He leaned in, his face inches from hers. "But I cannot understand... how did you suddenly become so incredibly smart?"

Elara simply looked at him, unblinking. She had died as the CEO of NetVault Security and woken up as Princess Yue Lian, but her fundamental processing power remained unchanged. "Continue the story, please," she said.

Seeing her completely unhurried, emotionless expression, Ken let out a harsh bark of laughter. "Well, that’s not the main point. We kept observing you. We saw your obsession with the collars, and we worried again. But then you ran away."

His face shifted into cold, unadulterated fury, his ears pressing flat against his skull. "You know, at that time, we wished we had choked you before. We were furious. How could you run away after promising us so much? We needed somewhere to vent that anger. So when the masquerade happened..." He smiled darkly. "We killed everyone."

"Ah," Elara said, her hand lifting to touch her shoulder lightly. "As I suspected."

"You knew?" Ken asked, his tail lifting slightly in surprise.

"It wasn’t a difficult deduction," Elara replied, her voice flat and clinical. "How else could the entire palace be cleaned out without an invading army? It had to be the internal security apparatus. The beastmen guards were the only ones with the training, the positioning, and the motive to execute such a large-scale liquidation while leaving the infrastructure intact."

"Exactly," Ken agreed, a twisted sort of pride in his voice. "But we still needed someone on the throne to deal with the nobles, so it wouldn’t cause administrative problems. We found the most useless prince, led him to ’victory,’ and sat him on the throne. Everyone thinks he won the fight. We thought we could wait years controlling him from the shadows, but then he turned back into the capital after just one year. And the moment I saw you, I knew it was you."

Ken gestured to the locked room around them, the stone walls that held the weight of centuries of royal secrets. "Everything was going perfectly. But then, yesterday, you figured out the truth. It was irritating. Thank the gods Mahir works fast. The moment he saw you pulling away and realizing the truth, he understood the risk and kidnapped you."

Elara absorbed the entire timeline, slotting each new piece of data into its proper place. There was no anger. No fear. Just pure, unadulterated data processing. The board had been reset, the players were revealed, and she was currently at a significant tactical disadvantage.

"I see," Elara said finally, her expression unchanged. "A highly efficient coup. Poorly managed aftermath, but the initial execution was statistically impressive."

Ken just stared at her, deeply unsettled by the total void where her panic should have been. He had built a weapon of treason, but he was finding that the princess he had tried to break was a weapon far more advanced than he could ever comprehend.

Elara leaned back against the soft bed, her eyes tracking the way the light glinted off Ken’s armor. She looked up at him, her voice as flat and clinical as if she were discussing a budget deficit.

"So what are you gonna do now?" she asked, her gaze steady. "Kill me? To silence me? Or you wanna make me stay here for my whole life, just like how my dear family captured you for all these years?".

Ken, still standing in the uniform he had worn to deceive her, looked at her in genuine confusion. He had expected terror, or at the very least, a flare of royal indignation.

"Aren’t you gonna be angry, shout at me, or ask me any questions?" he asked, his golden eyes searching her face for a trace of the "previous" Yue Lian.

Elara looked at him firmly, her analytical mind already moving past the betrayal to the next set of variables.

"Well, it is a waste of time to ask all these questions," she said. "So should not you just tell me what you are gonna do to me? Like if you are gonna kill me, then I should appoint Demorti as a worker. If not, then it’s okay. You can just kill me. I don’t even give a damn about it.".

She paused, then added a detail that actually concerned her. "And another question, what did you do with that system, you know? I’m quite worried about it.".

Ken looked at her, his head tilting slightly. "But your highness, you do not look worried at all.".

"Oh, should I cry or should I shout?" Elara replied, her voice dripping with dry sarcasm. "Like, ’give me my system. Where is it? Blah, blah, blah.’".

Ken’s expression didn’t shift. "Your highness, you do not even appear sincere.".

"Well, whatever," Elara said, dismissing the sentiment. "So what did you choose for me? Which type of death?".

Ken paused, the silence in the room stretching long and heavy. "Why do you think I will choose death for you?".

Elara let out a slow, tired sigh. "Well, if you’re not, then okay, I need to do another work. So what is your, like, what do you guys think? Keep letting me be here or something?".

Ken suddenly burst into laughter, a sound that held both irony and a strange, newfound respect.

"Your highness," he said, shaking his head. "No matter how many times I talk to you or stay with you, it is always funny and always new things I got to know about you.".

The room fell into a heavy, stagnant silence, broken only by the fading echoes of Ken’s laughter. Elara stared at him for a moment longer, her internal processor already labeling the conversation as Circular/Non-Productive. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

"If you’re done laughing," she said, her voice flat and devoid of any theatrical flair, "then that’s it. I’m going to sleep."

Without waiting for a rebuttal or a permission she didn’t need, she turned away from him. —and directly laid down, pulling the heavy covers over her face to block out the light and his intrusive gaze.

Ken stood frozen, completely bewildered. He had revealed a decade-long conspiracy of treason, murder, and regicide, and her response was to clock out for the night.

"Okay..." he stammered, his usual predatory confidence faltering. "You sleep. We talk later."

From beneath the mound of blankets, a single pale hand emerged. Elara gave a dismissive wave of her hand, a silent command for him to leave, and then went still.

She wasn’t faking. The moment she had transmigrated into this body, Elara had performed a risk assessment of her new life. She knew then that a calm and peaceful existence was a statistical improbability. If the "system" or the universe or whatever force had dragged her from her CEO office into this magical death trap wanted her dead, so be it. But she wouldn’t face her execution or her next reincarnation sleep-deprived. At the very least, she should get enough rest; God only knew what kind of world she would be thrown into next if this one ended tonight.

Within minutes, the tension left her frame and her breathing became slow and rhythmic.

Ken didn’t leave immediately. He stood by the bedside for a long time, looking down at the silhouette of her face beneath the fabric.