---
Morning broke pale and gray over the treeline, and by midday the three of them reached the town gates, only to find someone who looked like Roswaal L. Mathers already waiting there, grin unsettling as ever.
"Well, well," Roswaal drawled. "What do we have here — two oni sisters and a human? Interesting. Well, have you considered my initial offer, Ram-san?"
Ram and Rem stepped forward without hesitation, shielding Jake from view.
"Unfortunately, Master Roswaal, I have to decline," Ram said, glancing at Jake. "Due to some unforeseen circumstances, we've decided to serve another."
"We're young master Jake's maids now," Rem added.
"And as much of a pervert and degenerate as he might be sometimes—" Ram continued, ignoring Jake's indignant "I'm not just a pervert, I'm a super pervert!" from somewhere behind her, "—we're bound to him now. So please accept mine and my sister's apologies."
She bowed forward slightly and, in doing so, accidentally flashed Jake, who promptly got a nosebleed and started muttering something about divine blessings and a protagonist halo. A single dead-eyed glare from Ram was enough to remind him of his place.
Something flickered across Roswaal's face — surprise, maybe irritation. It was gone as fast as it came. "How... unfortunate," he said, the smile slipping from his face. "I can only assume that wasn't the only reason you dropped by."
Jake finally stepped forward, playing it cool — or as cool as he could manage. "Just heading into town for supplies," he said, casual, like he hadn't just accidentally derailed whatever plans this man had for the twins. "My name's Jake. I'm just a man."
---
Roswaal Mathers POV
The boy's brief introduction made Roswaal's right eye twitch, just for a moment. *As if I'd believe that. How had a mere man managed to unravel his plans so precisely? That was what actually bothered him — because as far as he could recall, no one named Jake existed. Not in the Gospel his shishō had left behind. Not anywhere he'd read.
So where, exactly, had this boy come from? And what, exactly, was he? Standing this close to him felt like standing near something wild, primal, dangerous, and utterly unreadable. And yet he still claimed, so plainly, to be just a man.
A slow smile spread across Roswaal's lips, one that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Ah, Ram-san, Rem-san — no need for such formality."
---
General POV
"So, Jake-san — where exactly are you headed? If you've nowhere to go, why not join my household and serve under me?"
"That's kind of you to offer, Margrave Mathers," Jake said, "but we're already heading into town to settle in and look for work as adventurers. I'm also planning to sell off the drops from a goblin pack that attacked us on the road here."
Roswaal's brows lifted. "Goblins? Attacked you, on the road?" He shook his head. "Strange, though not entirely uncommon — goblins and wolves occasionally trouble travelers out that way. Normally my knights handle it, but with the recent stirrings of a certain group calling themselves the Cult of Witches, the roads haven't been as safe as they should be." He gave a small, modest bow. "Please accept my apologies for not keeping them safer. To make up for the inconvenience, I'll arrange a dragon carriage to take you into the city, along with a letter of recommendation bearing the Mathers family seal — present it to the guards at the gate for ease of entry."
---
Jake POV
What's this clown up to? This was exactly what I'd hated about this guy in the manga — minus the whole obsession with Echidna, who didn't give a damn about him and treated him like a disposable pawn she could throw away whenever she pleased. But I digress. Let's see what Roswaal's stats look like.
Observe.
[Observe: Roswaal L. Mathers]
Name: Roswaal L. Mathers
Race: Human
Title(s): Margrave of the Mathers Domain, Court Magician, ??? (Locked — insufficient INT/WIS to view)
Level: ?? (Estimation failed — target's true power obscured)
HP: ????/???? (Concealed)
MP: ???/??? (Abnormally high magical reserves detected)
STR: 40 (est.) | AGI: 35 (est.) | VIT: 45 (est.) | INT: 90 | WIS: 75
LUK: ?? (Contract-bound — cannot be read normally)
Skills/Traits:
- Dual-Attribute Magic (Fire & Water) — Rare: most mages can only wield one element
- Court Magician-tier Spellcraft (Advanced)
- Gospel (Owned) — grants limited future sight; Anomaly detected: Host's existence not recorded within
- Contractor of the Witch of Greed (Echidna) — Status: Bound, Duration: ~400 years
- Poker Face (Passive) — reduces accuracy of Charisma/Insight-based reads against him
System Notes:
Warning: Subject exhibits inconsistencies between displayed persona and true nature. Recommend caution.
