a side passage which led to a flight of stairs heading higher into the castle. With Sascha leading the way we climbed quickly, trying to be as quiet as possible. Zelaeryn’s sword, however, proved too wide for the stairwell and kept scraping gratingly along the walls to the point she finally unsheathed it and carried it in front of her like a starving man wielding a pair of chopsticks at an all you can eat buffet.

“Does this seem strange to anyone else?” Lysabel asked as we wound higher and higher through the back stairs and chambers of the castle.

Nope, I thought to myself. Nothing strange at all. An emaciated, mostly naked half-elf, a naked demon and catgirl, three rogue princesses and a criminal noble sneaking through a castle to kill a vampire king after wading through the sewers all seemed pretty much standard to me. Yep. Nothing to see here.

“What do you mean?” Carrisyn glanced at her.

“There’s no one here,” Lysabel muttered, glancing curiously into one of the servants’ rooms we passed.

“That’s…true,” Carrisyn glanced around herself nervously.

“He knows you’re here,” Ashvallen’s Nana Meri chimed in in my head.

“How can you be sure?” I thought to myself, the notion of talking to the invisible person in my head smacking once more of at the least untreated bi-polar disorder and at the worst a complete psychological break.

“I can feel his emotions. He is seething with anger. He’s moved the servants out of the castle, so they won’t see him kill his own daughters and spread the truth. He is dangerous and he is prepared. Tread carefully, dear.” Meri’s disembodied voice fretted.

“He knows we’re coming,” I reported to the others.

“How do you know?” Carrisyn asked, though it seemed like she believed me, at least.

“Just a feeling,” I shrugged. No sense getting into the whole not quite so dead ancestor bit. It’d just make things awkward and weird. Well, weirder than they already were at least.

“I have no reason to doubt you,” Carrisyn nodded. “At least we know we’re walking into the trap.”

“True,” Sascha grinned ruefully. “It was a fool’s hope to think he wouldn’t know about Galen. Well, that suits me just fine.”

I’m tired, I thought as we continued on once more. So very tired. Each step in this hideous world was taken either running into danger, being in danger or staggering away from danger. What happened to the Isekai worlds in the anime and manga and light novels? Where was my fluffy cabin in the woods with my dragon companion who was both gorgeous and sweet? Where were my big boobed elven goddesses granting me wishes? Where were my stupidly overpowered abilities? Where the hell was what I was expecting?

Lies, I thought venomously. All lies. Of course, I reasoned, I’d already complained many times and it seemed foolish to complain once again, but I felt I was within my rights as a former citizen of Korea to bitch and moan impotently. Especially given as how I seemed to have a better than even possibility of dying once again. Maybe permanently this time. Also I could only assume I’d already been fired from the job I’d spent months trying to get. I felt very much like wallowing in misery as we scaled the servant’s stairs.

Of course, I reasoned as I stared at first Zelaeryn and then Sayuri’s naked butts as they ascended ahead of me, it wasn’t all bad. I glanced over at Carrisyn and grinned lasciviously. It wasn’t bad at all, really. I mean, I had even had sex with a real-life person! That was a win in my book. Had I been thinking clearly, maybe I could have actually gotten myself a harem and turned this whole rotten experience into a delightful harem master Isekai rather than the shit show it had been. I wasn’t sure how to go about gathering a harem as in the anime the women just seemed to flock to the main characters like the swallows to Capistrano. I wasn’t sure how to go about achieving that level of flocking.

I know I could most likely not pull the maneuver off in my body back in Korea. My idea of working out had been walking to the kitchen for popcorn and standing in the busses in the morning because it was too full to sit so, I had developed a little bit of fluff. Not too much! Just enough to get me through a couple of long winter nights without eating if I had to. But in Ashvallen’s body when I first appeared, there was a real possibility. Not now, of course. I looked like a ghost at this point. But before…who knew?

However, just because I happened to be surrounded by very attractive women did not, I didn’t believe, mean I had a harem of my own. I wasn’t sure what the rules were and what numbers were necessary to constitute a harem, but I would think anything over 4 altogether would be necessary. 3 seemed more like a love triangle which happened in manga all the time. You didn’t often hear about love squares. Or, I supposed, rectangles depending on height differential. I felt comfortable with the harem threshold being 4, including the main participant.

I really hoped Meri wasn’t listening in on my thoughts or she would know her grand daughters’ body had been taken over by a pervert and a moron. Not necessarily in that order. Still, I thought as we topped the stairs and crowded together on a landing before a plain wooden door, I hadn’t thought about getting ground to a pulp in a few minutes, so the distraction seemed worthwhile.

“Through this door and to the right is the entrance to the throne room,” Sascha informed us. “It’s time to end my father’s grip on this land.”

“Wait! Wait! Wait!” I interrupted with a harsh whisper. “Aren’t we going to do some kind of cheer?” The others stared back at me blankly. “Like a rousing ‘Go Team Ashvallen!’ type of cheer?” The silence was deafening. “To…get us hyped or…no?”

