Kim Hyunwoo and Elena’s gazes intertwined in astonishnt.
One with a dazed, frozen expression.
The other, gradually realizing a sense of sha and embarrassnt.
“Th-this is—!”
Elena quickly stepped away from the mirror, hiding the cat costu behind her back, and began attempting to explain herself.
“I-I an, I was wondering why this was lying around in the office?! So I picked it up, and before I knew it, I was holding it in both hands like this, Lord!”
A desperate excuse.
With just one sentence, she perfectly explained why she was holding the cat outfit like that, and Kim Hyunwoo awkwardly laughed and responded.
“Ah, I see.”
He still wondered why she had been sizing it against her body in front of the mirror, but he decided not to ask.
Seeing how her face was about to explode with embarrassnt, he figured that asking might make her too embarrassed to face him for several days.
“First, can you hand that over?”
“Ah, yes.”
At Kim Hyunwoo’s words, Elena approached him, holding the outfit in both hands to give it to him.
At that mont.
“My Lord, I wanted to talk about sothing- uh?”
Kim Hyunwoo saw the face of the Hero King, who entered the room at the perfect mont.
“Oh…”
Elena let out a low groan at that sight.
Charyll looked at Elena, the outfit she was holding, and at Kim Hyunwoo, his face filled with confusion.
“S-sorry… It seems like I ca at the wrong ti like an idiot.”
She quickly turned to leave.
“Ah, no, it’s not what you think! You don’t have to leave!”
Kim Hyunwoo imdiately stopped Charyll from leaving and let out a deep sigh at the entangled situation.
Shortly after, Elena gave her simple morning report and left, albeit moving more clumsily than usual. Watching her go, Kim Hyunwoo sighed again and turned to Charyll.
“So, what’s the matter?”
“Ah, well…”
At Kim Hyunwoo’s question, the Hero King, who had been hanging her head with a red face, scratched her cheek awkwardly before speaking.
“Um, can I ask about sothing else first?”
“…Sothing else?”
“That thing I saw earlier…”
“Ah.”
Hearing Charyll’ question, Kim Hyunwoo felt his mind go blank.
He hadn’t even found a proper excuse for Elena, so he had simply postponed the explanation, promising to tell her during the next eting.
Of course, it wasn’t as if the explanation was particularly difficult for Kim Hyunwoo.
He could simply summarize what had happened the previous night into a few brief sentences, and the explanation would be done.
The problem was that reducing it to just one or two lines wouldn’t help Charyll or Elena understand the situation properly.
As Kim Hyunwoo pondered this with an awkward expression,
“My…Lord! I’ve co to find my clothes-”
Rin suddenly burst through the door.
“Oh.”
“……”
“……”
Fortunately, Kim Hyunwoo didn’t need to offer any explanation.
…Though to be honest, it was a bit of an awkward kind of relief.
After so ti passed and Rin retrieved her clothes, the Hero King, with a complicated expression, finally got to the point.
“So, what you’re saying is…you don’t have any weapons?”
“Yes, as I ntioned last ti, most of our weapons have already been used up. So, I was hoping that if Lartania had any spare weapons, we could have so…”
Kim Hyunwoo nodded at Charyll’s words.
Unlike other heroes, Charyll was the type of hero who could only unleash her full power with artifacts. Without one, she couldn’t exert her true strength.
However, the problem was that Kim Hyunwoo didn’t have any artifacts at the mont.
‘And it’s not easy to just go out and buy one right now.’
Kim Hyunwoo glanced at his resource window.
[Red Stones: 1,125]
[Blue Stones: 125]
[Gold Coins: 422,331]
[Magic Stones: 382,421]
After using a large number of Red Stones to wipe out the Eastern Clan Alliance, Lartania’s resources were now quite depleted.
‘If I exchange all the remaining Magic Stones, I could probably gather around 20,000 Red Stones.’
Unfortunately, after buying the Labyrinth Package, there wouldn’t be any artifacts he could afford with the remaining 10,000 Stones.
“Hmm… It might be a bit difficult to give you an artifact right away.”
“I see.”
“I’ll try to get sothing from outside. The only thing I can get imdiately is a Proposal Ring.”
