Useful Princess
As morning arises, all that can be seen in the valley is the green grass getting brighter as the sun slowly pokes out from the horizon.
Metis wakes up, resting his back on the kingdom’s walls, walls made of big stones towered on top of one another that have filled with moss and mushrooms thanks to the years of age, or the lack of maintenance. As he’s rubbing his tired eyes, his ears catch the noise of an ongoing conversation, he gets on his tip toes and slowly approaches the origin of the sound. The two guards were having a conversation right at the kingdom’s entrance gate. Metis wanting to hear what they were talking about, scurries a little more to them and hides behind the stone wall.
“You heard about the hard-working princess dude?” says one of the knights on guard duty.
“Yeah bro, she’s coming this morning, right?” says the other knight, chitchatting instead of doing their jobs.
“Honestly, I’ll die for her, not only is she pretty, but she’s doing everything she can to try to get Solestia back to its feet, too bad it isn’t going well for her.” The knight expresses his honor and respect for the princess.
“HEY YOU TWO, STOP CHATTING AND GET BACK TO WORK!” They get told off by a superior knight in shining silver armor which had two yellow circles on the middle of his chest, each only slightly overlapping, being offset vertically only a little bit. With a long sword on his hip, the quality of both the armor and the sword looked top notch. The other two knights quickly take their positions and stop slacking off.
Metis analyzing the situation, got two things:
- Solestia was probably the name of the kingdom he was trying to enter.
- The hard-working princess is presumably arriving today in the morning, probably after economic talk or some bullshit politics that went wrong.
Looking at the only two things he knew about the world, he thought of a plan that would get him inside.
Metis thought to himself “If I can somehow talk to the princess, I could convince her to take me with her… how? With superior knowledge of course.” Metis begins to have a smirk on his face, lightly covering his mouth. His eyes and pupils widen like the ones of a cat as he begins brainstorming. “She seems to be the upright type and is desperate enough to leave her kingdom to save it. Since she presumably had it bad there, she should be in a more vulnerable and desperate state, if I appear and confidently say that I can save her kingdom, her desperation will get the better of her and let me at least passed the gates, it’ll be a jackpot if she gets me to the king.”
“If I want this plan to work, I need to stop the carriage with an excuse. Maybe a travelling merchant? It has low chances of stopping it, but it’s the best bet.” Metis reaches into the pockets of his pants, checking if he has anything useful. In his right pocket there’s his phone, and in his left bag there’s his wallet and a plastic bag.
“ … There's barely anything here. Although if I offer the phone as an item, I could probably get their attention, but how could I seem like a merchant…”
Metis is looking at the valley of grass and flowers. “Flower crowns… They’re a symbol of peace, right? Haaa, at this point I’m just praying that they will stop if I bring enough attention to me. Let’s hope my clothes and phone already bring enough.”
Metis grabs some flowers and quickly turns them into a flower crown for his head, he then proceeds to take out his plastic bag and put his phone and wallet in it. His low effort merchant cosplay is done (if you can even call it one).
“More Importantly I’ll need to find them whilst they’re heading here, if I try to talk to them at the entrance gate, I’ll 100% just get killed.” So, Metis begins running down the path that led him to this kingdom’s gate in his shitty merchant cosplay that looks more like hippy protesting about how modern medicine is bad.
“Psst, dude,” the knight that previously got told off tries to whisper to his other knight buddy.
“That guy looks like a total weirdo, right?” says the knight while pointing at Metis running along the path.
“Yeah dude totally lol.” Says the other knight, while silently chuckling.
Metis was running for about five minutes along the path when he spotted something in the distance. It was a carriage heavily decorated with gold and painted in a deep white, a carriage of royalty, and it was… Being attacked by thieves?! “PERFECT! I don’t know what thieves are doing in an open valley, but it’s just what I need.” Metis said while running with a determined smile on his face, determined not to save the carriage that probably contained the princess, but determined to fully take advantage of the situation.
“If I can defeat even one, I’ll be able to speak with the princess, that’ll make the plan a shit ton easier!” taking out his phone and wallet from the plastic bag and beginning to put rocks in it while he ran.
The carriage was surrounded with thieves, each of them wielding light leather armor, a silver sword and wooden shield, at the entrance of the carriage there was a fully silver plated knight similar to the one that was scolding the other knights, but this one had only one yellow circle on their chest, and was wielding a short sword instead of a long one. That knight looks like he could sweep the floor with the thieves, but if Metis just forcefully helped them by taking care of one, it would have a 70% chance of the princess personally thanking him.
