Chương 124: Chapter : 124

Ken slouched forward again, resting his elbows on his knees. He looked totally bored by the conversation, acting like he was explaining basic math to a child.

"Look, boss lady," Ken said, ticking off points on his fingers.

"We didn't just lose today. Prince Hephaestus lost today. Princess Hestia lost today. Those masked thieves didn't just steal from us; they embarrassed three different Royal families at the exact same time. Do you honestly think Princess Hestia is sitting in her fancy mansion right now feeling happy about that?" Naomi's eyes widened.

"No. She is incredibly proud. She is probably throwing a massive fit right now because some random street thugs stole her victory."

"Exactly," Ken nodded, grinning broadly.

"She is furious. And Prince Hephaestus looked like a guy who really, really needed that rock to build his heaters. He is definitely not going to just give up and go back to his garage." Ken reached over, picked up his empty noodle bowl, and placed his chopsticks inside it with a soft clatter.

"So, why should we do all the heavy lifting and all the stressful detective work?" Ken suggested, his lazy voice completely calm.

"If someone steals my potato chips, and they also stole Sayma's chips, and they also stole Laxmi's chips... I am not going to go chase the thief by myself. That is way too much cardio. I am just going to tell Sayma and Laxmi to come with me, and we can all go beat the guy up together. It is much less work for me." Naomi was completely speechless. Her jaw actually dropped open.

"You want us to team up with them?" Naomi asked, her voice hushed in total disbelief.

"You want Princess Iris to walk next door, knock on Princess Hestia's gate, and ask for an alliance? Ken, they are our absolute worst rivals! They insulted us in the hallway yesterday!"

"Who cares if they insulted us?" Ken argued, shrugging his shoulders without a single care in the world.

"Words don't hurt my feelings. Losing points hurts my feelings because it makes you guys yell at me. If we team up with the 9th Unit and the 16th Unit, we triple our searching power. We have Prince Hephaestus's smart engineers to build tracking gadgets, and we have Hestia's shiny soldiers to help search the city. We let them do half the work, we find the thieves, we take the rock back, and then we all get the points." Ken leaned back on his hands again, giving her a completely relaxed, confident wink.

"It is the perfect, ultimate slacker strategy," Ken declared proudly.

"Work smarter, not harder. Make your enemies do your chores for you." Naomi sat on the floor, staring at the messy, untucked boy in his pajamas. She ran his ridiculous potato chip logic through her highly trained, tactical military brain. It was crazy. It was totally unorthodox. No Royal family had ever formed a three-way joint task force in the history of the Succession War. They were all too busy hating each other and trying to stab each other in the back.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. But tactically? It was an absolute stroke of genius. The masked thieves wouldn't stand a chance against three united Royal vanguards. They would find the artifact in a matter of hours.

"You..." Naomi whispered, shaking her head in sheer amazement.

"You are an absolute idiot, Ken. A complete, total idiot."

"Thank you!" Ken beamed happily.

"But," Naomi continued, a sudden, fierce spark of hope completely replacing the sadness in her green eyes.

"That idiot logic might actually save our entire campaign." While Naomi and Ken were talking inside the bedroom, the hallway outside was not completely empty. Standing perfectly still in the dark shadows of the corridor, hiding just out of sight from the half-open door, was Princess Iris. Iris had not been able to sleep either. She had felt the exact same crushing weight of the five-point penalty.

She had noticed Naomi pacing the halls, and she had quietly followed her vanguard leader, intending to step in and offer her some comfort. Iris didn't want Naomi to blame herself for the failure. But when Iris reached the door, she had stopped. She had listened to the entire conversation. Princess Iris stood in the shadows, her back pressed against the old floral wallpaper of the hallway. Her violet eyes were wide with sudden, absolute clarity. She replayed Ken's words in her head.

Make your enemies do your chores for you. They embarrassed three different Royal families at the exact same time. Iris's heavy, depressed heart suddenly began to race with intense, tactical energy.

"He is right," Princess Iris thought to herself, her mind spinning with a hundred different political calculations at once.

"He is absolutely right. The Core of Luminus is not gone. It is just hidden. And right now, Hestia and Hephaestus are dealing with the exact same five-point penalty that I am." Princess Iris knew her siblings perfectly. Hestia was driven entirely by her pride. The 16th Princess would be absolutely desperate to erase the humiliating stain of losing a prize to nameless thieves.

And Hephaestus was driven by his compassion for the poor; he desperately needed that magical core to complete his heating project for the outer districts. If Iris walked over to them tomorrow morning and proposed a temporary, strictly business alliance, they would be backed into a corner. They would hate the idea of working together, but they would have absolutely no logical reason to say no. But more importantly, Princess Iris saw the massive political victory hiding underneath Ken's lazy suggestion.

"If I am the one who proposes the alliance," Iris realized silently, her hands curling into determined fists, "it completely changes how the Upper Council views the 13th Unit. We won't look like the weak team that lost a mission. We will look like the powerful, diplomatic leaders who brought three rival families together to crush a criminal organization. It will prove that I have the political strength of a true Empress." It was a brilliant, master-level political maneuver.

And it had just been handed to her by a boy who was currently wearing baggy sweatpants and complaining about potato chips. Iris peeked around the doorframe one last time. She saw Naomi smiling, the heavy burden of guilt completely lifted off the red-haired warrior's shoulders. She saw Ken reaching over to turn the volume back up on his terrible martial arts movie, completely unaware of the massive political earthquake he had just accidentally started. Princess Iris could not help but let out a soft, genuine smile.

"You really are a mystery, Ken Eliot," Iris whispered into the dark hallway, her heart overflowing with gratitude for the messy commoner.

"You pretend to be a fool, but you always seem to know exactly what we need to hear." Iris quietly stepped away from the door. She didn't interrupt them. She turned around and walked silently down the hallway back toward her own royal quarters.