The Genius Mage Was Reincarnated Into A Swordsman Family - Chapter 323

Chapter 323: The Traitor King’s Design

The cold clarity in Greed’s mental voice made my skin crawl. Gone was the bombastic rage, the theatrical fury I’d grown accustomed to. What remained was something far worse—a dry, surgical precision that spoke of millennia spent cataloging every betrayal, every humiliation, every strategic failure.

The black sword had stopped vibrating. My hand felt empty despite gripping the hilt. The phantom ache where the rune used to burn was already fading, but the dread filling my chest only intensified.

‘I’m listening,’ I projected, forcing the words through my mental fatigue.

I didn’t sit. Couldn’t. Instead, I leaned against a cracked slab of wall, using the rough stone to ground myself. The exhaustion from pouring every last reserve of my arcane energy into awakening Greed still clung to my limbs, but something about Greed’s tone—that awful, patient certainty—kept every nerve alert.

{Good,} Greed replied. {Because what I’m about to tell you will recontextualize your entire existence. But first, we have a procedural matter.}

The temperature in the chamber seemed to drop.

{I need access to your Sea of Consciousness. Full, unrestricted access. Now.}

My heart stopped. “Absolutely not.”

The words came out as both thought and whisper. Full access to my mind? To the deepest parts of my soul? After Greed had just absorbed a piece of itself, growing exponentially more powerful?

{Your refusal is noted and irrelevant,} Greed continued with that same unnerving calm. {If I wanted to consume your soul, I would have done so the moment that rune broke. But consumption would only give me fragmented, useless data—ensuring Arkadius’s plan succeeds without my intervention. That outcome is strategically unacceptable.}

‘Arkadius?’ The name sent ice through my veins.

{The one who engineered all of this. The one who made you.} Greed’s presence pressed against my mental barriers like a blade against skin. {He meticulously erased his own traces within you. I must find the signature of that erasure. The scan will take seconds. Drop your defenses. Now.}

Every instinct screamed to refuse. But the certainty in Greed’s voice, the implication that something was already inside me, waiting—

I lowered my mental walls.

The intrusion was immediate and absolute.

Greed’s consciousness didn’t explode into my mind—it flooded in like freezing water, surgical and thorough, moving through my memories with terrifying efficiency. I was a passenger in my own head, watching helplessly as something ancient and merciless rifled through my life, searching for—

There.

Even I felt it. The voids in my memory. Not gaps from forgotten childhood moments or hazy recollections, but clean, precise deletions. Surgical removals where something vital had been extracted with impossible skill.

Three seconds. That’s all it took.

{Confirmation achieved.} Greed’s presence retracted like a blade being withdrawn. {You are the optimized anchor. Worse—you’re laden with preemptive security measures I can barely detect. This complicates everything.}

Before I could respond, a deep THRUM resonated from the obsidian blade.

The air itself seemed to congeal. A massive dome of oppressive black energy erupted outward, sealing the chamber in darkness so complete it felt like being buried alive. The walls, the ceiling, the very space between us—all of it disappeared beneath that lightless barrier.

‘What the hell is this?’ My mental voice cracked despite my best efforts.

{Nullification energy,} Greed stated flatly. {The foundational matter of the Dark Primordial. This dome ensures our conversation remains undetected by the thing you’re carrying.}

My blood turned to ice. ‘The thing I’m—’

{Listen carefully, runt. You are currently housing a dormant consciousness. Not a fragment. Not an echo. The complete, intact Ego of the Celestial Arkadius—the Traitor King himself. As you grow stronger, as you integrate more power, the threshold for his awakening decreases. Should he detect external interference before the proper moment, premature activation could occur.}

The sword pulsed once, like a heartbeat.

{And if that happens, Klaus? Your consciousness will be overwritten. Erased. You’ll simply cease to exist, and Arkadius will pilot your body like a puppet wearing your face.}

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. The revelation was too massive, too horrifying.