He quickly sprinted to the closest thief that was surrounding the carriage, the noise of his running alerted the thief which turned around and was ready to swing his sword at him, but it was too late, the moment the thief turned around Metis was already doing a drop kick aimed directly at his balls, it successfully hits, bringing the thief crying to the ground with the face that a tortured soul in hell will make, letting out a weeping cry that sounded like someone was being murdered.
One of the surrounding thieves closed his eyes for a moment, lamenting the lost comrade.
Metis quickly gets up and brings the hand holding the plastic bag that’s tightly filled with rocks up, and behind his back only to bring it back down in a full swing motion directly on the skull of the thief, leaving him unconscious.
Metis stays still looking around and investigating the formation of the thieves surrounding the carriage. There are 10 thieves in total, 9 now with him taking care of one of them.
He notices that the knight in shining armor isn’t defending the carriage but just roaming freely, walking up calmly to each thief and skillfully beheading them. Their numbers quickly dwindled to just 2 with many of them dying by ganging up on the knight, surprisingly enough the other 2 thieves were not running away but proudly standing their ground. One runs to the unguarded carriage and the other one is running up to Metis.
“Shit! If I can’t do a surprise attack I’m fucked!” said Metis looking at the situation knowing that he can’t directly win against a swordsman. That’s when he looks at the plastic ball he’s holding and has a light bulb moment. Metis begins running backwards to buy him even a little bit of time while grabbing the bag and tying it as tightly as he can. Once he did that he stopped running and entered the stance of a baseball throw, throwing the bag filled with rocks with everything he had at the thief, aiming it directly at his face.
The thief easily blocks the attack by just bringing his shield up to his face, but when he puts it down Metis is no longer in his view. The thief stops running and tries to look at his surroundings, but it’s too late. The thief feels an incredible pain in his special place and drops to the ground crying. Metis was able to get behind him while his vision was blocked by the shield allowing for a surprise attack.
With the thief being dealt with, Metis quickly turns to look at the carriage worried that something had happened, but it’s quiet… too quiet. The knight was just standing at the side of the carriage door. Has the last thief already been dealt with?
A female voice comes from the carriage, “Aaahh, Aaaah, you guys are such a fucking pain in the ass. I’m already in a bad mood thanks to failed negotiations and now I gotta deal with these twinks?” A beautiful young lady begins walking out of the carriage, she is slender with beautiful and smooth white skin and pretty face to sum it up, with long straight brown hair. She’s not wearing a princess dress, she was wearing medieval era light grey pants, leather boots, and a dark green hoodie, it wasn’t the normal hoodie that was seen through medieval times, but a modern designed hoodie made out of cotton. Wait, wait, more importantly she’s walking out of the carriage while lifting the thief up by grabbing his face!
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She calmly gets off the carriage while still lifting up the thief with just one hand. “Be thankful that I’m not smashing your fucking skull you shit.” Says the princess with a smirk a delinquent will make while shaking someone down, meanwhile the thief is desperately trying to make her unhand him without any result. While still holding the thief, she throws him with a full arm windup making it look like he weighed nothing. She easily threw him as far as 100 meters across the valley.
“Pieces of shit.” She mumbles to herself as she begins walking to the carriage, until she turns her head and sees Metis standing there with a dumbfounded face.
“The hell, there’s one still left.” She says while looking at Metis. After a few seconds of looking at him her eyes suddenly widened, not a widened of curiosity or hostility, but of fear, an uncontrollable fear strangled her when she focused her eyes on Metis.
Metis was holding eye contact with the princess, a little confused with the expression she was making while looking at him. He then rapidly fixes his posture and begins to greet the princess: “Oh Great princess of the king-”
In what seemed to be a blink of an eye the princess was at the face of Metis, her eyes and face making an expression of fear and desperation. Metis couldn’t even react when she unleashed a punch directly to his stomach, with such force he was lifted off the ground and launched to about one meter.
At the time Metis could process what was happening he was already on the ground not being able to breathe and with probably some intense internal wounds.
Adrenaline rushed through Metis with every possible survival instinct that he still had being focused on being able to breathe and withstand the pain he was in. “Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, I- I need to get up…”
“Up… up… GET THE FUCK UP” Metis screamed in his thoughts, with him slowly lifting his upper body while holding his stomach.
