Myria leads Straf and Cycelia up the stairs and to a pair of doors. She unlocks one of them, then turns to face Cycelia.

「Here's the key to yours…」

Clicklack…

She says as she hands Cycelia the key with a small wooden block attached.

「…And here's yours.」

Myria then unlocks the other room, and holds the key out for Straf with a smile on her face. With his mouth heavily aslant, Straf stares at it for a few seconds, causing her to tilt her head.

「Ahhh… Can't believe I've had my big stocks win just a moment ago, and a normal inn room already ate into it.」

Clikk…

He sighs and snatches the key from her fingers, then slips it into his coat pocket along with his fist.

「Well then, have a good night.」

Myria bows towards the two a little, then heads back towards the stairs. Straf and Cycelia watch her leave, before Straf lets out another sigh.

「…Are you planning to head directly to bed, Lia?」

He turns his eyes away from the stairs to Cycelia. She meets his gaze, and nods.

「I'm a little beaten up from the ride, so yes… Is there something you wanted to do still, Straf?」

She asks, tilting her head while she rolls a lock of her chestnut hair around her finger.

「Nah. Go get some rest, we'll likely have to sleep outdoors tomorrow…」

Straf shrugs and turns back around for his own room.

「Ah- Ahh… Okay.」

Cycelia nods, and with her shoulders slumped, walks into her room as well.

「…Goodnight then, Straf.」

「Yeah, goodnight.」

Cycelia and Straf exchange nods as her face peeks through the small crack in her closing door. She then softly pushes it shut from the inside. Straf enters his room and lazily swings the door shut, slamming it loudly. He lets out a sigh, throws his boots off his feet, then jumps onto the inn bed with his back. His hat drops off his head onto the bed with him.

Thud!

「Aw, fuck!…」

Straf grunts, and rolls to his side while wincing heavily.

「…Forgot this isn't a palace bed. Ahhhhhhhhh…」

He looks at the hard, straw-packed bed with his mouth slanted in contempt, then cautiously lowers himself onto his back again with a large sigh.

「Tsk… That means I paid for a room I can't even sleep in. I should have taken the fucking bed…」

Staring at the ceiling with his head resting on his arms, he grumbles loudly.

「Hup!」

He throws his arms forward, and brings himself up to sitting. Straf straightens his back out, crosses his legs, and closes his eyes.

「…Might as well take this time to grind up some willpower.」

He shrugs, and his mouth scrunches to the side a little.

Straf remains perfectly still. With his eyes closed and head gently lowered, he appears as a picture of perfect focus and sereneness.

「Nhhrggghh… Willpower. Willpower. Willpower.」

After roughly an hour of being silent and still, he lets out a frustrated groan and repeats himself. Five more minutes pass while Straf grimaces heavily.

「…Interest rates. Interest rates. Interest rates.」

His grimace grows, and his mouth wobbles as he struggles to keep a neutral and expressionless face.

「Gaaah! Fuck!…」

Thwumpf.

With another frustrated groan, he gives up and drops down onto his back.

《…Willpower my ass! How am I supposed to focus if my financial magic is about to run out!? This fucks everything!…》

Fwumpf.

He throws his arms aside with force, noisily dropping them down on the bed.

「Ahhhhhhh…」

《…Buying materials, things I need, paying the fucking troops, sucking out wealth from other kingdoms… I'm not going to work to do all that! Fuck that!》

Straf lets out a large, long sigh at the ceiling as he thinks.

「…And inflation lags, too. Everyone was slow to notice that there's a shitton of drakes, now everyone will be slow to notice almost half a million of them are out of circulation…」

He grumbles, then listlessly rises himself back up to sitting again.

「…The other half must be in other kingdoms and in the sticks. Fuck. I intentionally kept myself from stealing shit, now I might end up having to steal shit from other kingdoms by force.」

Straf mutters out a curse, then looks at the moonlight flooding in through the window.

「Tsk… Maybe a walk will clear my head. If it works with ideas for stories, it should work with ideas for fixing inflation too」

With a click of his tongue, he slips his feet back into his boots. He then opens the door, but stops just short of making a step outside.

「…I almost forgot the most important part.」

Straf turns around and plucks his Ministry of Security hat off the bed. He sets it down on his head, and adjusts it slightly so that the brim doesn't obscure his vision.

The metal dragon and the grinning skeleton glitter in the hallway's candlelight as Straf closes the door behind himself, and heads for the stairs. They creak with each step as he descends.

「Ah! You're leaving?」

The bulky innkeeper asks while his daughter is buzzing around the room from table to table seemingly at random, like a pesterous fly.

「For a moment. I'm going for a walk.」

With a mixture of frustration and boredom in his tight-lipped grimace on his face, Straf glances at the man with his hands in his coat's pockets.

「Ah, I see. You're a night walk person, huh? We get those sometimes… Don't walk too far out from the village! We had a few people disappear some time ago!」

Myria's father warns as Straf walks past the counter towards the exit.

「Yeah yeah, I'm sure there's a very interesting occurrence in this ordinary but out-of-the-way village, but I'm not interested…」

Straf shakes his head as he's about to gently push the door handle down with his pinkie, but a man opens the door from the outside. He moves out of the way for Straf.