Anomaly flag: Subject's information network contains no record of host. Cause unknown.
The fuck — why can't I see his stats properly?
This is cheating, devs.Though, honestly, I'd half expected something like this.
Fuck, I'm weak as hell right now. If Roswaal so much as sneezed in my direction, I'd probably die.
You know what — fuck that. I was going to get strong. Strong enough that I'd never have to wonder about anyone starting shit with me. Bigger harem than that bastard Regulus, stronger than all seven Witches of Sin combined. Even Satella herself would have to fall in line eventually.
Ding.
[System Notice: Unauthorized ambition detected.]
[New Quest Unlocked: ??? — requirements not yet met.]
Rewards: ??? | Failure: ???
The notification cut off abruptly, almost like the system itself had gotten flustered. Jake blinked....Okay, that was weird, even for you, Eve.
The air around him shifted — it felt electrified, a pressure, sudden and heavy, like something vast had turned to look his way. Jake felt it before he understood it: several presences, each distinct, each radiating something different. Curiosity. Hunger. Indifference. Something sharp and simmering that felt a lot like wrath. And one — just one — radiating an intensity he did not want to examine too closely.
He should've been terrified. Some small, sane part of him was. But he squared his shoulders anyway, chin up, doing his best impression of a man who wasn't currently being sized up by forces well beyond his pay grade.
Yeah, he thought, meeting that pressure head-on with nothing but sheer stubbornness. You can watch all you want. I'm still gonna be the strongest son of a bitch in this multiverse.
---
General POV
Jake decided to accept the Margrave's offer for the carriage, at least — but that didn't mean he had to actually use Roswaal's letter to get into the city. He took it anyway, made a show of tucking it into his pocket, and quietly stashed it in his inventory instead.
With the dragon carriage and driver, they reached the city quickly, handing the gate guards two silver coins each to get through. Gotta love good old capitalism, even in another world.
Inside the gates, Jake finally got a handle on the local economy — four coin tiers, same as back home: copper, silver, gold, and holy gold, the last one reserved for the kind of transactions regular people never saw in their lifetime. After a solid minute of internal panic, he remembered his starter pack currency converted over just fine. By local standards, he wasn't Roswaal-rich, but he wasn't dirt poor either — solidly "wealthy young upstart nobody's heard of yet" territory.
He sold off the goblin loot for a modest seven silver, then booked a room at the nicest inn in town, mostly just to sit somewhere that didn't smell like moss.
[New Mission: Secure a Permanent Home]
Description: The world weeps for the homeless harem king...
He turned the notification over in his head while the twins went to explore the market. A room's fine for now. But if I'm going to keep coming back here, I need somewhere that's actually mine.
He found a real estate agent by asking around — an older man who did a poor job hiding his surprise at the size of Jake's coin pouch. "I'm looking for something substantial," Jake told him. "Privacy, defensibility. A place I can build on."
By the end of the day he'd found it — the Thornhollow Estate, out past the edge of town. Two stories, timber-framed with a stone foundation built to outlast whoever built it. The ground floor was already laid out as a shopfront: wide-planked floors, a long counter built into the far wall, shelving still bolted from whatever the last owner had sold. Upstairs held five rooms, connected by a narrow staircase that creaked in exactly one spot no matter how carefully you stepped.
Behind the house, three hectares of wild land opened up — overgrown grass gone waist-high, a scatter of untended fruit trees, a stream cutting along the back edge. At the far end, half-swallowed by bramble, stood the crumbling remains of what might've once been a watchtower. Or a shrine. Nobody in town seemed entirely sure which.
The agent had been oddly quick to change the subject when Jake asked about it.