The arm that he was using as support for getting up starts shaking, making it lose balance, dropping Metis to the ground again. “Shit…. Why did she just attack me out of the blue?!?” “Like, come on at least say something to me before goddam blitzing me.” “Still, I can barely breathe and I’m just slowly getting up; I need to get up and explain” “I-I’m not dying here.” All those thoughts were rushing down the brain of Metis to what seemed like milliseconds, while he was still trying to get back up.
After a few seconds, he was successful in getting his upper body up, still holding his stomach, resisting the urge to scream and cry like a little girl because of the pain.
“Wait a minute, let’s just calm down-” Metis said, right as he finished that sentence the princess was already on his face again with her arm already winded up to a punch, this time directly at his face.
The princess unleashed the punch, and right as her fist was about to hit Metis’s face, a voice stopped her.
“My lady.”
“That young man has helped us with the thief attack, it will be unjust to kill him.” Said the knight to the princess.
“Unjust? Stelis, I know that you don’t notice because you don’t have a high perception of magic like me, but this guy… He’s far from human.” Said the princess taking a step back from Metis while still being on high alert.
“Human or not, we still need to show our appreciation.” The knight proclaimed firmly.
“tsk, If he does anything you find suspicious, kill him immediately.” Said the princess with an annoyed look on her face, walking away in a fit. The knight begins walking up to Metis, offering their hand to help him get up.
“Thank you, by the way, you’re a woman right? I mean no offense, but your voice is really feminine.” Said Metis to the knight whilst taking they’re hand gratefully.
“That’s right, I’m the best, highest and strongest knight in the kingdom of Solestia. Stelis, personal knight of the princess Kaida.” She said while taking off her helmet, revealing the face of a white skin woman with blue eyes, short blue hair, and an old scar going from the bottom of her right eye down until her chin. She quickly puts her helmet back on.
She helps Metis get up fully and begins guiding him to the carriage. Metis was still barely walking and holding his belly thanks to the intense pain.
“I'm sorry that my lady has wounded you, I truly don’t know what she thinks sometimes.”
“Yeah, that’s not fine. Quick temper she got right?”
Stelis chuckled a bit after hearing Metis response, “Indeed, but I assure you, each action my lady takes are for her own goals. Although that may sound selfish, I assure you that she’s a good girl” Said Stelis, trying to recover the reputation and view that Metis had of the princess.
“Alright then, I’ll trust you on that.” Responded Metis.
While they were having they’re little chat they had already reached the carriage, with the princess already inside.
“You can get on the carriage, since our driver ran away I’ll be the one driving” Said Stelis.
The eyes of Metis and Princess Kaida meet once again. She is looking at him with a gaze powerful enough to kill someone (metaphorically).
Metis waves hello awkwardly to her while getting onto the carriage. As he sat down on the seat across the princess he gets asked.
“What are you?” It was the princess Kaida asking him, still with that penetrating gaze. As they were starting they're conversation Stelis began driving the carriage to their destination.
“Last time I checked I'm human, nothing more.” replied Metis with a serious face.
“Ahem, more importantly I have to tell you Princess Kaida.” Said Metis, slightly smirking.
“Oooh, if you want to say something to me then you better get on your hands and knees and lick my feet you thing.”
“Do you want to save your country?” Said Metis with a smirking face, ignoring the warning he was just given. As the Princess heard this her eyes were filled with suspicion, curiosity, anger and a lot more emotions.
As she heard the heavy words that came out of Metis mouth, she began saying sarcastically: “What would something like you know how to save a country?”
“True. But I do know how to make something that will save it.” Metis takes out his phone from his pockets, turning it on and showing the screen to the Princess.
The Princess was in shock after Metis pulled out the mysterious device.
“This bad boy can do long distance information exchange in an instant, it can solve mathematics problems that will take months and years in a couple hours.”
“ …” the Princess began taking Metis’s words seriously after seeing that weird device for the first time in her life.
“So? Even if it can do all of that there's still only one. Yeah it will be a national treasure but your intent is to sell it. Right?” The Princess was spewing solid logic and facts at Metis.
“Heh.” Began laughing Metis for a good second and said: “What if I told you I can make these if you give me enough time and resources?” He began proudly proclaiming with a smug yet serious look.
“You would really think I would fund your little scam just like that?”
