As the giant lizard crashed heavily into the mud, completely defeated, a sudden clanking of armor echoed through the square. The remaining village knights rushed forward, instantly surrounding me with their weapons drawn and pointed straight at my chest. They were still terrified and deeply confused by my sudden appearance. Also, because I did technically run away from their prison.
Before anyone could make a move, Claire stepped directly between the knights and me.
“Everyone, stand down!” she commanded, pure authority ringing in her voice.
The knights hesitated, but slowly lowered their blades. Claire turned toward me. Her sharp, serious eyes looked up at me with a profound sense of awe. Then, without a single moment of hesitation, she dropped to one knee and knelt in front of me on the muddy cobblestones.
“You have saved my life and effortlessly defeated a monster that even I struggled against,” she said, her voice laced with absolute, unshakeable loyalty. “Would you like to guide this village, Sire? We will gladly honor you as Your Majesty.”
A collective gasp echoed through the village square. Every single knight and surviving villager froze in absolute shock. They all looked up at me—this mysterious, legendary savior who was still standing victoriously on top of the dead salamander's head, with a wet laundry blanket cape flowing majestically in their perspectives.
In their eyes, I was something truly divine. The afternoon sunlight broke through the dark smoke clouds at the exact perfect angle, illuminating my silhouette and reflecting off my glasses to create a brilliant, blinding halo around my head. To the kneeling crowd, I looked like a stoic god of war, bathing in celestial light, silently contemplating the fate of the realm.
In my perspective? The sun was just straight-up bullying my eyes.
The glare hitting my lenses was so intensely violent that my retinas were actively crying for mercy. I couldn't see Claire, I couldn't see the knights, and I couldn't see the ground. I was completely flashbang-blinded by the universe itself.
‘Please stop looking at me,’ I screamed internally, my face completely frozen in a rigid, deadpan expression because I was terrified that if I blinked, a tear would roll down my cheek and they'd think their new king was weeping for the sins of the world. ‘I just want to go inside. Someone please give me sunglasses.’
And then, the domino effect happened.
Seeing their legendary commander on her knees, the rest of the village knights exchanged awestruck glances before dropping their weapons, clattering to the ground as they all knelt in perfect unison. Behind them, the terrified villagers fell to their knees one by one, weeping in gratitude.
To make matters worse, a group of village priestesses emerged from the rubbled chapel. Witnessing my glowing, light-engulfed silhouette standing atop the slain beast, they gasped, fell to their knees, and immediately started chanting holy, ancient hymns of salvation. Beautiful, echoing harmonies filled the burning square, turning my accidental laundry-line incident into a literal religious awakening.
‘Are you kidding me right now?!’ I screamed internally, my face completely frozen in a rigid, deadpan expression. ‘I am an IT guy! Why is there background music?! Why are you praying to me?!’
The combination of the blazing sun and the solemn, high-pitched holy chanting was giving me a massive headache. A single tear of pure physical pain threatened to slip out from behind my glasses. I knew if I moved even an inch, I would trip over the giant salamander’s scales, fall into the mud, and ruin a localized religion.
"Very well," I said, my voice echoing with downloaded royal authority, though I was mostly just trying to find a way to get into the shade. "Rise.”
With extreme, agonizing slowness, I stepped down from the dead salamander’s head. Guided purely by the elite muscle memory I’d copied, I managed to walk a perfectly straight line toward the village hall without tripping over my stolen floral blanket.
Before crossing the threshold into the glorious shade, I paused, turning back to look at the kneeling crowd. I pushed my glasses up my nose, letting the glare mask my completely blind, watery eyes.
“If my people wish for me to rule," I declared, my tone deadpan, distant, and effortlessly detached, "then I have no reason to refuse.”
I sounded like an absolute badass—a stoic sovereign accepting his destiny with calm indifference. In reality, I was just speed-running the conversation because my retinas were actively melting.
The moment my boots crossed the threshold into the dark, glorious interior of the village hall, the blinding white glare vanished. I slammed the heavy oak door shut, leaned my back against it, and immediately ripped my glasses off to rub my violently weeping eyes.
‘Take that, space fireball,’ I thought, blinking back tears of pure physical exhaustion. ‘I survived. My retinas are intact. Barely.’
I tossed my stolen, lavender-scented floral blanket onto a nearby chair and looked around. The room was dusty, filled with old maps, stacks of parchment, and a heavy wooden desk. This was apparently my new "royal palace.”
Suddenly, a bright translucent green window snapped open right in front of my face, flashing with developer-style code.
[KINGDOM SOVEREIGN PATTERN RECOGNIZED]
[Status: Player Aung Chin Phyo has officially accepted the mantle of Sovereign.
System Patch 1.01 Initialized: The law of [Absolute Reciprocity] is now active within your domain.
Current Subject Count: 42
Notification: Subject Claire De Valois has reached 100% Loyalty Alignment. Commencing Superhuman Class Evolution...
Sovereign Reward: Mirroring evolved skills... Downloading data packets…]
I blinked. ‘Wait, what? Superhuman evolution? Data packets? Huh, I guess that's my unique ability, or did I just create it by accident with my IT brain?’
Before I could even process what the text meant, a massive wave of information compiled directly into my brain. My downloaded knight muscle memory violently upgraded, my senses sharpened, and a notification for a new passive skill called [Superhuman Administrative Reflexes] pinged in my mind.
