The walk to the so-called High Strategy Chamber was entirely too serious. Especially when it was obviously the map room. I mean, there was a map in it. That’s the defining feature. End of discussion.

  I gnced sideways at Lo, who strode ahead with military precision, papers tucked under her arm like it contained the secrets to world domination. Maybe it did. Still, I didn’t voice my objection to the room’s name. She’d earned her fantasies of grandeur, working herself ragged, organizing a kingdom from scratch.

  I could let her win this one. For now.

  When we arrived, I had to admit… the room had leveled up. The old folding tables and hastily scrawled diagrams were gone.

  Now a massive, polished oak table stretched through the heart of the room, big enough to seat twenty people per side. It gleamed under the flickering light of magic mps, and at its center was a huge, detailed map of East Klippe and nds around us.

  I paused at the doorway, taken aback, but quickly composed myself. The room was full, familiar faces, both pyers and NPC turning toward me in expectation. Soldiers, guild leaders, mages… each wore different expressions.

  Some were curious, others weary, a few nervous. All waiting for me. Oopsie.

  I put on a smile like armor and stepped inside. “Good morning!” My voice was cheerful, if not a bit too loud. I made my way to a chair at the head of the table and sank into it. The murmur of returned greetings flowed around the room, low and polite.

  And there it was, the map. In the map room. Glorious, overwhelming, full of tiny fgs marking troop positions. My eyes darted to it, impressed, while a rogue thought popped into my head: Where the hell are they getting these high-res updates? Magic? A really persistent cartographer?

  Lo sat beside me, the true ruler of this chaos, and spped down a stack of papers like a gauntlet. Without missing a beat, she slid me a neatly folded agenda. I blinked at it, already pnning my protest, this was a game, we didn’t need—

  Her gre could have frozen va near the not-a-dragon. Right. Not a game. Probably. I sighed, unfolding the agenda like a doomed noble unrolling a decree.

  First item: Disaster Yesterday.

  My heart stopped for a second. She couldn’t possibly know about the maison demolition, right? Right?? No. There’s no way. My mind raced until it screeched to a halt on the other disaster: the demon fight.

  I cleared my throat, buying time. “Uhm…” Stay cool, Charlie. Think like a princess. Think like someone who didn’t help demolish a probably illegal mansion while drunk.

  The room was quiet as I pushed my chair back with a soft scrape and rose to my feet. “What happened yesterday was a disaster,” I began.

  Frozna scoffed, loud enough for a few people to shift uncomfortably. She didn’t bother to raise her hand or lower her volume. “What do you mean, disaster? We won.” Her voice was slicing through the air like one of her arrows. She lounged back, arms crossed, as if daring me to argue.

  I didn’t flinch. “Please, wait until I finish. I’ll give you each your word, alright?” My voice was firm, the edge of command threading through the words. There was a pause, then nods, reluctant, but they came.

  I paced a half-step along the table, fingers trailing over the polished wood, eyes scanning the room. “What I mean is that what I did yesterday, leaving the wall, parleying in the open field, was foolish. Yes, Irwen could waltz wherever she pleased. But that was an exception. She’s that strong. The walls wouldn’t stop her.”

  I raised my hand as the faces turned sour, frowns pulling tight, and a murmur of disapproval rippled across the map room. “I know, I know. It worked out. But it was chaos. Total chaos. No direction. No structure. Everyone running wild, fighting solo or only with their guild. That’s not strategy, that’s barely survival.”

  A flicker of discomfort darted through the gathered guild leaders. I flicked my gaze at the parchment in my hand. Second agenda item: Mi’s suggestion.

  “What we need is a military touch,” I continued. “Because, and trust me on this, if we pulled the same stunt tomorrow? Casualty rate would be one hundred percent.”

  NightSwallow gave a soft scoff, just loud enough to be heard. I caught her lips moving, the words like a sneer, “I’d run.”

  She probably would. I chose to ignore her, for now.

