After the sunset, in Straf's room…

Cla-clack… Crrrreak… Clack.

The telltale sound of the door wakes Straf. He lets out a long, fatigued sigh out of his nose, and his mouth goes aslant, but he keeps his eyes closed.

「Don't tell me you haven't had enough… At least you learned how to use the door…」

Straf groans out, and rubs his face with his palm.

「Enough of what?」

Nona asks. Straf opens his eyes.

「Wh-? Nona? What are you doing here?- Ahhh…」

As he sits up, he furrows his brows at the pair of eyes glowing amber at him from the darkness of the room. He then lets out a resigned sigh.

「…You don't have a home in the capital, right?」

Straf groans, throws the blanket off, and shuffles over to the foot end of the bed.

「Nope!」

Nona happily answers, staring at Straf with a faintly visible smile.

「…Right. I see. So you came here, instead.」

Straf nods, and gets up with a grunt, heading to the window.

「…The inn is full, then?」

He asks, and pulls the window curtains aside, letting some of the red moonlight in. With his fists on his hips, Straf nods his head, appreciating the simple beauty of the moon.

「Dunno, I didn't check. Hehe…」

Nona nonchalantly replies, and lets out a little chuckle.

「Figures…」

Straf says, still nodding, grimacing a little.

「…Wait, what? I've had a duel with gravity a moment ago, and we had to call it a draw… That being said, I think I have a little concussion, and I'm fairly sure I misheard you.」

He turns around, extending his index finger as Nona innocently smiles at him, standing in the center of his room with her hands behind her back.

「…You said there weren't any rooms in the inn, right?」

Straf asks, furrowing his brows at her. Her glowing amber eyes tilt a little.

「No, I said I didn't check.」

She casually clarifies, blinking at him.

「You didn't check if the inn has rooms?」

「Yup.」

Straf asks again, and Nona nods her hatted head with a smile.

「…Why?」

Shaking his head a little in confusion, Straf asks another question.

「I didn't need to, 'cus we're going to spend the whole night together.」

Nona declares with a broad, smiling grin as she tilts her head. While she's holding her hands behind her back, her two-handed hammer gleams in the moonlight.

「Listen, that's a wild assumption of how I will spend my time- What are you hiding behind your back?」

Straf points at Nona, and the two stare at each other. Her grin shrinks into a light smile.

「I'm not hiding anything.」

She bluntly declares after a few seconds of uneasy silence, staring Straf in his eyes.

「…Then what are you holding behind your back?」

He warily asks, with his finger still pointed at her.

「My hammer. The one you gave me.」

Nona shoots back, softly smiling at Straf.

「That's… Good?」

Straf hesitantly remarks, or perhaps asks himself a question.

《But why am I getting a bad feeling about this?… Did I eat those fucking spiders after all?》

He thinks, slowly rubbing his chin while they maintain eye contact.

「Okay, let's go find you a room here in the palace-」

「Does the queen like you, Straf?」

Nona abruptly asks, tilting her hatted head, smiling. Her watchful glowing eyes only lose sight of Straf to blink.

「…That came out of nowhere. I suppose so? If she didn't, she'd kick my ass out. Probably.」

His brow rises at the strangely unrelated question. He replies with a shrug of his shoulders as he places his fists on his hips.

「I see…」

She nods her hatted head gently, lowering it a little.

「…Did you two do it already?」

Her amber eyes rise from the floor to meet Straf's gaze again, glowing ominously at him as she tilts her head. Her faint smile, the gleaming light behind her head, and her amber eyes give her an eerie quality.

「Do what? Nona, I might have minor brain damage, but you're talking nonsense.」

Straf replies with a slanted mouth, and exhales heavily out of his nose in exasperation.

「Ahahaha… What are you being all coy for, all of a sudden, Straf?…」

Nona giggles, lowering her head for a brief moment, before looking at him again. She approaches closer, taking slow, leisurely, swaying steps with her hands still behind her back, slyly smiling at Straf.

「…A handsome guy like you probably goes to bed with a different girl every night. So…」

While Straf watches her with wary eyes, she walks up right next to his face.

