The Throne Room of Oakhaven's Royal Palace was crowded with nobles and ministers who played the part of people who cared for the Kingdom.
King Cuckus III, a man who seemed to exist solely to sit majestically on a golden chair, listened to the Hero's furious request.
"Your Majesty," Nick thundered, dropping to one knee dramatically. "I request royal authorization for a high-priority hunt for the rogue known as Kaitoyama! This man has not only outraged the Saintess, but he represents a threat to the moral stability of the Kingdom!"
The King stroked his white beard. "Sir Nick, I understand your wrath. However, our scouts report anomalous movements near the borders of the Wailing Plains. The Meander of the Damned appears to be... closed for renovations? And there are rumors of a certain villainous entity claiming to be a 'CEO' who is buying up the debts of our peripheral villages. I advise against wandering too far from the capital. It is dangerous."
"Danger?!" Nick laughed, springing to his feet. "I am the Dragon Slayer! Danger is my EXP farm! Give me permission, Your Majesty. I will bring you that molester's head before the new moon banquet."
The King, pressured by the whispers of Archbishop Malphas (who desperately wanted to erase Lucy's public embarrassment), yielded. "So be it. You have the royal mandate. Go, Hero, and wash away this shame. I'll ask for the church to send some of their paladins to protect the city while you're away."
Then, Nick bowed. "Thank you, Your Majesty. Now, if you'll excuse me-" He said, before walking back to the Heroes' wing to take the girls with him.
After that, Nick stormed out of the palace like a hurricane, closely followed by his eclectic harem: Luna floating silently, Lucretia trotting while clutching her magic staff, and Egel cracking her knuckles menacingly.
"First stop: The Guild," Nick ordered. "We need to track this Kaitoyama's movements. He must be hiding in some dungeon to farm levels. We'll find him, clear his dungeon, and humiliate him."
At the Guild, the receptionists, still terrified by the memory of the Edgelord Rizz, immediately handed Nick the public ledgers (the few that Mordecai hadn't ordered Cassandra to classify).
"Good," Nick said, scanning the parchment. "It seems that the guild had been stalking him. Reports say that since his arrival, lots of dungeons have been cleared, like the Slime Dungeon, the Labyrinth of the Flayed King, the Caverns of Wailing, and the Crypt of Putrid Whispers... and the... Meander of the Damned? S and A-rank dungeons. A level 1 can't do something like that, especially with an useless princess. There must be an error."
"Y-You're so intelligent, Sir Nick! Those are incredibly dangerous dungeons, a level 1 can't complete these!!" Lucretia murmured, adjusting her glasses. "The Flayed King is a brutal boss. They say his arena is a lake of visceral blood that debuffs health regeneration!"
"Better," Egel grinned, throwing punches at the air. "The bigger the monster, the louder the crunch when I snap its neck. It'll be a great warm-up before I smash Kaitoyama's face."
"We're going to the Labyrinth of the Flayed King," Nick decided, fixing his blonde bangs. "We'll kill the boss he failed to beat, steal the loot, and show Lucy and the server who the real man is."
The party traveled quickly thanks to the Hero's VIP teleportation runes. In half a day, they found themselves before the massive, oppressive black rock entrance of the Labyrinth of the Flayed King.
The air around the entrance, however, wasn't oppressive. It didn't smell of blood, death, and sulfur.
It smelled of... Pine-Sol. And bleach.
"Strange," Luna murmured, her pointed ears twitching. "I don't sense any darkness. In fact... I sense a total absence of... everything."
"It must be an illusion trap," Nick decreed, drawing his glowing sword. "Egel, smash the door."
"Roger, boss." Egel smirked, charging her chi punch. A blue energy wrapped around her arm and delivered a devastating blow against the massive stone door.
Instead of an epic explosion, the door—which had recently been oiled with magical WD-40—swung open with a silent, fluid glide, bouncing off the newly installed rubber doorstop. Egel's punch hit empty air, causing her to lose her balance and tumble comically forward.
"What the hell?!" the girl cursed, getting up in confusion.
The party entered the infamous S-rank dungeon.
Their boots, ready to trample shattered bones and pools of blood, instead slipped on a black stone floor so incredibly clean and polished you could eat off it. The torches on the walls weren't emitting ghostly flames, but a white, steady, cold light, similar to industrial neon tubes.
