Chapter 163

(163)

“Your Excellency. So what color did you ask to be coordinated?”

Tenitia inquired, emptying her glass.

Her face was flushed and glowing with excitement.

Receiving a magical tool was always an honorable and prestigious event.

She was just happy that her lord seemed to be stepping closer to being a true knight.

“I feel like I couldn’t answer right away. When you mentioned you would grant armor, I was so happy I couldn’t speak, but when you actually asked me to choose a color, that made me think quite a bit.”

Valencius promptly filled Tenitia’s empty glass with wine and took half a glass from Rudi.

He too had had rosy cheeks for some time.

Tenitia, mimicking Valencius, tossed her red hair back and said,

“It would be nice to have a white base with red patterns like the style you usually wear, but Your Excellency, you are of royal blood. The color of the escort must not overlap with that of the escorting knight.”

“That’s true.”

“You’re not an officer, so brass is out, and you’re different from the guards of the capital, so a black base with silver is out too. Light blue is also a color of the vassals.”

“Hmm. Looks like I won’t be able to use your knight order’s colors.”

“How about a navy blue? A navy blue base with yellow patterns.”

“Oooh. That sounds nice.”

Rudi sighed inwardly as he looked at the two inebriated friends.

‘They’ve had quite a bit to drink.’

Valencius and Tenitia were already repeating the same conversation for the third time.

‘How can one save the wine bestowed by His Majesty the Emperor?’

‘Hahaha. You’re right, Your Excellency.’

After finishing dinner, they began drinking immediately, and already a pile of wine bottles was stacked beside the table.

“Thank you. Thanks to you, I was able to handle Marquis Benechion. It has all become easier because you persuaded Bishop Heharson. All the achievements I gained today are thanks to you.”

“No, Your Excellency. The feat of toppling that disloyal great lord with merely six knights is solely your accomplishment. That spirit! That courage! It should be a model for all knights and be praised for generations to come.”

“By the way, don’t you wonder? How I found out that Marquis Benechion was an infiltrator?”

Tenitia shook her head and snatched the wine bottle from Rudi, filling Valencius’s glass with the remaining half.

“Yes, Your Excellency. I do not wonder.”

“Really?! How can you disregard strategy like that?”

“Your Excellency. I excel when wielding my sword, not in strategy. Princess Sererassie is uninterested in worldly matters, and as long as the outcome pleases the Emperor, he does not care about the details; only you need to know of the tedious and complex schemes.”

Rudi looked at Valencius.

For a brief moment, relief seemed to wash over his face.

“Is that so? I see. Yes. I understand. Hahaha.”

Valencius chuckled pleasantly as he clinked glasses with Tenitia.

Although the flush on his pale cheeks spread down to his sharp chin, Rudi did not stop him.

In those cheerful, wasted, and cruel eyes, everyone feared and loathed the golden pupils, he recognized the flicker of regret that always occupied a place within them.

* * *

Sererassie returned to the workshop after about 18 days.

The sound of her staff on the ground brought her disciples and students rushing to greet her.

“Master! You’ve returned!”

“Guild Master! You’ve returned!”

Sererassie smiled gently at her students and disciples.

“Everyone is here in front of me.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Then, who is in charge of the experimental equipment and the lab?”

“!”

Understanding the meaning of her words, the faces of her students and disciples turned pale.

“We are sorry!”

“We made a mistake!”

She spoke with her two different colored eyes shining coldly.

“Go and continue your research.”

The students and disciples scurried away like the tide, leaving only a few with some status.

“Master. This is the paper related to the generation of thunderclouds that you asked me to organize again last time. I have also tried to systematize the purification methods for the red and blue potions you created as much as possible.”

It was Lorraine, Sererassie’s first disciple.

With long blonde hair and wearing a dark blue robe similar to Sererassie’s, she was a top graduate of the Academy.

Sererassie skimmed through her thundercloud paper and said with a hint of mischief,

“Don’t claim to be my disciple with just this level.”

“I apologize.”

“I could introduce you as a magician.”

“Master!”

“Just a third-rate wandering magician, I mean.”

A twitch ran across Lorraine’s face, and Sererassie spent about 30 minutes pointing out the problems in her paper.

“…The mana efficiency drops drastically here. Use an amplification spell rather than a generation one.”

“But drawing in external power would decrease stability.”

“The thundercloud already contains the essence of thunder; how can that be an external force?”

“Ah!”

“You seem to understand where to fix things now. Go and make the corrections.”

“Yes. Understood.”

Sererassie mumbled softly to Lorraine’s back.

“…You’re doing well, so don’t rush too much.”

Upon hearing that, Lorraine’s face regained its vitality.

The second to stand before Sererassie was a mage named Tuppio, whom she had picked up from Magic Street.

His hair was cut short to the point of exposing his scalp, and tattoos decorated the backs of his hands, naturally evoking the image of a scrappy fighter from the Academy.

“How is the situation in the workshop?”

While she considered his magic skills just average, his ability to conduct business using magic was outstanding.

For someone uninterested in worldly matters like her, he was a decent subordinate.

“The first supply to the imperial court has been completed safely. Soon, there will be an oath of loyalty, so I am stockpiling as much as possible, so that when the great lords come after the oath, they can purchase.”

“Are there any special issues?”

