A wrestling match occurred for a short while in the dimly-lit room. Roel, despite his disadvantageous position, tried his best to struggle free, flinging his arms and legs with the intensity of Magikarp flopping around on land. Unfortunately, he was outpowered here.
Nora’s golden mana flickered several times before two pairs of golden rings locked his wrists in place. Meanwhile, Nora was locking down his waist with her body. All she had to do was to move her body a little for the reddened Roel to dare not move anymore.
“Why don’t you continue struggling? I like it when you struggle.”
“You really are a pervert!”
“It has already been two years, but your mouth is still as sharp as ever.”
With his attempt to rebel a failure, Roel was rendered utterly helpless before Tyrant Nora as she stroked his cheeks lightly. It was hard to tell whether her sapphire eyes were twinkling due to the golden radiance of her mana or something else, and her sadistic smile was growing wider and wider. An idea seemed to have come to her mind as she prodded Roel’s cheeks mischievously.
“Why don’t we try this? If you bark once and call me master, I'll consider letting you off. What do you think about it?”
Nora grabbed the collar of Roel’s suit as her eyes narrowed in excitement. Anticipation was written all over her face as she gazed down on the boy lying beneath her.
“Though I want to put you under my foot, that would soil your clothes. Would you be more receptive to it if I do it barefoot?”
“Receptive your head!”
Faced with the double insult to his body and his dignity, Roel’s cheeks twitched as he cursed out loud. The reason why he struggled so desperately earlier was because he knew that something bad was bound to happen if Nora managed to get her hands on him.
Indeed, his intuition didn’t fail him!
“Haven’t you slain your fair share of deviants at the eastern border? You should have satisfied your sadism there, no?”
“Well, the cries of those monsters are indeed music to my ears. But, if I have to be honest, it isn’t stimulating enough.”
Nora rubbed her chin as she blinked her eyes contemplatively, seemingly reminiscing how she felt when she stood atop heaps of corpses.
“I thought that I would be excited too, but the experience turned out to be underwhelming. I was only able to vent my desire to fight. No matter how many filthy wild dogs I dig through, how can any of them compare to my most beloved pet?”
Nora’s searing gaze was almost burning through Roel. She felt that her appetite had gotten too accustomed to Roel that nothing else could satiate her anymore.
“After having tasted a true delicacy, those ordinary fodder are nothing more than a means to alleviate my appetite. You should have given it quite some thought over the last two years, no? How about it?”
What do you mean by ‘how about it’, you sadistic freak!
Roel retorted in his mind as he quickly formulated a plan to break out of his current situation. However, before he could put it into action, a voice suddenly sounded behind the two of them.
“Your Highness Nora, may I humbly ask you to stop bullying Lord Brother?”
That voice made Nora click her tongue in annoyance. She slowly rose back up to her feet before turning around to face the owner of that voice.
A silver-haired girl was looking frostily at her.
Over the last two years, Alicia had undergone quite a transformation too. Her miniature body had grown larger by a fair bit, making her look more ladylike. Her slightly chubby cheeks grew slightly more defined and exquisite. The only things that remained the same were her beautiful ruby irises. Her disposition felt more ethereal and untouchable than before.
By now, Alicia’s beauty had become famous throughout the entire Theocracy. Her striking beauty was the perfect love-at-first-sight weapon, inducing the infatuation of many young scions. They desperately tried to fawn on her, hoping to catch her attention. Some of them even went a bit overboard.
Unfortunately for them, Alicia was no longer the weak-willed girl she used to be. She didn’t hold back against those who dared to step out of line. Many of those who thought that they could take advantage of her ended up learning a painful lesson in the shadows they would never forget.
Yet, whenever she was with Roel, the cold and unapproachable girl would suddenly become incredibly affectionate and cuddly. She would leap right into Roel’s embrace with a giggle and snuggle right up to him.
The obedient child disguise that Alicia had been maintaining before Roel really left Nora feeling exasperated, especially since Roel continued getting duped by it. Every single time, he would patiently console the ‘frightened’ Alicia and use the excuse that she was still too young to reject all of the pursuers who came knocking on the doors of the Ascart House.
Of course, some scions who were unwilling to give up so easily attempted to send a letter directly to the father of the two children, Marquess Carter. However, most of those letters fell on deaf ears.
Nora could understand where Marquess Carter was coming from. Unless someone clubbed Marquess Carter hard on the head, there was no way he would easily let go of a talent of Alicia’s caliber.
“Miss Alicia, it has been two years since I last met Roel. Don’t you think that it’s inappropriate of you to interrupt our rendezvous?”