The official reason it was cheap was the location — twenty minutes past the last real street in town, down a road that saw more roots than wheels. The real reason, the agent admitted after some prodding and a five-copper tip, was the previous owner: an old hedge-mage who'd lived out here alone for decades, until one autumn he simply stopped being seen. No body. No note. Door locked from the inside. His things still sat untouched upstairs, because none of his surviving relatives wanted to come within a mile of the place.
"Folks say the land's not quite right out here," the agent said, lowering his voice. "Animals won't nest near the old tower. Compasses spin wrong past the tree line. My guess? Old man dabbled in something he shouldn't have and paid for it." He straightened, business-like again. "Entirely superstition, of course. The price reflects the location. Nothing more."
Jake privately thought the price reflected exactly what the agent thought it did.
Because he could feel it too — faint but unmistakable, humming up through his boots the moment he crossed the tree line. Mana, thick and old, pooling in the land like water finds a low point. A ley line, or close enough. The kind of thing that explained the animals and the compasses both, and made a system built to run on mana absolutely delighted.
Well, Jake thought, careful not to grin in front of the agent. That's exactly why I want it.
The estate, land included, went for 4,200 gold — a steep price for a property this far out, but a bargain for what it actually was. Jake didn't haggle, watching the total in his inventory drop without much reaction. The agent looked faintly relieved to be rid of it.
He followed the agent to collect the deed and keys, then made his next stop the Builders' and Craftsmen's Guild — a sturdy building near the market square that smelled like sawdust and impatience. He laid out what he wanted to the foreman: reinforced outer walls, a renovated kitchen, a proper roof to replace the old patchy one, the shopfront restored and restocked with fresh shelving, five bedrooms made livable, and — after a pause, like he was still deciding whether to say it out loud — a cellar space beneath the house, dug out and reinforced, big enough to actually use.
"Training space," Jake clarified, when the foreman raised an eyebrow. "Reinforced walls, high ceiling if you can manage it, and something underground too, soundproofed, if that's possible. For... magic practice." He didn't elaborate on what kind of magic practice tended to blow holes in walls. The foreman, to his credit, didn't ask.
The full job — repairs, furnishing, the shop restock, and the training space both above and below ground — came out to **2,800 gold**, with a six-week timeline. Jake paid half up front, handing over a leather pouch bursting at the seams with 1,400 gold coins, the rest due on completion. He left with a signed contract and a foreman who seemed personally offended by the idea of finishing early with subpar work.
Ding. A notification blinked at the edge of his vision. He pulled it up while walking the grounds of his newly purchased home.
[System Alert 1: High-density mana source detected. Structural integrity of property boosted by 15% due to residual ambient magic. Caution: Entity trace detected in proximity to watchtower — classification: Ex-rank, unconfirmed.]
[System Notice 2: Accelerated Growth Protocol — Active]
Cause: Residual instability from summoning merger (Taimanin/Nasuverse/Throne of Heroes fusion). Host's physical form is being force-aligned to match magical output requirements.
Estimated timeframe: physical maturity reached within days.
Side effect detected: temporal drain on host's origin-anchor.
Great. Just what I needed — two life-altering notifications in one day. Come on, Eve, really?
[System AI entering maintenance. Estimated reactivation: 13 years, 6 months.]
Jake stood there for a solid ten seconds, staring at absolutely nothing.
"...Thirteen years," he said out loud, to no one. "Eve, you're telling me thirteen years? That's not a nap, that's a coma. What the hell am I supposed to do without a system update for over a decade?"
No response came. Of course not — she was offline. Which, he realized slowly, was sort of the point.
Okay. Okay. Deal with it later. One crisis at a time. He exhaled, pushed it down next to the "time-debt back home" problem he also hadn't dealt with yet, and went to go find Ram and Rem before he spiraled properly.
Why couldn't I get something like Jinwoo's system, he thought bitterly, walking off toward the market. Or hell, I'd even settle for something similar. Anything that doesn't come with a thirteen-year warranty gap.
--
Time Skip — Six Weeks Later
Six weeks flew by in a blur. Jake spent most of it growing closer to Rem and Ram, who were slowly, unevenly, opening up to him — Rem more than Ram, though not for lack of trying on his part.
