A few hours ago, in the early evening, in the palace halls…

Two maids with sour faces are walking side by side together, one holds stacked and folded bedsheets, and the other carries a broom and a rag with a bucket of water hanging from her hand.

「I hate cleaning that pervert's room. I wish the queen would have done something about him already.」

The maid with the broom says to her fellow maid.

「You said it! Good grief! It's like he is going out on his way to disgust us!」

She replies with a powerful nod of her headdress-topped head.

「Do you want to bet he'll do it again the moment we open his door?」

The broom maid asks with a little grin as they approach Straf's door.

「Isn't he out of the palace right now? There's no way. What could he have possibly done to be more reprehensible than he already is? Murder someone in his room?」

The maid with the bedsheets tilts her head and furrows her brows a little.

The two stop in front of the door, and the broom maid switches hands, resting the broom on the ground and propping up against her shoulder momentarily as she reaches for the door handle.

「…Don't even say that. I don't want to have to inform the queen we found a body. I still have nightmares about all the blood and heads from that maniac's reign.」

Her hand stops, and she looks at her coworker maid with a tight-lipped, nervous grimace on her face.

「Right…」

The coworker replies, apologetically nodding. The broom maid hesitantly reaches for the handle, and opens the door. They take a few steps in, and immediately gasp in shock. They look at each other with their eyes wide-open in disbelief, then turn them back to the bed.

A young, very young girl in a gothic dress with golden twin tails is laying face-down on the bed, completely motionless. The broom maid silently points at the girl with a nervous expression, and the other maid looks at her friend with a grimace mirroring hers.

The maid with the bedsheets nods her head towards the girl, signaling her friend to move towards her. After an uneasy moment of silence, she reluctantly obliges, taking a few slow steps towards the bed, fearing the worst.

「Ahhh…」「Aaahhhhhhh…」

The two maids let out relieved sighs. Their shoulders slump and relax, when they see the little girl move a little. They remain nervous, however. The broom maid sets the bucket and the rag down on the floor, and approaches closer to the bed.

「…Young lady?」

She carefully, quietly calls out towards the young girl on the bed. She rises to her knees, and rubs her eyes with her fingers as she remains turned with her back towards the two maids.

「…What is it?…」

The twin-tailed girl asks in a displeased tone, still groggily rubbing her eyes. The two maids glance at each other, exchanging nervous looks.

「Is… Is everything alright?」

The maid asks, leaning in a little while the little girl yawns softly.

「Haaaaaaahhhhh… Huh? Why would it not be?」

The girl asks back, lightly turning her head towards them.

「Um… We were worried, that… You see… Well…」

The maid stumbles through words, looking towards her friend for help. With her lips tightly pressed together in a nervous grimace, she approaches as well.

「Young lady, is the minister forcing you to do something… Unpleasant? Against your will?」

She asks, and glances at her friend with the broom, attempting her best to be delicate.

「Huh?… Who, Straf?」

The girl asks, tilting her golden head a little.

「Yes, Minister Vindi-」

「What nonsense… Straf isn't forcing me to do anything unpleasant. I enjoy everything he tells me to do.」

The girl proudly declares, and the maids look at each other with wide-open eyes. They quickly regain their composure.

「Um… May we know what your relationship with Minister Vindict is?… What types of things he tells you to do?…」

The broom maid asks with fearful eyes, looking at the little girl's twin tails of gold, and her back.

「Hmpf. My relationship?… That is none of your business, human…」「Human?…」

The girl scoffs, crossing her arms as she replies.

「…But very well, I shall tell you… For now, our relationship is merely carnal.」

She haughtily adds, keeping her head high.

「C-? C-? C-? Ca-? C-? Ca-?」「Carnal!?」

The maid with the broom exclaims in shock and looks at her friend, who is stuck trying to do the same, but finds herself stuck in a loop of stammering.

「Yes… For now… But I can tell there is more between us. Only I can satisfy his certain needs, and…」

The girl's voice trails off, as she seemingly hesitates to open up further.

「C- Certain needs?…」「N- Needs?…」

The maids stammer, and glance at each other with their faces frozen in pure, wide-eyed shock.

「…And ever since he put his hand on me, I realized there is also a deeper connection between us. He understands me.」

「He did what?…」

As she listens to the girl speak, the broom maid quietly utters out, and covers her mouth with her hand.

「Yes. He is the only man in this world who will ever understand me…」

The golden-haired girl adds, and her voice gains a somber note to it.

「D- Don't say that, young lady! There are plenty of good men out there who will treasure you and love you! You just need to find the right one, one day!-」

The maid holding the bedsheets exclaims with despair on her face.

「Wrong. Straf is the right one. He is the only one…」

The little girl declares with an insistent, yet sullen tone. The maids look at each other with anguished expressions, and the broom maid reaches for the rag hanging on the bucket's edge.

