Ariadne and the Porto merchant who was currently conducting the auction, Vincenzio del Gato, had little in common, but at the moment, they were both thinking the same thing in their heads.

‘Count Cesare, this crazy bastard!’

‘What a lunatic!’

The Porto merchant’s face hardened instantly and he desperately shouted at Cesare.

“Why are you thinking such nonsense!”

“Well, how would I know? The little lady here who said that would know.”

He calmly examined his well-groomed fingernails and continued.

“Something about it being a forgery?”

Instantly, the hall became as chaotic as if a bomb had hit it.

– “A forgery? Did I hear that right?”
– “Are you saying is fake right now?”
– “Is it true?”

The eyes of everyone filling the hall all focused on Cesare and Ariadne sitting right next to him. Ariadne wanted to lie down with a wet towel on her head.

Throughout their 14-year engagement period, or rather their de facto marriage period, Cesare had always been like this. Occasionally, he would cause an unimaginably huge incident and then casually push it onto Ariadne.

Back then, she had been tied to him under the name of fiancée, so she had silently cleaned up after Cesare’s messes, but she couldn’t understand at all why she had to wipe his back even now!

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Ariadne shook her head and tried to take a step back. When she was about to make an excuse that a sheltered young lady who hadn’t even had her debutante ball wouldn’t know anything, Cesare told a blatant lie.

“The young lady just said. That it’s a forgery.”

“I didn’t say that!”

Ariadne desperately protested to Cesare with the shape of her mouth. She wanted to urge him to quickly correct his words and say that this young lady had nothing to do with it, but it seemed the message was a little delayed as she was cursing.

“Yes, you there, young lady! If you spoke, you have to take responsibility!”

The Porto Republic merchant jumped down from the platform, panting as if he would grab Ariadne by the collar.

Ariadne quickly assessed in her head whether she could go home if she burst into tears here and cried out, ‘Why are you grown adults doing this, I don’t like the tall mister next to me or the merchant mister in front of me! I’m still young and don’t know anything!’

It seemed possible.

That’s when she saw Prince Alfonso in the front row, looking at her with a startled expression.

‘…If I just leave this mess and go, will that troublesome statue be dumped on Alfonso?’

Unfortunately, the last person to bid was not Marquis Marcelu, but Prince Alfonso.

‘It was 2000 ducats (about 2 billion won), I think.’

It was a large sum, but not an extremely large amount for the prince. He wouldn’t end up on the streets or starve without that money, and the prince’s palace wouldn’t go bankrupt.

They would have to hold three or four large-scale events that require a large budget in a modest way, and postpone palace repairs for a few years. In the end, the king or queen would pull in a budget from somewhere to fill it.

But if that happened, Prince Alfonso would lose favor because of this incident.

The throne, which had been obviously his but had gone astray somewhere, would take one more step closer to being passed to this crazy bastard standing next to Ariadne. She didn’t want that to happen.

No, in fact, even if it didn’t go as far as the throne, she just didn’t want to see Alfonso become a laughingstock and be upset. Ariadne decided to wipe Cesare’s back one more time for Alfonso’s sake.

“Hah.”

She let out a deep sigh, dusted off and straightened her clothes, and stood up straight. After finishing fixing herself up, Ariadne looked straight at the merchant and shouted loudly.

“Vincenzio del Gato of Porto. A seasoned merchant in antique art auctions?”

Her resonant low voice filled the auditorium, drawing the attention of the audience. Ariadne slightly stepped up onto a wooden footrest lying on the floor so that everyone in the hall could see her well.

It was about the height of one stair step. Growing about half a piede (about 25 centimeters) taller, it was just right to look down on the people on the flat floor.

“Does this statue really seem to be the that Halicarnassus mentioned in to you?”

“It must be, or I wouldn’t have brought it, you thoughtless young lady!”

The merchant seemed to have forgotten all honorifics and polite speech in his excitement. Ariadne ignored this and continued.

“In , Halicarnassus lamented, ‘Her delicate wings were already damaged by one round of destruction due to the Moorish army that swept through the temple during the Celestion War and restored…’ Isn’t that right?”

was a commonly read textbook for boys’ Hellenic language studies. There were quite a few noble men who had memorized that passage.

– “Yes, there is such a passage.”
– “Doesn’t it say it was damaged and restored?”

The Porto merchant raised his voice frantically.

“What does it matter if it was restored! Statues are meant to be broken and put back together! It broke a long time ago and was restored in the Hellenic era, so its value as an antique is not diluted at all!”

The true continuation of that passage is “restoration was impossible. had no wings, no head, no arms”, but that part had not yet been revealed to the world. She had to somehow piece together the situation with the remaining circumstantial evidence.

“Have you heard the saying that a broken bowl pieced back together is still a broken bowl?”

While speaking directly to the Porto merchant, Ariadne reached out her hand to Cesare who was standing blankly next to her. Cesare spread his hands, asking what she wanted, then pointed with his finger to the longsword at his waist.

– ‘The sword, perhaps?’

Ariadne glanced to the side and frowned.

– ‘The baton. You carry a baton, don’t you.’