Nora glared at Alicia with an awful look on her face.
“Your Highness, I understand how you feel, but as the star of the show today, you have already caused quite a commotion out there with your prolonged absence. Other than that, I also have important news to inform Lord Brother of—Lord Father has returned.”
“Our father is here?” asked Roel in agitation.
Nora’s expression also turned slightly grim too. She quickly dispelled her binding spell on Roel, and the latter quickly sat up, straightening his clothes as he did so.
Marquess Carter had been managing the Logistics Department for the Tark Stronghold for two years now, and during this period of time, he had only returned home once. The news that he was at the Holy Capital came as a pleasant surprise to Roel.
“Is father back from the frontlines? Didn’t he have a mission on hand and couldn’t make it for the birthday banquet?”
“I heard that he has managed to complete it ahead of time.”
Nora fell silent after hearing Alicia’s words. She couldn’t help but sense that there was something strange about this matter.
The deviants had been growing more and more active at the eastern border over the past two years. It was for this reason that Nora had to give up celebrating her birthday and head to the eastern border in advance. It was only in recent days that she managed to find some time to return back to the Holy Capital.
She knew a fair bit about the situation on the frontlines, and she was aware that the mission Marquess Carter was assigned with wasn’t something that could be completed in the short-term. It was odd that he was able to return to the Holy Capital despite his duties.
Just what is so important that he needs to relay the matter to his children in person?
Nora had her doubts about this matter, but she felt that she should still take the big picture into account and allow Roel to leave. After all, this was a rare reunion for the father and son, so it would be inappropriate for her to continue taking up his time.
Roel quickly headed out of the door, and Nora followed him. At that instant, when Nora was about to walk past Alicia, she suddenly halted her footsteps and tilted her head slightly over to look at the silver-haired girl with a sharp gaze.
“You shouldn’t even hope that you’ll be able to continue maintaining that innocent act of yours before him. It’s only a matter of time before he opens his eyes and sees through you.”
“Pardon me, but I don’t understand what you’re saying. I’m only preserving my truest self for Lord Brother. Everything is built upon our love.”
After the quick verbal clash, the two girls harrumphed coldly before turning away from one another.
…
Carter Ascart was feeling very nervous at the moment. The jittery feeling he felt inside wouldn’t subside no matter what he did.
Two years ago, before he headed for the eastern border, he suddenly recalled an important matter which had slipped his mind all this while. A long time ago, when he first participated in a battle on the frontlines, his father said some mystifying words to him.
“You must return alive. Otherwise, the daughter-in-law from the Sorofyas that I’ve reserved for you would have been in vain,”
That was the exact words that Carter’s father told him, It was simple and direct, but that didn’t make it any less of a bombshell. Back then, Carter was still young and hot-blooded, so how could he possibly turn a deaf ear to the sudden news drop that he was actually engaged to someone else? He immediately demanded the details from his father.
And thus, a cliché scene unfolded.
Roel’s grandfather, Blanc Ascart rubbed his hands together as he instructed a servant to flip through the drawers to retrieve an engagement contract. According to Blanc, this engagement was made prior to the founding of the Rosa Merchant Confederacy.
In the final years of the liberation of Rosa, the Austine Empire had tried making one last ditch struggle, dispatching a large-scale reinforcement to hold a final showdown with the Rosaians. With the enemies outnumbering them threefold, the Rosaians had no choice but to seek help from the Theocracy, but the Theocracy wasn’t in a position to dispatch their troops directly to help them.
In simple terms, the Theocracy could not directly interfere in the conflict between Rosa and the Austine Empire. Since Rosa at the time was still a part of the empire, the fight was considered a civil war, and it was taboo for external nations to meddle in a country’s internal affairs. So, the Theocracy could choose to side with one party and provide aid wherever necessary, but if it were to directly participate in the battle, that would not only ruin their reputation but also bring a great deal of trouble.
However, the Theocracy couldn’t just watch as Rosa’s rebellion was quelled by the Austine Empire either. If they did, all of the aid previously provided for Rosa’s liberation would have gone to waste.
It was at this crucial moment that the friendly neighboring Ascart House stood forward to lend a hand. As important as legitimacy was, there were always dirty tricks to circumvent it.
In a war, it wasn’t uncommon for troops to slightly overstep their boundaries, especially when pursuing enemy troops. And, the Ascart House made full use of this fact to beat the stuffing right out of the troops of the Austine Empire.
What? You dashed into my home with your troops, and you expect me to just shrug it off just because it’s an ‘accident’? Hah! This is called self-defense, you twats!
