Chapter 443

A Gathering of Rabid Fans

“Well, this is not going so well.”

Ludwig looked at the country scenery from the window of his carriage. The morning sun, which had been shining softly on the quiet country road, was slowly getting hotter as noon approached. The time they were supposed to leave had passed, but the carriage showed no signs of moving.

The carriage door opened all of a sudden, and Dion Alaia stepped inside. He took the sword out of his belt and sat down on the seat.

“It looks like they won’t be able to fix it for a while. The carriage broke down at a good time, didn’t it?”

The trouble started the morning after Mia’s group left the village where they had been staying. Not long after getting on the road, a wheel on one of the carriages broke. Even though they quickly thought about sending the rest of the crew on ahead, they decided to wait until the repairs were done because the damaged vehicle was an expensive Greenmoon carriage. They could see for miles in all directions, so it was unlikely that someone would sneak up on them. At the very least, waiting here didn’t put their safety at much risk.

“And? What did the patrol say?”VIssịT n0(v)eL/b(i)(n).com for the best novel reading experience

“No problem. I wouldn’t worry. We got the Princess Guard, and the Greenmoons sent a good-sized group as well. Also, Sunkland did what they should have done. After all, they are meeting the daughter of one of the Four Dukes. If I were a thief, I wouldn’t even come near us, let alone try to rob us.”

Dion’s eyes were narrowed as he looked out the same window.

“I’m pretty sure the princess also knows that, so whatever’s out there isn’t robbers. It’s more complicated than that. Something that you can’t handle even if you have a lot of forces with you.”

Ludwig nodded in agreement.

“We’re also going in the same direction as where the wolfmaster ran.”

Before he was forced to run away, the wolfmaster, a Chaos Serpent killer, had come dangerously close to killing Mia. Ludwig had told a group of people to go after him, but they lost track of him. He had gone missing on the edges of Sunkland, which was a big deal. Since then, no one had seen him.

“Yeah,” said Dion, “and if that bad boy shows up, normal guards won’t be able to stop him. We’re going to need hordes of men to deal with him, and that’s not even taking into account his dogs. I understand why the princess is so careful.”

“I see,” Ludwig said. “Then I’ll leave security things up to you. Do what you have to so we can stay safe. Most of all, Her Highness. I don’t know how I’d explain it to everyone if something bad happened to her.”

“You mean your friends in the Empress Faction?”

“Yes. About that, I haven’t introduced you to any of them except Gil. I’ve wanted to do it, but...” Ludwig remembered the time he got together with a few of them to talk about who would do what while he was away.

On that day, Ludwig rushed to an empty mansion in the capital where he and the other members of his faction had decided to meet. When he got to the house and went into a room, he heard a familiar voice.

Balthazar said, “Damn, Ludwig, you finally made it! Well? Out with it. Let’s hear all the tasty details of your trip to Perujin.”

Gilbert was there, along with about a dozen other people.

“No, there’s more. She also ate like everyone else. When she was given a rubyfruit, she ate it right away.”

A man in the room gasped when he heard that.

“You can’t really mean that! Rubyfruits taste good, but they are very messy to eat. The juice makes your hands sticky. It has a bad reputation among noblewomen, and none of them would come within three feet of it.”

Ludwig looked at his clueless coworker and, as the person in the room who knew the most about Mia, said in a teaching tone, “Her Highness is not one to be bothered by things like this.”

Mia was the kind of person who didn’t mind getting her hands dirty, as long as she got to eat delicious foods. In this way, Ludwig was right. He wasn’t exactly right, but he wasn’t wrong, either.

“Makes sense,” said a different voice. “It was given as a gratitude for all she had done. You could say it’s a sign of friendship. By working together, she had made them feel like she was one of them.”

“And by eating it,” said someone else, “she showed that the acceptance was mutual... The central nobility, who see Perujin as a vassal state, would never agree to this kind of exchange.”

The responses kept getting more and more wrong.

“The next episode is about the golden slope,” Ludwig said. “Does anyone among you know how Perujin treats nobles from the empire? Master Galv, you must be.”

Galv spat, “Yes, I do, and it’s a stupid one. They put a blanket of newly harvested wheat on the slope leading to the capital and let the carriages roll over it. Someone from Tearmoon with no brains probably came up with the idea a long time ago, and it stuck. Its only reason for being is to physically step on Perujin pride. The height of stupidity, for sure.”

After expressing his dislike for the practice, he turned to Ludwig and said, “At the same time, it is a sign of welcome, and as a guest, she can’t afford to ignore it. So, I’m very interested to know how Her Highness handled the situation.”

Ludwig smiled arrogantly when his master looked at him with an interested look. Gilbert, however, spoke up before he could.

“Oh, I get it! Didn’t she get out of the coach and walked up?”

Everyone in the room nodded in agreement.

“Very clever,” said one of the younger people. “If the wagon rolled up, it would ruin all that hard-grown wheat, but walking up would do less damage. So, she shows her thanks for their welcome without wasting what they worked hard to make. It’s the best of both worlds!”

Other members of about the same age all agreed and seemed proud that they had found the right answer.

On the other hand, Ludwig shook his head. “No. At least, it’s not the best solution, because that’s only half of it. Her Highness did walk up, but she took her shoes off and did it barefoot.”

“You can’t really mean that! Her shoes off?!”

“Not at all! This is the princess we are talking about!”

Mia’s friends (fanatics), who were already crazy about her, let out a round of amazed gasps. In the middle of their excited talk, Ludwig puffed with pride and kept telling his story.