Straf and Lily enter the throne room again, where Cycelia is looking at a piece of paper with her mouth on her fist, propping herself up on the armrest by the elbow. She notices Straf walk in with the corner of her vision, and her concerned expression does not disappear with his arrival.

「Straf, I'm sorry I'm calling you here again, when I told you to take it easy, but I thought you might want to hear this.」

She sighs, lifting the piece of paper in her hand a little.

「What is it? I imagine it's urgent.」

Straf asks, shrugging his shoulders. Cycelia looks at Straf's arm, hung on a cloth sling and in a cast.

「…I just received a letter from the robber barons. They didn't like my last letter.」

「Ah. They like pictures, huh?」

Straf scoffs and grins.

「Straf, this isn't a joke. It's an outright declaration of war without naming it a war. They gave me a ridiculous ultimatum. They've wrote that, unless by tomorrow morning I send a messenger agreeing to their demands, they'll fight my tyrannical rule, or whatever that means.」

Cycelia crumples the paper in her hand and throws it aside, shaking her head.

「And? What do they want?」

「Recognition as the legal rulers, and the right to autonomous rule. I'm surprised they didn't outright demand sovereignty. I'm not going to risk a messenger's life to try and stall for time…」

She places her mouth on her fist again, blankly staring at the ground with greatly concerned eyes.

「And I have until tomorrow to kick their teeth in, huh? Thought I could take my time with that…」

Straf shrugs his shoulders as he sighs and looks aside.

「I didn't believe they'd act so rash, either. I thought that they'd maybe realize this is as far as they can take this, and demand some sum of money as compensation, or some such…」

Cycelia spreads her hands as she explains, puts her hand on her fist in front of her, then her mouth on her hand again. She looks down at the steps in front of the throne, almost as if in a seated prayer, deep in thought once more.

「I'll handle it… But I'm going to need all those troops, the mana potions, so on, and so on, all much quicker.」

Straf explains, almost spreading his arms, if not for the arm in the cast being mostly immobile.

「…With broken arms?」

Cycelia's green eyes rise up from the steps at Straf, as she asks with concern in her voice and furrowed brows.

「With a broken arm. It's only my hand that is broken. And it's because of that fucking bandit. I said I'll handle it, so I'll handle it. Trust me.」

Straf reassures Cycelia with a completely unbothered and relaxed tone, and a mildly frustrated slanted mouth on his face. She sighs and leans back in her throne, slouching a little.

「…Very well… I really don't like how every single problem in my kingdom has to be solved by you, Straf. It's like I have a magic spell by the name of 『Straf Katastrof Vindict』 and can't do much of anything without it…」

She interlocks her fingers, sulking and frowning, still slouched and looking down at her lap.

「Hey, as long as they have health bars…」

Amused, Straf shrugs, smirking at Cycelia.

「Hmpf. Ingrateful brat. Straf graciously extends an offer of aid, and instead of being thankful, you choose to concern yourself over your prestige and perception of your authority? How dare you.」

Lily places her fists on her narrow hips and scowls at Cycelia while berating her.

「No! That's not it! I am thankful! Very much so! It's just… I can't find a way of solving a problem that doesn't involve Straf in one way, shape, or form. I'm already overworking him, what if he gets sick?」

Cycelia shakes her head, leaping forward in her throne out of her slouch. She twiddles her thumbs as she takes her eyes off Lily to look at Straf beside her.

「Hmpf… I suppose that is a reasonable concern…」

Lily nods with closed eyes and crosses her arms, then looks up at Straf as well.

「So why not-?」

She begins to ask with a large grin, but Straf immediately cuts her off.

「No. Stop asking.」

Straf bluntly states with a demanding tone.

「Tsk…」

Lily pouts, looking away from Straf.

「I'm not going to get suddenly sick. Besides, a flu can't kill anyone except background family characters, and old people.」

Straf scoffs with ridicule on his face, shrugging his arms.

「Straf, you have broken arms, that's already bad enough. And you deserve rest, too.」

Cycelia looks with pity at Straf's slinged arm again, and sighs as her shoulders slump.

「Broken arm. And I can order people around like this just fine. Is that it, Lia? I have to go somewhere.」

Straf reminds Cycelia with his mouth aslant, and asks as he points his broken hand to the door.

「That's all, but… Go somewhere? Where? Shouldn't you be resting?」

Cycelia tilts her head, blinking.

