NOVEL WEB Chapter 15
That evening, Iris and I prepared to meet the Lord. Originally, we planned to go tomorrow morning, but that bastard sent a servant to call us right away.
Iris was wearing her usual white sleeveless top and dolphin shorts, while I wore a plain outfit made of average cloth. Thank goodness the men’s clothes didn’t change.
“Got it? Don’t act on your own, and if he asks you something, just keep your mouth shut and stay still. I’ll handle the answers.”
“Alright. How many times have you said that already?”
“I’m saying it because it’s still not too many. Remember, we don’t know how he will treat you or what he might nitpick about. You must stay still.”
While riding toward the Lord’s mansion, Iris repeated her advice multiple times. It was pretty pointless, really.
If that bastard was really determined to nitpick, such advice would be useless, especially since I knew far more about the Lord than Iris did.
The rest of the knight commanders, including Iris, only suffered from his tyranny. But I had firsthand experience of killing that bastard in every possible way while playing the game.
Starting with beheading him in our first meeting would make things pretty exhausting afterward, so I couldn’t do that here, but I was confident I could deal with him without any issues in about two weeks, including the preparation.
“Here we are.”
How long had it been since we rode into the city center? Iris stopped in front of a grand mansion.
It was a mansion of absurd size, making me speechless for a moment. It was much larger than I remembered from the game.
What was this, was the setting that they still couldn’t shake off their vanity because they were of royal blood? I would believe this was the mansion where the Empress resided.
‘Speaking of which, she must be a woman, right?’
In the NPC appearance retouching mod, the Empress was a woman too.
No, it was more accurate to say that in the appearance modification mod, pretty much all humanoid bosses turned into women. It was rarer for a boss to remain male.
My head was getting complicated. Yeah, she was probably a woman. I just hoped her personality hadn’t changed.
“Stop, stop!”
The guard standing at the entrance of the mansion noticed us and shouted irritably. It was a far cry from how the guards at the city entrance treated us with some modicum of courtesy.
His posture was crooked, annoyance was evident on his face, and his tone was blunt. Judging by skills alone, this guy wasn’t even close to Iris’s level yet he acted like this because he had the Lord’s backing.
“What do you want?”
That was the bare minimum of politeness thrown at us. I was left dumbfounded, but Iris replied calmly as if accustomed to such treatment.
“I’ve come to report about the prison dispatch.”
“Oh, really? Then go in. Keep your words to a minimum.”
Now he was pointing inside with a jerk of his chin rather than a hand gesture.
Iris gave me a look to be patient and dismounted. I did the same and walked past the guard.
“Wait, who’s that next to you?”
Just as we were about to pass, this time he pointed at me with a sharp gesture, brusquely questioning.
“He’s a newbie.”
“A newbie? Pfft, trying to kick him out in a day? Got no learning ability, huh?”
The guard burst out laughing, and Iris silently tied her reins to a tree. Once we walked far enough across the garden that he couldn’t hear us, I leaned in and whispered.
“Is this normal?”
In the game, the knights tended to give lazy and rude replies when speaking to them in the early story stages, but nothing was as severe as this.
“You’ll have to get used to it. The longer you stay here without being kicked out, the more of that kind of attitude you’ll hear.”
Iris replied monotonously. It sounded less about annoyance or anger and more akin to resignation.
After that, until we were told to wait in the reception room inside the Lord’s mansion, I painfully realized how poorly the Silver Dawn Knights had been treated.
I didn’t know what the problem was, but it was definitely worse than in the game.
While in the game, the servants looked down on players, they at least felt like they played their roles; now it felt like they weren’t even fulfilling the bare minimum of their duties because they were too busy looking down on us.
I don’t know how long we had been left in the reception room, practically thrown in and forgotten, when suddenly maids in uniforms rushed in and laid out a variety of refreshments on the empty table.
“The Lord is coming in.”