“Is there any other option for you to take? Listen, I want money and a home and you also want money and a home, so team up with me and I'll promise you that with enough time I'll make this country the most powerful and richest ever.” Metis extended his hand to the Princess while looking straight into her eyes with a determined and trusting gaze.
The princess looked at the hand of Metis hesitating whether to grab it or not. Both of them were nervous and slightly sweating, a couple seconds passed with the Princess still hesitating to take the deal or not, calculating everything in her brain to see if this was a good decision. She let out a deep sigh and took his hand sealing the deal.
“Pleasure working with you” Said Metis with a cool and serious look. While he was celebrating in his brain “YES YES YES YES YES” screaming for joy in his thoughts thankful that he was not going to spend another night out on the streets.
“So how exactly are you gonna make one of these things?” Princess Kaida asked Metis.
“Good question…” Metis said while looking at the scenery in the windows and rubbing his chin while thinking of an answer.
“hey.” Princess Kaida said with the expression and intent of wanting to throw Metis out of the carriage with her bare hands.
“calm down, calm down. I definitely know how to make them but they require sufficient funding and expensive materials. Also, those aren’t things you can make with your bare hands you know? We need to make good machines, and we need good materials to make said machines.” Metis began to explain. “So we need to start with a product that will give us those funds.”
“And what will that be?” Said the Princess with an annoyed tone, resting her back on the carriage’s chair while crossing her arms and lifting her right foot to rest on her left one.
Metis continued looking down the windows trying to think of a solution, a few seconds went by and he asked: “How do the people of your country take a shit?”
“W-what?” Princess Kaida was dumbfounded at the sudden question that had barely anything to do with their problem.
“Just answer it.”
“T-they poop in a public bathroom all together, only wealthy people have their own toilets.” Princess Kaida explained a little reluctantly since she didn’t know how this information was going to help.
“And where does the shit go?” Metis said, waving his hand pointing at the princess as if he was making a confident argument.
“It stays on the bottom of the toilet until it is manually cleaned.” Princess Kaida replied, still looking confused at the usefulness of this information.
“And the toilets in wealthy people work the same right?”
“yes.”
Metis smiled and began laughing before pointing at the princess and exclaiming: “Well there you have it! our first product to make will be… A sewage system and better Toilets for the wealthy.”
“HUH?!” Princess Kaida was surprised by the miscellaneous item that Metis has proposed to sell, almost springing out her seat before calming herself down and thinking it rationally. “I don’t know how this sewage system will work, but toilets? How is that going to make us any money?”
Metis moved his arm up with his index finger being the only one not down as he began moving it back and forth in sync with his head. “tsk tsk tsk, you’re wrong Princess, shitting specially for wealthy people is an undiscovered business. If we can make comfortable toilets with a sewage system that automatically gets rid of the waste we can then sell them at ridiculous high prices! We’ll make millions and more! Only needing to give one or two to nobles or merchants to spread the word. I can bet my right ball that it will give us the necessary funds and more!” Proclaimed Metis sharing his genius plan with an evil corporate laugh and grin.
Princess Kaida was looking down on Metis’s plan, until she remembered all the bad and boring memories she had with her toilet. As she thought deeper she could only see success with his idea with a minimal chance of error. “If the toilets can be comfortable then we would have a monopoly over their sales, and this automatic sewage system would improve our reputation as a whole. This guy… He might actually be a genius.” She began having a creepy grin as she thought of the idea more and more.
They both looked at each other with their evil corporate smiles and did a hand slap which transitioned to a firm handshake.
“Metis… Looks like I’m starting to like working with you already.”
“The pleasure is all mine princess.”
they said to each other with a handshake beginning to laugh maniacally like a villain who has just made his evil plan.
“Uhhh, Forgive me for interrupting your meeting my lady, but it seems we have arrived at the gates.” Stelis announces that by opening a window on the carriage that’s located right behind the driver's seat.
“Oh, very well just give me a moment” Princess Kaida cleared her throat while getting ready to leave the carriage. Right as she was about to open the exit door she turned around at Metis.
“Hey, sorry for almost killing you back there, even though you’re not human you still seem like a good guy.”
Metis holds eye contact with the princess before doing a sigh of relief and with a warm smile saying: “I’m never gonna forgive you for that you know.”
“heh.” The princess chuckled a bit and as she was opening the exit door she said: “I know.”
As the door was closing shut Metis shouted: “Also I am human, I don’t know why you think other-”
The door slammed closed leaving Metis alone in the carriage.