I Became a National ‘Disaster’ Level Monster

Chapter 149 Season 2 – How to Coexist with Humans

“Laira, where are you?”

“Laira, come out!”

“Do we really need to look for the runaway princess in the underground village? She can’t escape from here anyway.”

“That’s a separate issue! Kids her age can easily go astray over something like this!”

“Ah, I see…”

I was searching for Laira along with Xiao Ling and Shin-ah. Not being a parent, Xiao Ling didn’t fully understand, but I urged her to search the other side of the village while I continued searching the underground village with Shin-ah, desperately trying to find Laira.

“Laira, where are you?”

“Dad, maybe this was too much, wasn’t it?”

“…You mean how we tried to introduce her to humans too quickly?”

“Yes! I might have been okay, but Laira… She’s a princess who grew up entirely in the palace and hasn’t even attended the academy yet. Her worldview is still very narrow, and we threw her next to humans right away…”

“…Let’s find Laira first and think about it afterward.”

“…Okay.”

Was I too hasty?

Both Leon and Shin-ah seemed to accept humans pretty well, so I thought Laira would naturally follow suit once she got to know them.

But she was still a child who hadn’t fully formed her own values.

If she were human, she’d be no older than a 10-year-old in elementary school.

In human terms, it was like handing her a pig she’d been eating her whole life and forcing her to be friends with it.

Sure, monsters don’t view humans exactly as livestock, but still…

I couldn’t stop my legs from running, fearing she might harm a human because she couldn’t adjust to the sudden change.

Just as we reached the outer wall of the village—

“Dad! I found Laira!”

“…! Where is she now?”

At Shin-ah’s words, I hurriedly ran to stop my youngest daughter.

But when I got there…

“Let me explain it again.”

“”Yes, Princess!””

“First, I’m royalty, so I’m above all of you. Got it? And since you’re humans, you’re considered a dangerous species. Obviously, you don’t have human rights, so you’re probably ranked about the same as monsters.”

“But we’re not as strong as monsters.”

“Yeah! Doesn’t that mean this pyramid structure is wrong?”

“Well… I guess that’s true…”

Laira was sitting with the three little kids of the underground village, squatting down, drawing lines in the sand, and explaining something.

“What… is she doing?”

“Who knows…”

“Hey, it’s that guy who showed us the sky!”

“Oh, right?”

“Hi, big brother.”

“…! P-Past His Majesty…”

As soon as Laira met my eyes, she awkwardly turned her head away.

“…What were you doing?”

“Yes! We were deciding on ranks!”

“Ranks?”

“What ranks?”

“Well, Laira Princess said that when she gets her own territory, she’ll let us live there! And all the people in the underground village too!”

“”What?!””

“……”

Wait… This was the same girl who had run away saying she didn’t like humans just a while ago. What could have caused such a change in her attitude?

When Shin-ah and I looked at each other in disbelief, Laira mumbled, shifting her lips awkwardly.

Then she said—

“H-Humans… They seem like much purer creatures than I thought…”

“…!”

“I just… thought I’d try raising a few, so I was planning things out…”

She turned her head away, clearly embarrassed, as she explained.

“We even changed our name from the ‘Three Musketeers’ to the ‘Four Musketeers’ with Laira Princess joining us!”

“The new leader is Princess Laira!”

“In the time we weren’t watching, you’ve already become their leader…?”

“…I thought of it as an opportunity for a status upgrade.”

“And in Laira Princess’s territory, I’ll be… What was it again?”

“Minister of Land and Infrastructure!”

“Oh, right! I’m going to be the Minister of Land and Infrastructure!”

“Not captain of the guards or something like that?”

They’d already worked out more details than I expected.

Listening to the kids, I could hear a rather well-thought-out plan.

Like she was assembling pieces of a game, Laira had already drawn up a detailed plan for coexisting with humans.

“Laira, what’s going on?”

“I-I told you… I just thought I’d try raising a few humans…”

“From what the kids are saying, it sounds like you’re planning to set up an entire human settlement within the Empire.”

“……”

“Have you suddenly grown fond of humans?”

“N-No! That’s not it!”

Laira quickly and firmly denied any liking for humans.

But the expression on her face didn’t quite match her words.

“I just… started to doubt whether they were really as dangerous as I’d been told.”

“…And that’s why you’ve already drawn up a plan to move humans above ground?”

