Though his face and voice were so ordinary and common as to not easily leave an impression, I recognized him when I heard it. It was him. He was also the very suspicious man who ruined the banquet Beatrice had prepared.

She narrowed her eyes as she looked at the silhouette visible in the distance.

While the banquet was ruined and the newspapers were highlighting the massive debt of the disgraced Beatrice and House Monde, Beatrice gritted her teeth and tracked down this merchant group.

Then she sent a unilateral notice that she would visit the Avenlo merchant address and came.

It seemed like a trap that he was waiting for her without any sign of presence and with the lights off, but Beatrice was also at her wit’s end.

Her eyes, accustomed to the darkness, confirmed the unfamiliar face. A few dim lights also turned on. There was nothing inside the building.

Beatrice stared carefully at that ordinary but somehow dangerous face once more, as if imprinting it in her mind. Is this guy the leader of the merchant group that has twisted the enormous debt of House Monde? Or is there someone else behind him?

“So, have you come to pay your debt?”

Though he had said he would either let her meet Duke Monde, or not meet until some of the debt was paid, this man was here today. So she decided to let that kind of impertinent provocation slide once. It was also true, after all.

“Among other things. Is there nowhere to sit here?”

“There isn’t.”

Though a merchant group should eagerly jump at anything that could make money, the man who had placed this empty building with not even a place to sit as a merchant group replied indifferently. It seems he doesn’t think about hospitality at all.

“For now, I’ll transfer Hillhouse to you as notified, so put it up for auction. We’ll use whatever it sells for to pay off the debt for now.”

“Very well. But it will likely go for much less than expected. It’s become famous in a very bad way.”

Beatrice gritted her teeth and smiled.

“If you hadn’t ruined the banquet, I could have gotten a much higher price for it. Why didn’t you come the day after the banquet? I could have gotten more for it.”

Though she was a debtor deeply in debt, she rather boldly scratched at him as if it wasn’t her loss.

“Besides, I was planning to choose a husband there. I have to be careful about the date with His Highness the Crown Prince’s engagement ceremony coming up. So I’ll have to postpone getting married a bit.”

“Even if you postpone the date by selling Hillhouse, only the interest will pile up.”

“I need to hold a grand wedding with many guests so that I can become a topic of conversation and earn more money to pay back. Are you sure you’re really running a merchant group? How can you have so little sense?”

Beatrice looked around at the man and the empty building with an expression that was beyond dumbfounded and verging on suspicious. There were no household goods, no furniture, nothing at all.

“But I do feel regretful about the massive debt continuing for so long.”

“That’s what most noble lords tend to say. ‘I feel regretful.'”

The man said, curling up the corners of his mouth as if playing with that sentence.

“I should have said that when stopping the well-prepared banquet.”

That ignorant bastard just has a sharp tongue and clearly won’t let even one word slide. Beatrice narrowed her eyes at the clearly mocking tone.

“Then remember it next time and be sure to say it.”

“I will.”

If he had been an ordinary person, Beatrice would not have clung onto every single word like this.

But she wanted to somehow stubbornly break this man and surprise him. She wanted to make him wear an expression of being hit hard. She wanted to make him kneel before her.

Beatrice walked out abruptly and went to the window where a seat had been made for someone to sit by the windowsill. It’s not clear whether dust has accumulated on the window seat or not. Anyway, she started dusting off the seat with her handkerchief.

“It’s quite interesting that a merchant group set up in Avenlo is mentioning 83 million riquet in front of me. Because there’s nothing here. If I had to name something, there’s only the hot springs and hot spring villas, and even those villas are few in number. Rich nobles don’t build villas in a place like this.”

“What’s your point?”

The man’s expression said he wouldn’t invest time in useless chatter.

“The most famous noble family among those who own hot spring villas in Avenlo is the Alemichi Marquis family. And His Majesty the Emperor never comes to Avenlo. He absolutely hates it.”

