WorldCrafter - Building My Underground Kingdom-Chapter 185 - Ben Desire
185: Ben Desire
185: Ben Desire
Barrek’s voice was rough.
“Back in Emberreach,” he said quietly.
“Wife.
Two little ones.
I send what I can, but between the bribes and the taxes…”
He didn’t finish.
He didn’t have to, Ben already know what he mean.
“That’s why I’m here,” Barrek added, straightening his back as though to steel himself.
“If I can get even a sliver of something in Krahal-Zir… maybe I can pull ’em out.
Get ’em someplace better.”
Ben didn’t look at him directly, but he nodded once.
Someplace better In this kingdom?
That was more than a dream, without revolution nothing will happen.
The city’s blackened walls rose into view beyond the curve of the road, half-swallowed in steam from the lava channels that ran beneath.
Ben stepped off the ramp first.
The wooden planks groaned underfoot, half-charred from some riot or reckless smuggler’s flame spill.
Behind him, Barrek climbed down, squinting at the ash-crusted stonework.
Ben turned toward the corner of the dock where a trio of familiar guards lingered.
It was the group he’d beaten senseless not long ago.
“Oi!” Ben barked, waving one hand.
“You three.”
They flinched as one.
One tried to stand straighter, his armor still dented from their last encounter.
“C-City Lord Tzarek, sir!”
“Guard the boat,” Ben said, smirking as he stepped past them.
“Touch anything that isn’t yours and I’ll make sure your ribs remember why I’m in charge.”
The three saluted so fast one nearly toppled forward.
“Y-Yes, sir!
Understood!”
Barrek raised an eyebrow, but didn’t give any comment.
He could conclude something happened, and the new city lord teach them a lesson.
But this kind of violence?
He already familiat with it.
It’s already great they’re not outright killed as none of them where nephirid.
As they enter the city, the streets began to reveal their scar.
Rubble-lined alleys.
Houses hollowed by fire or looted and left open to the dust.
People, mostly non-Nephirid, shuffled past quickly, heads down, eyes cautious.
A few glanced up, recognized Ben’s face, and ducked away into doorways or shadows.
They passed the main square.
The statue at its center had been torn down, the base scorched and fractured.
Scavengers picked at the shattered plinth like crows on bone.
Barrek’s eyes narrowed as he took in the broken streets and the scorched remains of what once might’ve been a prosperous city.
But more than the ruin, it was the people that caught his attention, the way they shrank from Ben’s gaze, the tension in their steps.
He leaned closer as they passed another collapsed home.
“Forgive the question, but… what happened here?”
“What you think?”
Barrek frowned.
“A riot?”
Ben shook his head.
“A rebellion.
The old reagent, nobles, city bureaucrats, they took what they could, emptied the vaults, enslaved who they didn’t kill, and ran.
What you see now is the aftermath of their greed.”
Barrek blinked, stunned.
“They abandoned their own city?”
“They never care.” Ben’s voice was clipped.
“They only see this city as mean to a end, a tool to suck dry for their own benefit.”
The Dwarrow’s lips pressed into a thin line.
He rubbed the back of his neck, beads of sweat forming despite the cooler lava breeze.
“…so the same like mine.”
“One group sits on mountains of wealth, so much gold, silver, and privilege that they could burn it for warmth and never feel the loss,” Ben said, his voice calm but razor-sharp.
“Lavish halls, private guards, endless feasts, and when they grow bored of luxury, they find new ways to bleed the people beneath them.
Not because they need more… but because they can’t stand the thought of others rise up becoming their competitor.”
He gestured to the cracked stone beneath their feet, the buildings still smoking in the distance.
“And then there’s the other group.
Working themselves raw just to eat.
Hauling stone, risking death in the tunnels.
They break their backs to keep the city running, and still the ones above find a way to tax them more.
Cut their pay.
Steal their families.”
He turned to look at Barrek.
“Don’t you think they’re parasite Barrek?”
Barrek nodded slowly, but in the back of his mind, a heavy weight began to settle.
He thought he’d stepped into a jackpot, a bold new lord with power behind him.
But this?
This was worse than he expected.