「…You did it, right?」

Nona rewords her question, looking up at Straf from below. At least a head and a half shorter than Straf, she smugly smirks in his face while her amber eyes remain locked onto his.

「Did what? You'll have to be more specific.」

Straf answers with a reworded question of his own, looking at Nona with a tight-lipped grimace on his face.

「Ahaha… Straaf… I might be a commoner, and from a poor family… But I'm still a lady, you know? Don't force me to say stuff like that…」

She quietly, softly giggles, and lowers her gaze to her feet. She bashfully spins her boot left and right on her toes, looking away from Straf, still holding the hammer behind her back.

「…Or do you like that sort of thing?」

Nona adds, spinning her head around to meet Straf's gaze again with a sly smile on her gently tilted face. She takes one more step forward, and hops to her tiptoes, trying to get her face as close to Straf's as possible.

「…Did you two fuck?」

She asks with narrow-eyed, pressing her uniformed breasts against his chest, and smugly grinning. Like a child that just got away with misbehaving. If she'd hop just a little, she could headbutt Straf.

「What!? No! Lia isn't an easy girl like that! In fact, I'm not in a rush to do it with anyone!」

Straf openly declares, spreading his arms in outrage. Nona's glowing amber eyes snap wide open in surprise.

「Ah!… No way!… You're lying!」

She lets out a quiet, shocked gasp. Her stunned face slowly turns into an amused grin as she excitedly exclaims, and takes a few swaying steps backwards.

「Why would I be!? I may be a virgin, but I'm not a desperate virgin!」

Straf proudly declares, pressing his thumb into his chest with his head held high.

「I'm not going to chase or beg anyone! My harem is going to come around, eventually!」

He adds, planting his fists on his hips with his chin high, unyielding. With her jaw dropped, grinning, Nona blinks at him in shock in silence for a few moments.

「No way!… So I'm going to be your first?」

She asks, cocking her head to the side.

「What? N- Listen. It's not a first come, first serve. There is a proper order to this…」

Straf stammers briefly from the surprise of her unabashed, audacious and presumptuous question. He shakes his head in confusion, before he begins explaining with his index finger out.

「…The first girl gets the first attempt. Now… I saw that dumb bimbo first, but the situation is a little more complicated than that, because technically, Lia was the first girl I saw here.」

He continues explaining, while Nona listens with an expressionless face.

「And that means that it is first-come-first-serve, but only between them-」

「Get on the bed.」

Nona authoritatively blurts out, smiling gently at Straf, interrupting his explanation. Straf shakes his head, astonished and at a loss for words.

「…Now, hold the fuck up. You of all people aren't going to order me around.」

Amused by her outrageous demand, Straf chuckles quietly, and grins at her lightly smiling face, holding his index finger out as he makes his stand.

「Straf…」

Lowering her hatted head, Nona loses her smile. She swings her hammer out to the front with one hand, and rests it on her free hand.

「…I'd rather not hurt you. I'd like it more if you would order me around… But get on the bed.」

Nona commands, gently smiling at Straf's again. As she lifts her head, the metal dragon on her peaked cap glints, reflecting the moonlight pouring in from the window. Straf eyes her warily with a troubled grimace.

「…Unless you want to do it on the table, or something. That'd be kind of dirty, ahahaha!…」

She adds with a grin, and giggles, bending forward a little as she laughs.

「…Imagine we're panting and sweating, I have my legs locked around you, we're in the thick of it… And then a maid or someone comes in! While we're on that desk there!」

Nona exclaims with glee, grinning as she points at the desk beside them, effortlessly holding the sledgehammer in one hand.

「That might actually happen!」

Straf says with his mouth heavily aslant, audibly frustrated.

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「I know, right!? Ahahahaha!」

She nods with a huge grin, and mirthfully laughs, completely disregarding the late hour.

「No!… What I mean is, a maid might actually come in right now! And she'll completely misread the situation! She'll probably think I'd agree, or some shit like that! I'm not gonna!」

Straf shouts out, and points at Nona while she's still cackling, protesting and rejecting her lascivious fantasy. Nona's cackling stops abruptly, and she straightens out of her guffawing belly laughter.

