I was feeling almost back to normal. Talking with my friends helped me forget about my 'condition' and settle my mind. With them, everything went smoothly; there was no reason to feel awkward or behave awkwardly.

  I knew there were other meetings scheduled after this one, but I didn’t want to rush. Was my life really going to be dictated by meetings and “official” talks—like being force-fed one soggy chunk after another, only for the results to disappear down the toilet of time? What the hell?

  Why couldn’t they make the right decisions themselves? Why did everything have to land on my desk?

  I let out a heavy sigh. I knew I wouldn’t have been happy with most of their decisions anyway, so...

  Drats. This problem had no solution, so why bother? Wouldn’t I be happier sleeping in my dungeon, sprawled on my belly atop my treasure, blissfully ignoring all these petty problems?

  I shrugged and forced my mind back to the meeting. What were we talking about again? Oh: money, food, and the coming winter.

  Later, once things had become a bit clearer, Tom left for a meeting with the miners, and Mike had some business to take care of with the castle staff. I chuckled, feeling a flicker of schadenfreude: so it wasn’t only my fate.

  Hew remained, because he still had that extra problem to torment me with—the Orc Kingdom bookkeeping drama—into which he had already dug far too deeply.

  “So, you’re saying the orc leaders just cash money for fictitious soldiers?” I asked, trying to shortcut my way to the core of it.

  He shook his head.

  “It’s not that simple or that straightforward,” he said, and with a resigned sigh I braced myself for a long explanation.

  I picked up the chopsticks again and grabbed a piece of jerky. I bit down, but the jerky fought back. The result was mixed: I managed to tear off part of it, but the rest shot out of the chopsticks and went flying. With a quick flick of my left hand, I snatched the runaway piece before it got too far.

  “Imagine you’re the captain of an orc company,” Hew began. “You’re responsible for a hundred orcs. They’re supposed to stay there for two years and train. But let’s say one of them has a problem—a death in the family, or something else. He asks for a few days, maybe a week. Would you refuse him? Of course not. Another one needs to help with the harvest—letting him go for a couple of weeks seems harmless. Someone’s house burns down and needs rebuilding, and so on. There are dozens of things that can happen, and plenty of reasons why they need to interrupt their service.”

  He sighed. “But if you try to handle all of that properly, it creates a mountain of paperwork. So captains often skip it. Everyone feels it’s easier that way.”

  I nodded slowly, chewing my jerky as he continued.

  “Most orcs do pay their dues through military service,” he said. “But a military at peace becomes lax. And orcs have always had… let’s say… a complicated relationship with discipline. So more and more orcs end up being ‘there’ only on paper, not in reality. Meanwhile, the barracks still need maintenance, and the weapons and armor too.”

  I managed to swallow my jerky enough to speak. “But aren’t they supposed to maintain the weapons and armor?”

  “Sure,” Hew said, “but if the soldiers aren’t actually present, someone else has to do it. And all of that costs money. As for what else is going on behind the scenes, well, it could be corruption, or it could just be bad administration. I can’t say for certain. Not until we conduct a proper audit.”

  I nodded with a weary sigh.

  “OK, OK, I see what you mean. You’re right. But why did you spend so much time digging into it? I’m not even sure I really want to take over the kingdom.”

  He shrugged.

  “Do you really want to let things crash and burn?” he asked, his brows rising almost high enough to meet his dirty brown hair. “I don’t think so. That’s not like you.”

  I lifted my gaze to meet his tired green eyes. New wrinkles had begun forming at his temples. I shook my head, then snorted, half aghast.

  “You’re right… but honestly, the thought did cross my mind.”

  I shook my head again. “You work too hard,” I said. “Take some time to relax—do some sport, go outside—instead of burying your nose in those ledgers all the time.”

  He chuckled.

  “Yes, Mom.”

  I huffed. I wasn’t going to let him run himself into the ground.

  “Look at Tom, he works hard, but he still knows how to enjoy life. You, on the other hand, somehow found extra work by checking the orc kingdom’s bookkeeping? Even Mike is more relaxed; he spends more time with Elenia and the Trewars.”

  He let out a soft huff.

