Chapter 2

They woke me up at dawn, of course. Apparently "Sages" don't get to sleep in.

The pale morning light filtered through tall windows as I was escorted... dragged, really... to the palace's council chamber. My feet dragged against cold stone floors that had seen better centuries, each step echoing through corridors that smelled of old incense and accumulated disappointment.

I wish I could say their council chamber was impressive. It wasn't.

Just a circular stone room with a big table and too many chairs. A few banners hung limp from the walls, their colors faded like forgotten promises. Some magic lamps flickered overhead, casting unsteady shadows that danced across weathered faces. The whole place felt tired, as if even the architecture had given up trying to look important.

And nobles.

God, so many nobles. All of them dressed in ridiculous layers of silk and gold, each one more desperate to look important than the last. They rustled when they moved, like autumn leaves clinging to dead branches. Their jewelry caught the lamplight in sharp, hungry glints, and their eyes held that particular combination of arrogance and barely concealed panic that I'd seen in corporate boardrooms back home.

The king himself sat at the head of the table. Older, grizzled, clearly exhausted. Deep lines carved valleys around his eyes, and his shoulders sagged under the weight of responsibilities that had grown too heavy to bear. His crown looked more like a shackle than a symbol of power, sitting crooked on gray hair that had long since given up any pretense of royal dignity.As I stepped into the chamber, every eye turned to me like searchlights finding their target.Whispers followed in my wake, sharp and cutting.

"So young..."
"Is that the Sage?"
"He looks like a beggar..."

Fantastic. Already making a great impression. I could practically feel their disappointment radiating off them in waves, mixing with the morning chill to create an atmosphere thick enough to choke on.
The king raised a weathered hand for silence, and the whispers died like candles in the wind.

"You are Riku Aoyama, the summoned Sage of Systems?"

His voice carried the weight of a man who had asked too many questions and received too few answers.

"Apparently," I said, deadpan.

The king didn't even flinch. He just gestured to an empty seat positioned right between two nobles who looked like they wanted to strangle me on sight. Their faces were masks of barely contained hostility, and I could feel the tension radiating from them like heat from a forge."Then hear the plight of this kingdom," the king said, his words heavy with resignation.

And then the floodgates opened.

They shouted over each other like children fighting over the last piece of candy. Complaints about food shortages poured forth in torrents. Monster raids were described in increasingly dramatic terms. Trade route collapses were blamed on everything from weather to witchcraft. Peasant rebellions were discussed as if they were natural disasters rather than symptoms of deeper problems.

Voices rose and fell like a chaotic symphony, each speaker trying to outdo the others in urgency and desperation. Hands waved in the air, bangles and rings catching the light. Faces flushed red with passion or pale with fear. The very air seemed to vibrate with their collective anxiety.

It wasn't a council meeting. It was a daycare for entitled adults.

I listened, silent and expressionless, mentally filing every problem into categories that made sense to my systems-trained mind:

- Resource scarcity: food, water, basic supplies. The fundamentals of survival, all failing simultaneously.
- External threats: monsters, enemy nations. Forces beyond their borders that pressed inward like a slowly tightening noose.
- Internal decay: broken infrastructure, failing magic wards. The skeleton of their civilization crumbling from within.
- Political dysfunction: these idiots. The human element that turned every problem into a crisis and every crisis into a catastrophe.

By the time they paused for breath, their voices hoarse and their eyes wild with desperation, I leaned back in my chair and spoke into the sudden silence.

"I see," I said slowly, letting each word drop like stones into still water. "So, your kingdom's a complete mess."

Half of them turned red as if I'd slapped them. The other half went pale as if I'd confirmed their worst fears. The king just nodded grimly, his crown catching the light as he moved.

"Correct."

"And you're asking me to clean this up."

Another nod, slower this time, as if the weight of admission was physically painful.

I let out a long sigh that seemed to deflate the tension in the room by degrees.

"Fine. Show me the worst of it first. The biggest crisis you have right now."

They wasted no time dragging me through the streets, their urgency infectious despite my reluctance.

The capital wasn't what I expected. No shining fantasy city here, no gleaming spires or bustling marketplaces filled with exotic goods. It was worn down like an old coat, all frayed edges and faded colors. Cracked stone walls bore the scars of neglect, their mortar crumbling like old bones. Empty marketplaces stretched between buildings like gaps in a smile, their silence more telling than any speech. Thin, gaunt people watched us from the shadows, their eyes holding the hollow look of those who had learned not to hope too hard.

