Burnout Reincarnation [SLOW BURN COZY 'MAGIC CRAFTING' KINGDOM BUILDING PROGRESSION] (LitRPG elements) [3 arcs done!]

The Princess Angelina Grace Marca Prima Omnio sat regally in the Granavale Sitting Room, a cup of tea on a saucer before her, next to a layered rack of sweet treats. She'd traded her bright red dress for a muted maroon one. Not quite the black of the sleek Omnio operator. Nor the color of mourning, for that matter.

"It's odd how quickly she got back here," Mary whispered to Archmund as they stood just outside the door. "I thought she fled to safety after the Monster outbreak. You'd think she'd wait a little longer."

She clapped him on the back. "It'll just be the two of you alone, then. Do your best to make a good impression!"

He met her reassuring smile with a smirk and stepped in. Raehel's reminder echoed in his head. He might have felt the princess was a kindred spirit, but she was far more enmeshed, more adept at navigating the political nuances and challenges of this world.

"Your majesty," he said, bowing slightly as he entered, the door shutting behind him.

"Archmund Granavale," she said imperiously. "You may be seated."

"You didn't pour your own tea, did you?" he said.

"Your maidservant handled the matter for me," she said arrogantly. "As one would expect."

He poured himself his own cup of tea and took a sip. It was the usual stuff. Black tea.

She lifted the tea cup to her mouth and took a sip. Maybe she'd been waiting to see if it was poisoned? But when she put it down, the liquid level hadn't changed. And though her face stayed forcibly neutral, there was an almost imperceptible curl of her upper lip.

"Right. You hate this stuff," Archmund said.

Her mouth dropped open — again, just ever so slightly — before she returned to her mask of beauty and grace. "Granavale. Whatever would make you think that?"

"It's the finest tea our money can buy, and you won't drink a drop of it."

"So much for trying to make a good impression, huh?" she said, glaring at him.

"You heard?"

"Your maid wasn't exactly quiet about it."

Surprisingly, his face felt hot.

From the faint tinge of pink on her face, it was possible she was in the same boat.

"Look, if you feel that strongly about it, I did import some coffee—"

"There's no need. But thank you."

She ahem'd quietly into her shoulder.

"Well," she said, returning her face to its regal, neutral composure. "I'm glad you're alive. How do you feel?"

He suspected he'd be getting that question a lot in the upcoming days.

"Sore. Tired. Like I'm going to need quite a lot of time and rest."

"From what Redmont told me, you took a blow straight-on. It's a wonder you're not dead, at your level of training."

"I thought that too."

"In the Imperial City, we wouldn't even think of sending someone to fight a Centaur-type beast unless they could stop a steel sword with a palm," the Princess said. "So… you were lucky."

"You can stop swords with your bare hands?"

"I can stop blades with my neck," the Princess said haughtily. "Though the point of having a spy agency is to stop anyone from ever getting close enough to try."

Well, that would probably stop any popular revolutions from pulling out the guillotine.

Not that a commoner revolution had any real chance of standing up against the noble class, based on what he'd seen at the tournament. Training with Gem from childhood granted immense enhancements, and even a second of using Gemgear elevated one's fighting abilities far beyond mortality.

Archmund grabbed one of the cookies and nibbled at it. He'd always had a bit of a sweet tooth, especially if he was nervous. After he'd eaten half of his, Princess Angelina ate one of hers, too.

"Why are you really here?" Archmund said. "Surely it's not just to make sure I'm well. You could've sent a card."

She ate the rest of her cookie, chewing delicately on every bite, the very image of a princess.

But if he didn't know better, he'd almost think she was nervous.

"The men who died out there had some Gemgear," she said. "Which, on a technicality, makes them servants of the Empire, the same as you and I. They died in service to it defending the crown and its people. They are to be honored as heroes. And since it was under my watch that they fell…"

"Yours? Mine? Or Mercy's?"

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"Mmmmmm… mine," she said. "I authorized the tournament and was there as observer."

"And that's why you came back."

"I haven't left Granavale County yet, to be honest," she said. She looked at him expectantly.

Surely she hadn't been waiting for him to wake up. Surely she had some other motive. Surely that wasn't why she'd wanted to see him the day he awoke.

Maybe it was related to her Grand Working. Whatever she had done.

"My… distant relation oversaw the rebuilding of the entrance to Granavale Dungeon," Angelina said. Which meant that she'd overseen it herself, as Mercy. "Tents, wooden barricades, palisades, a few more defensive structures. The traps up top, incidentally, hadn't been touched at all. The whole point of them is to disrupt the Monsters from above."

"We had men down there," Archmund said. "Good men. Trained men."

"And I respect that, but if you're not willing to sacrifice them, reconsider having the traps at all. Or relocate the camp."

Yes. Of course. "Why did you set up the camp down in the pit, anyways?"

"The Sacred Guard assigned to Omnio agent 'Mercy'," the Princess said, as if she wasn't talking about herself, "uses primarily melee weapons. So when you're dealing with Dungeon entrances, if you want to avoid Monster amalgamation, it's best to be close to their egress points."

Archmund nodded slowly as if that had meant something to him. Princess Angelina sighed.

"Kill the Monsters as they come out so they can't eat each other to get stronger," Angelina said. "You don't have to pretend like you know everything."