「…I just want to go for a walk.」

Straf adds, sighing as he walks past the villager.

「Uh… Careful, man. I had a creepy feeling like something was watching-」

「I really am not interested.」

Straf cuts in, replying to his comment. The villager shrugs, and enters the inn.

「Get an adventurer if you have a fucking ghost problem… You think you'll bring up strange occurrences to a traveler from out of the village, and he'll start scribbling in his journal? Pft.」

While heading for the edge of he village, Straf scoffs as he looks over his shoulder at the inn.

The village itself is dim, but not entirely dark. Though it's modestly sized and somewhat low in population, the insides of homes around Straf are lit, and some of the light overflows out the windows onto the shadowy dirt road between them. It appears some people are unbothered by the darkness, and Straf passes by a gaggle of village women gossiping about something near someone's home. A few minutes later, with a lazy and unrushed step, he makes it to the house at the periphery of the village. The building is either abandoned, unoccupied, or its residents are sleeping, as it's one of the few dark ones.

With his hands in his coat, Straf looks around the general area outside the village with his bored gaze. It's dark, but the moon shines bright enough light to see everything mostly clearly.

《…Might as well go and find a cool place to sit down at.》

Straf shrugs, and walks out of the village. He wanders for a few minutes around its plains, thinking about everything that lead him to this point, and about nothing in particular.

「Ah.」

He raises his eyes up from the grass ahead of himself, and spots a hill leading to a forest. He glances over his shoulder at the nearby village, then shrugs.

「…Might be a cozy view.」

Straf turns for the hill, slowly climbing up its gentle slope.

He soon makes it to its top, and to the treeline there that stretches into a deep and dark forest far from the road by the village. Straf turns around, then takes a look at the scenery below.

「Hm.」

With a small nod of his head, a light grimace, and a soft hum, he sits down on the grass just by the trees.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The waning moon shines overhead with a soft white light. The sky is remarkably clear for the season, and a warm orange glow comes from the village below, like a large and inviting campfire. A cold breeze turns into short-lived but leaf-ripping gusts every now and then, slowly weathering away the sparse collection of leaves still clinging on. A long dirt road beyond the village connects to another, even longer road of stone, which stretches and winds through the kingdom's many rolling hills and plains in the distance, every now and then dipping out of view, only to emerge elsewhere.

Black mountains silhouette themselves against the somewhat brighter sky, and countless foreign stars glitter in unnamed constellations above. Straf doesn't dare to look closer.

With his mouth's corner slightly slanted, he lowers his pensive gaze down to his outstretched feet.

《Yeah, it's a cozy place alright. This is the type of place where you'd put a writer who comes across occult texts by chance, and slips them into his works… Or some psycho cult.》

Lightly amused by himself, Straf scoffs at his own though with a small smirk.

「I could write that… Buuuuut I'm not leaving anything of value for this shithole of a world. I've come here to fuck it up, not wow everyone with my writing…」

Straf turns his eyes to the village, then looks at the dispersing band of women who appear to be bidding each other farewell as they leave one by one to their homes.

「…Then again…」

《…What do I do to fuck it up? If I just do full chaos and hand everyone guns and nukes, it'll be fucking boring… I'm here to laugh at the fucking cliches, not just watch stuff go boom.》

He rolls onto his side and props his head onto his hand as he thinks. Far in the distance, Straf can see a faint yellow glow of a city.

《…I already gave them fiat money. What could possibly fuck up a world harder than this? If I actually made a rail network, it'd be a matter of time until someone steals it for war…》

His eyes lazily scan the dark horizon in search for something interesting, but the wilderness beyond the village stretches on and on with nothing of note in sight.

「Tsk…」

《…A shitton of people dying isn't funny either. It'd be funny if they died in some contrived way for forced drama, and not because some asshole stole the concept of a train.》

Frustrated, Straf clicks his tongue and sits back up. His eyes drift up as he thinks and thinks.

「Heh…」

《…Smartphones. Just hand them to the otherworlders and watch them turn into bent-neck zombies…》

Straf's shoulders jump up as he lets out an amused huff with a short-lived grin on his face.

「…Oh yeah, in another world… With a smartphone. That's the fucking stuff. Just don't forget to bring a charger, dumbass…」

Crossing his arms, Straf chuckles while shaking his head.

「…Ahhh. Funny thought aside, I could use some long-ranged communication methods. A phone could work… Too high-tech? Telegram, maybe?」

He begins to rub his chin, thinking deeply again as he lowers his head.

「…Come on, focus. You've got inflation running rampant, a shithole country with no running water, and literacy rates are wrestling infant mortality for the top spot in the ranking of problems…」

After a brief shake of his head, Straf mumbles to himself, furrowing his brows in intense thought.

「…You can't raise interest rates, because nobody is borrowing your money. How do you raise productivity enough to offset inflation?…」

He asks himself, then turns his eyes to the long road. After a moment of thinking, his head perks up.

Snap!