‘Claire evolved? To what?! And why did I get an office-work skill from a knight commander?!’
I was too tired to figure it out. I collapsed onto the cot in the corner of the room and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
I was too tired to figure it out. I collapsed onto the cot in the corner of the room and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
The next morning, the reality of being a king hit me like a physical punch to the gut.
I was sitting behind the massive wooden desk, staring at three separate stacks of messy parchment detailing village taxes, crop yields, and broken fence repairs. It turned out that saving a village from a giant lizard didn't mean the village suddenly stopped needing a budget. I was an IT engineer, not an accountant!
Knock. Knock.
"Come in," I sighed, rubbing my temples.
The door creaked open, and a woman stepped into the room. She was wearing a pristine white blouse, a neat charcoal skirt, and a pair of round, silver-rimmed reading glasses. Her long black hair was tied back into a flawless, professional bun, and she was tightly clutching a clipboard to her chest.
"Greetings, Your Majesty," she said, bowing at a perfect, rigid forty-five-degree angle—an angle I recognized instantly because my right arm's upgraded muscle memory literally twitched in response. "I am Clara. I have been assigned as your personal secretary to handle your administrative affairs.”
I stared at her. I looked from her face, down to her boots, and back up to her face.
‘Clara? Seriously? Claire, you just dropped two letters from your name and put on reading glasses! I literally mirror-downloaded your soul data last night, I know exactly how much you weigh! And wait...’ My eyes locked onto the object in her hands. My brain ground to a sudden, screeching halt.
‘Why does that clipboard look so incredibly modern?! It has a metallic spring-loaded clip at the top! Did my past life's memories leak into her brain when she evolved?! Oh no...’ A cold sweat broke out across my entire body. ‘Did they see my search history?!’
(In reality, they hadn't seen his memories at all. They were still pure products of this fantasy world—but because their souls were linked to a modern Sovereign, the System was forcibly evolving their creativity, skills, and concepts to match his modern standard.)
I opened my mouth to call her out, but then I noticed how hard her hands were trembling against the clipboard. Her eyes, hidden behind those fake lenses, were burning with an intense, terrifying mixture of absolute loyalty and sheer anxiety. She looked like she was waiting for a divine judgment.
If I blew her cover right now, the sheer awkwardness might actually crash the system.
I swallowed hard, pushed my own glasses up my nose, and decided to play along. "Right. Nice to meet you, Clara. Please... sit down before you break that clipboard."
"Understood, Sire!" she barked, instantly snapping to a perfect military attention before catching herself, blushing slightly, and smoothing down her skirt. "I mean... Yes, Your Majesty.”
To hide my own amusement, I stood up and walked over to the large wooden window overlooking the village square. I pushed the shutters open, bracing myself for another drive-by shooting from my eternal enemy, the sun. Luckily, a cloud blocked it just in time.
But what I saw outside made me freeze.
Yesterday, the village square was a disaster zone of smashed carts, cratered cobblestones, and smoking ruins from the salamander's rampage. It should have taken weeks, maybe months, of grueling medieval labor to fix.
Instead, the village knights and peasants were moving like absolute blurs. Men were casually carrying whole logs over their shoulders like they weighed nothing. A team of three workers was lifting a collapsed stone wall and slotting it back together like a game of Tetris. The entire village was being restored fast—way too fast.
"Your Majesty?"
I didn't realize I had a completely bewildered, tech-support-style look on my face until Clara spoke up. She had stepped up beside me, her silver-rimmed reading glasses catching the morning light.
"Is something wrong, Sire?" she asked, her voice dropping into a softer, deeply earnest tone. "Are you confused by their speed?”
"A little," I admitted, gesturing to a man who had just casually jumped fifteen feet into the air to hammer a roof tile. "Did I accidentally summon a lot of Flash?"
Clara offered a rare, small smile, clutching her modern-looking clipboard a bit tighter. "No, Your Majesty. This is simply the logic of our world. When you accepted the mantle of Sovereign yesterday, your people swore their lives to you. In this world, the depth of a subject's loyalty directly triggers a spiritual evolution.”
She looked out at the bustling, superhuman villagers with immense pride before turning her sharp eyes back to me.
"The more powerful and divine you become, the more your loyal subjects evolve alongside you to match your glory. Their strength, their speed, and even the tools they create will adapt to serve your standard. You are our King, Lord Aung. Your existence is literally rewriting our reality."
I stared back out the window at the superhuman construction site, my mind reeling.
‘So... their power scales with my power, their tools evolve based on my background, and I get a copied data-packet of all their new skills…’
I looked down at my hands, which were completely steady, humming with an invisible, terrifyingly vast ocean of newly downloaded mana. This wasn't just a fantasy kingdom anymore. It was a self-optimizing, rapidly evolving empire. And I was the lead programmer.
‘Alright, world,’ I thought, a slow, confident smirk finally breaking across my face as I pushed up my glasses. ‘Let’s see what kind of system we can build.’
End of the chapter.
Fun Fact: The sun will always find a way to hit Aung Chin Phyo's eyes at the most random times after a fight. Back on Earth, he once stayed locked in his dark room for months straight just to finish a video game, so his relationship with daylight is practically nonexistent. The sun is basically acting like a toxic, tsundere ex-girlfriend at this point—constantly showing up uninvited just to cause a scene.