The Austine Empire ended up being put through a great deal of suffering by the Ascart Fiefdom. Unlike his tamer son, Carter, Blanc Ascart was an unreasonable and underhanded person. Instead of confronting the Austine Empire directly, he chose to exploit the times when the Austine Empire was going all out against the Sorofyas to sneak to their rear and shove a sword up their ass. A few more iterations of that, and even the soldiers started constantly checking their rear out of PTSD.
This pincer attack put the Austine Empire at a terrible disadvantage, so they proceeded on to hold a three-sided negotiation instead.
At the negotiation table, Blanc Ascart, despite meeting the then patriarch of the Sorofya House, Tindi Sorofya, for the first time, claimed that he felt a deep bond with the latter, as if they were long-lost friends who were reunited once more. The two of them nearly made a vow of sworn brotherhood then and there, but they eventually decided to settle with a bond of marriage instead.
To officialize it, they even signed a private engagement contract right there.
The two of them were so chummy that the negotiator for the Austine Empire nearly retched.
In any case, their shamelessness left the Austine Empire with no way to push their agenda through. Seeing that they no longer held the upper hand anymore, they could only try to squeeze as much compensation out of Rosa as possible before finally signing a peace agreement, where the Austine Empire agreed to recognize Rosa as an independent country.
And thus, the Rosa Merchant Confederacy was formed!
While the engagement contract was brought out for the sake of disgusting the Austine Empire and ruining their plans at the negotiation table, that didn’t mean that it wasn’t binding. Both the Sorofyas and the Ascarts recognized its legitimacy, and they were indeed intending to invoke it.
While the patriarchs of the Ascart House tended to shirk their duties as fief lord, they weren’t oblivious to their incompetence in governance. Similarly, the Sorofyas were also painfully aware of their weak military prowess too. From the perspective of complementary natures, the two houses were a perfect fit for one another.
Yet, due to gender clashes, this engagement was never fulfilled in Carter’s generation, for the Sorofyas and Ascarts happened to bear only male offspring in that generation. After Blanc passed away, there was no one else mentioning the engagement anymore, so Carter forgot all about it.
But not too long ago, Carter received a letter from Rosa that was so shocking that he immediately applied for leave and dashed all the way over to the Holy Capital in fright.
The Sorofyas had remembered the engagement, and they wanted to invoke it too!
According to the letter, it seemed like the Ascart Fiefdom had sent a proposal over to the Sorofyas for a collaborative development. The Sorofyas seemed to think that Roel had talent in business, and they had a very high opinion of him. As such, they wanted to fulfill the engagement contract they had signed a hundred years ago and form a bond of marriage between the two houses.
Looking at the timeline, the Sorofyas should have already set off by now. Carter was too late to stop them, and he had no reason to stop them as well. Regardless of whether it was for the engagement or the negotiation regarding the proposal, it was only appropriate for them to meet in person to talk things through.
One must know that an engagement between nobles was no joking matter. It was not so simple that one could cancel it just by giving 7 days’ notice beforehand or something. There was no greater humiliation to a noblewoman than being refused from an engagement. If no legitimate reason was presented, she would become a laughingstock within the circle of nobility. In other words, if they failed to settle this well, the Sorofyas could very well turn against the Ascarts.
Did this mean that Roel had no choice but to carry out the engagement then?
Well, that was not exactly right either.
Ever since ancient times, there were plenty of ‘unsuitable political marriages’ too. Nobles weren’t entirely inflexible either. In order to leave some space for them to take a step back wherever necessary, there was something known as the adjustment period.
The adjustment period was usually set to be several months long, and during this period of time, the two engaged parties had to visit each other once and attempt to spark feelings for one another. If they felt that they were still unsuitable for one another after several months of effort, they would be able to cancel the engagement.
Even though there was usually such a clause, it was rarely invoked in real life. After all, most noble houses valued the interests of their houses over their own feelings anyway, and that was why there were still so many unfortunate marriages. But again, the situation between the Ascarts and the Sorofyas was a little peculiar since it was a century old engagement contract.
In any case, a meeting between Roel and his engaged half from the Sorofyas was already inevitable at this point.
Looking at the two nearly monster-like girls rushing in his direction together with the overjoyed Roel, Carter found his guts deflating a little. However, he knew that there was no way to postpone it any longer, so he decided to just light the fuse and quickly get it over and done with.
He first stepped forward and gave Roel a tight hug before acknowledging the presence of the two girls with a nod. Then, before Roel could say anything, he took the initiative to speak his piece.
“Roel, I came back in a hurry because I have something important I need to inform you. You have a fiancée, and her name is Charlotte Sorofya.”
Comments