「I have a meeting regarding finances to attend to. I'll be back shortly. Come, Lily, I'll need your help.」

Straf heads for the door, nodding his head for Lily to follow.

「Naturally, Straf… With what, however?」

Lily grins, quickly rejoining his side.

「The doors.」

「Huh?」

She tilts her head, and her golden twin tails jiggle as they walk out of the throne room…

…

Clankclankclankclank… Thud!… Clank!

Straf walks into the warehouse through the open door, and Lily follows him in.

「Thank you Lily, close it too, will you?」

「Of course…」

Lily swings the door shut behind them, as Straf walks up to the kids still working on the printers.

Clankclankclankclank… Thud!… Clank!

「Alright, forekid! How many fatalities, and how many dismemberments? Give me a quick rundown.」

Straf calls out to the oldest child, who is looking at Straf with weary eyes. All of the children look greatly fatigued, and are out of breath. A few boxes of gold and silver papers are set aside on the floor, a few steps away.

「No one's hurt… We made a lot of these too… We're on the last papers… You're just in time…」

The child mumbles, and rubs his palm on his face.

「Really? Nobody lost an arm? Great! Crippled kids are great for business when you're running a charity, not so much for a central bank.」

Clankclankclankclank… Thud!… Clank!

Straf grins, looking at the papers falling into the box beneath the menacing blades that just cut them into ready banknotes.

「Can we go back and sleep yet? I'm tired…」

One of the sheet-handlers asks, then immediately yawns.

「Not until the job is done.」

Straf says, looking at the last paper sheet being delivered under the stamps.

Clankclankclankclank… Thud!… Clank!

The sheet gets stamped, cut up, and dumped into the box beneath.

「Can we-?」

The child asks again, but Straf cuts him off.

「Yeah, I guess you can, you impatient brat. Are kids everywhere just made with no patience whatsoever right in the factory?」

Straf shakes his head and walks up to the machine. The child spinning the crank stops, and the machine grinds to a halt after a moment. He kicks the box from beneath the cutter, sliding it amidst the yawning, tired children.

「Alright, time for the part you've all been looking for. Everyone, take one of those yellow papers out of the box.」

Straf walks in front of the box, and commands the children with a smug smirk on his face. Tiny hands reach into the box, and each pull a banknote out.

「You! Not that one! That's for the government and bribes! Put that down! Take the paper that says one on it!」

Straf says with a harsh, raised voice at one of the children holding a hundred-drakes bill in his hand. He quickly drops it back into the box as if it was on fire, and hesitates pulling another one out.

「…But, which one says one?」

The child asks, squatting in front of the box with furrowed brows.

「Tsk, are you serious? The one with one number. One that isn't a two, or a five.」

Straf rolls his eyes and sighs. He indignantly explains, pointing his hand at the box.

「…Which one is that?」

The child asks again, still confused. Straf sighs again, looking at the child with a tight-lipped grimace.

「…Lily, can you give him one golden drake from the box?」

Straf turns his eyes to Lily and asks.

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「Of course…」

Her boots ominously echo through the now-silent warehouse. She approaches the box, causing the children to take a few steps back, as a terrifying pressure builds. She stops in front of it, bends forward, then plucks a single gold-colored paper out of the box with her clawed fingers.

She straightens out and glares at the empty-handed child. She walks closer, and the child starts trembling, taking one step back out of compulsion. He makes no grimace, and his expression doesn't change, but the color is quickly draining from the child's face and becoming almost as pale as Lily.

She holds out the paper towards the child, and waits for him to unfreeze and take it. He swallows nervously, looking at her scarlet, slit-pupil eyes as they're just a little above his own eye level. He looks down at the one-denomination golden drake between her index and middle finger, and takes it in his shaky hands.

「Be grateful, worm.」

Lily snarls at the child, turning away from him to join Straf's side. She flicks one of her twintails back behind her shoulder as the children clear the way.

「T- T- Th- Th- Tha- Th-…」

The child rapidly nods, stammering heavily as he attempts to utter out distressed thanks.

「…Is that it? We just made all of those.」

One of the children asks, looking up from his golden drake up at Straf with confused eyes and furrowed brows. Straf clicks his tongue and stomps up to the child, then bends forward to meet his eye level. Straf's face suddenly closing in causes him to recoil backwards.

