As the carriage screeched to a halt, Isak and his sister stepped down from the vehicle, followed closely by the multiple guards who had been trailing right behind them.
However, upon getting down from the carriage and taking just a few steps forward, the first thing Isak heard was the echoing sound of Dorian yelling across the field.
"Keep pushing! We are almost done! Let's go, let's go, let's go!"
Dorian was standing right on top of a large rock. In his hand was the rolled-up blueprint, with Maria and Ciel standing faithfully beside him.
Seeing this only led Isak to scan the field further, and what he saw left him shocked, unable to say a word.
At the edge of the body of water, he could see a massive tallic ring, easily thirty feet tall, anchored deep into the ground.
It was thick, sturdy, and pulsed with a rhythmic, low-humming energy.
Around the huge circular construct were two towering stabilizers, their surfaces engraved with glowing runic circuits that crackled with blue arcane electricity.
The air around the gate distorted slightly, shimring like a heat haze, hinting at the imnse spatial magic compressed within the structure.
Wires stretched from the grid buried underground all the way to the two other poles standing at the side of the circular platform.
He then noticed there was a huge carriage loaded with cargo right in front of the circular construct, ready to pass through it.
"Wha—"
Isak was speechless.
Unlike the first ti he ca to the site, it looked far different. It looked futuristic, as though sothing had been pulled from a different era entirely.
"How did he—" His face was struck with shock.
"Is that the famous Duke Dorian?" Elizabeth leaned closer to her brother so she could whisper in his ear.
He imdiately gave her a disgusted look, and not even a millisecond later, he turned his gaze back to Dorian.
"Yes, he is."
"Oh, wow. He is actually quite handso. I expected him to be fat and chubby, but this… this works too." Elizabeth suddenly frowned, scanning the won next to him. "And those must be his wives. Hmm… Interesting. Excuse for a second."
"Uhm? Wait, where do you think you—"
It was too late.
Elizabeth had already wandered off.
"Duke Dorian!"
Elizabeth went strolling down the slope, with about three guards imdiately following behind her for security.
Dorian, who had been focusing on his workers to get them to finish up the project, was forced to turn his attention away from them and toward the princess wandering to his side.
'Hm? Who is this?'
With his hands on his waist, he looked down at her, still standing high on the rock.
Once Elizabeth was close enough, she slightly pulled on the side of her dress and bowed her knees with practiced respect.
"My na is Elizabeth, First Princess of the Sualan Family. It is an honor to et you."
'A princess?'
[Na: Elizabeth Sualan.]
[Class: Mage.]
[Rank: Master Rank.]
[Current Mode: Enthusiastic and Confident.]
'Oh. Would you look at that. She is a princess after all.'
Dorian paused, then decided to get down from the rock he was standing on.
"What is the Princess of Sualan doing all the way over here?" Maria chid in, already finding the entire thing suspicious.
Elizabeth turned her gaze toward Maria, a huge smile on her face.
"And you must be the Lord Rank Knight, also wife to the Duke. You look as beautiful as the news says. I also heard you rejected the offer to work for my kingdom. What a sha."
"What do you want with Lord Dorian? I refuse to believe you just ca all the way here just to have a discussion."
The fact Maria refused to play along was slowly getting to Elizabeth. So much so that her smile was twitching, threatening to fade away.
'This bitch, what is your problem?' she whispered in her mind, while maintaining the failing smile.
Then, from nowhere, Isak appeared.
"Please, do pardon my sister. She can be rather straightforward when she sees soone that she likes. She sotis can't control it."
He strided forward, soon standing right beside his sister with his guards guarding every corner of his proximity.
At this point, many of the workers were already looking toward their position, and it wasn't a friendly look either.
Many of them never trusted the kingdom to begin with, so they wondered what the Royal Family suddenly wanted with their Duke.
If anything were to so much as happen, all they needed were orders from Ishtar and Seraphina, and they were willing to pounce into action.
Of course, since Seraphina and Ishtar were ignoring the entire thing, neither of them decided to act on it yet.
With the rolled blueprint resting on his shoulder, Dorian leaned forward to take a closer look at the princess.
"No way," he began. "Were you that upset about the contract that you had to call your sister in to speak for you?"
Isak's face turned red almost instantly.
"Wh—no—how dare you assu sothing like that to a Prince?" He pointed at Dorian indignantly.
With an unimpressed look on Dorian's face, he pointed at the princess with his blueprint.
"Then why is she here with you? Unless she is instructed in the art of construction, I see no reason why she would co all the way to this side of the kingdom."
Isak was once again speechless. It wasn't like he could tell Dorian the real reason she was there with him.
For the first ti, he wished his sister would say sothing.
"I did not co here because my brother wanted to. I ca here of my own volition. To et the man who had bested my brother in both intellect and power."
Dorian gawked at her.
'So she is here to be so kind of pawn, huh? I won't be surprised if this is supposed to turn into a marriage proposal at so point.'
Dorian sighed.
"If that is the case, then can it wait? I am currently in the middle of sothing."
Isak used that opportunity to scan the surroundings again, impressed as though he was seeing it for the first ti.
"You really went all out here. It's been just four days? And you've managed to go this far?"
Dorian too looked at the site, his eyes landing on the shimring portal gate.
"My workers and I have not slept for three days and have been working twenty-four hours every day. We can finally rest today, because the project has finally co to an end."
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