“It seems there are troubles in supplying cave moss reagents needed for the circuit engraving work. It is speculated that the conflict between Konel’s workshop and other workshops is the cause.”

Sererassie clicked her tongue.

If it were her will, she would want to go find them and strike them down immediately, but she knew little of the world’s affairs and was aware that meddling in things she did not understand was unwise.

“I will give you time to meet when your brother comes. Discuss it with him then.”

“If it’s him, I’ll be at ease.”

A smile spread across Tuppio’s face.

For a moment, Sererassie became curious about what Valencius was up to, but she soon set that question aside.

‘That’s enough.’

There was plenty more to ponder, especially because she had seen the look in Grace’s eyes when she appointed her as the next marquess a few days ago.

That was ambition.

Some might call it regret, nostalgia, or sorrow, but Sererassie’s thoughts were different.

‘You want the Emperor to be loved.’

Though Sererassie was the epitome of indifference, like those who are uninterested in others’ emotions, she understood well how to control her own feelings.

It was also because of her past that she was confident she would excel in feelings of regret and nostalgia.

When Sererassie looked at it, her half-brother’s guilt and longing was significant.

‘You do not regret killing Benechion; you regret not being able to emotionally sway Grace.’

Sererassie felt a shiver of fear at that realization.

‘You desired loyalty first, not achievements.’

She knew that Jeilliris and Valencius could kill someone to eliminate threats.

That night when royalty fell by the dozen was barely half a year ago.

‘Shivering with guilt, they would still swing down their necks. The Emperor would feel no guilt at all. That is how worldly powers survive.’

Sererassie bit her lip and organized her thoughts.

She had gained much from this outing.

The pinnacle of visible profit was this silver plate.

The silver plate used not by the actual guards of Gremoryus but those pretending to guard her was engraved with ‘Light Reflection’ and ‘Blur’ spells together.

‘It would be nice if I could discover how to engrave it into liquid metal. The name of the master who developed Aquateg.’

If commercialized, she would be able to receive gratitude and respect from both Jeilliris and Valencius again.

The pinnacle of invisible profit was the fact that she had peered into Valencius’s desires a little further.

‘It is both amusing and terrifying. The limits that fool had drawn were like that.’

Wanting the Emperor to be loved.

However, the day Grace, the Marquess, would swear her loyalty with her heart would likely never come.

Could her half-brother accept that fact?

Though she had secured his weakness, could she truly be at ease?

‘Absolutely not. Those twins, who captured royalty so obsessively, would not allow the emotional elements that reveal their feelings to linger.’

Sererassie took a large sip of tea that her disciple had brought and scattered the sporadic thoughts rising in her mind.

Thinking about topics outside of magic caused a headache to swell.

“I should make more blue potions for my brother. I want to live long and enjoy magical research.”

* * *

The people surrounding Valencius did not ask how he had discovered that Marquis Benechion was an infiltrator.

Jeilliris did not wonder about such things, while Sererassie did not know how to be curious about them; Tenitia also did not question it, and Rudi thought that it was information provided by the Church of Light.

In fact, the two most prominent individuals in that Church had already concluded that Jeilliris’s information network had extended as far as the outskirts of the central region.

How nice it would have been if they had heard it themselves, they lamented.

“Bishop Hong will need to act very cautiously when the Church attempts to recruit lords below the count level and gain secular authority.”

The two clergy members—future pope Bishop Hong Argos and the black saint Matheos—were having a serious conversation in a quiet office.

“Understood. Saint, what did you think of Duke Valencius?”

Valencius was a figure of significant interest for the Church of Light.

He had been together with the saint when he awakened, participated in the internal faction battles within the Church, kidnapped the saint twice, launched a joint effort against tobacco smuggling, and if everything were revealed, any one of those actions might trigger a rebellion, accompanied by countless rumors swirling around him.

“He was consistent, whether in a good sense or bad.”

“If he was consistent…”

“He rode a wyvern all the way back and forth, spinning around in the air until I fainted.”

Matheos’s face contorted as if he didn’t even want to think about it, his steel-like demeanor suddenly shattering into turmoil.

For Matheos, ‘wyvern’ was a magical term implying that the ‘cautionary lamb’ could suddenly transform into the ‘chaotic serpent’.

Argos stifled a laugh that almost escaped him, his stern face growing even more serious.

It was a matter that could not permit even a trace of humor.

“Didn’t he say something that contradicted his revelations?”

“Well, that part is somewhat ambiguous.”

Matheos lowered his head with a solemn expression.

His handsome face reflected considerable anguish.

“Originally, he only stated that the inner sanctum of the Gremoryus family should be swept with the ‘Discriminating Veil’.”

“Didn’t you feel that it shouldn’t be so?”

“Yes. So I covered the entire city with the veil.”

“The entire city?”

Argos’s wrinkled eyes widened in disbelief.

Though he was also a high-ranking clergy member, he could never imagine praying in a way that would affect an entire city of 200,000 people.

“Yes. And then, close to a hundred fully mutated infiltrators emerged. I defeated them with prayer, but many people died due to them and the hordes of infiltrators that followed.”

Argos did not ask how such a prayer was possible.

Instead, he carefully inquired about the parts of Matheos’s statement that might pose issues.

“Duke Valencius, knowing that using the veil over the entire city would cause an uproar, likely thought he had instructed you to only use the Discriminating Veil within the palace, right?”

The saint nodded.