Nick blinked. "Where is... where is the horde of skeletons at the entrance?"
They advanced down the first corridor. No traps. No monsters. No chests. The walls had no cobwebs; they had been hit with an anti-static duster.
Turning the corner, Lucretia stepped on a tile.
SWOOOSH!
Her legs flew out from under her. The poor, curvy mage slipped as if she were on ice, crashing to the ground with a high-pitched shriek and ending up legs-in-the-air, her robes flying up to reveal underwear decidedly inappropriate for dungeon crawling.
"Lucretia! An ice trap?!" Nick yelled, getting into a defensive stance.
Luna, the dark elf, crouched near her fallen companion, sniffing the floor. She touched the stone. "It's not ice. It's... highly concentrated liquid soap."
Luna looked up. Exactly in the middle of the corridor, placed with millimeter precision, was a yellow plastic folding sign lit by luminescent runes.
It carried a warning in three languages (Common, Elvish, and Demonic): [CAUTION: WET FLOOR. SLIP HAZARD. MANAGEMENT IS NOT LIABLE FOR INJURIES DUE TO RUNNING IN SANITIZED AREAS.]
"Wet floor?!" Egel roared, helping Lucretia up. "What kind of dungeon master puts up a warning sign?!"
"It's an insult!" Nick yelled. "Kaitoyama must have paid some weaklings to clean the path before him! Keep moving! I want to see the boss' room!"
They ran for hours through the labyrinth. Nothing. The rooms where giant minotaurs once resided were empty, except for a few recycling bins (Organic, Dry Waste, Bones, Corrupted Mana). The aura of cosmic horror had been replaced by the mundane, mortifying sensation of walking through a hospital at three in the morning.
When they finally threw open the doors to the Hall of the Flayed King, Nick's adrenaline was maxed out. He was ready to fight the horrendous creature made of exposed muscle and blood magic.
The double doors swung open.
The hall was completely, immensely, desolately empty.
The infamous "Lake of Blood" at the base of the throne was gone. The floor had been washed and polished with a special wax that made it shine under the light of newly installed LED spotlights. The throne of bones had vanished, replaced by a single particle-board desk with a sign: [Complaints Department - Currently Closed].
There wasn't even a boss. There was only a strong smell of ammonia and another yellow sign: [BIOHAZARD AREA REMEDIATED. ASSET IN TRANSIT TO CENTRAL WAREHOUSE.]
Nick stared into the void, his holy sword trembling in his hand.
His chat was laughing hysterically.
Waifu_Hunter99: "HAHHAHA THE DUNGEON HAS BEEN CLEANED TO A MIRROR FINISH! LARRY STRIKES AGAIN!"
CorporateSlave42: "Kaitoyama didn't defeat the boss. He evicted him for health code violations. Nick just walked into a vacant commercial property."
GoonerKing: "The Hero was looking for glory, he found Mr. Clean. I am in tears."
"WHO... WHO THE HELL STOLE MY EXP?!" Nick screamed at the spotless ceiling, his voice echoing pathetically in the empty room.
Frustrated beyond all logical limits, Nick dragged his party out of that hygiene nightmare and attempted the other dungeons on the list.
They went to the Caverns of Wailing. They found the vampire bats fully registered with freelance contracts, busy sorting guano into labeled bags for agricultural export. They went to the Crypt of Whispers. They discovered that the ghosts had all been silenced by legal injunctions for noise pollution, and the crypt had become a dusty archive storage facility.
There was no glory. There was no combat. There was only the unmistakable, oppressive presence of Ravenloft Holdings' bureaucracy.
By the end of the day, Nick was dirty (from outside dust, not epic blood), sweaty, and sporting a mortally wounded ego. His party was exhausted from disappointment. Lucretia was whining about her feet hurting, Egel was kicking rocks in frustration over not hitting anything, and Luna was looking at him with a mix of pity and concern.
They were back outside, near the Wailing Plains. The sun was setting, painting the sky red and purple.
"This bastard isn't exploring dungeons. He's... he's vandalizing them!" Nick growled, driving his sword into the ground. "He's stealing my content! If I keep this up, I'll drop out of the Top 10 global streams!"
