Vol 1 Chapter 9 – I Told You It Was a Flag

Can I just cut straight to the result? Great. As predicted, that female knight was in my route.

Do you want a description of the fight? Fair warning: it was spectacularly unimpressive.

I wasn’t a cheat-powered otherworlder. My stats were basically at floor level — no different from your average civilian. The grind-from-zero type of situation. Like being stuck in the starter town with no gear.

“Damn you — you just won’t go down—!”

“You’re literally trying to kill me right now?!”

Apparently Titania’s beef with me was straightforward: she was genuinely offended that I’d made the Princess cry. According to Ashthal-san, she and the royal twins had been childhood friends — she and Princess Odette were practically sisters.

The force behind every swing was nothing short of terrifying. My only sword experience was a gym class kendo unit, and catching one of her strikes felt like bracing against a collapsing wall. She moved like someone slight beneath that armor — but she was hurling a blade the same size as me like it weighed nothing. The Crimson Rose reputation was starting to make a lot of sense.

It would’ve been great if I wasn’t on the verge of being murdered.

“Whoa — close—!”

“Tch. Good reflexes and bad luck. Here—!“

“That’s not a compliment—!”

Blade past my cheek. Blade between my legs. We were well past cold sweat — this was full-body existential panic. I wore a T-shirt and jeans and she showed zero mercy. “No mercy” doesn’t even cover it. I was scared.

Elena looked like she was actively aging. Ashthal-san hovered nearby, quietly checking on her — those two were the only sane people in the room. The King, meanwhile, was shouting “Go on, there you go, Utaki—!” which contained zero useful information. And right beside him, Princess Odette was gazing at me with that dreamy, unfocused stare that had been drilling into the side of my head this entire time. No light behind the eyes. None.

“Hah… hah… come—on—”

The moment Titania seemed to freeze — just for an instant — was nothing but pure luck.

I closed the distance. Knocked the blade clean out of her hand.

“Ah—”

“Oh my, Utaki just went and — “

“…He won. Terrifying boy.”

Please don’t make this wholesome. I had been desperately trying not to die. That’s it. That’s the whole story.

Titania stood there in stunned silence, staring at her empty hand. It trembled.

“I… lost…“

“I mean — lucky shot — but can we please be done now? I’m exhausted.”

“You — you dare — “

“Augh?! What?!”

Now, I mentioned earlier this was a flag — but the flavor here turned out different from the Princess situation.

“I will kill you someday. I’ll cut you down with my own hands, and then you’ll be mine forever — heh… hehehe…“

The blush on her face was genuinely cute. Objectively cute.

Those were the words she chose, though, and I got a headache.

Vol 1 Chapter 10 – A Small Digression on Fixed-Route Occupations

Hey, long time no update.

“Uuuugh, I’m so bored— Albert! Bored!“

“Ariadne, you really ought to develop at least some awareness of your responsibilities as a Ruler…”

This world had laws. Different from Utaki’s world in the specifics, but the same in principle — the rules that made organized society function.

Among them, one stood out as particularly unusual: the “Statute Governing Fixed Routes and Route Obligations for Designated Occupational Roles.”

In plain terms: hereditary succession, and all the rules that went with it. The most obvious examples were the royal family — and in this world, those known as mages fell under the same provision.

“Not my problem! The whole world-conquest thing was only the 2nd-generation Lord and Great-great-grandfather and Mother — I never wanted to be the Demon Lord!”

The Demon Lord was no exception.

“I wanted to be a dancer. Or a pharmacist.”

“You can’t exactly choose to become the Demon Lord.”

“Then you do it, Albert.”

“I’m not in the direct line of Catastrophe-sama, so that’s not possible.”

The role of the Demon Lord in this world was critical to economic circulation.

The Demon Lord’s side hired subordinates under the banner of world conquest. The kingdom’s side responded by summoning heroes, who required payment. The need to stop those heroes from winning drove demand for enhancement potions, training gyms, and combat facilities — profit margins exploded. The heroes spent their earnings on equipment, stimulating town economies. The subordinates raided those towns, and the towns rebuilt. Repeat.

Put simply: when the wind blows, the barrel-maker profits.

Incidentally, the best-paid and most comfortable job in this world was the low-ranking subordinate assigned to farm experience points for early-stage heroes. Runner-up: pharmacist. Strange as it sounded, subordinates got eliminated constantly, and their reward gold kept getting taken — so their base compensation had to be extraordinary just to make the role viable.

The current Demon Lord, by appearance alone, was a girl who looked barely old enough to be out of school. The 42nd holder of the title. Her name was Ariadne. Favorite things: stuffed animals and cake. Her actual age — I’ll spare you. You’d regret asking.

Her attendant, Albert, was a blood relative — though not in the direct line, so he would never hold the title himself.

As was typical for those with fixed occupational routes, succession passed to the eldest child regardless of gender. If the eldest had no heir, it fell to their siblings. Previous holders — parents, ancestors — retired into comfortable obscurity: traveling, playing lawn games, enjoying their post-Lord years. Ariadne’s younger brothers were living it up in town as merchants and hunters. In a world where being “defeated” didn’t mean dying, the long-lived non-humans among them were perfectly content to socialize with heroes and townsfolk once they stepped down.

Albert’s role as attendant, incidentally, owed partly to his seniority — and partly to the long-smoldering romantic feelings he’d never quite managed to put out.

“The next hero will be arriving soon, so compose yourself.”

“Nooooo… I don’t wanna—“

Perceptive readers have likely already worked this out.

The Demon Lord is a girl.

Which means —