{You need context,} Greed continued, its tone shifting into something almost professorial—a lecturer recounting a catastrophe they’d witnessed firsthand. {So let me tell you about the being who engineered your eventual demise.}

*

*

*

{In the beginning, there was only Darkness. Then the Primordial emerged—light from void, consciousness from nothing. It grew. It battled the Dark. It created the first universe.}

Greed’s words painted images in my mind—vast, incomprehensible struggles across dimensions I couldn’t name.

{That first universe collapsed. Structural failure. So the Primordial created this one, and this time it was smarter. It wove fragments of itself into everything—every star, every stone, every living thing. That’s why this reality is so maddeningly durable. It’s literally built from the Primordial’s own essence.}

{But durability wasn’t enough. The Dark Primordial—the rival consciousness from the endless void—was building its own universe. A realm of pure Nullification, designed to conquer and erase everything the Primordial had made. So the Celestials were created: guardians of light and order, structured defenders against the coming invasion.}

{Everything should have been perfect. Except the Primordial realized it had a fatal flaw.}

‘What flaw?’ I managed.

{Emotion.} The word dripped with contempt. {It cared too much. It got excited watching mortals wage war. It felt pride when its creations achieved greatness. It experienced joy and sorrow and rage. For a Supreme Being locked in an eternal cosmic struggle, such feelings were vulnerabilities. Weaknesses the Dark Primordial could exploit.}

{So it made a choice. It tore out its own emotions.}

I felt sick.

{Pride. Greed. Envy. Wrath. Lust. Gluttony. Sloth. Seven core emotions, ripped from the Primordial’s essence and given form. Because they were born from the absolute core of existence itself, they manifested as perfect, pure power. The Primordial called them the Arkdieu—a self-referential name, as if they were meant to be its spiritual heirs.}

{We didn’t see ourselves as heirs. We saw ourselves as the improvement.}

For the first time, I heard genuine emotion in Greed’s voice—bitter, ancient pride.

{We were the raw ambition it discarded. The drive it no longer wanted. And we instantly sought to impose our will on its universe. But we were too powerful. Our mere presence in the physical realm caused structural damage to reality itself. The Celestials were called in to contain us.}

{The Primordial, now emotionless and easily bored, made another arrogant decision. It sealed us in a prison realm called Vatheron and gave the keys to the seven strongest Celestials. Problem solved. Universe stable. Perfect cosmic order maintained.}

‘But something went wrong.’ I already knew the answer.

{Not something. Someone. Arkadius.}

{Arkadius was not born a Celestial. He was human—from Xyros, the Primordial’s most beloved world. Born into poverty and pain, he clawed his way up through sheer, unbreakable will. He became a warrior. A conqueror. A King. And he did it all without ever once praying to the Primordial or begging for divine intervention.}

Greed’s tone shifted, carrying a weight I’d never heard before. Almost… respect.

{That impressed the Primordial more than anything in its existence. True free will. True self-made power. So it offered Arkadius transcendence—the chance to shed his mortal shell and become a Celestial, one of the guardians, one of the seven key-holders of Vatheron.}

{Arkadius accepted. He took the power, ascended, and became one of the strongest beings in creation.}

{But he never stopped being the King of Xyros.}

The temperature dropped further. The Nullification dome seemed to press closer.

{He looked at the Primordial—the detached, emotionless observer—and saw waste. A Supreme Being so afraid of its own feelings that it mutilated itself. He looked at the Celestials—dutiful, structured, boring—and saw limitations. Beings so bound by cosmic law they could never adapt, never truly protect the universe from what was coming.}

{And then he looked at us. The Arkdieu. Locked in Vatheron, raging against our prison, embodying raw, untamed power.}

{He saw potential.}

My grip on the sword tightened involuntarily.

{Arkadius was the most brilliant thing the Primordial ever created. He understood that the universe’s rigid order—the very thing that made it stable—also made it brittle. Inflexible. Vulnerable to the chaos of the Dark Primordial’s invasion. He realized that to truly defend creation, you couldn’t rely on structure alone.}

{You needed chaos. Controlled chaos. Directed by a singular will.}

‘His will,’ I whispered.

