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  The stifling heat inside the tent pressed down on Alexander like a smothering cloak, every breath thick with canvas dust, acrid sweat, and the faint metallic bite of polished steel. Overhead, mana lamps sputtered with unstable light, their restless glow casting shadows across towers of despair—monuments that sealed more wars than hunger, death, or disease ever could.

  Bureaucracy. Looming stacks of ledgers and reports. Petty and insidious.

  “I’m broke.” Alexander muttered, pacing the cramped room, his white tail lashing in irritation. Each strike of his steel-capped boots rattled the floorboards, echoing his frustration.

  His mother’s sudden visit had forced Alexander to slam the brakes on his reckless spending, dismantling every gold-siphoning scheme—whether disguised as donations, loans, or aid. The entire afternoon had collapsed into a single meeting where, for once, he was expected to solve problems with economic discipline—an almost impossible demand for him. Until then, he could only pace, agitated, although he understood he had to discover an alternative.

  “B. R. O. K. E!” he snapped, spelling it out with sharp gestures, as if emphasis alone could summon the gold he lacked.

  Her presence was no mystery—she was here to scrutinize whether he could truly carry out the punishment: to lead a successful campaign under a strangled budget. Alliances and social maneuvering might grant him more resources, but this trial was meant to shape heirs in the harshest lessons of command—warfare, responsibility, and, worst of all, the dreaded art of budgeting.

  “Let’s assume you are not—” Zaphiro began smoothly from his seat across the tent, his voice measured and infuriatingly calm, the tone that made Alexander itch to hurl the nearest ledger at his head.

  “I don’t need to assume—I am!” Alexander snapped, voice filled with frustration. The weight of it all pressed down—this latest quarrel stacked atop countless other problems, turning the entire campaign into an administrative nightmare.

  Zaphiro urged him to carry on as before, willing to gamble, but Alexander refused. The risk of discovery had grown too high, and adjustments were necessary. If caught, the entire operation could collapse, leaving his record of merits void. To secure approval as heir, he would then be forced to serve in another campaign under someone else’s command—an outcome he was determined to avoid at all costs.

  “Alex, please—calm down.” Zaphiro offered a nervous smile, raising a placating hand. “We can always petition for more aid. I’m certain—”

  “Yeah, let them help,” Alexander cut in again, raking his hands through his hair, still unable to calm himself. “I’m sure they’d be thrilled to hash it out with Mom.”

  Normally, arguments could be made. Not this time. Definitely not. The entire campaign was punishment for his brilliant idea of seizing a strip of land nobody wanted, nobody needed, and nobody would even notice if it sank into the sea, besides the dungeon, whose value remained unproven. The entire operation was basically an exercise in mocking Alexander’s dumbest decisions and trying to beat a little common sense into him… a game he would lose.

  “Oh hey, Mom, how about you stop being such a pain and just leave—maybe come back later? I haven’t siphoned enough gold into my operation yet.” He threw himself into the mock performance, voice pitched in exaggerated dread. “Oh? And why are you carrying that big stick wrapped in deadly [Energy]—” He clutched at his throat and made a choking sound, turning toward Zaphiro. “Brilliant plan! Why not skip the torture and stab me straight through the heart instead?”

  Zaphiro narrowed his eyes at Alexander, unimpressed by the mockery. “You look stressed. Maybe stop being such an idiot and think for once?”

  Alexander’s smile widened, the vein on his forehead throbbing as anger pulsed through him. “I’m the idiot? Whose brilliant daddy decided to dump a refugee camp on our border, promising to some fucking tree that we would not touch them? Definitely not me.”

  Zaphiro’s smile sharpened as he flicked his floppy carbunclekin ear aside. “Oh? Did I just hear someone badmouth your household’s master? Would be a shame if word of that slipped out~”

  “Yeah, what a shame if that person’s blood suddenly decorated my tent walls,” Alexander muttered, mana flaring around his hand until it glowed a deep, angry red. “Carbuncle red number four—a suitable tone.”

  They locked eyes in a brief staring contest before Zaphiro rolled his eyes. “You’re not Scarlet; don’t even pretend,” he said with a dismissive wave. “If it were her, I’d already be paste on the floor. But you?” He crossed one leg over the other, smiling mockingly. “You’re all noise—emotional, like a barking pup. Not dangerous.”

  After a moment of contemplation, mostly daydreaming about lopping off Zaphiro’s head, Alexander let his mana fizzle out with an annoyed click of his tongue. “I hate you.” Zaphiro started to answer, but Alexander cut him off. “And no, there’s no discussion about more leeway… not while I can still feel Mom’s disappointment drilling into me.” His shoulders sagged. “I hate myself.”

  Zaphiro chuckled, waving off the outburst. “I suppose I should be glad my future knight isn’t eager to redecorate the tent with my blood.” Sheets of parchment floated into place before him, forming a shifting wall of figures and notes. “Let’s look for another option. Your strength has never been brute force, Alex—it’s administration.”

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  Every aspiring knight in Moorgrel—lords and ladies alike—were forced to endure this ordeal. Some waltzed through alone as walking disasters; others relied on assassinations or deceit, but most followed the same weary path: scrape together the cheapest sellswords and pray the enemy was even more foolish.

  “You do realize that the whole thing about quills and swords was never meant to be taken literally, right?”

  Alexander’s strength was both dull and peculiar: he was, to a surprising degree, a natural bureaucrat. At every turn he bent regulations, slipped through loopholes, and operated just inside the rules while keeping half a step beyond them. And he was good at it.