“Who said it was team Ashvallen?” Carrisyn sniffed.

“Sayuri will cheer!” Saying whispered excitedly, clapping her hands in delight.

“No,” Carrisyn snapped, “you won’t.” Sayuri sagged in disappointment.

“Guess there’s no I in team, but that me sure as fuck is capitalized,” I muttered sullenly as Sascha opened the door and stepped into the hallway beyond.

“Go team friend Ashvallen!” Sayuri whispered excitedly, tapping her fingers together happily.

“Thank you, Sayuri,” I grinned at her and petted her head. I resolved to spend an entire day doing nothing but rubbing Sayuri’s ears if we survived this. They were so soft as to most likely be illegal in at least half the countries of the world.

“Focus,” Carrisyn growled.

“I am focused,” I shot back testily. “Don’t be mean! I’m struggling with existential shit here.”

The hallway was wide and well-apportioned as befitted the long walk to an audience with royalty. Rich tapestries in silver and sapphire hung from the walls and a silver and sapphire rug ran down the center of the stone floor toward the huge set of double doors at the far end of the hall. I followed dutifully as we strode down the hallway, breaking off to the left slightly to flank Carrisyn as Alarice took up position to the right to flank Sacha with Zelaeryn leading the way and Sayuri and Lysabel bringing up the rear. With a deep breath as if to steel her nerves Sacha stepped past Zelaeryn and pushed the doors wide and strolled in, the rest of us following.

If the Prince’s throne room was opulent the king’s throne room was ridiculous. The room itself was well over 20 meters from the gilded floor to the silver and sapphire arched ceiling. Ten-meter-tall stained-glass windows depicting the king in truly heroic battles against terribly dramatic and dangerous-looking foes stretched along the east wall. Columns lined either side of a twenty-meter-wide carpet stretching the entire length of the room from the door we’d just entered from to the base of the raised golden throne some hundred meters away. I could make out the figure of the king as he sat on his throne, his blue and scarlet eyes burning brightly even from this distance.

We followed Sascha as she strolled down the carpet, looking surprisingly relaxed. As we drew closer, I could make the king out more clearly and I was, quite honestly, thoroughly intimidated. He was a bear of a man with a black beard streaked with silver and long flowing black hair beneath the simple golden circlet he had on his brow. His hands as they lay on the arms of his throne easily looked like they could crush the life out of someone without even trying. Even by himself I had no doubt he was quite a formidable foe and certainly not one a sane person would relish tangling with. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I supposed depending on one’s point of view, we had proven repeatedly that doing sane things was our strong suit.

“So,” the king’s deep, gravelly voice echoed off the stone walls, “my treacherous daughters have finally returned to my hall. I trust your journey went well.”

“We will end his abominous existence today, my young companion,” Meri breathed in my mind. I could feel her agitation and seething anger rushing through me, sending tingles down my arms and legs. Someone’s out for blood, I thought absently.

“You knew we’d come,” Sascha replied simply.

“You have come to finish me off the same way you killed your brother. Your own family,” Ancil Rhade shook his head in disappointment. He leaned backward slightly, crossing one leg over the other and peering at us from below his bushy brows. “I suppose it was inevitable either you or your brother would come to try to claim what you felt was yours.”

“This has nothing to do with ‘claiming what’s ours’. This has to do with stopping you. You’ve done enough harm,” Sascha’s body was relaxed, but her knuckles where she gripped her staff were white with tension. “For the elves and the other human kingdoms you’ve tried to grind into dust, we will end your reign.”

“Very dramatically said,” Ancil clapped his big hands together slowly, mockingly as his smoldering eyes stayed fixed on us. “You have long enjoyed the sheltering harbor of my patience and yet you’ve chosen to try your hand on the open waters of rebellion. Well, the choice is your own, of course. He raised one massive arm over his head and the doors behind the throne room burst open and a stream of armed soldiers and robed mages and priests flooded into the room, stretching from wall to wall directly behind the throne. A hundred if not more.

“Oh,” I sighed. “That seems unfair.”

“I will take no joy in watching you and your companions writhing in agony as you’re impaled in the city center,” the look in his eyes said that he would most likely take some pleasure from it. I noticed movement from Carrisyn and glanced over in time to see her pull a small white object from one of her inner pockets that looked like a marble. She flicked the ball into the air, the lights from the chandeliers glinted off it dully as it flew through the air as if in slow motion.

A moment later it struck the ground and shattered, an explosion of white light burst through the hall, and I flung my arm over my eyes to try to protect them. I blinked back the hovering white aftereffects to find a tall blonde woman in deep scarlet robes standing placidly where the marble had burst apart.

“It’s good to see you again, brother,” the woman curtsied slightly.

“Eliana,” Ancil growled.

“It’s good you remember me,” the woman answered, her long blonde hair fell about her shoulders and down her back in waves. “After all, I helped create you.”

“Oh, please let this not be some weird sister mother thing,” I thought grimly.

“Hush!” Meri giggled in my mind. “I’m trying to listen.”

“Oh,” I thought apologetically. “Sorry about that.”