《Uuoooohhh I can't believe this! What a scumbag! What a horrible, horrible, dreadful scumbag! He ruined this young girl's self-worth and made her completely dependent on him! On someone so perverted and sick!?》

The broom maid thinks, sniffling quietly as she dabs her wetting eyes with the rag.

《I wish her all the best, but despite everything I told her, I know no man will have her anymore! Am I in the wrong to give her false hope? That bastard! How could he!? How could he!?!》

The maid with the bedsheets clenches her teeth, holding back tears and blinking rapidly.

「Y- Young lady! You shouldn't let someone like him do this to you! Please!-」

Pulling the rag away from her eyes for a moment, the teary-eyed maid desperately cries out towards the girl's back.

「Huh? Are you telling me what I can and can't do, human?」

The girl asks, and an odd, oppressive atmosphere fills the room.

「N- No, but… You are a lovely young lady who deserves better than this!」

The maid replies, desperately pleading with the young lady. Perhaps out of fear from the sudden atmosphere shift, or for plain, regular comfort, the maid approaches her friend and hugs into her.

It brings immediate relief, and the little girl grows silent for a long moment. With her head lowered and her face turned towards the pillow, she appears in deep thought.

「No… My fate was sealed long ago…」

The young girl dejectedly replies, keeping her head.

《Nooooooo! Don't fall into despair! Don't submit to your fate! Fight on!》

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Tears of pure anguish roll down the cheeks of the maid with the bedsheets as she does her best to keep the urge to sob inside.

《Aaaaagh! If only a handsome, knightly man would come to rescue her from the clutches of this demon! I would have helped him, even if it'd kill me! I'd take the gallows, if it'd mean she'd have her happy ending! Life is not fair!》

The broom maid squeezes her face into her friend's puffy uniform shoulder, soaking it in freely-flowing tears.

《…She doesn't even see herself as a human being anymore! She's been that debased!》

Her friend returns the sentiment, and hugs her face into the broom maid's uniform as well. A moment of brief silence passes as the almost-blubbering maids hug each other in compassionate despair.

「Say… Do you ever plan to find a man for yourself?」

The girl asks, lightly turning her head towards the two. The question comes seemingly as a non-sequitur, and the maids are confused enough for it to turn the valve off on their stream of tears.

「Uh… Yes, young lady. It's my dream to get married to a handsome, loving man one day… Like you should!」

The broom maid nods, lowering the rag from her eyes as she shares her dream. She quickly adds an encouraging appendix to her statement for the little girl.

「I… I want to have a boyfriend, but I don't know how I'd marry the idea of having one with being a maid here…」

Her friend says, replying to the girl. The young lady gently nods her head, taking in their answers.

「I see… And suppose you would find the perfect man for yourself, would you take him?」

She asks, still turned away from them with her arms crossed.

「W- Well, of course. That's obvious. I'd jump at the chance, young lady.」

The maid replies, almost done with her sniffling.

「…Would that still be the case if he'd promptly leave you?」

The little girl asks, once again ever-so-slightly turning her face towards them, yet never truly facing them.

「Wha-? Why, I would never marry a two-timer!」

The maid replies with outrage in her voice.

「Yes! My boyfriend would have to be a loyal-!」

Her friend concurs, nodding her head, but the girl cuts in.

「No!… Suppose he just leaves you. Due to personal matters. Suppose even, that he wholly loves you, but has to leave after just a momentary relationship that will leave you unsatisfied…」

The girl interrupts the maid by raising her voice, and calmly clarifies.

「You mean… Like, leave for his distant homeland, young lady?」

「Leave for the military, and never return?…」

The maids ask, and glance at each other with furrowed brows.

「Yes… Something like that… Would you still bother with a man like this, being certain that he will not be with you for long?」

The young lady nods her golden head, jiggling her twin tails a little. The question makes the maids stop and think, humming loudly. They ruminate, ponder, and deliberate carefully on their answer.

「…There is a saying, young lady. It's better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all. I think it would be worth it, even if losing him would hurt. He would have left either way, wouldn't he?」

The broom maid says, tilting her head a little with a contemplative expression.

「Then the only thing that changes is whether you choose to love him or not, before he has to leave. By being afraid of getting hurt and avoiding it, you'll avoid being loved and loving, too.」

「Yes…」

She finishes her thought, and her friend concurs with a slow, repeating, gentle nod of her head. The answer seems to give the young lady something to think on, as she remains silent for a prolonged moment.

「…I see. So that is what humans think these days.」

The little girl says, and gets up. She hops down from the bed, and approaches the window. Her twin tails flutter in the gentle breeze when she opens it.

「I think you will find a lovely man soon enough, if you just don't give up!…」

The maid with the bedsheets insists with a forced smile that the young lady can't see, as she remains turned with her back towards them both.

