Nox's POV:
"You're not pullin my leg here, are you?" I asked.
After I gave that playboy a public beating in an attempt to save my side-hustle, my pretend-wife, the playboy, told me to follow him into this very offensive practical joke of the magic continents architectural culture to work out the details of my job/marriage contract in private, and holy shit does it pay well. Not only do I get to live rent-free in a new base, but I also get a medium sized spirit spring, on top of a crap load of magic stones with a bunch of fancy trinkets and clothes I can sell for even more cash later. Even that annoying bounty on my head is going to be taken down, and all I have to do is play the guys girlfriend for a while and fake a pregnancy test. This sounds way too good to be true, so there is definitely some kind of catch here, because my luck is never this good.
"You do know, you'll have to pay up front this time, right?" I asked, wondering if maybe this dine-and-dashing rich kid was planning to skip out on the bill again like last time.
"Hehe! No need to glare like that! This great lord learned his lesson after my beloveds scolding! You will get everything in full the moment you sign these papers!" The playboy said giving me the most reassuring, suspicious smile he could.
"Done! No takesies backsies!" I said, as I signed the papers without hesitation.
I already flipped through this contract several times, scrutinizing even the smallest of prints to make sure I wasn't selling away my soul or worse, having to do all this for free, but save for the one weird requirement of having to stay inside my new residence for a certain amount of time, the only suspicious thing was how favorable it was towards me. Even the penalty for failing is lenient, as I only need to return whatever of the reward is still in my possession, meaning I don't have to pay out of pocket to replace anything that I broke or sold. Most jobs I get from rich kids in the upper-class tend to be a lot harsher than this, often demanding all the money back on top of compensation for whatever losses they suffered as a result of me failing at my job. So, once I made sure this was legit, I hurried to sign the job contract to make it official before the playboy changed his mind out of nowhere.
"Okay, so now that you're officially my sugar daddy, where's my money at?" I asked, wanting to get my cash as soon as possible.
"Hehe! No need to get so anxious my sweet wife, you'll have your reward soon enough!" He said, as he psychically lifted me out of my seat and onto his lap so he could smell my hair like the creep he was.
"If by 'soon' you mean 'now' then A-okay!" I said, having a strange case of déjà vu while pulling out a water-pistol filled with my home-made bacteria-based playboy-repellent.
"What's the hurry, my dea-!"
*BANG*
"MY LO-!"
*Splash*
Unfortunately, the playboy moved his head out of the way last moment, causing the repellent to fly into the gaping mouth of the purple-haired shorty who just slammed open the door to the room.
"Ugh! AH! WHO DARES?!"
"Oh, sorry! I'll cure you in a minute, just-!"
"IT'S YOU!"
"No, you're thinking of the playboy's mistress You! My name is Nox, his official spouse, nice to shoot you! Anyways, you need to-!"
"SHUT YOUR FILTHY MOUTH, AND GET YOUR SLUTTY BODY OFF MY FIANCÉ!" The purple-haired chick screamed at us.
"…! Well, this is awkward!" I said, as I used my awesome brain to deduce why I suddenly had a lolli fiancée.
"Noxy, don't misunderstand she-!"
"Sorry, filthy playboy! Rat man, that rascal must have played another marriage prank while I was throwing soap in prison! Funny stuff though!" I said, wondering what hilarious thing that guy will think of next.
"Pft! *Chuckle*"
While the playboy was trying to hold in his laughter at the rat man's latest prank, I was pondering how this lolli-detective managed to track me down all the way here. I mean, I had been so discreet about my drunken castle smashing.
"HUBBY! GET RID OF THIS CRAZY LADY!" She screamed at me.
"Sorry to disappoint, but it's not me, it's You! She's the one I'm dumping you for! Now go! Be free, to harass her instead!" I said, as I tried to shoo her away, before this got any more awkward.
"HAHAHAHA!"
"YOU-!"
*Thud*
"Poor girl! She must have collapsed from the humiliation!"
She went through so much trouble to find me only to get dumped immediately, and pouring salt on the wound, she got laughed at by a rude and filthy playboy. No wonder she blew a fuse.
"Oh, wait, no! It's just the playboy-repellent I sprayed in her face! Hold on!" I said, as I slipped out of the laughing playboy's dirty embrace.
"HAHAHA! Huh? Noxy?! Wait, why is she convulsing like that?" The playboy asked, as he finally noticed the lolli's very energy-rich seizure, as her qi canals were already starting to leak everywhere.
"*Sigh* If only it progressed this fast with you, wife dearest! Alas, all the steroids you must have taken to get swoll only shrunk your wiener, but not your energy arteries? Oh, what a world!" I said, as I pulled out a gun-shaped syringe and gave her a shot of the anti-playboy-repellent.
"Nox? What exactly was in the liquid you tried to spray me with earlier?" The weirdly pale playboy asked.
