Chapter 14 - The Scarf That I Gave (6)

Translator: Kimmy

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Karlos only saw a kitten closely once. 

It was tiny, fluffy, squeaky, and was very afraid of him. 

It cried endlessly until he moved away a little and then scurried away. 

It was cute and pitiful but he knew that animals especially hated intimidation, so young Karlos could only watch it from a distance. 

It seemed like the kitten got separated from its mother and ended up all the way to the Castle Garden for food. He was afraid the kitten would die of fear if he approached it any more so he could only watch it under the tree. 

He didn’t even breathe until the maid came and took the kitten away. 

And standing in front of his favorite author right now was not that different from the situation back then. 

*.·:·.☽✧    ✦    ✧☾.·:·.*

Brigitta looked at the two frozen people that weren’t even breathing and decided to ignore the reality. 

*.·:·.☽✧    ✦    ✧☾.·:·.*

This awkward meeting was made possible by the Kingdom’s remarkably wise and worrisome man, the Chancellor. 

He planned this ever since he came back after meeting Eva. 

It was just about time Brigitta was contemplating what to say to the Emperor who couldn’t take his eyes off of the scarf ever since he asked about it. 

About two days from then, the Chancellor contacted Brigitta. 

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Apparently His Majesty seems to have developed a personal interest in your living mate. 

Do you perhaps recall the book His Majesty always brought everywhere at the Warfields? It seems like your living mate is the author. Our mighty and dignified Emperor is timid in weird situations, so he can’t ask you so I hope you will arrange a meeting for them. 

If you don’t, I will probably die from frustration watching His Majesty so I plead you to. 

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A man who introduced himself as Informant B came up to her and gave her this letter and in the letter, there was this message written in Holkan. 

Brigitta immediately went to the palace with the letter and requested for the Emperor’s audience. 

And much like a berserker, without any warning, she asked him directly with things like: ‘So you want to see the author’ ‘Is that why you are acting like a dog about to poo’. 

Thanks to that, she could witness the rare case of seeing the Emperor murmur.

“No, I wasn’t……It’s just that I, I was amazed that it was someone you knew…. I wasn’t really. Um.” 

His rapidly moving eyes were full of hesitation. 

Brigitta saw him like this a few times. 

Back in the North, in the Wolf Knights in Herssen, there were some handsome knights at the right age to marry, and the ladies who dropped their handkerchiefs on purpose in front of them had this face. 

The face people make when they have an inner desire to be bold but their overpowering shyness stops them from actively flirting. 

She watched those ladies thinking they were cute, but that was cute because they were ladies. Watching a giant like the Emperor himself doing that only made him look pathetic. 

‘Ah, this is why the Chancellor sent that letter.’

The Chancellor was always by the Emperor’s side, so he must have thought just letting them meet would be better than to continue watching him like this. 

“Then should I tell her to come to the Castle?”

“NO!”

The Emperor freaked out and waved his hands.

He said something like he can’t bother the author to ask her to come all the way to the Castle since she switched to weekly releases. 

It was such a sight to see the Emperor address Eva as “dear author” but she wondered how he knew Eva switched to weekly releases when even Brigitta didn’t even know. 

She, too, was far from being a fan of something like the Chancellor and the Duke so she wasn’t aware how passionate and obsessive a fan can be towards whatever they admire. 

“What are you going to when you meet her?”

“I want to get her autograph.”

The Emperor answered immediately. 

His thick eyebrows were slightly slanted downwards and his eyes were full of excellence despite his current state. 

“I want to get signed on the first edition of her debut novel……I couldn’t go to the event……”

She didn’t know what ‘event’ it was but she felt so pitiful of the Emperor who had his face down that she had to agree. 

She felt the urge to beat him up after trying to make the suddenly depressed Emperor feel better but she calmed her down and asked. 

“Umm, then, will your Highness go to her?”

“That would be best.”

“This is underrelat….No…What was it? Ah, This is irrelevant but have you ever disguised yourself?”

The Emperor’s mouth shut. 

