Chapter Fifty-Eight: Crowned as King

After burning down the royal palace and consigning thousands to death in the flames, Attis seized upon this momentum. The following day, beneath the ruins, he compelled the nobles to swear fealty as he declared himself king.

Beneath a raised platform, the gathered crowd watched with solemn expressions as Attis, attended by servants, ascended to the dais. Draped in the royal robes of this world, he stood resplendent beneath a divine radiance, exuding a heroic and extraordinary air.

Behind him, priests and worshippers fell prostrate in fervent devotion, sensing the vast, oceanic power of divinity emanating from Attis, as though their god had awakened anew. Witnessing this scene, those harboring ulterior motives felt a chill in their hearts, a nameless pressure settling upon them.

Amid this heavy atmosphere, an elderly priest gazed at Attis before him, silently offering his prayers.

My god, you are the embodiment of all things,
You are the sovereign of nature,
You are the everlasting radiance...

And so, amid that dignified and sacred scene, with the priests’ prayers rising, Attis was crowned king.

“Attis! King Attis!” The masses devoted to the god of nature shouted his name with fervor, gazing upon his figure with fanatic awe.

As their jubilant cries rang out, a star shimmered faintly above Attis’s head, pulsing with a gentle violet aura, restless and eager. All around, a thread of destiny descended with mysterious power, coalescing into the vague outline of a tree—ethereal, as if lacking some essential element, unable yet to fully take shape.

Observing this manifestation of fortune, Attis nodded inwardly, then turned to an old man at his side.

The elder, clad in ceremonial garb and grave of mien, perceived Attis’s intent and unrolled a scroll of parchment: “By order of King Attis, the Duchy of Cecil shall henceforth be the Kingdom of Attis.”

“At once!” Instantly, all present bowed their heads in submission.

With this final act, a star burst to brilliant life within Attis’s fortune, drawing down strands of destiny that intertwined and transformed into a towering, verdant tree, traced with faint threads of violet, merging with the star above to form a pillar reaching to the heavens.

“So this is the embodiment of fate; it is no longer the image of a dragon.”

Attis sensed the ancient tree above him, pondering thus. The embodiment of fate was simply the true form that emerged when one’s fortune reached a certain height, shaped by the nature of the soul. In the ancient world of his past life, for instance, because emperors were called Sons of Heaven and True Dragons, their fortune would take the shape of a dragon.

Dragon or tree, the forms differed, but the essence remained the same.

With this in mind, Attis looked up at the sky. Seizing this moment, when the descent of destiny brought him closest to the world’s will, he channeled divine power. Golden eyes flickering with the light of divinity, his consciousness rose and began to probe the secrets of fate.

As his awareness delved deeper, the world below shifted before his senses.

Across the vast lands, currents of fortune emerged, each people venerating their ancestral gods, battling fiercely on the earth, their struggles sending up waves of black miasma. In the depths, dozens of starlike points glimmered across the realm; among them, several massive fragments of starshine stood out, threads of destiny cascading down and connecting with worldly fortunes, forming pillars to the heavens, locked in subtle contest.

Attis’s gaze turned to the center, where a colossal pillar towered, suffused with rich violet light, the destiny entwined about it so potent it suppressed all other pillars.

“So this is the royal court?” Sensing the undercurrent of enmity and rejection from the heavens, Attis mused quietly, then looked elsewhere.

There, closest to Attis, stood another pillar—though not as grand as the royal court’s, it radiated a dense violet aura, bearing a destiny several times stronger than Attis’s own.

Focusing his mind, Attis pressed deeper. In his senses, a scene unfolded:

Upon a vast plain, a once-magnificent city-state lay thoroughly overrun by invaders; inside, countless marauding soldiers plundered and killed, turning the city into a charnel house. Surrounded by knights, a domineering figure appeared—a middle-aged man in royal robes and a bronze crown, reeking of blood, laughing over the corpses at his feet, his power palpable.

Behind him stood an ancestral god clad in armor, growing ever more formidable with each conquest and slaughter.

As if sensing his scrutiny, the ancestral god glanced at Attis, a faint violet light flashing in his eyes—a surge of overwhelming majesty emanated from him.

“Hmph!”

Attis grunted, his consciousness forcibly ejected by a profound, world-backed might, returning him to the present.

“Your Majesty, are you well?” a nearby guard inquired, puzzled.

Attis shook his head, offering no explanation.

Having been crowned, Attis, as king, stripped the lands of his former enemies—the hostile lords and royal family—and granted the titles and surnames of baron to Nadil, Carter, and others.

Moreover, seizing the moment when the old nobility was weakened and the new had yet to rise, Attis revoked all rights of territorial autonomy from the realm’s nobles. Henceforth, they would hold hereditary lands but no independent authority over administration or recruitment.

Unsurprisingly, the nobility were deeply discontented, but after repeated blows, their power was so diminished they could no longer threaten Attis. Unlike the kings of city-states before him, Attis’s rule was founded upon the support of priests and worshippers devoted to the god of nature; he had no need to rely on the aristocracy and thus could act without regard for their objections.

Of course, this decree sparked fierce resistance, both overt and covert, from nearly every noble.

Attis’s response was direct and ruthless. Any noble who dared resist was crushed utterly; their families exterminated, lands confiscated, and a bloody example made of them.

Then, wielding the terror of these massacres, Attis dispatched priests throughout the domain to conscript soldiers from each lord’s villages.

This policy brought numerous benefits: it proclaimed his sovereignty, extended the new kingdom’s authority to the grassroots, and, by conscripting commoners, bound more families to the state, invisibly strengthening national cohesion.

Unlike the old levies, where feudal lords, holding autonomous power, conscripted men by brute force and demanded they supply their own arms and armor—leaving the people impoverished and resentful, often fleeing into the mountains at the first sign of a draft—Attis offered a new way.

Over the decade since Attis’s reincarnation, the faith of the god of nature had deeply permeated the northern city-states, especially among the poor, whose newfound devotion astonished even the southern missionaries. It was the support of these grassroots believers that had enabled Attis’s swift takeover of Cecil; now, as priests disseminated the royal edicts, the people welcomed them with open arms, as if greeting a liberating army with food and drink.

From the god’s perspective, unlike the self-styled noble-born, all mortals were equal, distinguished only by their piety. In this, the impoverished masses far outshone the nobles.

Attis’s decrees stipulated that any who served in his army would receive five acres of land; if they fell in battle, their families would be granted twenty acres. All equipment and provisions would be supplied by the state, and valor on the battlefield would be rewarded.

Such policies, though unremarkable to Attis, opened a new world for the common folk. In this land, peasants owned no property; they paid taxes to their lords and bore heavy costs to rent land, scraping by year after year, endlessly exploited.

Now, with these generous terms, and the summons of faith, applicants flooded in. Attis selected four thousand, training them with veteran soldiers as their core.

After taking the city of Cecil, Attis ordered the construction of temples, and, with ample priests and established believers, propagated the worship of the god of nature throughout the kingdom.

This strategy, in the hands of mortals, would have inevitably limited royal power and sparked a struggle between throne and altar; but as a god himself, worshipped by his followers, Attis had no such concerns.

Having done all this, Attis made no further moves—he simply drilled his troops in the city of Cecil, silently waiting for the next turn of fate.