  “The orcs didn’t mention any of this in the earlier meeting, did they? They only asked for more money from the treasury. But since the delegation had been waiting for you to wake up, I thought I’d prepare and gather more information. Once I figured out why they’d really come, I felt that, as your chief bean counter, simply listening to their demands wasn’t enough. So I did some digging. I talked to the less important members of the delegation and to a few soldiers. That’s how I got this information. As my mom used to say: if you’re going to do a job, do it properly.”

  I glanced at my chief bean counter and chuckled.

  “Ah, so now we finally know the villain who planted these ideas in your head. It wasn’t even your idea to double-check?”

  He rolled his eyes, then lifted his shoulders in a helpless shrug.

  “I like to do a proper job. I can’t rest unless I’m sure I’ve checked all the angles. It’s not only what my mom taught me, I also don’t want a repeat of a blunder I made once because I didn’t do things properly.”

  Hew, not doing a proper job?

  There was more hiding under that explanation. So I nudged 'gently'.

  “What happened?” I asked, giving him a sideways look.

  I half-expected him to dodge, but he must have been in a confessional mood. He pressed his lips together, then sighed.

  “Oh, well… it doesn’t matter if I tell you—you don’t know her anyway. Last spring, a cousin of mine, Theresa, stayed with us during her exam period. Second-degree cousin. A really sweet girl from the countryside. I liked her a lot, and we were starting to become good friends.

  “She was lovely and intelligent, but she’d had it rough. She lived in a kind of time capsule out there in her village, they didn’t even have internet. But Theresa was ambitious and wanted out. So she prepared for the exams in secret and came to stay with our family. She had to leave before the results were announced; the evaluation took nearly a week to get through all the test papers.”

  “After a week she called me to ask about the results. She had walked almost ten kilometers to the highway station just to find a place with a phone.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  “It didn’t take much effort to check. There were about five hundred candidates for one hundred forty-five spots. The list was arranged by score, so I skimmed through the admitted names—and there she was: Theresa Hernández-Condor, place one hundred twelve.

  “She’d made it. I told her, and she was so happy. We talked a bit more, but the connection was bad and she had to walk back home, so we hung up—but not before she promised we’d go out and celebrate when she arrived in autumn.

  “In summer, my family went to the seaside, and… I mostly forgot about her.” He paused. “It wasn’t that I was in love with her, or she with me. We just enjoyed each other’s company. But during the exam period she barely had time for anything except studying.

  “So when classes started in autumn, I went to the student housing to look for her. I asked at reception for her name and told them I was her cousin. It took a while before two girls came over, staring at me suspiciously. One of them claimed to be Theresa. It was… awkward. Painfully awkward. Eventually I realized what had happened: there were two girls with the same name. My cousin had failed the exam. The other girl was the one who’d passed.

  “Theresa Hernández-Condor. That’s not a common name. I’ve never met another girl with that name in my life. How could there have been two in such a small group of five hundred candidates?

  “She left home that summer. And I never heard from her again after that phone call.”

  He stayed silent for a few moments, then lifted his face to look at me. When our gazes met, he sighed.

  “Oh, well. A silly little story with a giant fuck-up… That’s me.”

  I shook my head, unable to find the right words. What was I supposed to say? I was terrible at offering compassion or moral support.

  Luckily for me, Lynx and Michael chose that moment to enter the room.

  “Hey, Lores! Michael has a question for you,” Lynx announced as they stepped in.

  I turned toward them, grateful for the interruption.

  Cowardly sow, my conscience muttered. I ignored it and focused on the sight before me—there were hardly two people in this world who could look more different.

  Michael was a scrawny boy in classic adventurer’s light leather armor. Lynx, well, Lyn in his human form, looked more like a muscular athlete draped in a royal mantle.

  He was absurdly handsome, wearing a bright, easy grin, his blond mane spilling over his shoulder, those piercing cat eyes fixed directly on you. His fashion sense was… particular. He wore something that looked, depending on your perspective, either like a white bathrobe with a fur trim or a royal mantle with a fur trim. Beneath it, he had on a comfortable, pajama-like white outfit and a pair of elegant but plain gray shoes.

  Were these clothes real or illusion? Real fur? His own fur? You could touch the material, so either his illusion magic was extraordinarily refined, or the garments truly existed. He never gave a straight answer when asked. And there were endless variations on this same bizarre wardrobe.

