Translator: MarcTempest
Proofreader: naturallyInconsistent
Chapter 141: Not a bet, but a command
Aurora always got what she wanted without much difficulty.
She was clever and capable by nature.
The emperor was in critical condition and no one knew if he would survive the day.
The eldest princess, Naobi, had left for a journey to find her true self.
The third princess, Yushia, had spent almost ten years in a vegetative state on a sickbed.
Even someone with no sense could tell who had the real power in the palace.
“Hmm…”
But today, Aurora, the de facto ruler of the palace, felt a rare annoyance or frustration.
She didn’t know which.
It was almost midnight.
Ziiing─
She had waited all day, postponing even her sleep, to deliver her voice to one person.
And finally, as soon as the crystal ball lit up, Aurora placed her palm on it.
The man she should have met yesterday appeared before her eyes.
Flan.
“So you finally show your face.”
“Yes.”
The crystal ball projected Flan’s image as if he was really in front of Aurora.
“…”
Aurora looked at Flan silently.
He maintained a proper posture and had no flaws.
He looked like a personification of ‘formality’.
But that only deepened her doubts.
Why did he disobey her command?
Aurora broke the silence first.
“Flan.”
“Yes.”
Her voice was half worried, half confident.
Yushia had told her that Flan was impossible to tame.
That had made Aurora curious.
“I summoned you, but you dared to ignore me.”
Aurora deliberately put on a blank expression.
The indifference that had always terrified the bureaucrats gradually filled her face.
“I sent you my message more than twice, but you didn’t visit the palace until the very end.”
But even after hearing that, Flan was calm.
He looked at Aurora with straight eyes.
He didn’t tremble with fear when he faced her.
He was formal, but never bowed.
He valued his honesty more than pleasing her.
That was Flan.
‘Is he fearless?’
Aurora had opened the portal for him to gather investors and offered to lend him the funds he needed. But he still didn’t care about her mood.
“Why didn’t you come? You have to convince me.”
“…”
“Needless to say, those who failed to convince me all met the same fate. I don’t have to explain that to you.”
Flan slowly closed and opened his eyes.
He sounded like he was talking about someone else’s business.
“Is that so?”
“Yes. And there will be no exceptions from now on.”
“Didn’t you want me to discuss and share magic with the court magicians?”
“Yes. I see you read the message.”
Aurora quietly held her chin with one hand.
“I thought the court magicians would come to me.”
“…”
There was a brief silence.
“What did you just say?”
“Magic discussions are based on the highest seat, so I naturally thought they would come to me.”
Aurora burst into laughter.
“You have a funny way of talking. Do you think you are the highest seat among the court magicians?”
“Yes.”
“Your confidence is delusional. I appreciate your proactive attitude, though. But. In my opinion.”
Her voice was calm but cold.
“You are still nothing but a student.”
The second princess twisted her lips.
A cold sarcasm escaped from her mouth.
“I have awakened to the world without leaving the palace, and I have controlled the continent without leaving the palace.”
Aurora slowly got up from her throne.
She took a step towards Flan’s projected image.
“The continent is vast, and there are countless geniuses. Can you really be sure that you are at the peak? If not, I can’t accept that.”
“I’m sure.”
“Really, you are a madman.”
Aurora’s expression hardened ambiguously.
At the same time, a silence fell on the princess’s chamber.
“…”
She blinked several times, as if sorting out her thoughts or emotions.
Maybe both.
“You take the world too lightly.”
“I’ve proven myself until it became easy.”
“I see? But there is a limit to your proof. There are many people under me who have achieved much more at a younger age than you.”
“Then show me my limit.”
Flan’s voice almost cut off Aurora’s voice.
The princess twitched her eyebrows.
“Why are you interested in me, Your Highness?”
The space was silent for a moment.
Aurora lost her words for a moment and looked at the man in front of her.
She still didn’t know Flan’s limit.
The reason was unknown, but her ability didn’t work on him.
Facing Aurora who stood still, Flan continued his words without flinching.
“The magic of this world is still poor.”
“…This world?”
Aurora chewed on the words ‘this world’.
This world, this world.
She felt something alien, but she let it go for now.
That wasn’t the most important thing right now.
“I will put magic at the center of the world, no matter what.”
Finally, Aurora nodded.
“If you are so confident…”
Finally, Aurora stretched out her index finger.
She put it on her eye.
“I have no choice but to see it with my own eyes. Your future is too arrogant to be seen by me.”
She pointed to a part of the map that was spread out next to her throne. Leheln Hill.
It was the area where Aurora had recently weakened the barrier.
“There is something called ‘Dawn Butterfly’ in Leheln Hill.”
Aurora half-closed her eyes.
“Can you catch the Dawn Butterfly while fighting off the bloodsuckers and competing with others?”
A mysterious creature that had a faint light of dawn on its wings, the Dawn Butterfly.
It had a trait that it lost its light as soon as it was touched, but the fact that it used ‘teleportation’ with one flap of its wings was the reason why it was so tricky.
Since they didn’t know where it teleported to, they couldn’t chase it.