Kim Hyunwoo joked about the artifact he could get for around 10,000 Red Stones, a Proposal Ring, and Charyll, listening quietly, absentmindedly replied.
“That might…not be so bad.”
“Huh?”
“Ah, no, no…!”
Seeing the Hero King hastily correct herself, Kim Hyunwoo was confused at first but then let out a small “Ah” as if he understood sothing.
“Now that I think about it, I do have sothing I can give you.”
“Really?”
Seeing Charyll tilt her head in confusion, Kim Hyunwoo told her to wait and left the room to retrieve sothing.
A short while later,
“I’ll look around for a new artifact, but in the anti, why don’t you use this?”
“This is…”
The Hero King received a greatsword from Kim Hyunwoo.
The fact that Kim Hyunwoo had spent the night with Rin spread rapidly once again throughout Lartania and soon reached the ears of the other heroes.
And.
“Hmph~♪”
Thanks to that, a strange atmosphere had ford at the Round Table, the place where the heroes often gathered.
Rin, the center of the rumors, sat at the Table with a bright, smug smile on her face.
Shadra and River, on the other hand, wore expressions soaked with a deep sense of defeat.
Of course, the other heroes hadn’t arrived yet, but everyone already present could be certain of one thing.
No matter who arrived, this atmosphere would not disappear.
Creak—!
As they were all lost in their thoughts, rilda walked into the Round Table chamber.
“You’ve arrived?”
Rin, seeing rilda co in with her tail swaying as usual, spoke first.
“Yes.”
rilda answered calmly.
Rin smiled triumphantly as she continued.
“You were wrong.”
“About what?”
“Didn’t you say that during your ti, he couldn’t fully exert himself? Well, you’re wrong! When I was with him, he was even bigger than when he was with you!”
Rin, basking in her sense of victory, stood up from her seat, montarily forgetting that other heroes were present as she boasted.
Of course, she awkwardly sat back down after standing, but the victorious expression on her face did not fade.
But.
“I see.”
“…?”
rilda’s indifferent response caused a slight crack in Rin’s smile. rilda, watching her, instead smirked and replied.
“What? Did you think I would be jealous just because the Master slept with you?”
Rin’s expression froze in shock at rilda’s words, but rilda continued speaking.
“In the end, it doesn’t matter who the Master spends the night with. What matters is whether or not you’ve been ‘chosen’.”
“…!?”
“You haven’t been chosen, have you?”
“Grr—!”
At rilda’s words, Rin couldn’t help but frown.
It was true that both rilda and Rin had taken a huge step forward with Kim Hyunwoo by spending the night with him, far ahead of the other heroes. But neither had been “chosen”.
And so, Rin frowned, feeling frustrated.
“Hmph.”
But soon, she scoffed with a smirk.
“…?”
This ti, it was Rin who turned the tables, her expression shifting as she spoke.
“For soone who claims it doesn’t matter that they haven’t been chosen, your fur seems a bit too puffed up, don’t you think?”
“…!?”
At Rin’s words, rilda instinctively realized her tail had puffed up like it would when she felt threatened. She hurriedly grabbed it with both hands.
“Th-this is just because a bad thought crossed my mind, that’s all!”
“Yeah, that ‘bad thought’ seems pretty obvious-”
“Shut up! The Master would never choose soone like you!”
“Hah?”
As the two naturally slipped into their usual bickering, Shadra and River watched them with defeated expressions.
At that mont.
“……”
Elena, who had been handling security duties outside instead of attending the Round Table eting,
“Lady Elena? Is sothing wrong?”
“Oh, no. I was just lost in thought. Let’s wrap up for today.”
“Understood.”
Elena nodded and watched the guards moving in the distance, recalling the rumors about Rin that had spread today and the outfit she had seen earlier in the morning.
“……”
To be honest, as Elena thought about that cat outfit – one of the most vulgar she had ever seen-
‘…So the Lord likes that kind of cosplay…’
With that thought, she gazed at the Lord’s castle. Then, as if making a decision, she glanced around and quietly began moving towards soplace.
…Towards the underbelly of Lartania that had recently erged.
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