The very air seemed thinner here, as if the city's vitality had been slowly bleeding away for years. Even the shadows looked tired, clinging weakly to walls that had seen better decades.Outside the gates, it was worse.

Farms stretched into the distance like a patchwork quilt sewn by a drunk tailor. Fields that should have been golden with grain were brown with rot, the failed harvests creating a landscape of broken promises. Grain stores stood empty, their wooden walls blackened by fire from recent raids. The smell of smoke still lingered in the air, mixing with the sweet stench of decay to create an atmosphere that made my stomach turn.

And the monsters... things like giant wolves and armored insects... prowled too close for comfort. They moved with the confident swagger of predators who had learned that prey was plentiful and resistance was rare. Their eyes reflected the morning light with an alien intelligence that made my skin crawl.

One official, nervous and sweating despite the cool morning air, explained in a voice that cracked with strain:

"The ley-lines are decaying. Our barriers weaken by the day."

"Why?" I asked, though I suspected I already knew the answer.

"We... do not know. The formulas controlling them are... complex. Ancient."

I nodded, filing that away in the growing catalog of their failures. Infrastructure failure. Probably mismanagement, or worse, no one left who actually knew how it worked. Like finding a computer running on code that nobody understood, maintained by people who were afraid to touch it.

The further we went, the more I saw it with crystalline clarity.

Everything here was collapsing not because of some great evil or cosmic threat, but because no one knew how to maintain the systems they relied on. They were running on decaying, ancient technology, magical or not, like a civilization built on the bones of giants they couldn't understand.

And now they expected me to patch it all back together with nothing but good intentions and desperate hope.

By the time we returned to the palace, the sun had climbed higher in the sky, casting harsh shadows through the council chamber windows. The nobles had reassembled like vultures returning to a carcass, and they were already at it again.

Factions fighting with the bitter intensity of people who had forgotten what they were originally arguing about. Accusations flying like arrows in a battle where everyone was both archer and target. The air crackled with tension and barely suppressed rage.

I sat through it all, silent, arms crossed, until they finally noticed me watching them with the detached interest of an anthropologist studying a particularly dysfunctional tribe.

"You're awfully quiet, Sage," one noble sneered, his voice dripping with disdain. "Surely you have some grand solution for us?"

I smiled, sharp and cold as winter wind.

"Solutions take time," I said, my voice cutting through their bickering like a blade through silk. "Right now? I'm just enjoying the show."

They shut up after that, the silence falling over them like a heavy blanket.

Later that evening, back in the palace quarters they had assigned me, exhaustion weighed on my shoulders like a lead cloak. The room was simple but comfortable, with a bed that looked infinitely more appealing than another round of noble posturing. I was contemplating the radical concept of actual sleep when a servant knocked on my door.

"There is... someone who wishes to speak with you, Sage," they whispered, nervous energy radiating from them like heat from a fever.

I was too tired to argue, too drained to care who wanted to waste my time now.

"Fine," I muttered, resignation coloring my voice. "Send them in."

The person who entered wasn't what I expected.

They were young, maybe my age or a little older, dressed plainly without noble marks or flashy robes. No silk or gold here, just practical clothing that had seen honest work. They carried a leather satchel stuffed with scrolls, the kind of worn leather that spoke of constant use rather than ceremonial display. Their eyes had the same exhausted, hollow look I'd seen in every grad student back home, the thousand-yard stare of someone who had spent too many nights buried in research that nobody else cared to understand.

"I heard you're trying to make sense of our magic," they said, voice dry and sharp like autumn leaves.

I blinked, surprised by the directness.

"And you are?"

They gave a slight, mocking bow that somehow managed to be both respectful and irreverent at the same time.

"Liora. Royal Archivist's Assistant. Or as most call me, the idiot Cursed Scrolls Rat"

Something in their tone, the way they carried themselves, the tired intelligence in their eyes, made me sit up straighter. After a day of dealing with nobles who couldn't organize a tea party, let alone a kingdom, this person radiated competence like a beacon in the darkness.

Huh.

I might've just met the first competent person in this entire kingdom.