"Those are the candidates."
"The one who wins in the end will become the new king and renew the covenant."
"As for how the candidates are identified, it's through a royal heirloom. A badge set with a Dragon Jewel. When a true candidate holds it, the jewel glows red."
"Over the past year, four candidates have appeared one after another through various means, but there's still been no trace of the last one."
"That's the situation as it stands."
Old Man Rom finished speaking and took a sip of tea.
After hearing all that, Satoru Gojo fell silent, lost in thought.
A badge.
Red light.
Those two keywords churned in his mind.
If he remembered correctly, back in that alley.
When Felt returned the badge to Emilia, he had clearly seen the Dragon Jewel at its center glowing, radiating a red light.
If he followed that line of thought.
And if there wasn't some kind of fake or defective item involved, then the Felt standing right next to him…
Gojo paused, then reached out and tugged lightly on Felt's cheek, studying her face with an unusually serious look.
"What are you doing?!"
Felt slapped his hand away at once, glaring at him like he was picking a fight.
"Dragon Priestess… tch, what a ridiculous title."
"Do the other candidates have anything special about them?"
"Special?"
Old Man Rom thought for a moment. "I'm not sure what kind of 'special' you mean, but that one named Emilia…"
"She's a silver-haired half-elf, the same as Satella, the Witch of Envy who once swallowed half the world."
"Among the four candidates, she's by far the least welcome."
"A witch?"
Hearing the girl who had captured his heart being linked to a witch, Subaru Natsuki looked at Gojo in confusion.
"Just think of it as a demon king that needs to be defeated."
"Who knows, it might even turn into a tragic love story between the hero and the demon king."
Gojo patted Subaru on the shoulder and casually dropped a possibility that made the lovestruck boy deeply uncomfortable.
"As for the remaining three, one is the current head of the Karsten family in the Kingdom of Lugunica. One is the chairman of a major merchant guild in Kararagi. And the last is a wealthy widow who's been married eight times, and every husband died."
"Witch, noble, merchant, widow."
'And a thief.'
Gojo added the last word silently in his head.
No matter how he looked at it, the lineup felt strange.
Aside from the noble, none of those identities really seemed to have anything to do with being a king.
If they really had to pick a ruler from that group, wasn't that just making things difficult for everyone?
Gojo glanced at Felt and imagined her standing in the royal palace, jumping up and cursing out the ministers. The image was oddly amusing.
"These rivals really are something else."
Old Man Rom didn't catch the subtle tone in Gojo's words and assumed he was thinking from Emilia's perspective.
"That half-elf girl isn't actually that bad. She has the backing of the court's chief mage, the strongest magician in the kingdom, Border Earl Roswaal."
"It's just her identity that makes people wary."
Another piece of unknown information.
But when he heard the words "strongest," a spark of interest flickered deep in Gojo's eyes.
"Alright."
"No need to stress so much."
"There actually is a way to deal with this."
"What way?"
The three of them all turned to look at Gojo at the same time.
Gojo yawned and stretched lazily.
"That's a problem for tomorrow. For tonight, let's just get some proper rest."
"Instead of worrying about something so far off, we should be thinking about how we're going to eat tomorrow."
"After all, there's no way the bounty's getting paid that fast. Bureaucracy exists everywhere."
As he spoke, Gojo walked to the door and pulled it open.
"I'll head off to rest first. You all should turn in early too."
"Maybe we can even have breakfast here tomorrow."
He waved his hand and left on his own.
"Please help arrange a room for me to rest."
Gojo's voice came from outside.
"Tch, he runs off right when it gets interesting."
Felt kicked the table, then stood up. "I'm going to sleep too."
Thinking back on everything that had happened today made her feel drained, body and mind alike. All she wanted now was a good night's sleep.
"Let's go as well."
Old Man Rom nodded to Subaru Natsuki, and the two of them followed suit and left.
On this side, after a quick wash, Satoru Gojo arrived at the room that had been temporarily arranged for him.
It wasn't big. Basically a single-occupancy dorm room meant for knights stationed here to rest.
Lying on the clean bed.
Gojo went over everything he had experienced and learned since coming to this world over the past two days, replaying it all in his mind.
"The royal selection…"
Staring up at the unfamiliar ceiling, he murmured softly.
That deep look in his eyes hid who knew how many thoughts.
For now, he set the matter aside.
Turning his attention elsewhere, Gojo opened the Popularity Point Shop.
The anime playback didn't end after just two episodes.
As long as he wanted, he could rewatch it over and over, just like streaming a show online.
And the comments would refresh along with it.
That meant he could check the audience's reactions in real time.
On top of that, as more people watched, his popularity points continued to rise.
The pace was slower than when the episode first aired, but still steady.
If the later story was engaging enough, plenty of viewers would stick around.
Those were concerns for later.
What Gojo really wanted to see was what this so-called Popularity Point Shop actually had to offer.
From the initial explanation, it had sounded pretty impressive.
Being able to exchange items from his original world, as well as anything from worlds he had already experienced.
That alone was enough to spark curiosity.
As soon as the shop opened, a virtual panel appeared directly in front of Gojo's eyes.
It looked a lot like the shop interface in an online game.
There were no flashy decorations, though. Just clean and simple.
The entire shop was divided into four sections.
Each one corresponded to a different spending tier.
The first tier offered items costing between ten thousand and fifty thousand popularity points.
The second tier ranged from fifty thousand to two hundred thousand. The third from two hundred thousand to five hundred thousand.
The final fourth tier went from five hundred thousand to one million.
With just a bit over ten thousand points to his name right now, there was no way he could afford anything good.
Gojo skimmed through it casually.
Even in the first tier, he spotted quite a few cursed tools from his own world.