Inside the tent where the leadership had gathered, there was a tense atmosphere as if a war could break out at any moment. Everyone was holding their breath and just observing the situation.

“Hahaha, it’s really difficult to marry off a son.”

Leo III laughed heartily and took control of the gathering.

“Let’s leave the complicated matters like language and such to the working-level officials. For now, let’s have a drink together on a grand scale. We need to understand each other first to negotiate, don’t we? Let’s have an interesting conversation!”

The nobles of San Carlo laughed loudly together following Leo III’s lead. As the king personally stepped in to lighten the mood, the envoys from the Gallico Kingdom also stopped being stubborn and laughed along.

They all raised their glasses of Gallico champagne high and made a toast, then wet their lips. However, their palms and armpits were already damp with sweat. It seemed like it would be a difficult negotiation.

Not knowing about Prince Alfonso’s circumstances, Ariadne was in a gloomy mood and rode her horse aimlessly along a narrow trail on the outskirts of the hunting grounds.

She was not bad at horseback riding, but she was neither excellent at hunting nor enjoyed it, so she had no intention of going deep into the forest.

She was just circling outside because if she went inside the tent and took a seat, she would have to spend time sitting with Lucrezia, Isabella, and Janobi.

“I’d rather die than suffer.”

Ariadne was now thinking of turning her horse around and heading back towards the tent. But it seemed like a piece of trash that she thought was well contained in the trash can had escaped.

“Hey, let’s talk for a bit.”

It was Janobi. He seemed to have been following Ariadne for a while, as he was covered in dust. Janobi rode his small, muscular horse and approached closer. Ariadne frowned and stepped back.

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“If I have something to say, then there is something to say!”

From the beginning, he roughly tried to establish dominance as if to gain the upper hand. Ariadne pulled on the reins to further distance herself from Janobi.

“Restrain yourself. There are many eyes watching at the hunting competition. You don’t want to cause a scene in a public place this time, not just inside the house, right?”

Thinking that Ariadne was digging up his past mistake, Janobi’s face turned red. She was referring to the incident where he whistled at her wardrobe malfunction during Ariadne’s debutante ball.

He had been ashamed of being scorned as a country bumpkin by the capital’s nobles at that time, and he resented Ariadne for making him recall that incident again.

Angered, he drove Ariadne even harder.

“Who’s here to see? Even if I bury you right now, no one will know.”

Janobi rode his horse threateningly close to Ariadne. Despite Ariadne’s horse stepping back, Janobi’s pony overlapped with Ariadne’s brown horse as if crossing paths.

“I heard you have a foul mouth. Saying you’ll bury me? Is that something a lady should say?”

Ah, it seemed Isabella had clung to Janobi and poured out her heart, Ariadne thought as she lifted her head and glared at Janobi with a cold expression. She decided to feign ignorance for now.

“What are you talking about? I have no idea about that.”

“Ha! Look at this wench. Shamelessly lying through her teeth without any conscience!”

Janobi’s voice grew louder and louder, and he was now practically yelling at Ariadne. He seemed to feel a sense of superiority and pleasure as he shouted.

There were reasons for this violent outburst. Janobi felt as if he had become a knight for poor Isabella.

“If you act up again not knowing your place, you could quietly end up in a ditch! If you bully poor Isabella one more time, this oppa Janobi won’t let it slide!”

“Hmph!”

Ariadne scoffed loudly. The more Janobi spoke, the more Ariadne could understand why he was acting so arrogantly. It was for Isabella, or more precisely, to look good in front of Isabella.

There was no way Janobi and Isabella could share a genuine friendship, and there was only one reason Janobi was fawning over Isabella. Realizing this, Janobi seemed even filthier to her.

“Look, even if our mouths are crooked, let’s speak straight.”

Having assessed the situation, Ariadne changed her tone of voice towards Janobi. After doing the math, there was no harm Janobi could inflict on her. Ariadne had power, and she decided not to hide it and cower.

