What a hassle...

After clearing the bodies like sweeping dead leaves after a storm, Nana Toki hurried back to Mida Village and laid out the situation to the villagers.

She held back her guesses like a bird tucking its wings, and only told them not to stray far from the village these few days, so panic wouldn’t spread like wildfire.

After she spoke with the village chief, point by point like pebbles stacked on a cairn, Nana returned to her house to plan what came next.

That scripted tragedy was done, the stage swept clean, yet Mida Village’s future now felt like mist over a river—shifting, unknowable.

To weather those shifting currents, she had to tighten the village’s defenses like binding reed mats before a flood.

Not everyone needed to become strong; at least they should carry knives of their own, umbrellas against sudden rain.

What if one day she wasn’t here, and enemies slipped in like night wind and stole the hearth-fire? Game over, ashes in the brazier.

In the original, Mida Village was just a nameless hamlet by the roadside, a stepping-stone for the Protagonist Lord on his way to the kingdom.

Now she was alive, the villagers were alive, and the plot ahead was a field of tall grass hiding whatever snakes it pleased.

She couldn’t guard this place for life like a lantern left burning at a grave; she still had to find Nesting Phoenix.

But.

Speaking of Nesting Phoenix—hey, you damned System, you still haven’t told me where she is, have you?

The System had promised to reveal Nesting Phoenix’s whereabouts, yet it kept silent like a drum held under water.

System: "..." No chance to say it yet...

Extra plot is loading...

[Ding! Hidden Quest Triggered: "The Borderless Realm"]

[Quest: Unite Hedon Kingdom and Marl Kingdom with Ling’er Long.]

Wait, isn’t Marl Kingdom our Hedon Kingdom’s mortal enemy, like oil glaring at water?

Nana Toki read the hidden quest hanging before her like a banner in the wind, and her mood curdled: You want me to unify both nations? As a banished, down-and-out princess—the so-called village flower of Mida—wearing sackcloth?

System: "This System fails to see where you look down-and-out."

Nana Toki: "..."

Unifying a world doesn’t happen because someone snaps their fingers; this isn’t a game where menus obey like tame birds.

There are only two great nations under this sky: Hedon, where she now lived, and its neighbor, Marl.

Since antiquity they’ve been flint and steel—sparks everywhere—because Hedon exalts elemental magic, while Marl worships raw force like iron praising the hammer.

Each side scorns the other’s path, so the road between them is a river of grudges and old bones.

They’ve fought for years, fields turned to mud and smoke, just short of either king dropping a doomsday bomb out of spite.

In the original, they drew closer only once: the Protagonist Lord married Marl’s second princess, then cut out the rot in Marl’s court during an uprising, so the two cooled their swords.

That was merely reconciliation, a thawed frost on the eaves—not unification.

And Marl’s king loves solving problems with the blade, as if questions were knots to be sliced, not untied.

He holds reverence for Demon Hand zealots who charge like storms from the old myths, brutal and bright.

The Demon Hand’s rampage is a red comet everyone can see; its bearers break stone, and their bodies harden like ironwood.

In Marl, some war-mad fanatics call the Demon Hand a gift from a War God carved from thunder, and hail the Four Heavenly Kings as that god’s apostles.

As for Hedoners who lose control of that power and demonize, the people of Marl say they trespassed on the War God’s taboo—so let them fall like withered branches.

To Nana, that kingdom is sick to the root; if even the Protagonist Lord couldn’t cure it, sending her alone would be like feeding herself to wolves.

There’s still Nesting Phoenix, the System chimed in, a pin dropped in a silent hall; you won’t be going alone, Host.

Nana Toki: "..."

She wasn’t sure if the System was teasing, but in the extra plot, Nesting Phoenix appeared as Marl’s grand princess—an omen fluttering in black feathers.

In the original, the biggest thorn between Marl and Hedon was that very grand princess.

Ling’er Long grew up in Marl, brainwashed like stone carved drip by drip: the strong rely on force; only the weak study magic.

She believed only the weak choose magic to guard themselves, like hiding behind paper screens in a gale.

Toward Hedon’s magi, she felt a bone-deep scorn, cold as iron and just as stubborn.

In Marl’s court she often urged attacks on Hedon, and in the shadows she indulged an obsession with Demon Hand, studying it like a moth courting flame.

Later, when Marl’s civil strife erupted, Ling’er Long was infected by a Demon Hand with a will of its own, a parasite whispering under the skin.

While the Protagonist Lord fought Marl’s crisis, she secretly marshaled troops and marched on Hedon, a night tide racing the moon.

In the end, before the Demon Hand fully swallowed her mind, the Protagonist Lord rushed back and killed her, swift as cutting a red thread.

