Crackle crackle, crackle crackle...

Because the curtains were drawn, the bedroom was dim even in broad daylight. Add in premium materials, top-notch craftsmanship, and a custom soundproof barrier, and the king’s bedroom was definitely one of the easiest places in the world to fall asleep.

At least, that was what His Majesty had always believed—until today.

“So it was just my imagination, right?” His Majesty, who was currently sleeping with the blanket pulled over his head in a very un-royal way, mumbled half-awake. With a bedroom this good, how could there possibly be weird noises?

The next second, a shrill, piercing alarm ripped through the room and shredded the king’s comforting delusion.

Yeah. To prevent His Majesty from sleeping so soundly that he missed any emergencies outside, they’d added not only a soundproof barrier but also an alarm system, specifically designed to drag him out of dreamland in the most brutal way possible.

This was too much. The blizzard in the north right after New Year had kept him running around for days with barely any sleep. Now that he finally had time to catch up during the day, he still had to be disturbed? That was just tragic.

“Whose bright idea was this system, anyway…”

He crawled out of bed very unwillingly, rubbing his eyes and dressing with practiced motions, then casually shut off the blaring alarm. The thing did more than just make noise; otherwise it wouldn’t deserve to be called “brutal.”

He’d tried once to ignore it and stay in bed after it went off. Five seconds later, the system had punished him. As for the exact process… His Majesty really didn’t want to remember.

He’d been way too young when he agreed to have this thing installed.

“Guards! What the hell is going on out—what the—?”

The moment he opened the door, His Majesty was swallowed by a wall of noise from all directions. Acrid gunpowder stung his nose, and bright red paper scraps were floating everywhere through the usually spotless palace halls.

Wtf? The palace is under attack? And what the hell are all these red shreds flying around? The king was completely lost.

“Your Majesty, please resolve this matter as quickly as possible.” The head maid, Delua, who had been waiting by the door, curtseyed to Granzon.

“Leave it to me. Guards! Soldiers! Find out which bastard did this, right now! If I don’t cut him down with a single swing today, I’ll take his last name!”

His Majesty had serious morning temper, so the culprit had better start praying to the gods.

The title of War King wasn’t just for show. It was built on real blood and real corpses.

“Um… Your Majesty, please go stop Her Highness Tiran. If this keeps up and the citizens outside see it, they’ll think the palace is under a terrorist attack.”

The captain of the guards rushed over, looking wronged and helpless. That was the Silver War Maiden, the final boss herself. In this palace, aside from the queen, even Granzon couldn’t control her.

“…Ahem, well, uh, nice weather today.”

“Your Majesty, you just said—”

“What did I say! Is there a problem with sharing the same last name as my own daughter? Whatever my last name is, hers is the same, isn’t it?!”

Good thing he hadn’t blurted out something like “if I don’t beat her till she calls me daddy I’ll eat shit in public,” or his old face would’ve been done for.

Under the guard captain’s speechless stare and Delua’s familiar, helpless gaze, His Majesty’s figure disappeared around the corridor corner.

…

“Aya, Aya, a little lower! It’s a couplet, it has to be symmetrical!”

“Yeah, yeah, Mimi, hold that spot, don’t move. Once Aya’s in position we’ll fix it!”

In front of the ground-floor doors of the princess’s tower, Aya and Mimi were carefully adjusting a long strip of red paper on the left doorframe under Princess Tiran’s command, trying to get it just right.

“So… daughter, what are you doing?”

“Oh, hey, old man. Perfect timing. Once Aya and the others finish the couplets, have them help me put up the ‘Fu’ characters too. Forget the whole palace, but at least every door in this tower needs one.”

Tiran glanced back at Granzon, who looked like he had something to say but couldn’t, and waved him over happily like she’d just spotted the perfect extra pair of hands.

Granzon stared at the thick stack of square red papers in her hand, each with a big character for “Fu” on it. His mind went blank again. All that red confetti on the way here, plus these couplets and whatever else—what even were these things?

“Your Majesty, these are probably New Year customs from the Eastern Continent,” Delua reminded him at some point, having appeared without a sound.

“Bull. New Year was almost a month ago. You think I’m stupid?” The king, still groggy from just waking up, glared and snapped back, only to be met with Delua’s gentle, pitying look—like you would give a kid who’d grown up in the wild.

“Your Majesty, the traditional calendar in the East isn’t the same as ours. Their New Year is usually a month after ours, sometimes even later.” She smiled. “Also, please mind your language.”

Uh… How did I not know that before? Wait, that’s not on me, right? I’m not from the East, and I’ve never celebrated their New Year.

“They say that on this day, a monster called ‘Nian’ attacks humans, but it fears the color red and loud noises. So people started wearing red and setting off firecrackers.” Delua continued her little lecture.

Now that she mentioned it, Tiran and Aya really were wearing red dresses.

But these couplets and Fu characters…

“Hey, daughter, where did you get all this stuff?” Granzon really didn’t think anyone in the capital would sell these things. And the writing on them was honestly ugly. Even without understanding Eastern characters, you could feel the kind of ugly that transcended cultural boundaries.

“Obviously it’s your daughter’s master artwork!” Tiran proudly drew a flourish in the air.

Of course it was… Granzon flipped through the stack of Fu papers in his hand and found it harder and harder to look. The first few could barely be called neat; at least they looked like characters. But later—whether she’d run low on ink or just lost patience—the writing devolved into full-on arcane scribbles.

Honestly… wouldn’t it be better to hire an Eastern calligraphy master? They were royalty; it wasn’t like they couldn’t afford it.

“Hey, old man, did you just accidentally say your true feelings out loud?”

His ear suddenly twinged—Tiran was smiling sweetly as she pinched his earlobe.

