Chapter 247
"The winner is Simon Follentia!"
There was no applause or cheers.
Only a deathly silence lingered among the nobles.
Today was the royal ball of the Dresden Kingdom, and since this was the royal palace, the nobles could not applaud Simon's victory. They only glanced at him with startled eyes.
"Your Highness!"
"A-Are you all right?"
The royalist nobles rushed over and checked on the fallen prince.
Loraine and Serne approached Simon with graceful steps.
"Are you okay, Simon?"
Loraine said as she brushed the dust off Simon’s disheveled clothes.
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"Well done, Simon~"
Serne approached with a soft smile.
"It feels like your skills have reached a proper level even without using that power."
"That power?"
At Loraine’s question, Serne shrugged her shoulders.
"You don’t need to know. It’s a secret shared only between Simon and me."
Simon gave a wry smile. Explaining it like that again was just asking for misunderstandings...
"Her Majesty the Queen is entering."
"!"
The crowd suddenly parted to both sides.
Anyone could tell at a glance that this woman was the Queen, adorned in a dazzling dress. She was a middle-aged woman with a rather plump figure and an icy, cold expression.
"Greetings to Her Majesty the Queen!"
Everyone paid their respects to the Queen.
She walked forward and looked down at the collapsed Andre. As soon as he came to, Andre saw the Queen and trembled with a terrified expression.
"Pathetic thing."
Her cold words carried not a trace of affection.
"Disgusting to even look at. Remove him."
Dark Knights approached, grabbed Andre by the arms, and dragged him away. Loraine quietly watched the Queen’s behavior.
‘It was all your scheme, wasn’t it?’
Unlike the king, who was cooperative with Keyzen, the Queen was a prominent Anti-Keyzen figure. Her wish was for the kingdom to completely break free from Keyzen’s influence.
The sudden interruption of the party, Andre’s intrusion—everything must have been orchestrated by the Queen. Of course, all of it fell apart thanks to Simon defeating Andre.
"......."
Perhaps out of frustration from her ruined plan, the Queen stared at Simon with a terrifying gaze.
Loraine stepped forward to receive that gaze instead, and Serne distracted Simon by striking up a conversation, glancing subtly toward the Queen.
In the end, the Queen said no more and turned her back, disappearing.
* * *
After the duel ended, the ball resumed as usual.
Simon went to receive medical treatment. The royal physicians examined him and, fortunately, diagnosed only mild fatigue and slight anemia.
While Simon was being treated—
Thwack!
Crack!
At the Queen's private palace, a brutal act of violence was unfolding.
"To suffer such disgrace at the ball!"
The Queen was mercilessly beating Andre with her heeled shoe.
Though she was a regular human and Andre was a necromancer, he couldn't even meet her eyes.
In fact, Andre's cruel personality originated from this very Queen. When she snapped, not even blood relatives were spared. Except for Princess Molly, whom the King cherished immensely, there were no children of hers who hadn't been beaten.
"You think I gave you this opportunity out of kindness?!"
Upon learning that Princess Molly had invited Simon and his group to the ball, the Queen decided to exploit the situation.
She instructed Andre, who held a grudge against Simon, to challenge him to a duel and promised to handle the aftermath.
It had been a golden chance to humiliate Keyzen, but Andre had the audacity to lose to a first-year student. The royal family suffered great shame, and in the end, only Keyzen’s prestige was elevated.
The Queen stopped, breathing heavily with rage. Her shoe was now soaked in blood, and so was Andre’s face.
"The promise."
Her lips moved.
"What was the promise you made to that boy, should you lose?"
She already knew the situation from the Dark Knights.
Andre had drawn an ‘R’ over his chest and invoked the royal name to accept Simon’s condition.
"......."
Andre, who had silently endured the beating until now, began trembling at the lips.
His face showed utter fear and despair.
"Speak the truth."
The Queen said, eyes wide. Trembling like a man on death row, Andre squeezed out his voice.
"Exclusive raiding rights to one of the kingdom’s dungeons..."
Her expression turned icy.
At the same time, her foot slowly lowered. Andre, realizing the violence had ceased, desperately cried out,
"Your Majesty! I...!"
"You are no longer my son."
Andre’s heart sank with a thud. Staring in shock with his mouth agape, he was left behind as the Queen exited the room.
‘Fool!’
Dungeons held tremendous potential value.
Who knew what resources or treasures might be hidden there, yet now one of them was to be handed over, without question, to a 17-year-old brat.
Depending on that boy’s choice, the kingdom’s fate might hang in the balance.
She had wanted to intimidate him a little and negotiate a lesser reward, but standing beside that boy were powerful figures like Loraine and Serne. Intimidation was impossible.
‘Still, he’s just an ignorant teenager. I’ll try offering a different reward tomorrow morning.’
* * *
"I refuse."
Said Simon, resting in bed.
The royal treasurer, who had come bearing the Queen’s new proposal, was flustered by Simon’s firm rejection.
Contrary to the belief that he might be persuaded with gentle coaxing, Simon didn’t even listen to the full offer.