She dusted off her handkerchief and sat on the window seat.

“Because the Empress who came here for treatment became pregnant here.”

The Emperor hated even mentioning that incident.

“This is the first I’m hearing of this.”

“The Empress was the daughter of Marquis Alemichi, who was a Count at the time, so she wasn’t an Empress or anything yet. Of course it’s the first you’re hearing of it.”

But Beatrice had found out everything. Of course she needed a thorough background investigation on the woman who had taken the position she wanted.

“There are rumors that the man the Empress met then wasn’t human.”

Beatrice spoke without hesitation in front of the man about an absolute secret that no one else knew. The man listened to what Beatrice was saying without expression. But since he wasn’t stopping her from speaking, this was clearly a good sign.

“Interestingly, this merchant group is even named . It’s an ancient language that even most magicians don’t remember, the language of magicians.”

She laughed, “Hm-hm.”

“It means ‘the dragon has gone mad,’ right?”

The man calmly corrected her with indifference.

“It means ‘mad dragon.’ A bit different.”

It was an ancient word that Beatrice had barely managed to find out by burying herself in magicians’ archives, partly to avoid reporters.

“Whether the dragon has gone mad or it’s a mad dragon, it’s the same thing. Do you know some dragon? You’ve got some nerve to hang up a sign mentioning dragons in the Crania Empire.”

With the empire’s greatest threat being evil dragons, it was insane to attach a name related to dragons to a merchant group.

“You know, if His Majesty the Emperor finds out about this, you’ll have to shut down your merchant group. You know that?”

“Ah, I’ve heard he’s quite narrow-minded.”

The man spoke without hesitation, as if he had nothing to fear. Beatrice looked at him making statements he shouldn’t dare to make, then chuckled.

“That’s right. He is narrow-minded. So I don’t care what the merchant group’s name is. What I’m curious about is whether my guess is correct.”

She spoke playfully.

“I told you, didn’t I? I came to pay my debt. I’m not interested in anything else. But I do like to imagine some pretty outrageous things.”

All men greatly liked innocent women who lived moderately immersed in dreams, imagining, and saying absurd things.

So they laughed off even strange remarks. Even if it was direct words pointing out an ugly truth or brushing them off right to their face.

“For example, imagining that you might have some connection with the evil dragon.”

Beatrice smiled, her pink eyes twinkling.

“Since the merchant group has a lot of money and you’re attractive, I imagined something like that.”

And all the men she had encountered were captivated by her smile and admired her sharp eyes that pierced through to the truth.

But at the same time, they knew that what she was saying was not something to just laugh off. This was also a threat. It also meant that if things went wrong, she would immediately tip off the Emperor that he had a connection to the evil dragon.

“By any chance, do you know a dragon?”

“What if I do?”

“Don’t misunderstand. I said earlier that I don’t care. If I were to meet a dragon, I’m thinking of proposing a deal.”

The man was listening silently. Some answers don’t need to be said to be understood.

“I can bring what the evil dragon desperately wants.”

“And what would that be?”

“The Empress, of course.”

“The Empress?”

“The Empress.”

Instead of laughing as if that was nonsense, the man quietly looked at her as if sizing her up.

Beatrice wasn’t quite sure, but she realized that she had hit the nail right on the head. As expected, it was good that she followed the prophecy and the fortune she had this morning.

“I think this is an 83 million riquet deal, what do you think?”

The evil dragon wouldn’t just sit still. Just when I thought Lüsenford had been quiet for a while, it seems they’re planning to dig into the empire by moving humans. They want to take the Empress away somehow.

So it was also an offer that the evil dragon would pounce on if they heard it.

“Let’s hear the conditions first.”

In an instant, chairs and a table appeared out of thin air and silently settled on the floor. The man sat in the chair and gestured.

It was really an absurd deal, and nothing had been verified, but Beatrice instinctively realized this was the lifeline that would save her. It was intuition.