Nana read that extra plot and almost spat blood, anger pounding like a drum.

Insane!

Couldn’t that idiot Nesting Phoenix pick a body with normal plot-lines, a tree that doesn’t lean into lightning?

She always chooses roles that butt heads with the world’s male or female leads, and then leaves Nana to sweep up shards like a servant.

Nana wanted to go back to the first world where she met Nesting Phoenix and wring her neck like a chicken.

Maybe then her own liver wouldn’t ache like a bruised fruit.

Anyway.

Going to Marl to find Nesting Phoenix would have to wait, like sealing a letter instead of sending it.

Even though Hedon’s border and Marl’s edge were only a few days’ walk from this village, a road through the reeds.

But.

Mida Village was still a problem; if she left, she couldn’t say the village wouldn’t be lanterns in the wind.

Which circled back to her earlier thought—she had to strengthen the village’s safety like raising palisades before wolves sniffed the gate.

But how?

Her head throbbed like a hive; she was a princess exiled to the ends of Hedon, a kite with its string cut—no power, no sway.

Upgrading an entire village’s security without leaving would be like trying to dam a river with bare arms.

She thought and thought, pebbles tossed into a well; aside from bringing in capable people, there was no other road.

Raising the villagers’ combat prowess was a pipe dream; too many elders and children, and the grown men still had to farm like oxen in spring mud.

Even if she trained them, they wouldn’t refuse—these people had spines like bamboo—but it would eat time like a slow fire.

This is the early act of the world’s plot; she must stack her strength high before the main storm breaks like summer thunder.

She refused to pour herself into long, low-yield work; that’s sowing seeds in winter.

Tsk. Where could she hook a few house-sitters with good arms and clean blades?

“Sister Bingtang! New adventurers outside!” a child’s voice rang, bright as a bell on a breeze.

“Big brother says they’re heading to the royal capital!” another chimed in, feet pattering like sparrows.

Huh?

Adventurers bound for the capital, here in Mida Village?

Her worry-clouded face lifted; realization struck like sunlight through bamboo.

Speak of the devil, and his shadow’s already at the door.

She threw open her window; from afar, like a painting in a frame, she saw four little brats escorting a boy toward her place.

He wasn’t exactly handsome, but his features were steady and pleasing, like a clean stream over brown stones.

The kids’ enthusiasm overwhelmed him like a summer swarm; he wore an awkward, youthful smile that only that age can manage.

He’s the Protagonist Lord, sure as a drumbeat.

She flung open the door and dashed down the stairs; circling him, she looked him up and down like a rare beast behind glass.

Incredible, incredible!

He was straight out of a hot-blooded adventure tale, a banner snapping in the wind.

“Wh-what is it?” The Protagonist Lord felt her blazing gaze like sunlight on bare skin and flinched a step, words catching in his throat.

His eyes snagged on the blood-red arm under her sleeve, a coil of wine-red ivy. “That is…”

“Demon Hand. Never seen one?” Nana waved her right arm before him like a red flag. “Do you think I’m a demon-god cultist you need to slay?”

“N-no… nothing like that.”

“Lorin-哥哥, Sister Bingtang’s a princess from the kingdom,” a kid piped up, eyes bright as coins.

“Eh?”

The boy—Lorin—blinked, surprise rippling across his face like wind across barley; the woman in plain hemp clothes was a princess of Hedon?

“Sister Bingtang, Lorin came from another village,” another child declared, puffed with pride like a little rooster. “He’s going to the capital to join the Hero and seal the Demon God! He even cut down bandits!”

“But Lorin-哥哥’s kinda bad with directions,” a third added, giggling like water. “He lost his map, so he came to our village to ask the way.”

Hemmed in by small bodies, Lorin scratched his cheek, sheepish as a cat caught stealing dried fish.

“I’m not that bad, I just… lost the map.”

“And, Your Highness…” Lorin’s gaze slid back to Nana’s right arm, a question perched like a bird on his tongue.

“Just call me Bingtang,” she said; the word ‘princess’ raised goosebumps like frost along her skin.

Do all Protagonist Lords close distance with unguarded women so easily, like fire sidling up to dry grass?

What a halo.

System: "..." He’s just sociable, Host; must you?

“Ah, sorry. Then, Miss Bingtang—your arm…”

“It’s a Demon Hand.”

Lorin: "..." Of course it’s a Demon Hand!

What he wanted to ask was why a princess had one, and why she stood in this out-of-the-way place like a lamp at a crossroads.

“I caught it while visiting people sick with a demon blight,” Nana said, seeing his silence like rain before it falls, and answered cleanly before he spoke again.

“To keep me from causing panic, the king exiled me here, like setting a lantern out where fewer eyes gather.”