"Nick, maybe we should head back to Oakhaven," Luna suggested softly, placing a hand on his shoulder. "The King forbade us from venturing beyond this border. Fort Blackstone is in that direction. It's the impregnable fortress of the Dark Lords of the past. Do you remember what the scout said? Sir Aric is being imprisoned there, cleaning the floors."
Nick's eye twitched. "The King forbade us? I am the Hero. Nothing is forbidden to me. Especially not because of some cowardly NPC who rigs dungeons."
Nick grabbed the hilt of his sword and yanked it out of the ground with a sharp motion.
"If Kaitoyama isn't in the dungeons, he'll be in that fortress. He's Aldmax. He was faking his identity using some kind of stealth skill to hide his magic. I'm 100% sure now. We're going to Fort Blackstone. We'll smash the gates, I'll make him eat everything he did to Lucy, and I'll get my followers back. We must stop him before he returns at his full powers."
"Yeah! Let's bust his face!" Egel exclaimed, punching her fists together.
"I-if you say so, Sir Nick..." Lucretia sighed, clutching her staff.
Ignoring all common sense, royal orders, and survival protocols, the group marched toward the dark borders of Fort Blackstone.
They walked for hours in the growing darkness. Nick expected to encounter skeletal watchtowers, patrols of bloodthirsty demons, or desolate wastelands destroyed by black magic. He desperately wanted to kill something to boost his self-esteem.
Instead, the dirt path suddenly turned into a freshly paved road. Along the sides were even small streetlamps powered by low-consumption mana crystals, lighting the way.
At the end of the road, they arrived at a settlement.
It was the Village of Renea, historically known as one of the villages that once worshiped the Hero. One of the most important things about this village was its agriculture and the beautiful river that irrigated the fields with Holy Water.
But something was off. He had been told that all the villages near the capital had a big statue of the hero, visible from kilometers of distance, but here? There was nothing.
In that moment, his [Heroic Instinct] passive skill gave him the answer he needed.
When Nick felt something was off, it meant someone evil was there. And he always was 100% right because this skill was plot-based.
"Here we are," Nick whispered, ducking behind a bush with his harem. "A village under enemy control. Get ready, girls. The commoners will be terrified, probably enslaved, and forced into hard labor. Lucretia, prep a fireball. Egel, watch my back. Luna, stay with me. We'll go in, kill the demonic overseers, and free these poor people. They'll worship us like gods."
The party nodded, adrenaline finally kicking in.
Nick leaped out from the bush with a battle cry.
"PEASANTS OF OAKHAVEN! DO NOT FEAR! THE HERO IS HERE TO BREAK YOUR CHAINS!"
The group landed heroically in the central square of the village, weapons drawn, ready for a massacre.
But no one screamed with joy. No demon stepped forward, snarling.
The square was... quiet. And absurdly organized.
The peasants weren't wearing mud-stained rags. They were wearing clean, gray work uniforms with small ID badges pinned to their chests. Instead of rusty hoes and pitchforks, they were holding wooden tablets resembling clipboards, covered in dense columns of numbers.
There was a bubbling fountain in the center, and next to it a wooden kiosk with an illuminated sign: "Ravenloft Holdings - Oakhaven South Agricultural Branch. Rest Area."
An elderly farmer, wearing reading glasses and a foreman's apron, looked up from his parchment. He stared at Nick, the Hero, who was frozen in his dramatic pose with his sword pointed at the sky, surrounded by three heavily armed girls.
The farmer pushed his glasses down his nose. The expression on his face wasn't terror, let alone gratitude. It was the pure, unyielding expression of an employee who had just had their break time interrupted.
"Excuse me, young man," the farmer said in a monotone voice, pointing to a wrought-iron sign planted right next to Nick's boots. "This is private property. We are currently conducting a quarterly audit on wheat production. Did you make an appointment with Human Resources before screaming your way into the freight sorting area?"
Nick slowly lowered his sword. His brain, programmed to kill monsters and save princesses, completely short-circuited.
The girls behind him exchanged confused glances.
Under the sign the farmer pointed to, burned into the metal, was the inscription that would haunt Nick's nightmares for months to come:
[WARNING: CORPORATE TRESPASSING. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW OR FED TO THE SECRETARY OF FLAME. THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.]