"Do you remember the stuff your collectomania-ss infected yourself with like a year ago when destroyed your palace, the first time! Well, let me reintroduce you to my patented playboy-repellent!" I said, before I squirted another shot in his direction.
In response to my attempts to rekindle his relationship with this energy parasite of a bacteria, the playboy, in a total overreaction, demonstrated just how effective this repellent is as he threw himself out of the way so fast he broke the sound barrier, causing all the papers and whatever else not nailed down to scatter about the room.
"DO NOT SPRAY THAT ON ME! HAVE YOU GONE MAD?!"
"No! I was already crazy!" I said, as I aimed at his feet to make him dance.
This stuff doesn't infect through skin contact, but apparently the playboy didn't realize this, which made this all the more fun for me.
"NOX!"
"AHAHA, DANCE PUPPET! DANCE!"
"DAMN IT! I'VE HAD ENOUGH!" The playboy shouted before shooting a small fire-based projectile at the barrel of my gun to melt it shut.
*Sizzle*
"Oh, no! You burned my one and only gun! Whatever shall I do?" I said, while pulling out my secondary disease-ridden water-gun.
*Sizzle*
Only for the playboy to burn that one too.
"…! Well, you're no fun! Anyways! About my money!"
*Sigh*
"Fine, fine! Whatever keeps you from poisoning me again!"
"Technically, you did that to yourself last time!" I said, making sure he got his facts straight, just in case he ever had the urge to rob me again.
The playboy took a deep breath, and I got a look at that nostalgic frustrated face of his that I haven't seen in such a long time. It's crazy what you miss in prison.
"I will have your reward delivered to the Pink Palace, so why don't I give you a tour around your new residence first?"
"Hm? Fine, but if this is some kind of trap, then you better get ready to dance!" I said, as I pulled out my 3rd water-gun while following after him.
"How many of those do you even have?" the playboy asked me.
"Uuuuuhh!"
As I recalled the giant pile of watery fire-arms in my spatial storage, it occurred to me that telling my employer I had made an army's worth of deadly disease guns in preparation for a hostile takeover of his capital, might not be the best idea. Mostly because I'm still doubting this job-contract isn't some kind of trap, and I don't want to give my potential future enemy info on my arsenal.
"Hey, so where's my place anyways?" I asked, trying to change the subject as I sped up towards the exit.
"…! For my own mental health, I will pretend that it is less than the amount I am imagining! Now will you come along?" The playboy said, moving away from the exit much to my confusion.
"Huh? Aren't we going to my place? Is there like a closer exit or a secret passage leading to it in this place?" I asked as I followed after him.
"Hm? Oh, did I forget to tell you?"
"Tell me what?" I asked, as my instincts suddenly started blaring danger signals once we moved out into the garden out back.
"This is the Palace your great husband prepared for you, my lovely wife!" He said, as he suddenly decided he wanted to hold my hand to cross the disgustingly pink garden safely.
"Excuse me?" I asked as my eye started involuntarily twitching while trying to process the information suddenly dropped on me.
"Yes! Wishing to give my woman some familiar surroundings, I had ordered your residence to be constructed to resemble the palaces of the magic continent! Behold, the Pink Palace!" that asshole said with this shiteating grin on his face.
"Playboy! Have you ever actually seen a castle on the magic continent?" I asked, as I looked in horror at the thing I'll be legally required to live in for the next month.
"Well, no, but the design was approved by brother-in-law and your disciple! Though it took some time, once those miscreants finally gave up their attempts to stop our union, they proved surprisingly useful! Brother-in-law even helped put together the initial contract!"
I dropped to the ground as I realized what the catch of this job I took was, and despaired.
"Is something wrong?" The playboy asked.
"OF COURSE THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG! JUST LOOK AT THAT FASHION DISASTER!" I screamed in his face, while pointing my gun at the pink monstrosity.
Its interior was a mess, and its structural integrity was almost none-existent, meaning it could suddenly start collapsing at any given time, and the exterior didn't look imposing, intimidating, or any sort of '-ing' any self-respecting magic continent castle should, to a point where it could only be mistaken for one if you only saw its silhouette. However, the worst part of all was.
"WHY IS EVERYTHING PINK?!" I screamed in dissatisfaction and regret.
Pink is, and I cannot stress this enough, my least favorite color of all time, and this asshole, under the influence of my hole-like family had spraypainted the entire thing in that awful color. I'm talking walls, roof, furniture, even the damn bushes in the garden, have all been colored fucking pink, AND I HATE IT!
"It's fine, it's fine! I can just repaint it!" I said to myself, while trying not to look directly at it while resisting the urge I have to burn down my new base.
I later learned that there are some very interesting and genuinely stupid political and cultural controversies regarding the Dark Empire's Palace-color-schemes that would under any other circumstance make me laugh while wondering how this dumpster-fire of a nation conquered a continent before collapsed in on itself.