Cesare looked startled as if wondering how she knew that, but he untied the iron baton he had been wearing behind his longsword at his waist and handed it to Ariadne.

Ariadne took the baton and walked from the VIP seating area in the center of the hall to the podium prepared in front, where was being displayed.

It was raised about 2 piede (roughly 1 meter) from the ground, so when she stepped up there, the audience could see her very well.

The Porto merchant kept shouting.

“So what if the broken wings were restored! There might be hairline cracks, but how does that diminish the value of the statue? Is the statue a bowl? Are you going to put water in the statue? How does having some cracks matter!”

“If a broken bowl falls, it will break again in the same spot, right?”

“How are a bowl and a statue the same?! A decorative statue isn’t a bowl you use every day, there’s no need to put water in it or put weight on it, so how is having some hairline cracks in the wings a big deal! That was all made in the Hellenic era! It’s the same thing!”

Ariadne now walked up to , which was placed on a wheeled pedestal, ignoring the Porto merchant who was shouting frantically.

was very heavy, so the wheels on the pedestal were made particularly large to make transportation even a little easier. The diameter of the wheels looked to be at least half a piede (about 20 centimeters) each.

She breathed in deeply, carefully gauged the pedestal with her eyes, then raised the iron baton high. She had chosen the front wheel of the pedestal closest to the audience seating.

– Kwajik!

And she struck with her full weight behind it.

The baton hit the wheel head-on. Ariadne’s strength wasn’t enough to break the iron joint connecting the pedestal and the wheel, but the wooden wheel itself splendidly split into three pieces.

As the wheel shattered, the pedestal tilted, and the huge statue that lost its balance slowly began to topple forward.

“What are you doing right now!!!!”

The Porto merchant let out a scream filled with horror one beat too late, and the VIP guests below the podium also screamed as they saw the statue fall.

– “Watch out!”
– “It’s falling over!”

The podium where was placed and the VIP seating were at a certain safe distance, but the guests still hastily got up from their seats and hurriedly moved back.

The Porto merchant grabbed his hair and kept screaming from behind, but strangely, he took no action to try to catch the collapsing .

– Krgggggg… Thud!

Despite the remaining three wheels bearing the weight, the statue couldn’t roll properly due to the wrong direction and misaligned wheel angles, making an unpleasant sound of marble and wood friction that filled the hall, then as the incline became steeper, the marble statue finally fell off the stage and crashed onto the ground level where the VIP seating was.

The wheel Ariadne had broken was the left one. toppled diagonally starting from the left corner and squarely rammed its left wing into the glossy, solid oak floor of the Chivo Viscount’s estate.

The hall became quiet after the statue fell. , which had fallen and smashed into the oak floor, was intact in one piece without a single crack.

“This statue, does it really have hairline fractures?”

She kindly added a word in case people couldn’t understand.

“If it had hairline fractures, the wings would have broken off again when it received the impact, but this statue is smooth as if it were newly made.”

Ariadne jumped down from the podium in front of the shocked crowd and went over to that had fallen on the floor. She stroked the pink marble and continued.

“If it’s not newly made, then someone must have restored it incredibly well and it must have been pre―served very well underground. But you know, do you all know the two biggest differences between a Hellenic-era marble statue and a contemporary one?”

She ran her finger over the marble. Everyone in the hall was watching her.

“The ancient pagans painted marble statues. They dyed the skin an apricot color, the hair brown, and the clothes were colored according to the person’s status. Hellenic-era marble statues that have been excavated have more dye on them the better preserved they are. This is something any skilled antique art dealer would know.”

Nothing came off on her fingers.

“This statue is very clean.”

The crowd was transfixed on Ariadne, not even breathing.

“But this statue is a beautiful pink color, isn’t it? With such a blushing pink marble, there would be no need to paint the skin color separately. Don’t you agree, Viscountess Chivo?”

Ariadne asked Viscountess Chivo, who was the closest. She was startled and unconditionally agreed with Ariadne’s question.

“Th-that would be the case, yes?”

“But then why did the ancient Hellenic people bother to paint the marble?”

“W-well, who knows.”

Ariadne let the Viscountess Chivo, who was too burdened by the public’s attention, off the hook and returned to the statue’s side.

“It’s because the marble that came from where the Hellenic people lived, the eastern end of the central continent, was a dull grayish-brown color, not pink. Pink marble is a specialty only found in northern Etruscan, especially in the city of Rastera where this statue was excavated!”

Ariadne stood tall next to the huge statue and looked around at the people.

“Why in the world was a statue that was perfectly fine in Tibos, a city on the far eastern end of the central continent, discovered in Rastera, a remote countryside corner with nothing but a quarry – not the Moorish Empire where it would have flowed to if it had been plundered, nor San Carlo where it would have appeared through the black market if it had been stolen!”

She brought the baton she was still holding down on the fallen , no, the imitation of , with a thud.

“Do you still have anything more to say, Vincenzio del Gato!”

“I have one more thing to ask him.”

Suddenly, a tenor male voice rang out in the hall that Ariadne had dominated. It was Count Cesare de Como, who had been sitting in the VIP seating, leisurely watching Ariadne’s one-man show.

“Is your name really ‘Vincenzio del Gato’?”