The intuition that had never been wrong and had made her reign as the queen of high society until now. This man has a connection to dragons. It was clear.

When he ruined the banquet Beatrice had prepared, people said one after another that they were ‘pushed out as if riding a boat on a river.’ Even looking at it drunk, that was tremendous magic.

“It’s simple. The Emperor wants a magician to protect the Empress. The Emperor is quite anxious right now.”

She came down from the window seat, pulled out a chair and sat down leaning on the table. Her upper body naturally leaned towards the man.

“I have permission to enter the imperial palace, and I can handle this situation naturally. I’m saying I can let the evil dragon take the Empress without anything happening. I promise to finish it perfectly and that no harm will come to you either.”

“The price?”

“Debt cleared.”

“That’s too much.”

“Ask the evil dragon how much the Empress is worth.”

Beatrice said confidently.

“If they really love her, that much would be nothing. Love can’t be measured by worth, right?”

“You speak as if you know.”

“Love is my specialty.”

She answered with a grin, then blew a kiss with her hand. The man looked at Beatrice without any expression, then finished thinking and opened his mouth.

*

Kaella suddenly opened her eyes. It was very rare for her consciousness to return so clearly in the middle of the night like this. She looked at the empty space beside her and sat up.

Strangely, she didn’t feel sleepy anymore. Yet getting up and moving like this was odd. Usually she just lay there listlessly. Or she forced herself to cling to work. But now she was walking very normally towards the door.

Honestly, she was curious. Where had Peon gone? There was no way the man who always guarded her side, unable to let go of her desperately, would just leave her.

Somewhere, the sound of water that shouldn’t be heard now was audible. Where is he? What if, he really left? If she was alone again…

Kaella sighed and forcefully pulled open the heavy-feeling door. She was about to enter the pitch-black darkness, opening it just enough for her to slip through.

“Where are you going?”

Cold water droplets hit her, and solid arms still flinging off moisture completely captured her from behind. What startled her more was the heavily cracked voice.

“Hm? Where were you trying to go, Kaella? It’s still dark.”

As Peon gently pulled her back, the door moved on its own and closed again. He wasn’t properly dressed, and his hair was soaking wet. A faint smell of blood wafted by.

“Did you wash?”

“Yeah, I got a bit dirty. Where were you trying to go?”

His questioning eyes trembled. Peon, who was desperately holding onto her, deliberately didn’t put strength in his arms even in the midst of this, but the hands gently embracing her were shaking.

“I was thirsty.”

Some relief appeared on his pale blue face. But compared to the anxiety that continued to reside, the relief was extremely small.

“I’ll bring you water. Sit down.”

He picked up Kaella entirely and sat her back down on the bed. Then he immediately picked up a glass filled with cool, clear water from midair and handed it to her. After taking a few sips while glancing at Peon, she put the glass on the bedside table.

“Are you going to sleep?”

“We should sleep.”

He somehow seemed tired. Rather than his body being tired, his mind seemed tired.

Kaella just lay down as she was. His hair had already completely dried as he lay down beside her. Even as he lay down, his large hands held her tightly, and he buried his face one-sidedly in her narrow shoulders.

As soon as Beatrice left, Peon vomited until bile came up, then as soon as he noticed Kaella moving, he hurriedly washed off with cold water and barely managed to hold onto her.

It’s disgusting. It’s disgusting to think that he had devoted his pure heart without any emotion to such a disgusting being all this time.

The woman he truly liked tries to disappear somewhere, dangerously staggering, as soon as he disappears for a moment. It’s even more disgusting that he himself is the culprit who created this situation.

Tap tap, small dry hands patted his back as if comforting him. She tapped slowly a couple times, stroked a couple times, then stopped with her hand still resting there.

Following the warm temperature and even breathing of sleep, the nauseating twisting of his insides also quietly subsided. Peon felt the familiar self-loathing as he struggled not to close his eyes.