His fingers snap loudly in the quiet night. A smug smirk appears on his face.

「Cars!…」

《…Almost as hard to produce as a train, with not as many benefits for war as a train! That'll keep those grubby warhawk assholes off my world's stuff!-》

He proudly crosses his arms again, grinning down at the road in the distance.

「Gahhhhh! But that doesn't solve the immediate problem!…」

Fwumpsh!

With a frustrated groan, Straf drops onto his back, rustling the cold and stiff grass.

《…Trucks delivering goods here and there faster would plummet the prices of shit, but I'm not about to become a one man car company. IEDs take priority… And cars are more complicated.》

Straf's shoulders slump as he lets out a large sigh. He lies still for a few moments, then sits back up.

《Wait, why am I even so concerned about this? Who gives a fuck? Inflation is skyrocketing… So what? People struggle to afford shit… So what?…》

Almost appearing confused, Straf furrows his brows as he looks at the glowing village.

《…Is that any of my problems? I'm not from this fucking world to begin with. I wasn't born here. This isn't my country, this isn't my nation…》

Straf's face gains a disdainful smirk as he crosses his arms.

《…Shit, I'm not even sure if they know what a nation is, it might be a little too modern of a concept for them… So why care if this shithole collapses?…》

While dismissing the idea of giving it any further thought, Straf feels a very faint, but very specific and telltale twinge of sadness deep in his chest. He stares at the grass by his feet in silence.

A long moment passes, and Straf remains staring at the grass visible between his boots with his head empty, free from conscious thought, simply staring with his arms crossed.

《…I guess putting in all that work only to see it go to waste kind of sucks. I'm not exactly good at practicing non-attachment. I practically built it…》

He shrugs, but the odd feeling of sadness doesn't disappear. Cycelia's emerald gaze and smiling face briefly flash before his eyes, though he can't pinpoint from where that specific memory is.

《…I guess Lia would be sad too-》

He thinks, turning his eyes to the inn.

「Pft. Man, get over yourself. None of this is real. The kingdom isn't real, its people aren't real, the queen isn't real. You're pathetic… Humpf…」

Shaking his head in derision, Straf scoffs at himself, then with a grunt, drops down to the grass with his back again, resting his head on his arms.

「…You're the type of a guy to boot up one of those old dating sims and then get hit in the face with post-completion sadness. What's wrong with you, seriously?…」

Straf asks while looking at the sky with unfocused eyes beneath his slightly furrowed brows.

「…Am I just incompetent? Is that it? Things don't go my way, so I turn edgy and get put into a bitchy mood?…」

With a sigh and a shrug of his shoulders, Straf continues questioning himself.

「…Not my fucking fault. I'm a writer, not an economist. Playing RTS games and scouring the internet for cool historical battles doesn't make me a general…」

With his mouth scrunched, he throws his arms up before returning them back behind his head.

「…Doing research on the internet for my stories doesn't make me a genius. I'm just well read. Why isn't everyone? Hmpf…」

Straf asks, then lets out a conceited huff from his nose. Staring at the night sky, avoiding focusing his eyes on anything, he remains silent for a long while, and the stars remain blurry diamonds.

「…What the fuck am I supposed to do now? With everything? I can't even say I was a successful writer. It'd likely stay that way even if I'd get published… Do I just give up on everything?」

After a while, Straf lets out a large, long sigh, then continues quietly talking to himself. The feeling in his chest remains the same.

「…Hey!-」

Straf calls out towards the sky, but stops himself short of saying another word and closes his mouth.

「…Nah, fuck her.」

He says as he swings his arms forward to bring himself up to sitting again. The painful feeling from the inside abruptly disappears, and Straf looks at the village with bored eyes.

「…I was supposed to clear my head, not trash it up with more bullshit.」

He lets out a sigh as he adjusts his misaligned Ministry of Security hat.

Splat.

A heavy blob of liquid splashes on Straf's hat, spattering his fingers.

「Tsk… Seriously? I get a little moody and it immediately starts raining?… This is getting old and tired.」

Straf remarks while he looking at his hand with an incredulous and mildly annoyed smirk on his face. He catches his hat's brim, then looks upward to ascertain the weather. The sky is clear.

「…Huh?」

Straf furrows his brows at the clear night sky, and at the pair of wolf ears above him. They are just barely sticking out into his line of sight from beyond his hat's brim. He lifts it higher.

「Eh?」

As he lifts the brim and looks higher, he sees the ears' owner. An upside-down wolf's head is staring down at him from behind his back. Confused, he takes his hat off.

With the hat out of the way, Straf can now see the massive, hulking, shaggy wolf standing on its hind legs behind him. Instead of regular canine paws, its front legs end with remarkably human-looking, but gargantuan hands, but their fingers are tipped with sharp claws. One hand already has them lodged deep in one of the trees. Entirely silent, the bipedal wolf has all its fangs bared at Straf while it stares at him. It is towering, standing over Straf with a height of at least three men standing on top of each other's shoulders, and its head is almost in the trees' canopies.

「…Did you just fucking drool on me? Gross.」

Straf nonchalantly asks, furrowing his brows in disgust…