  I took a slow breath and locked eyes with Mi, sitting like a statue of iron and discipline. “That’s why I want to ask Imperial Doan-Commander Mi to walk us through how to structure our defense.”

  I stepped back toward my seat, but not before delivering the hook. “Before you hear him out, remember this: with his help, with real tactics, not only will we survive, but we’ll level faster, and with better rewards.” I motioned toward Mi with an open hand, then sank back into my chair.

  It was boring.

  Like, mind-numbingly, soul-snappingly boring. Mi, in all his stiff, imperial glory, pranced around the map room like it was his personal stage, orchestrating our defense with the fir of a man who hadn’t smiled in a decade. He outlined some quasi-imperial doan structure, full of titles and redundancies and, Twirs help us, paperwork, but at least, at least, everyone would now know what they were supposed to do.

  Even the notoriously unmanageable solo pyers, like Frozna or Scamantha, were given leadership roles, wrangling small packs of independent pyers into something resembling order.

  Herding cats, but with sharper weapons and less patience.

  Mi droned on, gesturing to scrolls and diagrams as if they were holy relics. He devised a structure so complicated on paper it looked like the family tree of a particurly inbred noble house, but in practice? It was surprisingly simple. Each person had no more than five under them, and only one superior to report to.

  Clean. Efficient. Almost too logical.

  The best part? Even if half the army went to respawn, the chain of command wouldn’t colpse like a badly built tavern. There were redundancies upon redundancies. Mi had thought of everything.

  Guilds were given autonomy over their own ranks, though they were slotted into roles within the overall structure, no micro-managing from Mi there. Probably because even he didn’t want to tangle with the chaos of guild politics.

  Across the table, Lo was glowing like a star about to go supernova. That smile of hers, the one she wore when everything was going exactly according to pn, never left her lips. She didn’t need to pay attention to Mi. She was already three steps ahead.

  When she wasn’t looking, I snuck a peek at her papers.

  Oh.

  She wasn’t just pnning for the battle.

  No, Lo was drafting a kingdom. In her meticulous, beautiful handwriting, guild leaders were slotted in as nobles, complete with titles and nds and personal armies. The pyers under us? The crown’s standing force, loyal to the throne.

  Her throne, not mine, if the world made any sense. She should be the queen, not me. I leaned back in my chair, watching her quietly scribble and shuffle papers, completely in her element, commanding the future with ink and ambition.

  The meeting had sted hours.

  Hours of bickering, side-eyeing, and resistance so thick I could’ve cut it with a relic-tier dagger. Pyers, shockingly, didn’t like being told what to do. Who would’ve guessed?

  Everyone, actually.

  It was a game to them. Fun. Freedom. Escapism. Not remembering five tiers of structure and who reports to whom when the arrows start flying.

  It was spiraling, fast.

  I leaned back in my chair, eyes twitching from the sheer stupidity of it all, and muttered under my breath, “Hey, system… is it possible for you to just handle the structure?”

  There was a pause.

  [Request received… Permission granted.]

  [Congratutions! You created Charlie’s Doan!]

  “Uhm…” I blinked at the glowing text in front of me and then gnced around the table. Lo’s radiant smile was a distant memory, long since repced by the weary thousand-yard stare of someone who’s been arguing with Frozna about whether wolves can technically serve in command positions.

  People were still arguing. Loudly. Endlessly. I needed an ally, one that wasn’t trying to bite someone. “Send invite to Lo as…” I shrugged, “some kind manager?”

  [Invite sent! Position: some kind manager.]

  Lo flinched like someone had just poked her with broken whiskey bottle.

  Her eyes locked on the invisible box floating in front of her, lips parted in disbelief. “Lady…? That’s! How?” She was frozen, staring at the title. “Why am I some kind manager?!”

  “I thought it’d help, and hey, it kinda worked?” I offered my most innocent smile. “No clue how, though.”

