Slowly but surely, time was stealing the days of Apolo's life, while gradually allowing the young man to progress with the goals he had set for himself. This was how eight long months passed. Today, the young man found himself reviewing one of the rooms in his mansion, ensuring that the furniture he had purchased had some kind of "purpose". Much of the mansion had been furnished, a task that had cost the young man almost 7000 crystals, and to top it off, the harsh reality was that all the furniture was second-hand. Thus, the lack of a unique style was evident throughout the mansion, giving it the appearance of a mishmash of "unbroken" and aesthetically "nice" yet not so easily compatible furniture.

Despite this, aesthetics mattered little to the young wizard. What was important was that the creatures he was about to acquire felt that the house was furnished to prevent them from killing him while he slept. Consequently, Apolo spared no expense in filling each room with furniture to make the mansion feel as "alive" as possible. But, of course, a problem emerged, or else the young man wouldn't have spent eight months of his life furnishing his house.

The not-so-comical reality was that the relatively straightforward task had turned into one of the greatest odysseys the empire had seen throughout its history. Being a rather paranoid young noble, Apolo not only aimed to complete the task but had, in fact, completely exaggerated it!

Apolo's main bedroom not only had one bed but four entirely different ones. And to make matters more interesting, he didn't have just one wardrobe, but five of them, each filled with used clothing that was practically unwearable for Apolo, yet they filled the space, giving the furniture a purpose.

The young noble had even bought second-hand women's clothing, just so that when the creature opened every miserable piece of furniture in the mansion, they would find something intriguing that would justify the existence of said furniture. As a result, Apolo's mansion had turned into the house of a compulsive furniture hoarder. It didn't matter what the function of the furniture was or how mundane it seemed. The important thing was that it was in his house, and like a guardian angel, that piece of furniture would protect him from the strange creatures he had to acquire at all costs.

The mansion had ultimately transformed into a complete maze. If one visited any of the multiple rooms in the mansion, it wasn't uncommon to encounter a bed or a rusted stove. No one would ever understand why these things ended up there. Yet, in Apolo's mind, everything had to serve some purpose for the creatures. Therefore, that bed needed to have its respective blankets, pillows, and let's not forget the faded plush toys on top of them. And, of course, there had to be various miscellaneous items under the bed, such as old pots and aesthetically unusable flowerpots.

However, the corruption of Apolo's original idea wasn't as abrupt as one might imagine. During the first month, the young noble had grown desperate trying to create a beautiful and appealing mansion. But those dreams shattered as he realized that money wasn't infinite and the mansion was far too large. As a result, Apolo grew tired and began distorting his sense of aesthetics to fit his economic situation. Only a select few rooms that had been furnished during the first month retained a certain noble aesthetic.

By the second month, the sense of aesthetics had entirely disappeared from Apolo's mind. The only thing that mattered was furnishing each room and following a certain logic. Thus, it became common to find a living room with wooden, stone, and metal furniture mixed together. There was no longer any need to adhere to a specific pattern; the crucial thing was that the creatures understood that it was a living room, not that it was beautiful. Despite this, the task of completing the mansion seemed titanic and impossible.

So, the harsh reality was that after the third month, Apolo had thrown all sense out the window. Everything could be found in this mansion, even things one couldn't imagine. From toilets serving as cabinets to kitchens filled with used books serving as reading rooms, Apolo's mansion had become a house of an obsessive furniture accumulator. It didn't matter what the furniture was; there just had to be furniture, and lots of it.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

And finally, as expected when the task continued to make little progress, by the fourth month, things began to approach the limits of madness. Apart from the scattered structures, the mansion had a total of four floors, including an attic, a dungeon, two adjacent houses, and a basement. Across all these floors and corners, there were 1555 rooms, all varying in size and hidden in various places throughout the mansion and its two adjacent houses, which had formerly served to accommodate servants and guests, as Apolo had learned from his two servants.

Filling this bizarre number of rooms would have been impossible had it not been for the fact that, by the fourth month, madness started to consume Apolo. He issued a purchasing order that resonated across the poor neighborhoods of the ring city:

> "No matter what junk you bring, if it's in 'good condition' and housed in a piece of furniture, I'll buy it!"

Rumors immediately began to spread throughout the Ring City. People were literally selling any nonsense: unmatched shoes, detached buttons, and as long as they weren't broken, the nobleman would buy them. Apolo started to notice a certain progress in his mission, but despite that, he couldn't yet see the final result he was after.

By the sixth month, and realizing that he hadn't been able to complete the task even with that order, Apolo's ideals began to distort. He started buying furniture that nobody wanted for various reasons. From supposedly cursed objects to furniture where someone had been murdered, everything was fair game. Starting from the sixth month, anything was acceptable, including furniture that had clearly been stolen.

After such moves, the rumors gradually spread throughout the capital:

> "Carriages filled with 'junk' were entering the capital from all the gates every day, heading towards a particular estate, where a nobleman was accumulating it compulsively as if it were crystals".

Of course, seeing those carriages prompted the guards to investigate. After all, it wasn't so easy for the guards to digest the sight of a carriage filled with used and blood-stained clothes fresh from the morgue being transported along the noble roads of the capital.

Noticing the guards' interest in his affairs, Apolo didn't step back. He used the full weight of his noble status as he had never done before and managed to defend his "junk", causing the guards to turn a blind eye to his carriages. The imperial capital's families, however, looked on with disgust as one of the largest houses in the whole capital accumulated piece after piece of junk without showing any restraint.

What had begun as a way to follow his ancestor's advice had, after eight long months of fulfilling this titanic task, turned completely into an obsession. In Apolo's mind, only one thought echoed incessantly day and night, as if it were a grand order upon which his life depended: "No matter what happens, the 'junk' must keep flowing. The flow of 'junk' must never stop". And so it happened.

—Sir, sir!—Orrin shouted loudly, trying to locate Apolo, which wasn't an easy task: it was quite easy to get lost in this maze of forgotten things.

—Yes! What's happening?!—Apolo shouted while obsessively adjusting a plush toy in front of a miniature table surrounded by other plush toys.

—Sir, sir!—Orrin shouted loudly again, apparently not hearing the young man.

—Over here!—Apolo shouted to the four winds, causing his voice to reverberate through the mansion and one of the dolls on the table to fall to the floor—Oh, shit: No! Princess Lorena must be looking at Mr. Giraffe, or else Mr. Bear will find out about her secret plot, and the cookie empire will not fall into his hands.

—Sir…—Orrin murmured, opening the door slightly, listening to Apolo's conversation and looking at him with a certain concern.

The truth was, Orrin knew well that Apolo wasn't the same. On one hand, his mind had become so obsessive about filling the rooms that, at times, it bordered on madness, worrying the servant. But on the other hand, Apolo's body was better than ever before. At this point, the young man stood at over two meters tall, and his body was completely toned, surprising anyone who had known him before. The strange fact was that Apolo's obsession with moving furniture around the house to fill the rooms had provided him with a good reason to start eating again and resume the military training he had abandoned at the age of eighteen. It created the paradoxical scene of seeing Apolo, who was less sane but healthier than ever before, simultaneously.

The fact that Apolo had finally acquired the body that a colossus of the Black Forest deserved was warmly welcomed by Orrin, who even supported him every day, reminding him to train and being extremely careful about his military diet. Orrin's only concern was Apolo's motivation. It was incomprehensible to him that the only thing Apolo needed to overcome the depression he had lived with throughout his childhood was furniture, lots of furniture: endless furniture!