Therefore, there were quite a few people who saw it briefly, but no one who observed it for a long time or collected it.
“The Dawn Butterfly will start its activity from next Sunday, and I will give you a week. You can choose four companions as you please.”
“Your Highness.”
“No.”
Aurora cut off Flan’s words once.
“This is not a suggestion, but an order. If you fail to convince me with the result, I will severely punish you for not visiting the palace yesterday.”
But then.
Flan’s clear voice reached Aurora’s ears.
At the same time, his figure began to blur like a mist.
He was reaching his limit to maintain the crystal ball that projected his image.
“I will catch the Dawn Butterfly.”
A voice without a hint of hesitation.
“Only when I succeed in proving it.”
And a word that followed like a certainty.
“We will have a debate at the tower. Your Highness, please teach me magic at the tower, not at the palace.”
“This is not a bet, but an order, I said.”
“It will be soon anyway.”
With a meaningful word, Flan’s figure disappeared without a trace.
“How arrogant.”
Only silence remained in the space. Aurora muttered quietly as she sat on her throne.
“It’s three weeks until he breaks…”
It was a foregone conclusion that Flan would break.
It was something close to impossible to lure the Dawn Butterfly with its whimsy, and it was impossible to chase it with teleportation.
But then.
“Your Highness.”
The escort knight Ban entered the inner chamber cautiously.
He bowed politely as usual.
“The knights have arrived. I will activate the crystal ball soon.”
“…?”
Aurora couldn’t understand Ban’s words.
“Wasn’t the crystal ball always activated?”
“Yes?”
But Ban’s face was the same as the princess.
He seemed to not understand Aurora’s words either.
“…”
“…”
A moment of silence.
Ban was the first to break the silence.
“I haven’t activated the crystal ball yet. The knights confirmed that they encountered the target, and I was about to project Flan’s image, but…”
Aurora didn’t answer.
No, she couldn’t answer.
She narrowed her eyes and pondered the situation.
“…!”
And it didn’t take much time to understand.
“Teleportation… Did he teleport…?”
Aurora’s voice, murmuring, was unusually flustered.
◈
As soon as I left the library, I ran into Violet.
It wasn’t a coincidence, but Violet seemed to have been looking for me all this time.
“Ah, Flan.”
Violet looked at me as she wiped the sweat from her forehead with a handkerchief.
She looked more lively than before.
I could tell by the fact that there were no more dark circles under her eyes.
“…”
I looked at her without saying anything.
It meant that she should just say what she had to say.
“Ah, it’s not that. We agreed to do the ancient rune research together, right? It’s about that.”
Violet looked a bit impatient and excited.
Maybe both.
She must have been overjoyed to be able to research what she wanted openly.
“These are the things I’ve been researching on my own lately… Ah, no. Let’s talk about that later. Look at me, I’m so distracted.”
She looked quite flustered. She was holding a bunch of papers in her arms, and her wide robe was dragging on the floor.
“Oops!”
At some point, she accidentally stepped on the end of her robe and fell.
Violet, who was flailing her arms loudly, grabbed my body with both hands.
The pointed hat on her head fell to the floor, and the papers flew like pigeons in the air.
I caught them with telekinesis.
“Ah, I’m sorry. I was too eager… Agh!”
The frog on Violet’s head jumped onto her face.
“My hat, my hat…!”
I sighed deeply and put the frog back on Violet’s head.
I also put the pointed hat on top of it.
“Th-thank you. I’m so out of it. Out of it.”
“Please calm down and get to the point.”
“Ah, yes.”
Violet took a deep breath and wiped her face with a handkerchief.
“There’s only one ancient rune lab in the magic department, and I think it’s time to clean it up.”
The ancient rune lab in the magic department.
I knew the place. It was so old.
“It’s about time we took care of it.”
“The problem is that we can’t use magic while cleaning. It’s a large space, you know.”
I had a rough idea why.
It must have been because of the ancient runes and the equipment that we hadn’t used yet.
If the magic we used for cleaning got tangled with the ancient runes, it would cause trouble.
“I’ll do it myself.”
But if I stepped in, it would be different.
I had been researching ancient runes since the previous world, so I was confident that I could finish cleaning in less than 30 seconds.
“What are you talking about? I didn’t bring it up to dump it on you. It’s the lab we’re going to use together, so let’s do it together.”
“I don’t need to.”
“This makes me look like an irresponsible professor who delegated the cleaning to a student. I hate that.”
But Violet was more persistent than I thought.
She must have had a good intention to care for the student, but I found this reaction annoying.
Then.
“…”
Suddenly, my eyes fixed on something.
It was just a passerby walking leisurely, but I instinctively looked at it.
It was a janitor in shabby clothes.
“Why? Oh, should we call the janitors too?”
Violet followed my gaze and asked, but my eyes and thoughts were only on the janitor.
Transmigration.
“…”
The more I looked, the more certain I was.
The person I met when I transmigrated to this world and got this body.
The person who made me clean the bathroom.
He was the only one in both worlds.
He was the only one who hit my head.
“…I’ll take care of the cleaning.”
I finished my sentence and walked towards the janitor.
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