「Want to catch me on your means of production bullshit, hhuuhh? Try again when you actually stake some risk on producing stuff. And no, your limbs don't count. They're liabilities that you can't even sell to someone else. They only become assets if you work hard enough for that.」

Straf grimaces at the child with an exaggerated expression that could perhaps intimidate a highschooler at best and spits on the floor to the side. As he straightens out, he taps the child in his chest with his broken hand, immediately wincing.

「Ow fuck… Consider yourself lucky. You'd be slaving away at a farm growning turnips to pay those limbs off. Be glad your parents went under, and so did your debt to them.」

Straf scoffs, and looks at the box full of eye-popping amount of banknotes.

「Let's see… One sheet was fucked up… By you.」

Straf looks up at the ceiling, thinking heavily about something, before glaring at one of the paper-handlers.

「S- Sorry…」

The child looks down, hiding his face behind his hair and apologizing.

「…I had some two-hundredish sheets, give or take… By nine… Then the silver…」

Straf continues thinking, mumbling to himself out loud and glancing at the silver drake machine for a moment.

「Okay, yeah, that should absolutely be enough. Even a little to spare for later. Just have to be careful to not accidentally inflate.」

Straf finishes counting the bills in his head, he smirks, and looks back down at the box.

「Lily, could you help me out one more time? Can you pick this up for me? The whole box?」

Straf nods his head at the box while looking at Lily.

「Of course, where do you want it?」

She asks, and effortlessly picks the heavy box full of cash up.

「In my inventory. Let's try it.」

Straf says, and opens his [Portable Storage] beside Lily. She looks at it, then up at Straf with a perplexed expression. She wordlessly asks a question, tilting her head at the swirling purple vortex, as the children look on in curiosity. Straf nods encouragingly with lifted brows.

She blinks a few times, glances at the hole in space, then looks back into Straf's eyes, still confused. She shrugs, then throws the box at the [Portable Storage].

Thud!- Thud!

The box unceremoniously slams into the vortex as if its boundary were a solid wall of brick, then drops down onto the floor, spilling the drakes all over the floor. Her arms slump limp in disappointment, and she looks at Straf with a face of mild concern and discomfort, as if she just accidentally broke something fragile in someone's home.

「Ahh… I figured.」

Straf sighs, and shrugs his shoulder as he grimaces on the cash on the floor.

「Okay. New idea. Can you put those back in and pick it up again?」

「Yes… Of course.」

Lily nods, and hastily puts all the drakes back into the box. She picks the box up once more, and waits for Straf's next instruction. He places his broken hand on the box gently, carefully, and looks at the vortex.

「Okay… Now sloooowly put the box in. Be careful not to put your hand in there, some of those skeletons might have been men, and I don't want you to fall in with the wrong crowd.」

「Huh?」

Lily furrows her brows again, and the box slowly sinks into the vortex. She quickly retracts her hands, and the box continues its way in.

「Nice. That saves me so much literal pain.」

Straf grins in satisfaction, as the box disappears into the purple whirl.

「Okay. Let's do the same with the rest, I need to give Lia some of these before I head out.」

Straf nods his head at the boxes off to the side and walks closer to them.

「What are you still doing here? Do you actually like working!? Get out of here! I don't hire work-masochists! It's a one-off! Shoo!」

Straf looks over his shoulder at the confused children, and shouts at the, shooing them weakly with his broken hand. They are startled, and quickly run towards the door, clutching onto their papers…

…

A few moments later, out on the streets of the capital…

Straf and Lily are heading to the palace, when Lily abruptly stops at one of the crossroads.

「Straf, will you be needing my help again?」

She asks, then yawns, covering her mouth with an open hand in a ladylike fashion.

「Already sleepy, huh? That's fine, go on then. You've helped me more than enough today.」

Straf waves Lily off towards the bell tower in the distance, silhouetting against the darkening sky.

「Hmpf. Naturally, I am very reliable, Straf. I've always been helpful and running errands for my master…」

Lily says while taking a few steps off to the side in another direction.

「…I expect a payment for my work, Straf.」

She ominously declares with a serious expression, looking straight into Straf's eyes over her shoulder, before continuing onward towards the bell tower.

「Yeah, goodnight Lily, I consider the moment I walked through the doorway there to be the second you clocked out! You can't wage-fraud me!」

Straf smirks, and shakes his head as he, too, continues on his way towards the palace.

