“A formal letter of apology… huh.”
A few days after we trussed up the high-rank adventurers and criminal-guild personnel and shipped them home, someone titled “Minister of Defense” arrived from the royal capital.
His position: ignorance notwithstanding, the kingdom had functionally picked a fight with Demon Lord Cornelia — and his dogeza was so abject that watching it induced secondhand pity.
The king himself offered to come apologize in person on a later date, but we settled it with a “please, that really won’t be necessary.”
For the record, there was a reason we let them off… let’s say, efficiently.
Namely: Arisa, seated at the table, spent the entire session extracting national-scale commercial concessions.
She had the man signing contract after contract, DOZENS of pages on the spot — and I trembled anew at the fact that every one of my wives is, in her own way, terrifying.
So—
Miyamoto took a direct hit from Cornelia’s ultimate-class magic.
Per Maria: “He became dust.”
Per Sonya: “He became a star in the sky~”
Per Mayu: “If he survived THAT, several laws of reality have problems.”
…So there’s that.
It was, in every sense, spectacular.
First Cornelia launched Miyamoto several kilometers with wind magic, then took to the sky herself.
Then she assumed her true form — a colossal dragon — and fired a mouth-beam straight out of that nationally beloved shonen manga where vegetable-named aliens go blond and superhuman.
Result: a crater roughly a kilometer across.
Unprompted, the divine voice provided commentary: [Even Farm Labor Resistance Level 10 would take moderate damage from a direct hit.]
MODERATE?! From THAT?!
…Level 10 skills remain certifiably broken. Confirmed yet again.
For my own peace of mind, given that no body was ever found, I’ve decided to classify Miyamoto as missing, status unknown.
—If he were confirmed dead, it’d leave a bad taste, frankly.
As for Atomu-kun — he’s been hired. Household cook, full time.
Apparently he’d been dreading the criminal guild eventually forcing real crimes on him.
He and Mayu turn out to be childhood neighbors, and with her personally vouching that he’s a good person, nobody objected.
Head chef remains me, for the record — when rare ingredients come in, I take the kitchen.
And so—
“BOSS! How’s THIS taste?!”
Atomu-kun cooks with total sincerity… and he is genuinely USEFUL.
A muscle-bound Sage-aptitude scary-faced dating-sim-loving lolicon — a character description that is one hundred percent tsukkomi bait…
Put generously: gentle heart, giant’s strength. That archetype.
Years of cooking for a single-mother household gave him real fundamentals.
I’ve lived alone a long time myself and like cooking enough to build ramen from scratch, so — he’s not at MY level, but his food is legitimately good.
He understands MSG deployment, and lands a solid 70 points on basically any dish.
Mayu can cook too — so between me, Mayu, Atomu-kun, Ouroboros, and Maria, even the banquets are manageable now.
Honestly, it was getting rough — this household drinks like a fish school and eats like a locust swarm.
That night, I spotted Atomu-kun casually drinking and called him on it—
“Eh? Boss, I’m twenty?”
“How does that work? You’re a high schooler?”
I assumed the time-skip mystery room was involved — but the explanation predated all of that.
“Ah, it’s embarrassing so I don’t spread it around, but… you’re the boss, so I’ll come clean. In high school I didn’t just repeat a year — I went past the double into a TRIPLE.”
—An idiot. A thoroughbred, pedigreed idiot.
Even Mayu, who knew the whole story, was fighting laughter, and my abdominal muscles nearly gave out entirely.
Mind you — he paid his own tuition through part-time work AND contributed to the household on top. A genuinely good kid, through and through.
And me? I was privately thrilled at his arrival for one strategic reason… nighttime load distribution.
Ten elves plus the main five means FIFTEEN, rotating nightly — often in simultaneous waves. It’s been a war of attrition.
Sonya, Arisa, Maria — the ones with heat cycles have a distinct “anyone will do” quality about them, so surely Atomu-kun could absorb some of the demand…
I observed for a week. Not one woman ever crept toward the detached shack where Atomu-kun sleeps. Not once.
I asked Sonya why, and—
“Everyone sleeps with Tatsuya because we love TATSUYA, obviously~?”
—she said it dead straight, with the face of someone wondering what on earth is wrong with me.