  “Oh? But is that really the truth?” The sheets of paper drifted aside, revealing his smugly serious expression. “You’re still young, and leading armies is mostly about experience. Perhaps I should help you out here, my puppyish friend~”

  “Educate me,” after feeling mentally tired, Alexander finally surrendered to frustration. He collapsed into a wooden chair with exaggerated despair; the sturdy frame creaked under the impact. From his coat pocket, he produced his ever?present ‘candy etui’—the silver case as inseparable from him as his perpetually disheveled hair, his wild fur, and that manic glint of determination etched into his features.

  He bit down on one of the tar?black confections, the air around his lips shimmering with toxic wisps. The burn seared his tongue—a reminder of his strange tolerance for poisons that would kill anyone else. Zaphiro flinched back, hand covering his nose as the poisonous cloud drifted over. Even after months of friendship, Alexander’s casual indulgence in lethal sweets still unsettled him.

  Zaphiro leaned back on his stool, balancing on two legs while his fingers idly combed through the fur of his large, fluffy tail—a nervous habit that always emerged when he drifted into explanations. “Tell me,” he began carefully, his chromatic eyes fixed on Alexander’s weary posture, “if higher [Conjecture] truly meant absolute power, why would armies exist at all? Why fill the ranks with low-tier soldiers who can barely bring down a squirrel in two strikes?”

  Alexander answered without hesitation. “Economy and infrastructure. If beings of enormous strength have to scavenge for food and resources themselves, they lose the time needed to train or protect anyone. Simple.”

  He had learned this lesson early: his household held power because they collected taxes and provided support in return—a pragmatic exchange—resources had to come from somewhere, and if his family wasted time chasing them themselves, power would erode. That was why Persephone feared losing capable subjects in the Heart?Fire region, pushing her to seek his favor and secure whatever backing her household could manage.

  “Wrong subject, my young friend.” Zaphiro’s fingers absentmindedly braided his tail as he pressed the point again. “I’m asking about the military specifically, not governance as a whole.”

  Alexander raised an eyebrow, crossing one leg over the other as his demeanor shifted. “Same thing, just in a different coat, no? We still need to… yeah, but why exactly?”

  Alexander considered listing the usual necessities—outposts, supply chains, logistics—but on Orbis, all of it seemed almost redundant. A single powerful individual could level a village with a wave of their hand, making armies feel unnecessary. True, he was already working on training mages and eventually developing mana weapons to spread that strength, but for now he relied on common sense carried over from Earth and told to lead an army, so he would.

  “I see the gears turning.” Zaphiro rocked his chair forward, his smile carrying a hint of mockery. “Yes, some individuals need training and support, but entire armies? Hundreds, thousands? Look at the Spirit Beasts—phoenixes, dragons, gryphons—each unimaginably strong. And yet, despite all their power and ambition, do any of them truly rule?”

  Alexander recalled the map. In the far northwest lay the region reserved for Spirit Beasts, but a closer look showed it fractured into thousands of ever?shifting territories. It wasn’t left alone for lack of desire to conquer, but because the continent was already locked in constant wars—making such an undertaking possible in theory, yet utterly foolish in practice.

  “An individual may kill hundreds, even thousands of low?tier combatants—but what about tens of thousands?” Zaphiro paused, unbraiding his tail with absent care. His tone eased into something almost casual, though his eyes remained sharp. “Remember your oh?so?gentle grandmother, carving through a territory alone and slaughtering hundreds at a time?”

  Alexander remembered the tale all too well—a grim story of how she drowned an entire village in the blood of a fallen army, earning her the names Slaughterer and Nightmare. “Didn’t she have to retreat because she pushed too far and stumbled into another enemy’s territory?” he asked, his tone uncertain, since the story seemed to undermine Zaphiro’s point—after all, she had acted alone.

  “Oh, is she spinning it that way now? How inventive.” Zaphiro chuckled, eyes glinting with mockery. “Not quite. After her first massacre—well, after several—every farmer, villager, and merchant armed themselves with whatever they had, chasing her for weeks until she was cornered in another territory. My father had to intervene and punish her madness.” His smile widened. “If thousands of ordinary commoners can drive a monster like that into a corner, imagine what a coordinated army can do. Those beings may slaughter pup after pup, father after father, mother after mother—but they do not have endless stamina. They do not have boundless willpower. And above all, they have no loyalty. A tyrant’s strength is no steadier than the roll of dice.”

  In short, power was never absolute. Even the strongest could be overwhelmed once enough opponents banded together. No one had unlimited [Energy]; a single mistake could wound them, and repeated mistakes could kill. Against sheer numbers, even at great cost, an army would eventually prevail—doing nothing only guaranteed defeat.

  “Makes sense,” Alexander smirked at Zaphiro. “So in short, you’re saying someone has to run the army’s books and ledgers—and that’s where my talents come in.”

  Zaphiro rose from his seat, a proud smile tugging at his lips. “Exactly—now you understand—”

  Alexander cut in with a mock?serious tone. “So clearly, I’m the greatest treasure you’ve got. Without me, you’d all be tripping over your own boots, running around like headless chickens.” He spread his arms wide as if declaring divine truth, grinning to break the tension.

  Zaphiro burst out laughing, shaking his head. “Listen to you.” He stepped over and ruffled Alexander’s hair with deliberate mockery. “Careful now—don’t let that oversized ego of yours topple the tent.”

  Alexander drew a breath, ready to dive back into the dreaded subject of budgets—only for chaos to cut him off. A frantic squirrel bolted into the tent, with Maurice right behind him, pale and tense, and Yvonne O. Nine?Fire, her spear gripped white?knuckled in both hands.

  “Mr. Alexander!” Ludwig, the nature-dweller squirrel, gasped, his voice quivering as if he’d seen a ghost. Panting hard, he blurted, “Something bad is coming!”

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