The victory was deafening, fueled by the spectacular power of the Flow Spike. The entire Chadgardian vanguard, demoralized by the absurdly neutralized foam rubber tank, was in full disarray. But back at the Royal Command Center, the sirens were screaming.
[SYSTEM WARNING: FLOW SPIKE CATASTROPHE! FPM CRITICAL OVERLOAD: 15,000 FPM. FLOW INFLUX IS VOLATILE AND UNSUSTAINABLE! SOCIETAL FLOW BURN-OUT IMMINENT!]
King Felix, still reeling from the sudden power surge, felt the volatile energy tearing through his core. He was channeling the emotional equivalent of a million people simultaneously shouting "I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!"—a sensation that was physically exhausting.
"Report!" Felix gasped, leaning heavily on the terminal, fighting the urge to surrender to the overwhelming power.
Knight-Captain Rhea's data slate was flashing red. "Your Majesty, the FPM spiked so high, the populace is in a state of hyper-mania! Their mental bandwidth is maxed out. If this energy isn't stabilized, we risk Flow Catastrophe—a total crash where our people lose all ability to focus, perhaps permanently!"
Lord Reginald, the GCVTD, was frantically working his console. "The national chat logs are showing only capital letters and streams of incoherent aesthetic praise! They are incapable of generating any more focused Flow! We are now operating on pure, manic fumes!"
The King realized his mistake: the Flow was too powerful to be managed in a moment of surprise. He had saved the kingdom from the Chadgardian army, only to risk destroying it through aesthetic excess.
Felix fought through the haze of hyper-mania. He needed a counter-ritual, one that used the people's current high-energy state not for attack, but for passive release.
"We need a Reverse-Flow Ritual!" Felix commanded, his mind racing through niche internet tactics. "A form of content that encourages active participation but requires zero emotional output!"
Rhea caught his meaning instantly. "A therapeutic Content Dump, Sire? Something that consumes their focus without demanding mental energy?"
"Precisely," Felix affirmed. "We will give them a massive, mandatory task that they must complete immediately, one that requires intense, but ultimately meaningless, attention to detail."
He rushed to the broadcast camera, his expression conveying an urgent, professional calm designed to cut through the national mania.
"Citizens of Thighland! You have performed flawlessly!" Felix announced. "Now, your King requires one final, high-focus task to secure our victory."
He pulled up the new protocol:
The Flow Stabilization Protocol: The Mandatory Metadata Ritual
Objective: All citizens must immediately catalog every single piece of un-optimized metadata (tags, descriptions, captions) from the past 48 hours of Royal Broadcasts.
Required Focus: Every citizen must verify, categorize, and cross-reference a minimum of 500 metadata tags before being allowed to log off.
The Goal: This creates a massive, national task that consumes the surplus Flow energy into tedious, focus-intensive administrative labor.
Enforcement: Automated system locks prevent further high-Flow content viewing until the quota is met.
The entire kingdom, still operating at 15,000 FPM, instantly redirected its manic focus. The energy that was about to burn out their minds was now channeled into the glorious, meaningless task of cataloging tags and cross-referencing captions. The national network hummed with intense, quiet, productive Flow.
[SYSTEM ALERT: FLOW STABILIZATION SUCCESSFUL. SURPLUS FLOW ENERGY SUCCESSFULLY CONVERTED INTO METADATA ARCHIVAL. FPM DROPPING TO SAFE, SUSTAINABLE LEVELS (6,000 FPM).]
As the kingdom stabilized, King Felix watched the battlefield feed. The Chadgardian Generals, utterly baffled by the sudden appearance of the foam rubber tank and the King's abrupt shift from high-drama to metadata management, ordered a full retreat.
"They cannot comprehend the complexity of the Flow," Felix sighed, feeling the welcome return of stability. "They see a power spike followed by a mandatory tagging exercise, and they conclude the King is either insane or preparing a bureaucratic trap."
"Their simplicity is our greatest shield, Your Majesty," Rhea agreed.
"Indeed," Felix said, looking out at the border where the dull, defeated Chadgardian army was retreating. "But they are learning. The next attack will not be traditional force. The next attack will be aimed at our very ability to generate Flow."
He turned to his GCVTD. "Reginald, I need intelligence. How would the Chadgardian mind, once it realizes our power is digital, attempt to destroy our source? Find me their plans to cut the Flow at its root."