How Dare You Touch My Woman

Meanwhile, Princess Helena, having heard unexpected news, could not help but react with utter disbelief.

“What? The two of them went out in secret? And no one even knows when they’ll be back?”

“Yes, that’s what I heard. It seems they left intending to be gone for quite a while.”

“Queen Mother, is that really allowed? The King and Queen leaving the palace? And doing it without telling anyone—don’t the ministers stop them?”

“I don’t know the details. But even in the past, things have gone on without issue when something like this happened.”

“Even so… the King and Queen both leaving the palace can’t be an easy matter.”

Faced with this incomprehensible palace circumstance, Helena felt an unavoidable sense of bewilderment. How could the royal household run smoothly with no master present? It was nothing but questions.

‘Is it because it’s a kingdom?’

She quickly realized it was not. Whether kingdom or empire, the ruler vanishing from sight was not a good move. If there were special circumstances—illness confining them to bed—that would be one thing. But a secret outing could cause serious political complications.

‘What if a rebellion suddenly breaks out?’

Of course, she could tell from being here that the country was very stable. But reality was not so simple. Discontent existed everywhere, and people’s hearts could change in an instant. A palace overturning overnight had happened in every era.

‘Maybe His personality is more irresponsible than I thought.’

Going out with the Queen—secretly, not even an official outing. It felt beyond merely “unusual” and crossed into “irresponsible.” She had thought he seemed normal, but perhaps he had problems in this regard.

Of course, these were thoughts born from not knowing the palace’s exact inner workings.

‘But why now—why did the two of them leave together?’

This was a woman’s intuition: it felt like something was going to happen between them. And that made her feel, absurdly, a faint irritation—why had she not been taken along?

As Helena remained in the palace, thinking about the vanished King and Queen…

The party in question—Ian—was currently stopped at a gas station.

‘Driving hard is great, but the fuel consumption being this fast is a problem.’

He had driven enthusiastically, and the tank was already near empty. The fortunate part was that when the roads were built, gas stations had been constructed alongside them in many places. As a result, at least tens of thousands of stations were now scattered across the country.

‘The concept of rest stops is still a stretch.’

Around a station with fuel pumps, there was usually only a single basic shop. From the outset, they had ensured that wherever a gas station existed, a small store would also take root—a kind of general shop selling assorted goods.

Because it was a better business than expected, about half of them were owned by the royal household. Half of the revenue from those sites flowed directly into the royal treasury.

‘Still, it’s inconvenient that it’s not electronic yet—everything’s pump-operated.’

Fueling was done manually with a pump. The attendant worked the pump repeatedly, and the sound of fuel flowing grew louder, then weaker, over and over.

Seeing the attendant sweating as he worked, Ian thought this too was part of the era—and that it would take time to fill up. He turned to Adrina, who had gotten out of the car with him, and said:

“How about we go over there and buy something while we wait?”

“Let’s do that.”

Adrina was curious what the shop looked like inside as well. After telling the attendant they would step in and come back out, they headed straight into the shop.

Jingle—

A small bell on the door rang as it opened.

Inside sat a middle-aged male owner, and there were a few customers as well.

Others had come to this gas station too, and while fueling was underway, they had entered to buy things. Looking around, they saw various products stocked—foodstuffs, simple shirts you could throw on and take off, even chewing gum you could chew and spit out.

It was, quite literally, a general store that carried everything.

They looked around with curious eyes. Ian examined whether the shop’s condition was acceptable, while Adrina—finding this type of store fascinating, as if she had never seen it—looked more closely.

Naturally, their behavior stood out. Even with hats and glasses covering their faces, the air around them still suggested people from a high-ranking family.

As they moved deeper inside, others slipped into the store as well—men who, at a glance, seemed like secret guards. They had tried to blend in, but their stiff demeanor made them obvious.

‘I’m basically advertising that they’re guards.’

Of course, perhaps that was only his thought. Some people did not seem to connect them to Ian and Adrina at all.

“There are so many things I’ve never seen before.”

“If possible, don’t choose snacks or anything edible.”

“Why?”

“There’s no need to eat something whose safety hasn’t been fully verified.”

“Ah… that’s true.”

There were food safety inspections, of course. But that did not mean they were one hundred percent trustworthy. For money, people did anything, and it was possible that illegal substances had been mixed in. For this era, it was not impossible at all.

‘I should launch a major investigation into substandard foods—especially candies kids eat a lot. Focus on that.’

They might be using dyes designated as illegal. It would make money, so there was reason to use them in secret. Filing that away as a task in his head, Ian looked at goods that were not meant to be eaten.

‘There are a lot of items, but a large portion of them are crude.’

The value did not look high. Some wooden goods were cracked, some not even properly joined. He guessed they had been brought in in bulk at low cost to sell cheaply.

‘Is this a marionette?’

A toy like something used in puppet shows—wood, strings, and all. Who would buy this? he wondered, and then thought: a child might.

Even after looking around, neither Ian nor Adrina found anything especially appealing. Perhaps their eyes had simply grown too used to refined goods—nothing here measured up.

In the end, without choosing anything, they decided to leave. They had entered mostly to see what the inside looked like anyway.

