As Kain watched the female, nine-tailed fox-type beastman walk out of the room that they had moved their negotiations to, he wondered to himself a simple inquiry.

“Why was she so willing to just hand him what I wanted?”

What Kain did not know was that by listing the various ‘secret names’ that Da Ji had for herself, he had gained a kind of limited power over her. If he had known that fact, he likely would have taken advantage of it, as the effect would be wearing off within a matter of weeks at most. After that point, he would be forced to deal with her at full power if they ever met again. This meant that while Kain had secured the borders of his nation from an attack from the east (for now), there was always the possibility that the vixen could stroll back and try and even the score.

Once again, had Kain known of the advantage he currently possessed, he likely would have mopped the floor with the malevolent vulpine sorcerer and used that as a manner of deterrence. However, his knowledge of things in the Oriant Co-Prosperity Sphere was limited to random bits of trivia and pop culture, and he was unsure of if any of it applied to the region or not. And so, regrettably, Kain and Darksol let a chance to wipe out a future threat slip through their fingers, as Da Ji was not inclined to stick around and put herself at risk.

The evil fox woman left the nation as quickly as she came, and, for now at least, the borders were secure. That did, however, leave room for more things to be done, and Kain was much enthused about finally getting back to personally working on things. He could tell that the infrastructure was amazing, that defenses were top-notch and that the economy was stellar, but part of him just wanted to see what he could do to add to the whole situation. Positively, of course. It wasn’t like he desired to see his nation burn, after all.

As he returned to his throne in the citadel, he pulled up the good old semi-transparent nation management screen that the two seats (his and his wife’s) could manifest to allow Kain to essentially run the show from the comfort of his chair. All looked good to him for the most part, save for one teensy tiny itty-bitty part of the nation that seemed to need a metric ton of work to be anywhere near the level of the other regions.

As it had just been annexed and turned into a vassal/ puppet state and because it had essentially been a warzone for a short period of time, the Arbianan Federal Protectorate needed a lot of work. Plus, Kain noticed something that he had not seen or at least remembered seeing on the screen before. There was now a sub-menu that would allow him to, essentially, remotely operate his armies and formations as though he was actually playing some kind of military strategy game. Kain immediately searched through the menus and put a lock on that particular ability.

He was not above controlling his troops and armies when the situation needed it, but he would be damned if he let that option of temporarily turning them all into mindless puppets tempt him and/ or ruin his ‘good’ image. He knew for a fact that people did not like to be trapped inside their own heads while their bodies danced around on the whims of others. Hell, that was why some of the most heinous criminals were given that fate after death! To do so to those who willingly served both him and his nation… Well, it would at minimum leave a sour taste in everyone’s mouths.

Other sub-menus had also appeared, but most of these were far less cruel to people than the aforementioned one. Some were more military in nature, others more economic, and some even bordered on stalker levels of creepy and intrusive. It was these latter ones that also received the undesired honor of being locked away, at least for now. Kain did not exactly find the option of being completely omniscient of everything in his whole nation to be all that appealing. Something about knowing literally everything about everyone and everything and seeing people naked and/ or f*cking who no one in their right mind should ever see naked and/ or f*cking made him wonder if the people back on Earth ever had to find mind-bleach for what they saw via slightly less intrusive surveillance.

As time passed, Kain continued to go through the new stuff that the management screen had to show him. And, as much as he wanted to get back to business, he found that this little feature that his favorite chair had for him to use was really into giving him yet more options to work with. In fact, it seemed that for every option he put under manually made restrictions, two or three other seemingly random options would take their place and require his attention.

Eventually, the number of potential options stopped increasing and Kain began to make somewhat decent headway in the process of evaluating the many, many options at his disposal. When he had finally finished more than 7 hours after he had first sat down, he tried to leave the throne so he could retire to his actual bed. Unfortunately, before his butt could fully remove itself from the seat, said seat began to bombard him with new and wild options for things he could do. Kain now finally understood why there had been so much new stuff.

“You’re jealous that I slept on the other throne, aren’t you?”

The screen did something it had never done before and slightly shivered.

“Don’t worry. This place is my home more than any other in this world. Besides, it’s not like that other chair offers me anything aside from endless lethargy and sleep. So, you don’t need to keep trying to keep me here. It’s better for me to be here, anyway.”

With those words, the screen faded and Kain fully removed himself from the citadel’s throne before speaking to the entire citadel itself.

“Now, one more thing. Please, for the love of all that is, was, and will be, don’t start being an overly possessive construct. I would hate to have to go down there and do a factory reset.”

The massive fortress did not need to respond, for its silence is what spoke the most. Kain got a decent night’s sleep that night, and when he returned to the throne, he noticed that much of the more superfluous options had been deleted. He smiled and was glad that at least one of the places he had routinely spent time in was willing to treat him more like a person and less like its favorite chair-occupier.