Naturally, these weren’t for us, but for the Lord who would enter shortly. We were left waiting for dinner while he munched on whatever he wanted.
When I finally heard someone entering, I raised my head enough to see.
‘……Whoa, holy crap.’
And I was horrified to see a visual far worse than I’d expected.
With bulging flesh all over, fat was even seeping out of her face, and her features were buried deep in the fat, making me wonder how on earth she managed to walk around with such a body.
It was the first time I had seen a human where the height and width almost appeared to be the same.
I wanted to commend the fact that she had walked in on her two feet instead of rolling on the ground. How was her knee joint intact when she walked in looking like that?
‘She might have been chubby in the game, but not to this extreme.’
The Lord waddled in, let out a long sigh, and plopped down on the sofa. The seat sank deeply under her weight. As soon as she sat down, the first thing she did was munch on some snacks from the table.
The smacking sound continued for quite a while until the Lord finally let out a long burp and opened her mouth.
“Well, have you returned, Iris?”
“……Yes, as you mentioned, I investigated the prison.”
Despite her appearance, being of royal blood, Iris was using extreme honorifics for the Lord. Her usual expression twisted in an unusual way, however.
“Report.”
“Including the prisoners and guards, everyone inside the prison fell prey to monsters, except for one. By the time I arrived, the situation had already unfolded, and there was no time to intervene.”
“Tsk, I told you to be fully prepared. I wonder why you didn’t listen to me.”
Honestly, you are the one who lured that monster there, right?
Knowing all about the situation, I smirked inwardly. How could she act as if she had foresight after sending someone to lure a human butcher into the prison? It was the most ridiculous thing I’d heard.
“Is the guy next to you the only survivor from the prison?”
The Lord seemed to have enough political experience from the imperial palace, glancing at me to figure out my identity immediately. Iris nodded.
“That’s correct.”
The Lord seemed to ponder something, then grabbed a handful of snacks from the table and stuffed them in her mouth while signaling Iris to leave. Iris looked greatly flustered.
“You should step out, Iris.”
“Excuse me? But—”
“I said to step out. Are you planning to defy my orders?”
“…….”
Iris looked at me with a gaze full of anxiety, but there was nothing she could do. Biting her lip, she awkwardly bowed her head and slammed the door shut behind her.
I hadn’t anticipated being in such a situation right from our first meeting.
Well, it didn’t matter to me. After all, this was an event I had to go through to eliminate the Lord without any aftermath.
In the game, you could have a private meeting with the Lord starting from the third encounter, but if we were moving this quickly from our first meeting, it was actually a blessing for someone like me who wanted to finish this as soon as possible.
Now that it was just the two of us, the Lord leaned back arrogantly against the sofa, propping her arms up and even putting her feet on the table. She was completely ignoring me.
Well, from her perspective, I was just a prisoner from the dungeon, so it could be reasonable that she would act like this. Would she really care about a mere prisoner when she looked down on even the knight commanders?
Considering the overall personality of the people in the mansion had become much worse than in the game, it made sense she had crossed the line way earlier.
“Hey, you.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
“You said you were locked up in the prison?”
“That’s correct.”
“And you barely survived by meeting Iris?”
“That too, yes.”
“Was there any trouble with the knights in between, or did you fight with one of the commanders?”
“No.”
Remembering the choices presented in the game, I only gave answers that would likely prompt the Lord to offer me something. She nodded and took a long time to think.
“Why were you imprisoned?”
There it was.
I smirked inwardly as I confirmed she was asking the question I expected. Things seemed to be going quite well.
“Why do you think I was locked up in such a place? It’s probably not too different from the charge you have in mind, my Lord.”
“Hmm, so you say……”
I deliberately showed a sneaky smile.
At this point, it was almost done digging my own grave. Now I just needed to prepare the coffin accessories, and hopefully, she would walk into that grave willingly.
After a long moment of contemplation, the Lord finally spoke up.
“Are you interested in women?”