  She gred, but then she sighed, shoulders slumping as she started fiddling with the system interface. “Not surprised. I would hug you… but I’m busy.” Her fingers blurred over the air as she muttered to herself, “...setting it up, fixing this mess…”

  Didn’t take long before blessed silence fell over the room. One by one, the invisible boxes popped up for everyone, assigning them ranks, roles, and titles, automated, system-enforced, and non-negotiable.

  Exactly how pyers liked it.

  I stood up, brushing imaginary dust off my clothes, and cleared my throat. “As you can see, you don’t need to remember anything anymore.” I pointed casually at one pyer whose tag had already updated.

  [Leader Second-Css | Position 74E | TechiLma]

  “See? Problem solved.” I grinned and flopped back into my seat, limbs spread like a queen whose kingdom finally started running itself. Lo was still working, her expression a mix of concentration and quiet confusion, my favorite Lo blend.

  I let my eyes close, just for a second, thinking I could rest now.

  A hand touched my shoulder, light, hesitant. I opened one eye. Fty. “Thank you,” he said simply, and left.

  “Huh?” I blinked, rubbing my eyes. The room was nearly empty. Pyers filed out with actual order, and I checked the time... I had dozed off for thirty minutes. Another oopsie.

  The corridor outside the Map Room was mercifully quiet, the only sound of our footsteps tapping against the polished stone floor. Lo’s arms were full of papers, again, but there was a lightness to her stride that hadn’t been there this morning.

  “Lady, that’s all we need to do before the battle,” she said with an actual smile, a rare and radiant thing that made me blink in surprise. “Thank you for suffering with me.”

  “You did everything,” I waved a hand dismissively, walking beside her. “You should be the princess, not me.”

  We rounded the corner toward the office when I spotted a familiar figure. “Kit!” I called out, grinning wide as I caught sight of Katherine, my favorite chaotic streamer. “Thanks for not making a fuss about the strategy! I owe you one.”

  She shrugged, her perfect eyes glinting beneath her tousled hair. “Borin’. Fight’s good tho.” A sly smile curved her lips, and I swear my heart did a tiny flip.

  Just a tiny one.

  “You wanna do something now? Rimelion or IRL?” I asked, hopeful. A drink, a distraction, anything to keep my mind from spiraling back into that murky soul-crisis. Especially with her. “We’ve got time to kill until tomorrow…”

  Kit hesitated, her smile faltering. “Nope, ‘rents pnned somethin’…” Her voice trailed off as she inhaled, and for a flicker of a second, I saw something. Pain, maybe, or just resignation. “Borin’. Runnin’ te, actually! Ta!” And then she bolted toward the… toilet? To log off.

  I blinked after her, confused, and turned to Lo to gossip, naturally, but Lo was already gncing away, her cheeks tinged pink, clearly embarrassed. It took me a beat before I remembered… right. “I don’t want to rule, Lady,” she breathed.

  “Nooo, you just work really hard to make it a reality,” I chuckled as we neared our office door, opening it for her with a pyful flourish. “You’re amazing, Lo. In what you do. You’ve got the brains and the looks of a princess. I can ask Irwen to give you some of her titles. She has enough.” I waggled my eyebrows. “If you want one…?”

  “No!” She shook her head with violent force, nearly sending her stack of papers flying. “No ruling for me. My dream is to be the one helping to rule, not to rule.”

  Only then did she step inside, mumbling something about paperwork.

  “I suck at it,” I muttered under my breath with a sigh, trailing in after her. Except we weren’t alone. “Alma?” I blinked.

  My personal guard stood near the window, arms behind her back, posture so stiff she might’ve been mistaken for one of the statues lining the hallway. “What are you… nevermind, I wanted to talk to you anyway.”

  “You will learn, Lady,” Lo added matter-of-factly from her desk, already sorting papers into organized chaos. She didn’t disagree about my ck of ruling skills though. Ouch.

  I sighed again and turned to Alma. “So, about the battle. When I called for and you didn’t listen to my order…”