「Enough. You have my gratitude for this insight, humans. I will remember this…」

The girl declares in a nigh-growl, looking straight ahead out the window at nothing in particular.

「…Stay indoors for the remainder of this week. Do not leave the palace.」

The girl says, and her dress noisily flutters in the wind as she steps onto the window frame.

「…Young lady?」

The broom maid utters out with her brows heavily furrowed, frozen in confusion. The young girl leaps out of the window.

「Ah!」「Young lady!?」

The maids' jaws drop in shock when they witness the golden twin tails' tips disappear outside beyond the window's frame. They look at each other with horrified expressions on their faces.

「D- Did she just?…」

The maid holding the bedsheets asks, as she slowly swivels her head towards her friend in a jittery, stuttering motion.

「I don't- M- Maybe she's fine, you should go take a look…」

Her friend quietly replies with her eyes wide-open in a mixture of shock and disbelief.

「What? No way! No way, no way, no way! There's no way she's fine! Have you ever looked outside the windows!? You do it!」

The her friend shakes her head and steps away from her, nodding towards the window. The two glance at the window then each other for a long, awkward, and silent moment.

「S- Someone will have to report this…」

She says with a nervous grin.

「I'll do it with you… But you go take a look!」

Her friend replies, and nods her head at the window again. She gulps nervously, and drops the broom and the rag, reluctantly approaching the breezy window. She takes a deep breath, and leans out the window, looking straight down.

「…She's not there.」

She says to her friend over her shoulder, with her brows greatly furrowed in confusion.

「What? But she… Is she somewhere off to the side?」

Somewhat confused as well, her friend asks.

「No, I looked everywhere. She's just not there.」

She shakes her head, and steps away from the window.

「…Then maybe someone already took her? Maybe she'll get to a healer in time?…」

Her friend theorizes, still holding the bedsheets in her hands.

「In that case, there's no need to report anything, is there? Someone will take care of it…」

The maid says, and picks the broom and the rag back up. The two look at each other, and shrug.

「…Let's clean this place up and leave. If someone asks, we can just say she wasn't here.」

「Right…」

The maid nods, and starts sweeping the floor, while her friend drops the bedsheets onto the table, and approaches the bed to change them…

…

In the early morning, far, far away in a distant land.

A golden, vertically-slit eye opens. The green dragon lifts its head, sensing something coming. It looks left and right, looking for the source of its unease. Its fellow dragons are soaring above the waters far below, or leisurely lounging about on the cliffs.

A distant battle is taking place, a stranger black dragon has its front claws tightly wrapped around an unknown red dragon's neck. They both are plummeting downwards in a lopsided spiral, but it will take much, much longer for them to crash into the waters below.

And yet, that cannot possibly be the source of the unease. Something flickers in the corner of the green dragon's vision, it turns its eye to it. A barely recognizable, mangled set of armor fit for a humanoid, covered in a ball of flame as it rapidly closes in on its head…

…

After sunset, in Straf's room.

「Ahhhhh… I should stop signing those certificates… Stamp them instead, would save me my wrist.」

Thud.

Straf lets out a fatigued sigh as he enters his room, and slams the door shut. He approaches the foot-end of the bed, and jumps onto it with his back.

「Ah. Fresh sheets, nice- Wait, they're not poisoned somehow, are they?」

Straf jumps up to sitting, peeling his back away from the fresh, soft blanket as he looks at it with wary eyes.

「…Nah, I'm already fucked if that's the case. I really ought to be more careful, though…」

He shrugs, and throws the blanket aside, sliding under it. Straf plops down onto the bed with a loud pfwap.

《Level up. Attribute points gained.》

A monotone female voice announces in his head.

「What the fuck!? Did I just crush a spider!?」

Straf shoots back up to sitting again, and looks around the pillow area.

《Level up. Attribute points gained. Skill points gained.》

「That had to be some fucked up spider to be worth this much XP, what the fuck? Athea! Athea!」

He looks down at the canopy and shouts.

《What do you want you perverted degenerate!? More of your sick humiliation!?》

「No! Are there spiders in my room!?」

Straf shouts at the furious voice in his head.

《…What are you talking about!? Did you finally lose it!? Are you actually a madman now!?》

Athea pauses for a second, then continues her angry shouting.

「Just answer the fuckin' question! Did I just crush some kind of endgame spider!? Was that the demon lord, or some shit!?」

He shouts again, looking all around himself, peeling the blanket off of his bottom half.

《Khkhkhkhhhhh… What!?》

Utterly perplexed by his bizarre question, Athea shouts another question.

「This shit about eating 6 spiders a day better be fucking fake, I'm not going to eat the bugs! Just answer the question, you bimbo exhibitionist!」

Straf continues shouting, erratically searching his bed for any signs of a spider…