For now, being kind and polite to everyone was a habit ingrained in Ariadne from her past life that she had not yet discarded. But it was not a superior strategy.

Occasionally, stepping on a bug is the only way to make it realize it’s a bug and stop acting up. Ariadne had a smile of disbelief on her lips and eyes as cold as ice, revealing her true feelings that she rarely showed.

At the same time as revealing her true colors, she pulled on the reins to turn her horse around. She had no intention of being alone with Janobi on the narrow trail.

“It seems you’re desperate to look good in front of Isabella, but it’s meaningless. Even if you devote your entire being, do you think Isabella would even spare a glance at a poor, unemployed loser like you?”

She planned to shake off Janobi and gallop straight back to the tent. Janobi’s horse was a pony meant for long-distance walking, while Ariadne’s horse was a steed that could run fast. She would not lose to Janobi in speed.

“And I can see why you’re acting like this, but she’s your real cousin. You filthy bastard.”

Ariadne’s horse pushed through the gap where Janobi’s pony was blocking and went to the other side of the narrow trail.

Ariadne’s horse was a powerful steed that could easily beat Janobi’s pony in both strength and speed. Now she just had to spur it on and run.

Feeling safe, Ariadne turned around and looked at Janobi with eyes of disgust. After scanning Janobi up and down, Ariadne added one more thing.

“Before poking your nose in other people’s business, take care of yourself first. You leech, living off others. Don’t you feel sorry for your Aunt Lucrezia?”

This time, Janobi, who had been poked where it hurt, became excited enough to snort. The fact that he was incompetent was one of his two biggest weaknesses that he tried hard to ignore, along with the fact that he was ugly.

“Shut that damn mouth, you b*tch!”

But Ariadne’s harsh words, having received curses from the trash, did not stop there.

“Have you ever earned even a single ducat with your own hands? You incompetent human trash!”

This hurt. Janobi had always dreamed of a life where he would succeed and the world’s gold would flow to him like iron to a magnet, and he would receive the affection and respect of all. But reality was a cesspool.

Of course, the world was bad and the knights failed to recognize his outstanding talent, but the fact remained that he could not make money.

The longer that period lasted, the more afraid Janobi became that he might not be the great hero he had imagined himself to be, and he became more violent in proportion.
Greatly excited, Janobi approached Ariadne, panting.

Ariadne, seeing Janobi’s face completely red, quickly pulled the reins to change the direction of the horse’s head and tried to spur it on to gallop towards the tent. Under normal circumstances, she would have definitely succeeded.

Even if Janobi returned to the tent and got angry at Ariadne, he was just a guest of the De Mare family, so he could not act insolent towards Ariadne. And even if he whined to Lucrezia, Ariadne had mostly escaped Lucrezia’s influence since she started receiving her expenses directly from Cardinal De Mare.

Janobi had no connections in the capital, so there was no one who would believe his words. There was no need to worry about her reputation either.

In other words, if she could just avoid this situation, there was nothing Janobi could do to Ariadne. A man with nothing believed only in what was between his legs and acted insolent. It was the type she hated most in the world.

But there was something she did not predict. Janobi pulled out the hunting crossbow he had on his back. Seeing the bolt with a blue-shining tip loaded in the crossbow, Ariadne cried out in surprise.

“What are you doing?! Are you crazy? Shooting a crossbow at a person?!”

If she turned around and ran away here, it would be the same as presenting her entire back as a target for Janobi. Ariadne spurred her horse and leaped into the nearby bushes. It was to find cover.

But Janobi was too close. He aimed the crossbow and shot at Ariadne’s back.

“Have a taste of this, you wicked wench!”

Janobi aimed closer to the horse’s rump than Ariadne’s back, between the two, but he figured it couldn’t be helped if it hit Ariadne’s back.

– Thwack!

The bolt, fired from an embarrassingly close range for using a crossbow, flew quickly and fortunately pierced deep into the buttocks area of Ariadne’s horse.

– Hihihing!

But Ariadne’s horse, startled, let out a long cry and ran off into the deep woods of the hunting grounds with Ariadne on its back.

