Reincarnated as HR's Worst Nightmare

This was the second worst day of Queen Bea Maddeux’s life.

She had been woken up by one of her maidhands and been informed that he father, King Rexham Maddeux “the Brave” had died last week from wounds he’d suffered in the final battle that put down a revolt against his rule. Her brother, King Godric Maddeux, had also died. The tavern he had been staying in exploded in a blast of fire and combusting manure. That meant that she was now Queen.

The worst day of her life was yesterday, when the random number generator of the game decided that Rexham would die and his heir with god-tier traits immediately died to an assassination plot that she got no warning about. Then she got an event notification that the game would spawn a Conqueror horde in five years right before hitting the save button. Ten hours later and countless reloads later, she rage-quit playing Fantasy Realms for the day, stepped outside, fell into an open manhole, died, and woke up the next morning in her last Fantasy Realms save.

She’d poured over a thousand hours into Fantasy Realm, a fantasy grand strategy game focused on managing a kingdom in a medieval fantasy setting. And now she’d need all that experience to survive.

Bea stewed in her frustration as the maidhand brushed her long blonde hair and helped her into her corset and pink dress. Today would be her first day attending court as ruler of the Gellert Kingdom, the maidhand reminded her. She needed to look presentable and behave herself.

…Behave herself? What did that mean and why was the maidhand blushing when she said that?

It was once Bea was left alone that she found it. Her character page. She hadn’t paid much attention to Bea the last time she’d played the game; she was intending to play as Godric with his amazing stats. Some of what she saw was familiar.

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Queen Bea of the Gellert Kingdom, House Maddeux
Age: 18
Speech: 10
Fighting: 7
Frugality: 15
Skullduggery: 18
Smarts: 9
Duel Skill: 10

Education: 3-Star Skullduggery

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Bea’s stats weren’t great. Only her Frugality and Skullduggery had good scores, meaning she was built to handle money or do schemes. Before Godric was assassinated, the plan had been to marry off Bea to secure an alliance with one of the neighboring kingdoms.

She made her way to the throne room, which was still decorated with the crimson regalia of Rexham, and sat down to think.

In her gaming session, the forces she could bring to muster against the horde were never enough. Skill wasn’t the problem. Numbers were. And losing a war against a Conquerer meant you lost all of your titles – game over. The only way Bea figured she could survive the war was to immediately form an alliance with the two neighboring kingdoms.

The orcish kingdom of Wicharia to the west had a solution to the numbers. Led by the Warchief Gallorna, she had an insane Fighting score and could personally go mano a mano with the Conqueror himself. She always lost, but that was a lot closer than Bea got on her own.

The elvish kingdom of Illorond to the south may not have had numbers but it did have amazingly skilled magic users. Bea had tried multiple runs where she allied with Duchess Marnie of House Dal’Tesh, but the game would just spawn more enemies for the Conqueror to throw and then they lost.

If Bea could ally with both Wicharia and Illorond then she’d have a chance. But she didn’t have any family members to marry off except herself.

“Your majesty?” A delicate hand lingered on Bea’s shoulder. “Should we discuss plans for your coronation?”

The hand belonged to a woman with dark skin and long white hair that had two wolf ears sticking out the top. She had a flowing black dress and a smirk on her face. Bea recognized her – Felicia, her court magician.

The coronation. That was her ticket. Bea double-checked her character screen to be sure and remembered she’d immediately inherited the gold both Rex and Godric had built up. In every run of the game before this, Bea had tried investing it in buildings to boost her kingdom’s economy or military. But this time?

“Something grand,” Bea told Felicia. “Ensure it’s enough a spectacle that the leaders of Wicharia and Illorond attend. We want to rope both of them in.”

If she could befriend both women, their relationship scores might be high enough that they’d offer to ally with her. With all the gold she’d be dumping into the coronation, this would be her only shot.

“Of course~” Felica’s hand ran along Bea’s shoulder. Bea shivered at the touch of her hand. “I’ll make all the arrangements.” And then she immediately kissed Bea on the lips.

Bea’s eyes went wide before she melted into the kiss and found herself wanting more.

“Ah-ah-ah!” Felicia withdrew and put a finger on her Queen’s lips. “Save it for tonight, your majesty. My chambers as usual. I have some new spells for us to try.”

Bea could only nod and watch Felecia’s rear as she walked away, a white tail wagging above that tight butt.

Wait, what?

The second Felicia was out of sight Bea reopened her character screen and made a number of discoveries. Starting with the most obvious: Bea had the “Lustful” character trait. She’d never been down this bad in her previous life and now Bea wanted nothing more than to strip Felicia naked and “assert her royal prerogative”.

Her face flushed when she saw the number of traits that boosted her ability to get it on. Maximum level Appearance and Seductress?! Her character was a total slut! She lightly slapped herself across the face to remind herself that was not a compliment.

Bea finally looked at her character’s relationship screen and found some proof of what she’d just experienced. Felicia was her lover. Maximum relationship score, with enough positive modifiers to go over the hardcoded limit of one hundred. Thank goodness, because Felicia had the Ambitious trait and those characters were always a hassle if you got on their wrong side.

That was when a notification appeared before Bea’s eyes. She’d turned off a lot of these in her time in the game, but those settings must not have transferred when she woke up as the character.

<Your lover’s plot to kill King Godric Maddeux has succeeded and gone unnoticed.>

…This sort of thing would be funny if Bea wasn’t stuck in the middle of it. Now it was embarrassing for two reasons. The first being that the best character Bea had access to in her court had put her in this exact situation.

The second was that Bea was only getting this notification because Bea herself was involved with the plot. Meaning as far as anyone cared, Bea had helped kill her own brother to take the throne.

Bea pinched the bridge of her nose and cursed under her breath.

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The character mechanics of Fantasy Realm had never been something Bea had paid much thought to. Enough to manage the game, but she usually ended up blobbing across the entire map in world conquests. Which was why she’d chosen to start out slow for her current game.

In hindsight, that had been a mistake.

One mechanic was constantly nipping at her heels: Stress. Stress was a mechanic introduced to prevent players from automatically taking the ‘best’ or ‘min-maxing’ option by giving them Stress if they picked an option that went against their personality traits. Showing mercy if you were Cruel, donating to the church if you were Greedy, doing anything if you were Lazy… And failing to relieve Stress meant that Bea would trigger a negative event that could give her new negative traits or worse.

Thankfully, Bea didn’t have any traits that would make her do anything that would harm others. But being Lustful meant that more often than not she found herself making passes at her servants, which she only realized three days into her new life were all women. It also meant that to avoid building up stress too much, she had no choice but to be lecherous. Which meant that at least once a week, she ended her nights in Felicia’s chambers and at her mercy.

Physically, it was a rush every time. Mentally, Bea was panicking because she knew there was only one option she had to gain alliances with both Warchief Gallorna and Duchess Marnie. And that made her panic more because every time she thought about it her face flushed and she couldn’t stop laughing.

Bea would have to seduce them both.