He was confident in front of the Chancellor and the Duke but sadly he was pretty self-aware. 

He often heard even from his enemies that he looked like a giant because of his big build and intimidating aura. 

Still, he had the hope of coming through as a knight. 

“Is it impossible?”

“Well, there are some people as big as your Majesty back in the North….You are the average Genovian woman’s build too.”

“Then I shall be your brother.”

“Why don’t you calm down a bit, your Majesty? You can’t even speak Holkan that well, right?”

“Just say that I am your long lost brother when you were young. I was adopted to the Kingdom but I searched everywhere to find my little sister and finally found you through a knight.”

“I told you to calm down not to write a novel.”

Brigitta laughed from the absurdity. 

The Emperor was indeed family with the Duke, looking at how they both are unpredictably absurd. 

“Then, if she asks where you were adopted to, what will you say?”

“The Chancellor will take care of that.”

“If you are going to be a knight, you will need to belong somewhere. Will you be a Royal Knight? What about the uniform?”

“The Chancellor will take care of that.”

Brigitta had a moment of silence for the sake of the Chancellor. 

She wondered what the Chancellor could have done to suffer cleaning after the two Rumilesas. 

He wasn’t a genie like in those fairytales, but guessing by how the two Rumilesas talk about him, he must have become something similar to that at least among them. 

“Uh…right. Eva is quite naive so I think she’ll believe that……”

Truthfully, who would believe that an Emperor would leave the Palace with a book to meet an author?

It didn’t matter what his identity would be but it was his intimidating aura that was the issue. 

She wondered if he could come off as someone ‘common’ with such an aura; and secondly, she wondered how a common fragile woman would react to it. 

So they started training. 

To be more precise, it meant that the knights of the 2nd Training Court had to suffer. 

*.·:·.☽✧    ✦    ✧☾.·:·.*

Maximilien, the great mage who is equally amazing in power and temper, once said, “His Majesty’s intimidating aura is not something fixable with magic.”

Like how elves are born with pointy ears and how dwarves are born with plenty of body hair, it was something he was born with so he meant that it was not something fixable with magic. 

“First of all, you can’t consider His Majesty as human.”

Maximilien spoke with calm eyes, observing Karlos. 

Karlos was certain. 

If Karlos was a little weaker than him, he would have torn an arm or leg for an experiment or something. 

Karlos knew that it had been done to a Mountain Black Orc. 

It wasn’t a good memory seeing the Black Orc that is as brave as the Wild Ogre cry that horribly. 

Karlos wanted to yell out ‘I am human and I’m not a devil like you!’ but Karlos knew that his cousin brother would never treat him like a human like he said. 

Maximilien suggested many things. 

The first and easiest way was to familiarize oneself with the person. 

Second was to intimidate the person completely so they believe that the intimidating aura is normal. 

Third way was to kill before the person felt intimidated. 

Karlos slurred at Maximilien’s harsher-as-it-goes suggestions saying, “His true form is slowly coming out.”

If it weren’t the Chancellor’s intervention, they would have fought again. 

“I wouldn’t know it in the first place anyway. How will a human know how a lizard moves its tail? His Majesty’s intimidating aura is like that tail. And reversely, a lizard does not know how we walk with two legs. What I mean is that the structure is different. To be fair, His Majesty’s structure is more like a dragon.”

Maximilien was a little offended that he couldn’t come up with any solution and frowned with his pretty eyes. 

“It doesn’t seem like it intensifies with how you feel, but why don’t you try cultivating inner peace like the Eastern people? Or ask a dragon yourself?”

It was the most normal solution, but back in those times, during the War, the Emperor’s intimidating aura was useful and effective so it was delayed. 

After that again, they never tried to lessen the aura because he needed that intimidating aura to rule as Emperor. 

But now, he needed to be as not intimidating as possible. 

There was no way to find where the dragon was, so that was not a choice, so Karlos decided to find inner peace. 

The Castle Library had many books collected from all the regions. 

Karlos scavenged for Eastern books and found a book about cultivating inner peace. 

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