‘Dammit… Did I just throw everything away?’ he thought, his gaze flicking toward the quiet crowds and the shattered buildings.
He’d gambled everything on this, his entire wealth, every favor he could pull just to get here before the other traders .
And now… what if Ben had nothing to pay with?
Barrek’s throat felt dry.
He kept his expression neutral, but the unease twisted deep.
Would this “City Lord” seize his goods?
Call it compensation?
Tax it in the name of rebuilding?
But Ben didn’t even look at him.
He wasn’t thinking about Barrek, or the cargo, or the cost.
His jaw clenched.
Old thoughts stirred like a nightmare.
Memories of his old life.
Dragging his body out of bed every morning before the sun rose.
Deadlines, debts, and drowning in bills.
Building towers he’d never live in for men who’d never look at him.
Bosses who barked and scolded, while sipping drinks in air-conditioned rooms.
Parasites in suits.
The real problem didn’t come from the labor.
It came from the lie.
The lie that if you just worked hard enough, you’d get somewhere.
That one day the system would reward you.
That fairness was real.
But fairness didn’t pay rent.
He remembered the elections.
Smiling puppets on screens, promising change, justice, reform.
Promising to drain swamps while building new ones behind closed doors.
Leaders more interested in their golf swings and stock portfolios than the people choking in the streets below.
Democracy, they called it.
A theater of choice where all the actors played for the same master.
Ben exhaled slowly, gaze sweeping across the ruined buildings of Krahal-Zir.
A desire start to form in his heart, now that he’s a leader he don’t want to be like that.
Ben stood at the edge of the cracked stone road, watching the city breathe beneath ruin.
Vendors sat behind empty stalls, pretending they had wares.
In the lower merchant row, a trio of Dwarrow women had set up makeshift tables along a sunken walkway, using overturned crates and salvaged fabric.
One sold dry moss cakes wrapped in charcloth, another offered sharpened nails, screws, and melted slag reshaped into nails or hinges.
The third, a grey bearded matron was bartering family heirlooms for sacks of mushroom.
They spoke little, but their eyes were sharp, scanning each passerby.
Children chased each other across the rubble-strewn alleys, mostly mixed bloods, a Draknir boy with scaled arms, a Shavralk girl with dust-colored skin and stubby horns.
One of them wore a paper crown.
Another wielded a stick like a sword, shouting names from old war songs.
They laughed like royalty playing in ashes.
Their joy wasn’t ignorance, it was defiance.
To the north, Shavralk laborers cleared debris.
They worked in silence.
A massive one, twice Ben’s size, lifted what had once been part of a roof beam, dragging it toward a central pile.
His partner followed behind, placing small spheres underneath.
They didn’t just clear ruins.
They were laying a foundation for new building.
At the far edge of the square, along the lava canal, the Draknir were gathering.
They leaned over fractured stonework, working to repair the cracked flow regulators.
One blew a puff of steam through his nostrils and muttered something in his hissing dialect.
Another, younger and missing an ear, laughed back and passed him a glowing obsidian rod.
Together, they reignited one of the secondary vents with a small controlled flare.
Around them, steam curled into the air like breath returning to stone lungs.
Ben watched it all, silent.
Not one of them knew what came next.
Not one of them looked to the future with certainty.
But still they moved.
Still they worked.
Still they lived.
And whether they agree to it or not, they were his now.
These weren’t numbers on a page.
They weren’t statistics to move around like pieces on a board.
They were his people now.
Ben clenched his fists.
‘I will not be like those parasite, I have the mean, and the strength.’
He could still feel the heat of his old life at his back, of governments that saw their people as wallets, not lives.
Of promises that always cracked beneath the weight of greed.
But this wasn’t that world.
Here, he wasn’t some cog in a rusted machine.
Here, he could do something.
If leadership meant anything, it had to mean change.
Real change.
Not for praise.
Not for glory.
But so that no one else had to look their children in the eye and lie that tomorrow would be better, knowing it wouldn’t.
Knowing there’s never any light at the end of the tunnel.
He took a slow breath, let it settle deep.
If he was going to build a kingdom…
Then it would be one where these people didn’t just survive.
They would rise.
