Hajin pushed himself up from the floor for the five-hundredth time, his arms moving at a steady pace that didn’t even burn yet. Sweat dripped from his chin and ran down his chest, highlighting muscles that looked like they had been carved out of stone overnight.

"So," Aria said, floating a few feet away with her arms crossed.

Her projection was noticeably larger this time, growing from the tiny shoulder-sitting mascot into a hovering figure about the size of a small child, her light illuminating the room.

"How do you like the new optimized vessel?" She asked, tilting her head as she watched him work.

’It feels ridiculous,’ he thought, completing another rep without breaking his steady breathing rhythm.

He dropped his chest back to the floor and pushed up again, feeling the dense, coiled power sliding under his skin. The sheer physical restructuring from his recent breakthroughs and the system’s aggressive optimization had stripped away any remaining human frailty, leaving his body functioning like a highly tuned weapon.

"I am not complaining," he told her, pushing up onto one hand and continuing the set effortlessly, "but I feel like I could crack a continent in half right now."

Aria gave a smug little nod, floating closer to inspect his arms, "that is the point of a divine bloodline, master. You cannot handle the upper tiers of power if your bones shatter the second you try to channel it."

He finally stopped, dropping his legs and sitting up on the floor with a quiet exhale. He grabbed a towel off the nearby chair and wiped the sweat from his face, looking up at Aria currently hovering at eye level.

"Why are you bigger?" He asked, tossing the towel aside.

"I can change my size now," she explained, gesturing to her form with a small smile, "but I am capped at a teenager’s form until you grow stronger. The bandwidth simply is not there yet for a fully grown manifestation."

Before he could ask exactly how much stronger he needed to get, a rapid knocking echoed from the door of his temporary office.

"My Lord," Marrick’s nervous voice called out from the hallway, "are you awake?"

"Come in," he answered, pushing himself off the floor and grabbing a clean dark shirt from the desk.

The young clerk slipped into the room, carrying a massive stack of worn ledgers, his eyes darting toward the glowing blue girl floating in the air before he quickly looked away, deciding it was safer not to ask.

"Put them on the desk," Hajin told him, pulling the dark shirt over his head.

Marrick practically dropped the books onto the table with a loud thud, wiping his sweaty palms against his trousers, "I spent the entire night going over the region’s current state and calculating the estimates you asked for, My Lord."

Hajin walked over to the desk, leaning against the edge as he looked down at the top ledger, "and?"

"To repair the main town’s infrastructure, establish a basic agricultural foundation before winter, and rebuild the collapsed trade routes," he explained, his voice trembling slightly as he pointed to the final number circled in red ink at the bottom of the page, "it will cost approximately four hundred thousand gold pieces."

Hajin stared at the number.

’Four hundred thousand,’ he thought, keeping his expression completely flat while his mind did the math. Considering the average family lived comfortably on ten gold pieces a year, the amount Marrick had just casually dropped on the desk was enough to fund a small war.

For the first time since claiming the territory, a genuine spike of doubt hit him. He could kill monsters, execute corrupt officials, and intimidate Great Houses, but pulling four hundred thousand gold out of thin air was an entirely different kind of impossible.

’Can I actually pull this off?’ He wondered, dragging a hand through his damp hair.

"We have absolutely no treasury left," Marrick continued, nervously rubbing his hands together, "those corrupt local lords bled the accounts dry before you executed them. We are completely broke."

"I see," Hajin muttered, picking up the parchment and staring at the ridiculous number for another second before tossing it back down, "is there anything of value left in this region?"

Marrick swallowed hard, reaching over to unroll a large map of the territory across the desk.

"There is the eastern mining sector," he explained, tapping a shaking finger against a mountain range marked in black ink, "it is packed with unmined gold and rare ores. Just one of those veins could fund the entire region for a decade."

Hajin raised an eyebrow, immediately picking up on the hesitation in the clerk’s voice, "so why is it not being mined?"

"Because it has been completely abandoned for decades," he answered, his voice dropping into a terrified whisper, "an apex monster sleeps directly on top of the largest vein, and the Great Houses refused to sacrifice their armies to clear it out."

Hajin stared at the black ink on the map for a few seconds, absorbing the fact that the King had handed him a massive, impossible problem that no one else wanted to deal with.

"Is that monster actually real?" Juna’s voice suddenly asked from the doorway, her ears twitching nervously as she stepped into the room with Vella and Loccy right behind her.

Marrick jumped in surprise, his eyes widening at the three girls before he quickly looked back at the map, "it is very real, serving as the sole reason the Great Houses failed to claim this territory for the last fifty years by completely annihilating every army they sent into the region."

He looked back up at Hajin, his expression completely serious, "honestly, My Lord... it is a miracle you are still alive, because normally it hunts down anyone crossing into this territory the moment they arrive, making its silence toward you completely unprecedented."

A cold shiver ran down Hajin’s spine.

’A monster powerful enough to casually wipe out Great House armies is sleeping in my backyard,’ he thought, his blood running cold, ’and the King did not even bother to warn me.’

He stared at the map for another second before his pragmatic survival instincts finally kicked back in, forcing him to focus on the immediate problem instead of the King’s betrayal.

"Right," he said, turning his head toward the three girls standing in the doorway, "Vella, Juna, Loccy."

They immediately straightened up, their expressions turning serious as they waited for his orders.

"Pack whatever gear you need," he told them, pushing off the desk and walking toward the exit, "we are going hunting."