Ram had developed a sharp, biting mouth that clashed constantly with the gentle, dutiful maid persona she otherwise wore like armor. *If only she'd stop calling me a degenerate and a pervert,* Jake thought more than once. It felt less like an insult and more like a test — that flat glance, the irritable little smirk, like she knew exactly what she was doing and enjoyed it. Meanwhile, the kind, sweet Rem from the anime was nowhere to be found; she'd been replaced by someone perpetually hovering near her sister, radiating something that could only be described as yandere energy whenever Jake got too close. *Damn it, Subaru, how'd you manage to tame her so fast in canon?*
As Ram's horn kept growing back, Rem seemed torn between resenting him and thanking him for it — and Jake tried hard not to take it personally. Every time he tried to close the distance, she clammed up and found an excuse to disappear, which only fed whatever protective instinct Rem was currently running on.
He'd woken up once to find her standing over him with a knife. Another night, he'd woken up to Ram — fully unclothed, using his chest as a pillow, two eyes glowing faintly at him in the dark. According to her, the mana transfer and healing process worked faster through skin contact. There'd been the faintest, barely-there tint on her cheeks when she said it. Rem got the dressing-down of a lifetime from her sister over that one.
But the real turning point came one night at the tavern, while Jake was quietly working through a tankard of mead.
"Two beauties like that," a man grunted, loud enough to cut through the tavern's roar, "guarding a kid who looks like he's never held a blade in his life. Seems like a waste of talent."
His companions laughed, eyes raking over Ram and Rem with the kind of entitlement that turned Jake's stomach.
He didn't look up from his drink. "You're getting loud, friend. And you're being boring. Both are bad for my digestion."
Laughter came from behind him — he didn't bother turning to see which sister it was.
The man's chair screeched back as he stood. The tavern went dead silent. "What did you say, boy?"
Jake finally looked up, letting his gaze drift over the man's status bar.
[Observe]
Name: Kaelen (Iron-tier Mercenary)
Level: 8
Threat Assessment: Low
A glance over the man's shoulder showed his three companions sitting at levels 7, 6, and 9.
"I said," Jake repeated, standing slowly, resting a hand on the table to steady himself, "you're staring at my property. And I don't like people touching or talking about what's mine."
Kaelen sneered, kicking his chair aside. "Property? They're maids, you little—"
He didn't get to finish.
Rem moved before Jake could even blink. One second she was standing behind him — the next, a blur of blue, slamming Kaelen's face into the tabletop hard enough to make the wood groan and the mugs on nearby tables jump.
The other three scrambled for their weapons, but Ram was already there, hand extended. A lance of frost cracked across the floorboards, anchoring their boots in jagged spikes of ice before they'd even cleared their hilts.
"The Master told you to be quiet," Ram said, voice dripping with a cold that had nothing to do with her magic. She tilted her head toward the nearest mercenary. "Do you truly wish to see how much of a 'waste' we are?"
The tavern held its breath. A few patrons backed toward the walls, sensing they were about to witness something they'd be retelling for years.
Jake stepped around the table and looked down at Kaelen, groaning into the dented wood. He grabbed a fistful of hair and yanked the man's head back just enough to force eye contact. His pulse was steady — there was adrenaline, sure, but underneath it, something closer to enjoyment. Like a combat sim, except the graphics were real this time.
"Let's get one thing straight," he said, voice calm enough to be unsettling. "I'm not a kid. And these two? They aren't just maids. They're the ones who'll be standing over your corpse if you interrupt my drink again."
He shoved Kaelen back down. Behind him, the ice around his friends' boots had started to crack, the room's temperature dropping further as Rem's aura flared, her eyes taking on that familiar, unsettling glint.
"Pay the barkeep for the table," Jake said to the men, already turning back toward his drink like nothing had happened. "Then get out. My patience is a finite resource."
The mercenaries scrambled for the door, leaving a trail of blood and shattered pride behind them. A sharp *ding* rang in Jake's head.
