After stepping into the garden and breathing in the fresh air, Leo stretched properly and murmured to himself. "If I keep staying here I'm going to end up falling in love with a damned simulation character and then feel obligated to marry the first person I meet when I get back to the real world."Without further hesitation, Leo wiped the scene he'd just lived from his mind and initiated a time skip. He set the duration to just after arriving in the capital.When Leo opened his eyes again he was in a square.The princess was standing beside him, looking around with eyes full of curiosity. At the same time she had her arm firmly locked through his and was pulling him along behind her.The square was no longer recognizable. Under normal circumstances this was one of the busiest market streets in the kingdom, farmers selling fresh vegetables, fabric merchants, food vendors. But today none of that was here. The stalls were there but the goods on them were completely different. The people

Leo had grown tired of browsing the stalls.Most of the enchanted items he had seen were far below his own level.That wasn't to say the festival had offered nothing of value. Walking through it, Leo had come to understand that his level of sorcery was actually not something to be taken lightly across all four kingdoms.He had also noticed the kind of power the great general had at his disposal.During the previous simulation, when Leo had attacked the great general's city, the system summary had described a scene like this: 125 rune sorcerers, most likely all at level four or above, tearing enormous chunks out of the imperial army through spells performed in concert. Had Leo not identified the weak point of those combined sorcerers during that simulation, recognizing that each of them was a vital piece of a single massive spell, the Dark Army could probably have wiped out the entire imperial force without taking a single loss.At the time Leo had killed one of the sorcerers with a si

A few minutes after leaving the festival square, Leo and the princess entered a quieter side street that Leo's master had described to him. Compared to the rest of the festival, the street was remarkably peaceful. There were no flashy magic performances, nor were there merchants shouting to attract customers. At the end of the street stood a small stall set up beneath an old, weathered canopy. The old man sitting behind it looked ordinary at first glance. His messy white hair reached his shoulders. Deep wrinkles covered his face. An old scar rested beneath his left eye, and his gray robe was so worn that several sections had been patched together with pieces of different fabrics. Forty small containers were lined up across the table before him. Some were made of glass. Some were ceramic. Others were rusted metal jars. The old man raised his eyes for half a second when he noticed them. Then he returned to the book in his hands. "You obtain whatever fate has in store for you.

Prince Tae had been raising a spoonful of dessert to his lips. The king's words reached him before it got there. He startled, coughed sharply, and caught himself, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth. He lowered the spoon and transferred the dessert to a napkin with the quiet, controlled motion of someone who had been trained never to show surprise. Then he turned to his fiancée beside him and said something in a low voice, brief and direct. Hara rose without a word. She crossed to the children's table, gathered them with calm efficiency, lifted the youngest onto her hip, and guided the rest toward the door alongside two attendants. The children went without protest, perhaps sensing something in the adults that they couldn't yet name. But before following them out, Tae looked at Leo. Then at the princess. It was a short look, no more than a second, but it carried weight that a second shouldn't be able to hold. It wasn't accusation, it wasn't warning, it wasn't pity. It was

[Initiating psychological structure protection mechanism to preserve the host's mental health.] [It has been detected that you possess a total of 28 hours of extra memories.] [Reviewing your 28 hours of memories... Review complete. The vividness of your memories has been reduced.] Leo leaned back as he read through the system screens and felt a profound sense of relief wash over him. The agony of being crushed to death had been wiped from his memory in an instant. [Loading simulation results...] [In this simulation, your third entry as the great general's son, you received rune sorcery training from birth and succeeded in becoming the apprentice of Maren, a seventh-level Rune Lord. You killed Cyrus, the child prodigy, with your own hands, came to know the great general's Dark Army, forged ties with the royal family, and married the emperor's youngest daughter. Over the years you fundamentally transformed the legal system, gradually dismantled the power of the noble class, turned