“Uh, how about you pretend you didn’t hear that?”

…

Aya was panicking. He genuinely felt his dragon body’s safety was under threat. Not his life, but his chastity.

“Um… Your Majesty, I totally get that you and Her Majesty the Queen have been giving each other the cold shoulder and haven’t, uh, done that in almost a month. But aren’t there lots of cute maids around you? You really don’t have to come after me, right? And, I mean, I’m a boy. That’s… something you’d care about, isn’t it?”

Cornered against the wall by the king, Aya hugged his own shoulders and shook.

“That fight with my wife was because of you in the first place…” Granzon’s face went dark—then he realized he’d just heard something very alarming.

“Anyway—” Granzon cleared his throat. “I didn’t come here today for that kind of nonsense.”

“So you really are here to do me?!” Aya’s knees gave out and he collapsed to the floor.

“I just said I’m not! Why is your head full of that stuff?!”

“I’m ashamed to say… I learned it all from Her Highness the Silver War Maiden…”

Granzon let out a long sigh and got straight to the point. “I told my daughter her handwriting was ugly and made her mad. Since you’re her maid, I was hoping you could think of a way to get her to stop being angry with me.”

“Whew, you should’ve led with that. I thought I was really about to get…” Aya patted his chest, like someone who’d just cheated death.

“I did lead with that! You’re the one who kept derailing the conversation!” Granzon clutched his chest, feeling his blood pressure spike. He was only in his thirties, for crying out loud.

“Just need Tiran to stop being mad? That’s easy. Get her a limited-edition manga or a collector’s figure set. Works every time.” Aya gave him a big thumbs-up.

“Manga? Figures? You mean like the stuff in her little room?”

Granzon was aware his daughter liked those things, but were they really that effective?

Still half-skeptical, he let Aya change his clothes and sneak him out of the palace and into the city streets.

“That trading market you mentioned… something like that really exists in the capital? And why have my court spies never reported anything about it?”

“No idea. Maybe they thought it wasn’t important?” Aya suddenly felt nervous. If bringing Granzon here got the place shut down, Tiran would probably kill him.

So you were the little bastard who led the enemy to our base?

But at this point there was no backing out. If they turned around now, Granzon would only get more suspicious.

With his pass, Aya had no trouble going in. For Granzon, it wasn’t so simple. There was no advanced communication tech in this era, but this was still the royal capital. Plenty of people had seen the War King on the battlefield. If someone recognized him, it’d be an instant explosion of news.

Granzon, however, solved it more easily than Aya imagined: bribe plus mask. Rich man’s “do whatever I want” buff, fully activated.

“So this is the doujin market? And they even have manga sales…” Even Granzon couldn’t help sighing when he stepped into the vast underground hall. As king, he’d never noticed this hidden side of his own city. It was honestly a bit embarrassing.

“Um, please follow me this way.”

Aya led the way, stiff and on edge, frantically rummaging through his memory for which section was relatively clean, then dragged His Majesty straight toward it.

If Granzon saw anything really awful, this whole market might get wiped off the map on the spot.

“Hey, what’s this?”

On the way, Granzon casually picked up a manga from a stall. Aya glanced at the cover and nearly had his soul scared out of his body.

“X Father”?!

He’d forgotten they had to pass some dangerous zones to get over there. And His Majesty, with his protagonist-tier luck, had casually grabbed the most nuclear volume in reach.

Under Aya’s about-to-cough-blood expression, the king opened the door to a brand new world.

Five minutes later, the book closed with a soft thump.

“Boss, how much for this? I’ll take the whole series.”

Aya: ????????????????

After that, it was like someone had flipped a weird switch inside him. His Majesty went full “set my soul free” and started playing his way through the entire underground event.

Maybe his work stress really was that bad, Aya thought.

And he really would try anything.

Before he knew it, Aya had been dragged up onto a stage by Granzon. He still had no idea what was going on. It looked like some kind of quiz game with prizes? Besides Aya and the masked king, there were six or seven other participants lined up.

“Welcome to today’s ‘Who Can Stay Standing’ game! The last contestant standing will receive a full signed collector’s set of works by Master Lengshang!”

Oh, Aya had heard of this game. But judging from the stage floor, it didn’t look like the kind that drops out from under you, so this “who can stay standing”…

“Everyone, take a look! This is a P77 model magic gun, produced in the Kingdom of Sainz. By adjusting the mana, it can fire shots of varying power… But don’t worry, we’ll be strictly limiting the output. Since this event started, um… we’ve barely had anyone die.”

Host, that guilty tone is not reassuring!

“Ahem, anyway, let’s welcome today’s volunteer gunner—the Masked Rider Princess, who wishes to remain anonymous!”

Huh?

Aya and Granzon both stared at the silver-haired girl in a knight mask hefting the magic gun below the stage. Then they looked at each other.

They both clearly saw the same word in the other’s eyes: shit.

“Now then, first question,” the host began.

“In your opinion, what determines a woman’s value?”

“Her boobs!” His Majesty shouted, lightning-fast—based on extensive research from his own wife.

Bang!

His Majesty, down and out, not getting back up.

“Of course it’s those long legs! Prpr!”

Bang!

“Black stockings!”

Bang!

“White stockings!”

Bang!

“Bare feet!”

Bang!

“...An independent personality and a noble soul?”

“Miss Knight Princess, that’s the textbook answ—?”

“Oh.”

Bang!

...

“...” Watching the people beside her answer one by one and get shot down like convicts in a firing line, Aya started trembling again, full-on scared.jpg.

Think, think! What is the right answer?!

“Th-then...” Aya raised her hand, voice shaking.

“Flat is justice...”

...

And so, after today’s match, only one contestant remained after the first round and advanced.