**[Quest Complete: Keep the Peace]**
*Reward: +50 Reputation (Notoriety increased), +100 EXP*
He exhaled, catching Ram's eye. She looked, for half a second, mildly impressed before hiding it behind a dismissive sniff.
"A bit dramatic, don't you think, Master?" she murmured, though she'd drifted closer, her hand settling near his shoulder in a way that read as almost possessive.
"I think," Jake said, taking a sip of his drink, "that we're done with inns. Time to move into the estate. Tomorrow we move into our new place."
"I think," Jake said, taking a sip of his drink, "that we're done with inns. Time to move into the estate. Tomorrow we move into our new place." He stood, stretching, already half-yawning. "I'm heading to bed. You two have fun."
He left them there, alone in the room, without a backward glance — missing entirely the look that passed between the sisters the moment the door shut behind him. Ram had known this conversation was coming for weeks now. Judging by the way Rem's shoulders immediately curled inward, so had she.
"Stupid horny monkey," Ram muttered under her breath, watching the door, "doesn't even notice when he's about to walk in on something."
---
**Chapter: What We Are Now**
The silence in the master chamber felt heavy, charged with the lingering hum of the estate's mana. Ram didn't just watch her sister; she scrutinized her, seeing the invisible weight Rem had carried since the day they were born.
"You still do it, don't you?" Ram said. "You still shrink when you stand next to me. Even now. Even after we've both pledged our lives to him."
Rem's hands tightened around the linens she'd been folding, knuckles going white. "Nee-sama, please—"
"No," Ram cut her off, her voice stripped of its usual mocking edge, replaced by something harsher and more honest. "You think because I'm the *genius* — because I'm the one with the sharp tongue and the flair for magic — that you're merely the shadow. You spend every waking moment serving Jake like you're trying to earn the right to exist, constantly measuring your worth against mine."
Rem's gaze dropped to the floor. She didn't argue. That, more than anything, told Ram she'd hit the mark exactly.
"You've been avoiding me," Rem said instead, quiet, changing the subject the way she always did when it got too close. "Ever since the tavern. Ever since the healing."
"I've been *busy.*"
"You've been avoiding me," Rem said again, not letting it go. "You go quiet whenever I bring him up. You disappear the moment he tries to sit with you." A pause. "I know why."
Ram's hands curled in her lap. "Do you."
"You resent him," Rem said. "For saving you. For being the reason your bloodline started healing. Because now you owe him something you never asked to owe anyone, and you hate that. And some small, ugly part of you hates *him* for it, even though it isn't fair, even though he didn't ask for any of this either." She looked up. "Am I wrong?"
Ram didn't answer right away. When she did, her voice came out smaller than she meant it to. "No. You're not wrong." She stared at her own hands. "But it's not just resentment, Rem. It's *duty.* I know what I am — what we both are, to him now. Sworn. Bound. And I take that seriously, more seriously than you seem to sometimes. You throw yourself in front of danger for him like it's instinct, like you don't even weigh the cost. I can't afford to think that way. Someone has to be the one keeping score. Making sure we're actually earning our place, not just coasting on his goodwill because he happened to be kind to us once."
"That's not fair," Rem said. "You've more than earned your place. You fight harder than anyone I've—"
"I *have* to," Ram cut in. "Don't you see that? If I stop earning it — if I let myself just *accept* being cared for — what happens the day he decides he doesn't need us anymore? Duty is the only thing that's ever kept either of us safe. I won't stop performing it just because it's inconvenient to how I feel."
Rem was quiet for a moment, absorbing that. Then, softer: "And what about how you feel?"
"It doesn't matter how I feel," Ram said. "It's never mattered. That's rather the point."
Rem flinched at that, small and involuntary, and Ram noticed.
"What," Ram said.
"Nothing."
"Rem."