"Then why set up the traps at all?"

"We wanted to give you options."

Options. Which included the option to fail.

"You impressed me, Granavale," Angelina said. "You spoke older than you were, like myself. You had a Skill that ripped through Monsters, and survived facing a Monster far stronger than justified for someone who'd learned to fight the day before. You resisted offers of power from below."

It had been, he supposed, a bit of a tragic miscommunication. She'd thought highly of him. She'd expected him to prevent this ahead of time.

"When you announced a tournament, I thought that was a sign you had the matter wholly in hand. I didn't realize that… I didn't want anyone to die either."

He'd assumed she'd prepared him with suitable fortification; she'd assumed he'd adapt the fortifications for his needs. Three people had died as a result, and one had been maimed.

"You'll still have the options, but as it stands, you should have quite a bit more time before any of your missteps become deadly again," Angelina said. "I wish it hadn't come to that, but…"

Something was weighing on her.

Something about the safety.

"The Grand Working," Archmund said. "What did it do?"

"You spoke with your maidservant about this already," Angelina said. She phrased it as a statement, but it was more of a probe.

"And my magic teacher," Archmund said. That was his subtle way of saying he'd talked to someone who knew something about it, and her mouth tightened to a line.

"You know the theories about Dungeons," Angelina said. "They're passages to Hell, that the wrathful dead carve out when they try to escape."

"I'm inclined to think there's an element of truth in that," Archmund said. "Whether it's a real hell or just a place of great evil doesn't matter so much for what ends up happening."

"Then I won't need to waste words on convincing you. Keeping Hell on Earth from ever occurring is what has sustained the long peace between the Empire and the Church," Angelina said. "And that means, when necessary, intervening in the natural growth of Dungeons. Usually adventurers are enough to stymie the growth, keep the Monsters at bay, and shut the darkness away, but when they're not, or if the local nobles should take policies that discourage adventurer visits… it falls under Imperial authority. And so I took Imperial action."

She took a breath, and the very tail of it was shaky.

"I had discretion, Granavale. The option to let some time pass without the Grand Working. And I gave you the tools to control the place back."

He felt admonished. This was his domain. Everything had been going well. And then it hadn't.

"I thought I had more time."

Everyone had said the Dungeon would build up gradually. That it would follow some sort of logistic buildup curve. That it should've been handleable by a small group of men. But by his reckoning, at least fifteen Monstrous horses had burst out of the Dungeon's entrance.

One of his assumptions had been wrong. Which one?

"You do now," Angelina said, her voice smoothing out. "You can go ahead with your original plan to build out your personal guard and harvest your Dungeon and develop your industries, and in fifteen years when it runs dry you'll be in a good place for whatever comes next."

She said this kindly. As if it was a mercy.

"No more days of unpleasant surprise?"

"No more of those," she said. "You'll face the slow collapse of your lands as vultures swoop in to loot your Dungeon, but you can be the biggest vulture of them all. So even if your lands fall into disrepair, you can entrench the Granavales in the capital as perpetual nobles."

That sounded like the sort of fate he would have liked to avoid.

"Oh, and—"

She reached behind her chair and pulled out a large metal bow, the one that the Centaur had carried.

Its grip and sight were Gemstone, but its limbs were some unidentifiable metal.

"This is yours," she said. "I'm told you won it through right of defeat."

"Xander was the one who killed the beast," he said.

"Archmund. Be serious. A peasant, granted the Gemgear by you, on a mission led by you, killed the beast you'd already disarmed," Angelina said. "You can give it to him if you want, but it'll be months, if not years before he can use more Gem than you've already given him. You, on the otherhand, could master this by midyear."

It was a good enough argument. He took the bow from her and almost fell forward — it was immensely heavy, and it was amazing she was strong enough to hold it herself.

She watched him carefully. "The next time we meet, Granavale," she said. "It will most likely be at the Imperial Academy."

It surprised him. They'd both screwed up. They'd had too much faith in each other's mastery. He would've expected her to give up on him, after he'd squandered this chance.

"You still want me as an ally?"

"Of course I do!" she said, sharply, somewhat surprising him.

"I would have thought, after…"

Well, everything. He'd spent a good amount of time on status games instead of practical reinforcement, even despite his skills. He was powerful, and yet he was starting to wonder if he was unreliable.

"Many men dedicated to my service have died," Angelina said, and though she phrased it neutrally he knew she meant in the field, under her identity as Mercy. "You made your decisions, you took a risk, and it went poorly at the worst time possible. So… I get it. I do. Even if this mistake weighs on you now, one day it'll have made you stronger."

She smiled gently, and his heart caught in his throat. It was a moment of genuine kindness.

It was true. His assumptions about the world had been based on shaky information, and he'd paid the price for it. He'd just assumed the Mortal Force Curve or whatever the proper name was, based on observational data, would hold — and then it didn't.

Because everyone was operating on blurred and obscured knowledge, cultivated through centuries of intentional misinformation.

"The thing is… I still think you did well, Granavale. The tournament was a decent spectacle for a place this rural, you've inspired and won the hearts of your people, you defeated a Monster far beyond what I'd have expected, and, as loathe as I am to admit it… you've found comrades who aren't me."

She sighed, a hint of nervousness in her voice. "I'd be a fool to throw away your friendship now. If you can bring yourself to forgive me."