「…Is that so?」

Nona asks, completely expressionless and monotone. Almost as if she was just blurting out an idle statement. She twirls the hammer around its axis in her hands, thinking as she looks at it spin.

「…What if a maid came in while we're in the middle of doing it? Would she immediately run to the queen, and blab to her about it?」

Her glowing amber eyes rise up to Straf, and she asks again, still expressionless. Straf warily watches her, tight-lipped and with fists on his hips.

「Yeah, probabl-」

「…What if the queen came in? What would she do?」

Nona asks, interrupting Straf. She grins ear to ear as soon as she finishes her question.

「…Would she get angry? Murderously furious? Would she kill us both on the spot, or just me?… Would you protect me from her?」

She continues, tilting her head as asks many more hypotheticals, grinning at him with her eyes narrowed. Straf extends his index finger at her, and opens his mouth, but then quickly closes it without saying a word.

「…Or would she drop to her knees, and start wailing in despair? Would she beg you to stop? What would she do if you ignored her, and gave me a really sloppy kiss there and then? Ahahaha…」

Nona adds, tilting her head the other way.

《That's… Kind of fucked up, actually.》

Straf thinks, looking at Nona with a troubled, tight-lipped expression as he's holding his index finger out, still at loss for words. She giggles, and looks back down onto her hammer, once again losing her grin.

「I really want to see her crying face, Straf. I want to see her despair. I want to see her heart break. I'm having a really weird moment in my life right now, and I don't really know who I am…」

She explains, idly spinning her hammer as if it was made of foam, whirling it around its axis. Her glowing, amber eyes look up at Straf once more, and she smiles softly.

「…But I think I am a thief at heart. I want to steal her most precious thing. And since we're both women, I know it's not money, or jewels, or the scepter, or something like that…」

She adds, and weakly shrugs her shoulders as she looks back down at her hammer, as if to hide from Straf's judgement. A few seconds of near-silence pass, broken only by the quiet noise of the whirling hammer.

「So… Get on the bed, Straf. It will be more fun if I don't have to hurt you.」

Nona commands again, smiling softly with her glowing eyes locked onto his.

「So if I agree, you won't hurt me?」

Straf asks, looking at her with a plaintive expression.

「Yes. I don't actually feel an urge to hurt you, Straf, so I'd rather not. I just want to see a river of tears flow down her pretty rosy cheeks. I'm sure you'll have plenty of fun, too. You can do anything to me.」

Nona nods her head, and grins at Straf, hugging her hammer as she explains.

「Will you really not hurt me? Is that a promise?」

He asks again, sounding even more meek and pathetic than before.

「Promise. Just get on the bed, unless you want to do it on the floor… That's fine by me too. We can do it anywhere. Maybe even her throne…」

She nods her hatted head again. The dragon and the grinning skeleton glint in the moonlight, while the intense stare from her glowing amber eyes attempts to burn a hole in Straf. He poses fabulously in response.

「I refuse. Heh. Walked right into that one.」

With his hands on his hips, and his head bombastically cocked, Straf powerfully and pompously declares. He smugly grins, and lets out a singular chuckle through his teeth.

Nona's head jumps back. She loses her grin, and her eyes blink at Straf in confusion while he's posing. It takes her a long moment to recover, and she begins to weakly, but rapidly nod her head.

「I see… I'm sorry…」

She quietly apologizes, nodding her head. Straf exits his fabulous pose, and forms fists on his hips, rolling his eyes with his mouth heavily scrunched to the side.

「It's alright, I kind of understand. It's not that I'm rejecting your fee-」

CRASH!!

Straf just barely hops out of the way of a hammer swing aimed at his knees. He falls near the bed, and the hammer smashes into the cabinet he was standing beside, completely shattering the site of the impact.

「What the fuck!?…」

Straf exclaims in wide-eyed shock, as Nona recovers from her wild swing. She rips the hammer out of the cabinet, and puts the shaft on her shoulder.