Rem exhaled, long and unsteady, the fight going out of her all at once. "It's easy for you to say that. Duty, performance, earning your place — you're *good* at all of it. You always have been. Even weakened, even with half your bloodline sealed, you still fought better than most full-blooded oni twice your level. What do I have, next to that? I hover. I worry. I sharpen knives I never get to use because you're always faster." Her hands twisted in her lap. "I used to tell myself it didn't matter, that we were equals, that being twins meant something. But some nights I look at you and all I can think is that if he ever had to choose, there wouldn't be a choice to make."
"Rem—"
"Let me finish." Rem's voice trembled, but she pushed through it. "I watch him too closely. I know I do. I hover, I get jealous, I act like a child afraid of being replaced — because I *am* afraid of that. Not of losing him. Of being *unnecessary.* You have duty. I don't even have that. I just have fear, dressed up as devotion, and I don't always know the difference anymore."
The silence that followed wasn't sharp this time. It was heavier, sadder — the kind that comes after something true finally gets said out loud.
Ram reached over and took her sister's hand. Neither of them was used to doing this. They'd spent so long being *useful* to each other that being gentle with each other had atrophied somewhere along the way. But Ram held on anyway.
"You're not unnecessary," she said. "You've never been unnecessary. You held that man's face into a table before I even finished raising my hand. You've been keeping both of us alive on pure instinct since we were children. I perform duty because it's the only language I know how to speak. You throw yourself between danger and the people you love because you don't know how to do anything else. That's not weakness, Rem. That's just a different shape of the same thing."
Rem's eyes were wet, though she refused, stubbornly, to let anything fall. "You really believe that?"
"I have to," Ram said. "Same as you have to believe in your fear. We're both just doing what keeps us standing."
The wind moved through the overgrown grass behind the house, and somewhere out past the tree line, an owl called once and went silent.
"He's not human," Rem said eventually, quieter now. "Not entirely. Not anymore, maybe not ever. There's something in him that wants — not just us, not just this house, not just power. He wants *everything,* the way a fire wants to spread, whether he understands that about himself or not. I've felt it, standing near him. I don't think even he knows how deep that hunger goes yet."
"And that doesn't scare you?"
"It terrifies me," Rem admitted. "But I've decided I'd rather be something a fire like that chooses to keep, than something it burns past without noticing." She squeezed her sister's hand. "That's the difference between us right now, maybe. You're afraid of being *claimed.* I'm afraid of being *forgotten.*"
Ram let out something that wasn't quite a laugh. "Neither of us is doing very well, then."
"No," Rem agreed. "We're not."
Rem went quiet again, and this time when she spoke, it came out low and careful — the way you set something down that you're afraid might break. "Ram. I know what you did. Before. Back home, before all of this. I know what you carry because of it, what you were willing to become to protect me. I've always known. I never said anything because I didn't know how — and because some days, I think you needed me *not* to say anything." She turned to face her sister fully. "I'm saying it now because I need you to understand — none of it changes anything. Not one piece of it. Not your duty, not mine, not what either of us carries. I'm not going anywhere. I never was."
Ram's composure, carefully held together for six weeks, six years, longer than that if she let herself count honestly, finally slipped. She didn't cry — oni didn't cry, not really, not the way humans did — but something in her face cracked open in a way it hadn't in a long time.
"You shouldn't forgive that so easily," she whispered.
"I'm not forgiving it," Rem said. "I already lived through it beside you. There's nothing left to forgive. There's just you. And me. And whatever we decide to be now, in a house that isn't ours yet, following a man who isn't entirely one thing or the other." She leaned her head against Ram's shoulder. "I'd rather figure that out with you than without you. Duty and fear both included. That's all I actually know for certain."
Ram didn't say anything for a while. She didn't need to. She let her head rest against her sister's, in a house neither of them had chosen, in a world neither of them fully understood, tied to a man who was — depending on the hour — either the best or the strangest thing that had ever happened to either of them.
"Six weeks," Ram finally said. "And we're already this dramatic."
"We were always this dramatic," Rem said. "We just used to hide it better."
Somewhere down the hall, a door creaked, followed by Jake's voice muttering something about "who moved my inventory menu" to absolutely no one. Both sisters went quiet, listening, and — without quite meaning to — both of them smiled at the exact same moment.