  Oh, well…

  “OK, what’s the question?” I asked, then turned back toward Hew, who was gathering his papers.

  “Still, you take these things too much to heart. Relax a bit. You don’t need to overdo everything.”

  He chuckled and nodded slowly. At least he didn’t say 'sure, Mom' this time.

  “Is there a way we could activate the system?” Michael asked.

  I scratched my scalp.

  “How do you mean that?”

  “I’m doing these dungeon runs… but how do I check the experience I’ve gained? How do I make sure the attribute points go where they should?”

  I shrugged and identified him.

  “You’re a human warrior. Level seven.”

  He shook his head, aghast.

  “Yes, I’m only level seven. Tina is already level nine. Maybe she'll be even higher when she comes back! When I was with Spartacius, I leveled much faster. Something’s wrong! If it takes this long, I won’t reach level twenty this year. With the system, everything was much clearer. How did they make it? Can’t we reactivate it somehow?”

  I sighed and shook my head.

  Finally—finally—someone was actually following my advice and doing dungeon runs.

  However, Spartacius had leveled fast because he took bigger risks. He didn’t have Lynx behind him, ready to jump in if mobs overwhelmed him. But if I pointed that out, it would sound like I was telling him to take more risks, and I didn’t want that.

  I lifted my shoulders in a helpless shrug.

  “I don’t know any way to reactivate the system. But if you want, we can go to the regional capital. There’s a local headquarters of the Adventurer’s Guild where they can measure your status and attributes. Maybe it still works? It would be a bit like looking at your old status screen.”

  “Oh! Good idea!” he said.

  As he left together with Hew, I exchanged a glance with Lynx. He sighed.

  “As if looking at those numbers would help him grow faster…” he whispered, so quietly the two departing guys couldn’t possibly hear.

  I held back a chuckle—that was exactly what I was thinking. Michael would make that whole trip just to stare at numbers, but at least it would make him feel better. Maybe they even showed experience gained? I couldn’t remember exactly. As for attributes, they followed the standard warrior build anyway. You could tweak them a bit with special training, in theory. Oh well, maybe those numbers would give him some insight.

  Once they’d left the room, Lynx turned toward me.

  “So, my queen, what do you think about our Ju?”

  Funny thing: Lynx was always more polite when it was just the two of us. Probably because he found it amusing. I shrugged.

  “She seems like herself. I haven’t seen or sensed anything unusual.”

  He shook his head.

  “Me neither, yet I still feel as though something is different. I can’t pinpoint it. It’s like an additional faint smell, except it's not a smell. More like a new flavor of magic. It’s so subtle that sometimes I don’t feel it at all. Other than that, I haven’t noticed anything. Maybe a slight change in how she talks about politics, or rather in whom she views positively.”

  I tilted my head and pursed my lips, weighing the idea.

  I hadn’t realized that.

  “Now that you mention it, she did change her stance on Guarava. But she still sounds as compassionate as ever when talking about the elves. Could there be some kind of compulsion spell or something pushing her to change her mind?”

  He shook his head.

  “No. There are no compulsion spells on her. People can change their opinions—that’s normal. I have nothing concrete to point to, it’s just this damn feeling,” he admitted.

  I shrugged.

  “I think you’re overthinking it.”

  I rubbed my coffee cup absently, watching as Lyn left the room, then turned to glance out the window. It was already getting dark outside.

  I called a maid and told her that all follow-up meetings were postponed to tomorrow morning. I felt both good and guilty about it, but I had reached the limit of what I could endure today.

  I stood up, waited for the girl to leave, seeing her all stressed-up with the responsibility to postpone my meetings and told the guards to close the door.

  When they did, I summoned my lightfire.

  Finally—some action. No more meetings.

  Heavy magic swirled around me as I set a new return point in the room. Hundreds of runes spiraled in sequence around me, and the familiar fractal patterns lit up the floor.

  When it was done, I took a deep breath and recalled the lightfire on Earth.

  I felt the pull of magic from my pool, magic tingled across my skin separating me from the world and then space warped around me.

  The next moment I nearly tripped over that poor toilet again.

  I chuckled.

  The restaurant owner was going to be stressed again.

  I let my domain expand around me. A strange silence answered. All the rooms in that block of flats seemed to be vacant.