Left alone, Janobi spat on the ground with a mix of exhilaration and unease.

“Ptooey!”

It was that wench’s fault for defying the great Janobi first. The anger at the person who exposed his weaknesses far outweighed the guilt of shooting a lethal crossbow at a person. I did nothing wrong. That’s right.

What if I get caught? It’ll be fine. The bolt hit the horse’s rump anyway. It’s not like I shot at a person.

Cesare was in the dark forest, eyes wide open, carefully looking around to find animal tracks.

The beasts in the forest were so well hidden that he had to listen carefully to every sound, from the rustling of leaves in the wind to the crunching of fallen leaves.

– Whoosh!

– Hihihing!

In that sense, the brown horse that charged across the forest at a crazy speed instantly grabbed everyone’s attention.

“What is that, Viscount?”

A subordinate aiming a hunting longbow at the approaching horse asked Cesare. Seeing the aimed arrow, Cesare stopped the subordinate in horror.

“It’s a person, you fool! Don’t shoot!”

Indeed, on the brown horse, a black-haired girl was clinging on for dear life, holding the reins tightly to not fall off. She seemed to lack the energy to even scream.

Her braided hair, which seemed to have been neatly tied up, was also a mess, fluttering in the air every time the horse thrashed about. Ariadne seemed to be running out of strength.

“At this rate, she might fall off.”

Cesare looked in Ariadne’s direction. It seemed to be a battle of whether the horse would tire out first or the rider, and it appeared the person would fall off first.

“We came to catch game, but it looks like we’ll be catching a person instead.”

After pondering for a moment, Cesare finally spurred his beloved horse and rode forward.

“You guys! If you see the ‘Golden Deer,’ don’t catch it and wait! Absolutely do not catch it! Don’t let anyone else take it either!”

He could not let go of his obsession with the ‘Golden Deer.’

Ariadne was using every ounce of strength to hold the reins tightly and trying not to fall off the horse’s back. Every time this damn horse moved, the muscles in its rump must be hurting because of the arrow stuck in it, but it kept thrashing about.

Every time a leap ended, she hoped it would calm down a bit, but the horse unfailingly made the next jump. Ariadne was now feeling nauseous.

She was gripping the reins so tightly that blood was not flowing to her hands, and the reins dug into her palms, hurting every time the horse moved.

‘Ah, this is too much now.’

While thinking about whether she would be seriously injured if she let go and fell, a familiar tenor voice of a man rang in her ears.

“Miss, relax your strength! You can’t try to overpower the horse with force!”

It was Cesare.

“Relax the strength between your legs! If there’s pressure on the horse due to the strength in your thighs, it will startle the horse more!”

Following the voice’s instructions, she relaxed her legs and supported herself with the strength of her foot on the stirrup.

“That’s right, well done! Pull your upper body forward! Your center of gravity is too far back right now!”

Although she was completely out of it, she tried her best to lean her body forward and follow Cesare’s instructions.

But Ariadne, a skinny adolescent girl, did not have the waist strength to support her body weight by relying only on the stirrups after releasing the pressure from her thighs.

Cesare thought based on his own standards, so he naturally assumed this level would be possible, but the physical condition of a 20-year-old noble man who always trains in preparation for war and a teenage girl on an extreme diet were completely different.

As Ariadne relaxed her thighs and supported herself only with her feet as instructed by Cesare, her arms automatically tensed up and pulled the reins. The horse, with the bit pulled even tighter, thrashed about once more due to the discomfort in its mouth.

– Hihihihing!

The place where the horse was currently thrashing about was a small clearing deep inside the hunting grounds. There were naturally fallen trees, protruding rocks, and stones here.

Ariadne’s horse spun around thrashing and then leaped towards a fallen dead tree.

Cesare’s eyes widened. The horse was a step away from tripping over a rock next to the dead tree.

“It’s dangerous!”

As if in rhythm with those words, Ariadne’s horse swayed greatly.