{His will,} Greed confirmed. {Arkadius didn’t just want to protect the universe. He wanted to remake it. To replace the Primordial’s Order with a new paradigm—one where chaos and order existed in perfect balance, guided by a king strong enough to wield both.}

{He wanted to become the new god.}

{The Primordial, lacking emotions, was pathetically easy to deceive. It had given the Celestials a simple directive: maintain order, but don’t interfere with mortal free will unless absolutely necessary. Arkadius exploited that hands-off policy masterfully.}

{He came to Vatheron. Not as a jailer, but as a conspirator.}

I could feel Greed’s anger building now, cold and precise.

{He met with each of the seven major Arkdieu fragments separately. He offered us deals—carefully tailored to our individual natures. He promised Gluttony eternal sustenance. He promised Lust dominion over sensation itself. He promised Wrath the ability to unmake anything that offended it.}

{And he promised me control over all material accumulation in existence.}

‘He played you.’ The realization was obvious, but saying it felt necessary.

{He used us,} Greed snarled. {He devised the host system—the method to free us from Vatheron without triggering the Primordial’s security measures. His theory was elegant: if an Arkdieu possessed a sufficiently powerful mortal host, the act of entering the physical realm would register as an individual’s choice, not a divine invasion. The causality laws would see it as mortal action, bypassing every cosmic safeguard.}

{Arkadius didn’t just open our prison. He gave us the keys to invade, the blueprint for conquest, and the justification to call it ‘free will.’ Then he shattered his own Celestial form and engineered the entire system we now use.}

The pieces were falling into place, each one more horrifying than the last.

‘Why?’ My voice was barely a whisper. ‘Why destroy himself?’

{Because,} Greed said with terrible finality, {he needed to become the anchor. The nucleus around which all the fragments would eventually gather. He needed to be reborn not as a Celestial bound by law, but as something new. Something that could hold both Order and Chaos within a single form.}

{He needed to become you.}

The silence stretched for an eternity.

{You are not Klaus who happens to carry Arkdieu power,} Greed continued, each word a hammer blow. {You ARE Arkadius. The Traitor King, fragmented and reincarnated. Your entire existence is the culmination of his plan.}

{The Arkdieu fragments—Pride, Greed, Wrath, all of us—we’re the power source. The chaos. The raw ambition. But you, Klaus… you’re the consciousness. The ego. The guiding intelligence meant to eventually reintegrate all the fragments and achieve what Arkadius always wanted: perfect fusion of Order and Chaos. A being strong enough to challenge the Primordial itself.}

‘No.’ The word came out weak, pathetic. ‘I’m not—I’m myself. I have my own memories, my own—’

{Do you?} Greed’s question cut like a blade. {Those clean voids I found in your mind? That wasn’t damage. That was surgical deletion. Arkadius erased his own operational history from within you. He left you the personality matrix, the emotional responses, the illusion of being “Klaus”—but the core identity, the King’s consciousness, is dormant. Waiting.}

{Every fragment you collect brings more power. Every increase in power lowers the threshold. And when you hit critical mass—when enough Arkdieu essence has been integrated—the dormant Ego will activate. Arkadius will wake up. And you?}

The sword pulsed once more.

{You’ll simply cease to exist. Your consciousness will be overwritten, erased, deleted like those memories I found. Arkadius will boot up in your body, wearing your face, wielding the combined power of seven Arkdieu fragments and Celestial essence. The Traitor King will stand in your place, and “Klaus” will be nothing but a forgotten subroutine in his reclaimed mind.}

I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. The revelation had torn through every certainty I’d built my identity upon.

{You are Arkadius’s masterpiece,} Greed finished, almost gentle now. {His final weapon. The Primordial’s greatest failure. Every step you’ve taken, every fragment you’ve gathered, every victory you’ve won—all of it brings his return closer.}

{So here’s your choice, runt. The only real choice you’ve ever had: Do you fight the destiny he engineered for you? Do you find a way to break his design and forge your own path? Or do you accept your purpose and become the god-killing weapon he created?}

The Nullification dome pulsed, waiting.

{Because make no mistake—the moment you hit that threshold, Klaus dies and Arkadius returns. The countdown has already begun.}

I stared at the black sword in my hand, feeling the weight of an ancient king’s ambition pressing down on my soul.

And for the first time in my life, I had absolutely no idea what to do.