「Ahahahaha!… Don't worry, Straf. I'm just going to break your legs…」

Nona throws her head back in laughter, stumbling a step back and almost falling over.

「What the fuck do you mean, don't worry!?」

Straf shouts back at Nona, clutching onto the bed to sit up on the floor.

《She's actually fucking nuts! Is it my fault I didn't notice the obvious and telltale signs? No! I'm not a psychologist! I couldn't have known!》

He thinks, looking wide-eyed at Nona's glowing eyes and giant grin as she approaches, tightening her grip on the『Magecrusher』on her shoulder.

《Welp. Lesson learned, maybe. Twice in a day? What's the pool of random events on the fucking blood moon!? What a mess…》

He shakes his head, grinning nervously as he looks at Nona's hammer above her head. Her amber eyes glow through the gap between her arms.

「Get on the bed, Straf… Or stay still!」

Nona commands, breathing heavily with a massive grin on her face.

《Nope. Time to bow out of this shitty situation, and make a graceful exit.》

Straf thinks, and activates [Contextual Time Perception].

SMASH!!

「Agh! What the fuck!?」

Or so he thinks, as he's forced to jump on the bed to evade Nona's overhead blow. It rips through a nearby chest of drawers, nearly cleaving it in half, and causing a huge dent in the wood where Straf's knee was.

「Straf!… We can have fun doing it every day!- Ah.」

Nona exclaims, and turns her manic grinning face to him as he's kneeling on, and clutching onto the bed with his teeth clenched and bared.

《Why the fuck is it not working!? What the fuck!?》

Straf screams in his head, staring at Nona to anticipate the next swing. She pulls the hammer up, and heaves it onto her shoulder.

《Gah! It's the hammer! It's the fucking hammer!》

「My actions have consequences!?!」

He shouts out in a shock realization, shielding himself from Nona with his arm as she's panting heavily, grinning at him.

「Straf… Does this mean you changed your mind, then?」

She asks, wiping sweat from her chin with her uniform's sleeve.

《Wait, how is this girl even swinging that fucking thing around!? Lia had trouble holding it!》

He thinks, and focuses his eyes on Nona's face.

Nona Bounder

[|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||] Lv. 9

Strength: 140 Perception: 12

Agility: 63 Endurance: 13

Dexterity: 47 Willpower: 16

Luck: 14 Intelligence: 8

Charisma: 17 Wisdom: 8

《What the fuck are those stats!? That's not normal! If she punched me with strength that high, she'd rupture my fucking lung!》

Straf quickly skims through Nona's stats, but she interrupts him by placing one of her boots on the bed, almost giving him an indecent view. He skitters away along the bed to one of its corners.

《Fuck! I forgot she's one of those!》

「No!」

He shouts at her, clutching onto the bedpost.

「Aww… Stay still! And don't fight back once I break them! I'll make it fun for you too, I promise!」

Nona declares, and lunges at Straf again. She swings the hammer down at his knee, and he leaps off the bed onto the floor again.

Thud. SMASH!! Crack! Smash!

Her sledgehammer hits the bed's corner, just a split second shy of viciously shattering Straf's bones.

The bed's leg splits. The force of the impact breaks the other leg on the same side, and the whole bed tilts. Nona loses balance, and harmlessly rolls off to the floor.

「Auuuggh!! You broke the bed!」

Straf gasps as he jumps up to his feet, and points at the now crooked bed, hunched over and shouting with pure anguish in his voice.

「Ahahahaha!…」

Nona madly cackles as she picks herself up, and puts her peaked cap back on by its brim. She hugs『Magecrusher』close, pressing her face against its hammerhead, smushing her cheek a little.

「It's not a laughing matter! What if it had a blessing, or whatever!? What if it's one of a kind!? What if it doesn't work anymore!?」

He frantically shouts with his eyes wide open, and his hand shakes heavily as he points at the bed.

「…We would have broken it anyway.」

Nona shrugs as she impishly claims, smiling, looking at Straf with half-closed, glowing sultry eyes…