A small campfire crackled inside the cave's ruins, cutting through the bone-chilling cold of the Eudor forest. Grom was already snoring loudly in the corner of the cave, his sound strikingly similar to a jammed concrete mixer. Meanwhile, Raga and Naria sat facing each other, watching the sparks dance in the air.

Out in the wild, the forest felt dead silent, as if the world itself knew that tonight was a much-needed pause for the exhausted.

"My father was a good king," Naria began in a soft voice, breaking the stillness. She stared into the flames with a gaze drifting far back into the past. "Yet, he trusted Duke Vallen far too much. He regarded Vallen as a brother. When the coup happened, it didn't come through a great war, but through betrayal across the dinner table. While my father was enjoying the banquet, they poisoned him and framed me for the crime."

Naria took a long, shaky breath, her eyes welling with tears. "In a single night, I lost everything. The people who once praised me now look at me as a monster who murdered her own king."

Raga listened intently. He offered no flowery words or heroic speeches. As a laborer, he knew that sometimes, all a person needed was someone simply willing to listen.

"Same here," Raga replied after a long silence. "In my world, kindness is often treated as a weakness. If you aren't cunning enough, you're the one getting trampled on."

Naria turned her head toward Raga. "Tell me about your world, Raga. Is it as wonderful as you made it sound earlier?"

Raga let out a cynical chuckle. "Wonderful? Maybe for those with money. For someone like me? Life is about chasing numbers. Numbers on a pay stub, numbers on rent bills, numbers on a calendar for payday. I remember when my mother fell sick, I had to work three shifts a day across three different construction sites. I didn't have time to cry, because if I cried, I couldn't lay cement properly—and if the cement wasn't level, I'd get fired."

Raga turned his palms upward, rough and covered in calluses and small scars. "These aren't the hands of a hero, Naria. These are the hands of a guy used to being chewed out by foremen and forced to work under the blazing sun until his skin peeled off. I don't have magic. I just have muscles that cramp up constantly and a desperate urge not to starve to death."

Naria looked at Raga’s hands with profound empathy. She slowly reached out, gently tracing his scars with her soft fingertips.

"These hands..." Naria whispered. "In my kingdom, the hands of nobles are always clean. They take pride in never having touched the earth. But to me, these hands are far more noble than any gold in my father's vault. Because these hands are used to build, not to destroy."

Raga felt a strange fluttering in his chest. He had never been praised like that before. To him, these hands were merely tools for labor. Hearing Naria say it with such sincerity made his throat tighten.

"Well, maybe in your eyes," Raga tried to cover his awkwardness with a chuckle. "Though if you were forced to mix cement for eight hours, I guarantee those soft hands of yours would be weeping."

Naria laughed, and for the first time that night, the crushing weight on her shoulders lifted just a fraction.

[System: Warning! High-level 'Emotional Bonding' activity detected. Relationship Status: Naria trusts Raga entirely. Mission Progress: 15%. Suggestion: Perhaps you should confess your love right now? (Success rate: 12% because you still look like a vagrant).]

Raga shot a sharp glare at S.I.N.I.'s blue screen. "System, do you seriously lack any form of empathy?"

[System: I have no empathy, Raga. I only possess an honest statistical database. And statistics say royal princesses rarely fall in love with laborers who smell like cement dust—unless it's in a cheap fantasy novel, of course.]

Raga could only scoff in annoyance. He turned his attention back to Naria. "Naria, if you become queen again... what's the very first thing you're going to do?"

Naria paused for a moment. "I'll build schools for the people, Raga. Schools where they can learn not just magic, but how to build a decent livelihood. Maybe... maybe I'll establish an 'Engineering' division in my kingdom. And you can be its highest-ranking foreman."

Raga flashed a wide, genuine smile. "Highest-ranking foreman? Wow, that sounds like a massive promotion. Does the salary package include holiday bonuses and health insurance?"

"I'll grant you half of the royal treasury," Naria answered firmly.

Raga burst into loud laughter. "Half the royal treasury? Whoa, let's not get carried away, or I won't even know how to spend it all. Just the chest of gold promised by that cheating system will be enough to let me live like a king back in my world."

The atmosphere settled into a peaceful hush. Outside the cave, the drizzle had stopped, leaving behind the rhythmic dripping of water off the leaves.

"Raga," Naria called out softly.

"Yeah?"

"Thank you for coming to this world. Even though you arrived because of that 'cheating contract,' I'm so glad you're the one who showed up."

Raga looked at Naria; the princess's face looked breathtakingly serene beneath the campfire light. For a fleeting second, Raga forgot his own world. He forgot about the overdue rent and his obnoxious boss. He only felt that tonight, deep inside the forest of another dimension, he had finally found a place where he was valued as a human being.

[System: Warning! Romance levels exceeding safe thresholds. Reminder: You are on active duty, not shooting a Korean drama. Rest immediately to recover stamina; tomorrow we have to keep scamming Duke Vallen.]

Raga ignored the system and leaned his back against the cold cave wall. He closed his eyes, letting the campfire's warmth and Naria's presence calm him.

"Get some sleep, Princess," Raga whispered. "Tomorrow we've got a lot of work to do. We've got a kingdom to rebuild, right?"

Naria nodded gently, resting her head against Raga’s dust-stained shoulder. Raga didn't move. He sat motionless, guarding the princess so she could sleep soundly, while deep inside his mind, the system kept firing off sarcastic notifications.

That night, in a small camp deep within the Eudor forest, a laborer and a princess shared the exact same dream: a dream of a future where they no longer had to fight just to survive.