‘It’s basically an early-form rest stop. I didn’t expect anything special, but the overall quality being this low is still an issue.’

And this place was half owned by the royal household. He thought there were too many problems, and that once he returned, he would have to order it corrected.

Just then—

Jingle—

The door opened again.

A group entered slowly. They all wore suits, but their sloppy swagger did not match. For a moment, he wondered if they were guards—then he saw it clearly.

‘No smoking ban here, either.’

They came in with cigarettes in their mouths. Ian immediately thought they looked like a violent gang.

‘I stop squeezing these groups for a while and cockroaches like them start crawling out again. But those guys—aren’t they outside the capital’s syndicates?’

To be clear, Ian had already, in secret, used Mental Manipulation on the underground bosses long ago. Basilisk and Medusa—organizations that he allowed to operate so long as they excluded truly illegal work like narcotics and human trafficking.

In exchange, the Secret Police (Mauter) backed them, creating a structure where they controlled the capital’s underworld according to Ian’s command.

Surely these men were not part of those two groups.

The words that followed made the situation plain.

“Hey. Your tribute.”

“Pardon? They already took it yesterday.”

“That wasn’t us.”

“But Medusa already collected it, so who are you to demand it?”

Bang—

A man slammed the counter, his voice echoing through the shop.

Adrina flinched. Ian gently took her hand, signaling that it was fine, and only then did she steady herself.

“So you’re saying you can’t pay! This is our turf starting today. Why pay tribute to city punks? From now on, you pay us. Got it? Bring two hundred Grang, now.”

“Two hundred Grang?!”

Considering that a middle-class household spent around 100–200 Grang a month on average, the demanded tribute was outrageous.

The owner panicked and protested.

“E-even Medusa only asks for thirty Grang at most. But suddenly demanding that much—ugh!”

“They’re them, and we’re us. We’ll collect our cut. You talking back to me?”

The man grabbed the owner’s jaw with his hand, threatening him. Ian frowned; his irritation rose.

At that moment, one of them met his eyes.

“Hey. What are you looking at?”

“…..”

“Trying to play some righteous hero? Heh. Keep it up and you’ll end up dead.”

“Yo, that girl next to him—she’s pretty damn cute, isn’t she?”

“Right? Looks like some young noble brat.”

“Not just cute—she’s really pretty. Look closer.”

“Damn, you’re right. What luck—seeing a woman like that in a place like this.”

“Man…”

Several of them approached Ian.

The guards who had been hiding nearby started to step forward—but Ian lifted a hand, stopping them.

Only then did the approaching men notice the others in the shop.

“Huh? What’s this—guards?”

“When were they there?”

“Guess he’s nobility if he’s got guards with him…?”

They hesitated. Even so, there were only three visible guards. The gang had around six men. Normally, even violent groups avoided touching nobles—because dealing with the aftermath was not worth it.

But these men were lower—worse. The sort that crawled at the bottom.

After a moment’s hesitation, their expressions shifted, and they advanced again.

“So what if you’re nobility?”

“Like we haven’t dunked punks like you before.”

“That woman looks like she’d make a great ‘product.’ Let’s do it properly.”

“We came for tribute and got lucky, huh?”

“Heh. Let’s take turns tasting first, then put her on the market.”

Judging by their tone and words, they were filth—human trash.

“Product” meant it: human trafficking.

How were men like this still running loose in his country?

‘This pisses me off.’

And what had they just said—taste first?

They were talking about doing unspeakable things to Adrina.

On their first outing together, a moment that should have been filled only with good sights and good sounds—he had been forced to hear this garbage.

He abandoned any thought of ending this nicely.

“These bastards are trash.”

“What? Trash? You little—how dare you say that to us!”

‘How dare’ is what I should be saying. How dare you run your mouth like that about my woman.”

“This bastard—!”

One of them, furious, drew a pistol.

So they carried guns too.

Ian wanted, in an instant, to crush the gun and the man’s arm with Psychic Power—yet he could not, not in front of Adrina.

He only waited for what was about to happen.

“You pointed a gun at me?”

“You bastard—keep messing around and—”

Thud!

Before the sentence even finished, the man’s head burst.

Then—thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!

A rapid series of sounds followed, and the rest began collapsing, one after another.

All of them fell with blood spraying from their heads.

In truth, snipers had been positioned hundreds of meters away beyond the windows.

There was no world in which the King and Queen would be protected by only three guards. The security detail was spread across a far wider perimeter.

Ian immediately turned Adrina’s body away so she would not see the shattered heads.

Meeting her eyes, he spoke in a low voice filled with concern.

“There’s something you shouldn’t see. Don’t turn around, alright?”

“Yes… I won’t.”

Her voice trembled. Hearing it, Ian’s fury deepened.

He would dig into the men’s backing thoroughly. There was clearly trafficking involved, and he intended to order a full purge once he found the network.

‘If we hadn’t run into them here, we might never have known this was happening.’

In a strange way, he thought it was fortunate.

At the same time, Adrina’s heart would not stop pounding—because he had called her “my woman.”

Thump-thump.

Her heart kept racing, and she could not understand why it would not calm down.

Her face, inevitably, flushed red.