「Cash barely exists and she already wants some allowance, huh? Kids…」

Straf chuckles, walking through the dark street provisionally lit by weak oil lamps that hang off the dismantled vampire lamps…

…

「Still here? Good. I have something for you.」

Straf says, walking in through the throne room's doors.

「I was waiting for you, actually. I'm ready to drop after everything that happened today.」

Cycelia sighs, and Straf opens his [Portable Storage] as he walks up the steps.

「Hm?」

「Here.」

He says, placing his hand up inside the horizontal, pancake-flat rip in space. A box full of papers starts slowly emerging.

Thud!

It falls out onto the ground, and spills the papers everywhere at Cycelia's feet.

「Ah. Shit. Sorry. I didn't consider it would come out tilted.」

Straf's arm drops limp when he sees the papers spilled on the floor again.

「That's okay… Captain, could you put those back in? And hand me a few of them.」

Cycelia raises her palm and gently shakes her head, before turning her eyes to the captain.

「Yes, your highness.」

The young man kneels down, hastily scooping the drakes into his hands and shoving them into the box. He takes a large handful, and presents it to Cycelia with a bowed head.

「Thank you… What are these?」

Cycelia asks, looking over the newly printed drakes.

「Bigger denominations. Do you really want to pay the miners hundreds of drakes in ones?」

Straf explains, scoffing.

「Huh? That's right… That'd be rather… Cumbersome. You even thought of something like that? You're pretty incredible, Straf. Not only you're incredibly powerful, you're also a genius.」

《Will you ever not be such a catch?》

Cycelia lowers the hundred-drake bill, and warmly smiles at Straf.

「Yeah, I know.」

Straf shrugs with a grin, nonchalantly accepting the praise for the ages-old idea. Cycelia notices the reverse side of the notes isn't just a copy of the front.

「…What's this?」

She picks up another bill, looking at a gold-colored portrait of her late brother, shamelessly copied from his painting out in the halls. Decorative text beneath it states, Otto Redwing. Cycelia blinks, and a mix of emotions stirs in her heart as she looks at Otto with a serious face.

「I thought you might want your family members and other notable stuff on your money. Like I said, the first bills were just a prototype, so don't get rid of them. If you're strapped for cash, you can auction them off for hundreds, or thousands times their face value.」

Straf shrugs, and briefly points his hand at the bill in Cycelia's hands.

「That's… Nice, but it's so unbelievably detailed… How did you do this, Straf? You didn't paint them all by hand, did you?」

Cycelia barely manages to unglue her eyes off the bill, looking in awe at Straf.

「No, that would be mind-rottingly boring. As any modern man would have done, I have made a machine to do it. The details are a trade secret.」

Straf smirks, explaining.

「That's… It's only two colors, but it's really incredible.」

She continues looking through the bills. She finds one depicting her father. And one with her grandfather, still bearing his warm smile from the portrait, and his dragon hand.

「Listen, Lia, I gotta go and strategize. Have fun with those bills, and don't hand them out too freely, remember they're still bound to gold and silver, for now.」

Straf says, and walks for the door.

「Huh? Okay…」

She momentarily takes her eyes off the golden drakes, and nods her head as Straf departs. She looks at the fifty drakes bill, her ancestral dragon with its wings majestically spread takes up most of the bill's reverse side. An ornate text simply states, Redwing. Cycelia smiles gently.

《What's this one?》

She takes a twenty-five bill in hand, and flips it to its back.

「Huh?」

She utters out, grinning in a mix of amusement and surprise. A depiction of herself that she has not seen anywhere else, standing proud, her hand rests on the pommel of the sword Straf has given her. Her pose very strongly gives off an aura of her dragon ancestor in its majestic air, and she looks up at herself from the twenty-five drake with a serious face, but not without a very faint smile.

She looks down at the text below her depiction, stating Cycelia Redwing in an ornate, decorative text. Cycelia begins to giggle quietly, shaking her head a little as she sets the bill down on her lap.

《Wait, if I am twenty-five, and Redwing is fifty… Who's on the hundred?》

Cycelia picks up the hundred drakes bill, still amused from the depiction of herself. She flips it to its reverse side, and immediately tilts her head, blinking at the bill with a confused and amused smile. Straf is smiling at her with a cocky grin, holding his thumb up.

「…Huh?」

She tilts her head even further. Straf Katastrof Vindict, the ornate, decorative text beneath his grinning depiction says…