My Ex-Fiancée Is the Female Lead in the Romance Novel

13 – Respond, Measures (2)

I felt sorry for the princess as she was at a loss for words of my rejection.

She said that the princess can’t just ask me to go on a trip for no reason, and it’s highly likely that she has something to go down to the province.

Couldn’t she use that as an excuse to entrust her with something, since the princess has reached her age of majority?

I made a rough guess in my mind. At this time, the only things that would send the imperial family somewhere were aliens in the east and pirates in the south.

If it was her other time, following her would not be a bad choice. Because in the original work, it is highly likely that this work was successfully completed, seeing as it built up its forces in the end.

It might be a good idea to go with her and put your foot on her ball, but the timing is such that I shouldn’t leave the capital.

The battle against Argenta will continue. In the meantime, if I am away, there is a high possibility that the upper management will not be able to respond appropriately.

And that inappropriate response will return to our family as it is.

“Ugh… I’m sorry. Was it an unreasonable request?”

“From now on, I’m going to be busy with the corps and the aftermath of the breakup. Other times… it could have been possible, but now is not the right time.”

“That’s right… not considering Cesar’s situation…”

The princess seems to be in a very anxious state right now. Normally, she is an immature princess, but she has a confident personality. But now she has become like a mediocre child who is just immature.

The fact that she had to leave the imperial palace, where she had spent her whole life, to another place, even if it was only for a while, the anxiety of meeting other people, and the burden of the fact that she had to get something out of conversations with them were on her shoulders. Seems to be squeezing the

“The Princess.”

“Yes..?” “I can’t, but I will send someone I trust. The princess must be someone you know well.”

“Who is…?” “I will send you Lena.”

“Ah! Great!”

Lena is a person who is in a fairly high position even in my upper ranks, and is a person who is in charge of negotiations. Wherever she goes, if the princess has a good conversation, she sneaks in behind her and it’s okay to negotiate about her exchanges.

“Once upon a time, when I was waiting for Cesar-sama to come, Lena-sama sometimes gave me snacks… I know her quite well.”

Is that so? I’m not sure. I always ran right away when I heard that the princess had visited our guild, but there was some time left before I went.

During that time, it seems that Lena did a little bit of her crush on her princess.

“Has Lena gone to work at the top right now?”

“No. She hasn’t come out yet. She has nothing to do right now…”

Today I will be at the top all day. Thinking that I could wait until she came and tell me, I started to deal with the backlog.

* * *

“What? Has Lombardi already paid off all its debts?”

At the same time, the duke’s forged arm struck the desk, and the desk made of a fairly solid material split in two.

Seeing the scene, Seria was lost in her thoughts. Common sense dictated that Lombardy did not have the means to pay it off so quickly. But before she had time to think deeply about it, her messenger went on a backstory.

“The source of the funds is presumed to be the Bereng Merchant Chamber.”

“Why do you support Lombardi there?”

“That’s fine…”

Then, as if breaking the desk wasn’t enough, the duke picked up an oriental celadon from the bookshelf next to him and smashed it to the floor.

‘I bought that from Bereng Merchant…’

Seria thought maybe she was being targeted by her father, but she quickly realized that her father didn’t know such a trivial detail, so she quickly erased the thought of him from her mind.

“Did the rest of the corps that entered Lombardy withdraw?”

“Yes. All the shops in the Lombardi estate must have been empty already.”

The duke could easily predict that for the time being, a crisis in daily necessities and food would occur in Lombardy’s territory. According to common sense, if the Bereng Merchant Merchant paid off Lombardy’s debts, it would be natural for the issue of the land transaction to be resolved quickly, but the current duke was not rational enough to even think about such a thing.

Seria could sense that things were going wrong as she watched the operation.

According to Seria and the duke’s idea, the marquess family should have already been sending letters to borrow money from all the surrounding families in order to attract money.

Since the nobles the Marquis became friends with were all connections made by the Duke of Argenta, he told them not to lend money to Lombardi in advance. So, in the end, it was an idea to make Lombardi’s leaning place limited to one Argenta.

Unexpectedly, however, Lombardi paid off all the money in an instant, and the only thing the duke could count on was the pressure from the upper management and the mining engineer.

But when Seria thought about it rationally, she didn’t know what the relationship between the Bereng Merchant and Lombardi was, but she knew that the two were one team. Therefore, even if the technician did not know, it was easy to predict that the pressure through the top would not work.

“Lady… Your hand…”

Her maid’s words made her realize that her fingernails were in her mouth.

“Ah… thank you.”

She was Seria who was determined not to have her lingering feelings for Cesar, but that was only if she stayed in her place.

If Seria herself could rise to the position of A, she had the heart to start over with Cesar.

She also imagined the scene where César came to her and asked her to get engaged again. But Seria trembled as she felt that such a thing would not happen.

* * *

After staying at the top all day for the first time in a while, her head started to hurt. As she dealt with her princess who came to her unexpectedly, anticipating the actions Argenta would take in the future and dealing with her, the day passed before she knew it.

Usually, I would have felt empty for the quick passing of the day, but when I remembered the expression of the Duke of Argenta, who couldn’t achieve anything despite my quick response, I was thrilled.

Even if the duke and Seria were to break off their engagement, she would have thought that she could shake us enough by using her capital that she had hidden in Lombardy and the sejaks she had infiltrated in Lombardy over the past 10 years.

However, my father has already made a list of three players, and he is going to be demoted or fired one after another, and it is not so easy to beat our top tier with money.

There are not many families with the capital that can beat our guild, which has amassed enormous wealth within the empire through Eastern trade. No matter how duke it was, it was impossible for Argenta, who was not from a long-established family, to have such money.

I leaned against the chair while thinking about that. Because it was made with reference to the chairs I used in my previous life, I was able to lie down naturally leaning against the chair because it had a function to lie down.

I was feeling tired, but I could easily feel the noise outside.

I had no choice but to open the door and walk out to see the outside.

“What is it?”

“Cesar. Just got a telegram saying that all the Argenta-related corps in our estate are closed.”

“All? Then, Argenta will also suffer huge losses.”

I predicted that Argenta would withdraw their troupe from our territory, but I did not foresee that they would withdraw all of them. The Argenta family invested more capital than expected in our territory. As a result, there are quite a few cases where even the shop run by our manor is part of the business run by the Argenta family.

But the reason why all the shops were closed is that the Duke of Argenta is crazy.

However, if the other person does such a crazy thing, we have no choice but to suffer corresponding damage.

“Then, right now, ask the store run by Youngjiin to list the cost of materials needed to open.”

When I ordered from the family messenger, my father quietly spoke to me from behind.

“There are many shops that operate only with ingredients and goods sent from Argenta. In this case, we have no choice but to temporarily close the store.”

Such stores had no choice but to be abandoned in the first place. As originally planned, we need to persuade them slowly and let them do business with products airlifted from our upper ranks. And convincing them won’t be too difficult.

“I already sent down the staff and told them to do business with those stores with the goods airlifted from the Bereng Merchant.”

It was obvious that Argenta would not supply a place where business could only be done with goods sent by the Duke of Argenta, so he had already taken action.

However, it can only be seen as futile that we stopped trading with all items that could be supplied as replacements.

Did the Duke of Argenta want to create an overnight chaos in Lombardy? Or did he just lose his temper in anger?