“Ah, student…”
The treasurer clasped his hands together with a business-like smile.
“Double the commission, that’s four thousand gold! Four thousand gold! That’s enough to buy several houses! Please reconsider—”
“Wooooow~ Adults scamming kids, how shameless~”
Serne cut in. Having made herself comfortable in Simon’s room since yesterday, she was now sitting on a chair, filing her nails.
“If you sell the dungeon raiding rights, it won’t be just four thousand, it could easily multiply into tens of thousands. And you’re trying to short him with just two thousand? You really think kids are that clueless?”
‘Please stop interfering…!’
The treasurer was boiling inside but forced a smile and said,
“Haha! Her Majesty is willing to raise it to triple the amount. And not only that, she’ll personally award you with a commendation of—”
“Treasurer.”
A voice came from the opposite side. A girl with jet-black hair, wearing pink pajamas she had brought from home, lay on the sofa, idly swinging her legs.
She briefly looked up from the book she was reading and said,
“Simon was named for an unfavorable duel, and he risked his life to win. He’s only asking for the agreed reward. Is the royal name so cheap these days?”
‘I’m losing my mind here!’
Before Simon could even speak, the two girls were advising and defending him like lawyers.
Carrot tactics wouldn’t work. The strategy would need to shift.
“Ahem… I hesitate to mention this to esteemed guests from another nation, but…”
His eyes grew moist with emotion.
“To be honest, the kingdom’s finances are in dire straits. Recently, due to a devastating drought in the grain belt, even Her Majesty has been skipping meals in solidarity with the peo—”
“Oh, that’s your problem.”
Serne interrupted, snapping her compact mirror shut and crossing her legs seductively.
“What is this nonsense? If the royal name was used to make a promise, it should be honored. Did you think you could brush it off just because he’s a student?”
“I-I’m speaking with Student Simon!”
Sweating profusely, the treasurer turned to Simon. Simon smiled gently and said,
"That’s exactly what I wanted to say."
Simon said, echoing Serne’s words.
‘Urgh…!’
He’d definitely messed with the wrong kind of weirdos.
At this rate, it was going to be a very difficult negotiation. He was starting to resent Prince Andre for blurting things out in front of so many people.
‘I swear, I’d love to just smack them down with the authority of an adult!’
His gaze briefly drifted to Loraine in her pink pajamas.
If that girl so much as opened her mouth in front of the Witch of Death, the entire kingdom could be wiped off the map.
Rumor had it she razed even Heaven Island of Efnelle to the ground, what’s stopping her from doing the same to this kingdom?
"Don’t worry too much."
Simon said.
"I’ll choose a dungeon that won’t be too much of a burden on the kingdom."
“S-Simon! Please, just reconsider one more time…!”
"Wait, how about this instead?"
Serne stretched out one leg and rested it on the chair.
Then, without warning, she started taking off her stocking.
“???”
The treasurer stood dumbfounded at her sudden action. She took off one stocking, rolled it up into a ball, and walked over to him.
"Hold out your hand."
The treasurer, as if entranced, held out his hand, and she dropped the stocking into his palm.
"An extra clause. I’ll give you this, in exchange for honoring the dungeon deal. How’s that?"
“......!!”
The treasurer’s eyes trembled with emotion. A stuffy, blocked-up feeling in his chest burst open, and it felt as if all the tangled knots in his mind were unraveling at once.
Was this how the ancient scholars felt when they cracked the code of rune script after a hundred years?
"I-I see! A stocking! A stocking! I never could have imagined such an ingenious solution!"
"Then go report to Her Majesty."
"Yes! Yessir! Understood!"
"Wait, what the hell are you saying? W-Wait!"
Before Simon could stop him, the treasurer had bolted out of the room at full speed.
Loraine gave Serne a withering look and muttered,
"You really are the worst."
"Hohoho!"
The treasurer dashed at top speed through the palace. His head was filled with only one thought, to deliver this glorious news to Her Majesty.
"Your Majesty! Your Majesty!"
The treasurer burst into the Queen’s chambers.
She was in the middle of an emergency meeting with officials, but stood the moment she saw the beaming expression on his face.
"You look pleased! Did you come to an agreement with those brats?"
"Yes, I did it!"
The treasurer triumphantly raised the stocking into the air. The torn, now useless stocking unrolled and dangled from his hand.
"A stocking! A stocking! We added this stocking as a condition in the contract!"
“.......”
A heavy silence fell over the room.
"Isn’t it brilliant? With this, I thought, the dungeon isn’t a loss at all!"
The officials stared at the treasurer as if he’d lost his mind.
Even the Queen, and the maids tidying up the room, were looking at him with scorn and contempt.
"Drag him out immediately and beat him senseless until he comes to."
“W-What?”
The officials grabbed the treasurer by both arms and hauled him out of the room.
"Y-Your Majesty! I’ve been wronged! Please, just take a look! It’s a stocking!"
Even as he was being dragged away, the treasurer kept ranting about the stocking.
And on the back of his neck…was a single, clearly planted feather.
Superb.
When are we getting more free chapters?
Thanks for the new chapters