“No! I mean, it’s just a ‘plan,’ after all! It’s probably not even possible because of the current emperor!”

“But from what I heard from the kids…”

“It sounded like you’d planned it pretty well, keeping humans isolated so they wouldn’t bother the people of the Empire.”

“T-That’s…”

Laira looked really conflicted.

At the same time, though, she continued to take care of the human children around her.

“What do you think caused this change of heart?” Shin-ah asked me, watching Laira’s actions.

Why did a girl who said she hated humans suddenly turn to their side after realizing they were weak?

I tilted my head, unsure myself.

“Princess! By the way, now that we’ve finished planning, should we play tag again?”

“Of course, Princess, if you’re ‘it,’ you have to close your eyes, okay? Otherwise, you’ll find us too quickly!”

“Tsk… Closing my eyes makes it way too hard…”

Like any kids, they didn’t want to think about complicated things.

Even though she was a princess, Laira was still just a child, barely older than the kids from the underground village.

It was like the difference between upper and lower elementary school.

“Uh, Past His Majesty…”

“Ah, right. Go ahead and play.”

“…! Thank you.”

Leaving behind the heavy atmosphere, Laira reluctantly joined the others to play after they asked her.

Watching her, I finally realized what was going on in her mind.

I had been overthinking things from the start.

“Laira… doesn’t have any friends, does she?”

“Huh? Friends?”

“Yeah. By the way, Shin-ah, do you have any friends? Like someone who listens to your troubles or sorrows, or family, maybe?”

“Ah, well…”

Why hadn’t I noticed this before?

Laira, Shin-ah, and all the children I’d seen so far—they were all siblings, but there was always a strange awkwardness between them.

Like they were just acquaintances who knew each other’s faces.

So I asked Shin-ah to confirm if my guess was right, and she told me about their family life, just as I had expected.

“We’re royalty, so we don’t have friends, nor are we allowed to make them.”

“You’re not allowed to… make friends?”

“Yes. That’s because our current father… the emperor, told us not to lower our ‘rank.’”

Seriously, does he think they’ll melt if they touch someone else?

This was some new level of insanity.

And apparently, this was only the start of the bizarre lessons my future self had drilled into them.

“We were also taught never to rely on our siblings or even our mother.”

“That’s also… to avoid lowering your rank?”

“Heh… Yes. The emperor always told us that relying on others is something only weak humans do.”

So that’s why Laira opened up to the humans.

And it explained why Shin-ah quickly became friendly with the people of the underground village.

Unlike the human-shaped monsters of the Empire, these humans saw them as ordinary girls.

Though Shin-ah had always been cheerful, she was lonely. Meeting people here filled that emptiness inside her.

For Laira, who had always been neglected as the youngest princess, meeting ‘friends’ who looked up to her and acknowledged her gave her a sense of belonging, and she wanted to be with them until the end.

“You’ve been through a lot… both you and Laira.”

“It’s nothing, Dad.”

I knew all too well how painful it was to endure the suffering of not being able to lean on even your own family.

I had lived that life before coming to this world.

Which is why I couldn’t help but feel disgusted with my future self.

The way he treated his children… Everything he did was exactly what my original father had done.

At that moment—

“O-Oppa! Oppa!!”

“Ria?”

“Lady Ria?”

“M-Mother?!”

While Shin-ah and I sat squatting, watching Laira play tag with the kids, Ria came running toward us, drenched in sweat.

She didn’t look like she was bringing good news.

“What’s going on, Ria? Why are you running like that?”

“Huff… Huff… Something’s happened, Oppa!”

“Something happened?”

“The time machine! The time machine!”

“The time machine…?”

Why the time machine?

Did something go wrong?

But one of our strongest forces, Katarina, and my most powerful child, Leon, were at the time machine.

So it couldn’t be that my future self had come.

If he had transformed into a monster, I would’ve sensed it.

Then why was Ria breaking into a cold sweat?

As I thought about it—

“There was just a message from the time machine!”

“Yeah, and?”

“They said I-I’m there right now!”

“…What?”

“My future self! Future me has shown up and is confronting the people in the time machine!”

“What?!”

The future Ria.

The Second Empress of the Empire.

The one I had loved the most, right up until Sophia was kidnapped.

Hearing that the future Ria had arrived, I immediately shot to my feet.