Retracing the Twelve Paths

In a place like the Nightmare Domain, you did not have anyone you particularly cared about. You simply felt that the people there had it rather miserable, their average quality of life far too low.

Since it had appeared once in Twelve's simulation, you stepped in and required some people you had chosen to properly fulfill their duties, so that the common folk of that land could eat their fill and drink their fill. That was all.

Unfortunately, your demands had clearly not been high, yet someone still violated them—and violated them severely.

The violator was one of the people you had chosen.

"Poor judge of character."

You entered a magnificent palace. Its exterior was coated in paint mixed with incomparably expensive extraordinary materials. Inside, the emperor drank the finest wine and ate the rarest delicacies.

There was nothing wrong with him doing so. As a Fifth Realm extraordinary being, he deserved such treatment. At times, you were a hundred times more extravagant than he was.

But too many people outside had starved to death. Slavery had appeared across this land, and many had been worked to death in endless labor, their bones mixed into the palace walls.

It had not been like this seventy-three years ago, when you came to inspect the place.

The moment he saw you appear, the emperor hurriedly threw aside those trifles, rushed before you, and knelt, crying out gratefully, "Benefactor!"

Yet he could not conceal the flicker of panic in his eyes.

You lifted him up. More than two hundred years ago, he had been an incomparably upright constable, a young man who had witnessed the hardships of the people and hated most those officials in uniform who did nothing. Now, he had rotted into this state.

"Not everyone can hold fast to their