Holy Emperor Novels & Stories

I've founded a company that doesn't encourage overtime shifts, pays everyone on time, and doesn't impose performance evaluations on the employees at all. My employees are free to bring their pets to work. All of their applications for leave will be approved immediately. Heck, they have unlimited leave as well. I originally think that my employees will like me a lot thanks to these benefits. But I never expect my company to be featured on the Internet one day. It even gets labeled as a sweatshop, much to my shock. "Guys, I can't believe I got hired by a sweatshop company. The boss is extremely stingy who pays us low wages while pretending to be a nice guy this whole time!" My company is then shown in the video. The narrator's voice has been edited, so I can't tell whose voice it is. As I stare at the tranquil office scene in real-time, I find myself falling into deep thought. Meanwhile, the video is still going on. "Let me tell you how evil my boss is. Every other company tends to distribute gifts during the holidays that like food and luxury items. But my boss doesn't bother giving us any of the gifts. He uses the excuse that our company is a very flexible and humane company, so we don't do any gift-giving at all. As if! "He also claims that we don't have to undergo any performance evaluation. In other words, that means our wages aren't transparent at all. Maybe he's been secretly docking our pay behind our backs this whole time! "Being paid thousands of dollars for this job is already bad enough! To make things worse, I'm forced to listen to my boss boast about everything in the world! Do I look like I have that much time on my hands to listen to him blabber? I'm not his mom, for crying out loud!" Everyone in the comment section doesn't hesitate to lash out at me. "Holy shit, I can't believe such soul-sucking companies still exist! Poor you!" "Why are you still staying in that stupid company? Hurry up and leave! If I were you, I wouldn't be able to stay there for a minute longer!" "That's right! That boss of yours is an evil capitalist! He deserves to die!"

I was an ordinary mortal girl who lived at the foot of Mount Olympus. Caelum, King of the Gods, descended from the heavens for me once, transforming himself into a shower of gold. He took me to the peak of Olympus over every other god’s objection. He built a shrine on the mountain that belonged to me alone, every god on Olympus knew the same truth: I was the only mortal love of Caelum’s endless life. Then I gave birth to our daughter, Nia. The Fates declared her a cursed child whose existence would bring disaster to the gods, and Nia and I were sent back down to the small cottage at the foot of the mountain. Seraphina, Goddess of Flame, said she could help cleanse Nia of the curse, and with Caelum’s quiet consent she came every month and burned my daughter with divine fire. Nia screamed under that fire, sobbing for me . I ran into the temple to beg Caelum to stop it, and I found him in bed with Seraphina. The pure, holy Goddess of Flame was moaning beneath him. They threw me into the depths of Tartarus, where Seraphina handed me over to the Erinyes to be torn apart day after day. When Nia turned five, they finally let me out, but by then my Nia had been burned to ash. The day I was gathering her ashes, the message stone in my room suddenly lit up, and a projection flickered out of it: Caelum, as he had been five years ago. His eyes were full of joy and anticipation, and his voice was so gentle it almost made me believe time had folded back on itself. “Sweetheart, is it a boy or a girl? Did our child inherit my power?” In the projection his expression shifted, and the smile froze on his face. That was when the door of my room was pushed open, and the present-day Caelum, five years older than the man in the stone, strode inside. I turned the message stone around so the Caelum from five years ago could see Nia’s urn with his own eyes. “It’s a girl,” I said. “But she didn’t live long enough to inherit your power. She was burned to ash.”