“Who clamors outside the hall?”
Vera’s voice drifted slowly out from inside the house, and Focalors felt a sense of ease.
As long as Vera was here, the matter should not blow up to a degree that could not be resolved.
After hearing Vera’s voice, Seraphina’s face changed greatly.
Her expression went from its original playful composure to vigilance.
This voice… it couldn’t be that one, could it?
That magician acclaimed as the greatest genius in the Empire’s history, the one even her dear imperial older sister had fought again and again under her hands and lost again and again.
But how was that possible?
Hadn’t she left the Sugel Training Grounds long ago?
How could she still appear here?
Seraphina was unwilling to believe this possibility, but facts would not change with her wishes.
That peerlessly beautiful figure she did not want to see was walking out of the villa one lazy step at a time.
Gray long hair, a peerlessly beautiful face.
This set of features belonged to only one person in the entire Chenyue Empire, and that was that Vera Sesis.
Vera, seeing that Focalors seemed to have run into some trouble, only came out to take a look.
Then with that one look, she saw Seraphina.
“Yo. This little sister I know. Princess Seraphina, isn’t it?”
Vera’s face held a smile, but her eyes carried unkindness.
“Your visit to my student’s humble abode—is there some urgent matter? If not, ought you not give an explanation?”
“Student? She is your student?”
Seraphina looked at Focalors in surprise.
Vera Sesis’s pickiness was famous in the Empire as well.
This white-haired little loli had actually received her recognition?
How was that possible?
After thinking for a moment, Seraphina’s face returned to normal, and she said, “Respected Lady Vera, a small misunderstanding occurred between myself and your student. I hope you will not take offense.”
At this moment, not a trace of the originally arrogant golden-haired loli’s haughtiness could be seen.
At least in front of Vera, she did not dare flare up.
Vera closed her eyes, crossed her arms over her chest, leaned against the wall, and answered vaguely, “Mm. And then?”
Seraphina continued, “According to the regulations, if a dormitory in [Gold] Zone is vacant, the imperial family ought to have priority usage rights. So this dormitory ought to belong to me to use. You don’t deny that point, do you?”
Vera nodded. “That’s right. Although the regulations aren’t written that way, you people at the top have already allotted it. What can I say?”
Seraphina’s face lit up. “So to sum up, what I did did not….”
“Stop.”
Vera raised a hand and cut Seraphina off, and looked down on Seraphina from on high. “First, this dormitory has already been used by my student. It does not fall within the category of ‘vacant.'”
“Second, dormitories in [Gold] Zone are only given to the most outstanding students to use. If you want to use one, what you need to do is openly and honorably issue a challenge to my student, not take out so-called imperial status to press people down.”
“Last, and also your most naive point. Your Highness Seraphina, regulations are drawn up for the weak to abide by, and you clearly do not stand in the ranks of the ‘strong.'”
“If you want to take so-called regulations to press me down, kindly first see clearly what strength you yourself have. I honor you with a ‘Your Highness,’ and you actually take yourself seriously?”
While speaking, the mana pressure on Vera’s body was released all at once, instantly pressing Seraphina’s little face deathly pale, unable to draw breath.
At the same time, Seraphina also clearly realized that the madwoman before her eyes would truly lay hands on her.
Whatever rules, whatever bloodline, before this madwoman they were not worth a single coin!
Just as Seraphina was about to suffocate, Vera withdrew the mana pressure, and the golden-haired little loli lay on the ground gasping in great mouthfuls as if she had survived a disaster.
“Y-you bullied me! I’m going to tell Imperial Sister! She definitely won’t let you off!” Tears circled in Seraphina’s eye sockets, but unfortunately all she could do was point at Vera and loudly accuse her, looking wronged.
“Do as you like. If Freya comes I’ll beat her together with you. She can’t beat me anyway.”
Vera’s “brutal” remark finally still crushed the last line of defense in the golden-haired little loli’s heart.
After shouting “You just wait!”, she instead ran off crying herself.
Focalors stared tongue-tied at the scene before her eyes and asked Vera with some uncertainty, “Doing it this way is pretty satisfying, but is it really all right? Isn’t it too high-profile?”
Although Focalors had not made a special point of learning about it, according to her many years of experience reading novels, identities that generally touched the two words “princess” were not easy to provoke.
“It’s fine. Isn’t it just a princess? I’ve already offended one Third Princess. One more Fourth Princess doesn’t make a difference,” Vera’s attitude was still one of complete indifference, and watching her made Focalors’s guts tremble.
Seeing Focalors’s face full of worry, Vera patted her little head and said gently yet firmly, “Focalors, you have to remember one thing.”
“In the Chenyue Empire, the strong are honored in all things. So long as you are forever powerful, you are forever noble. Absolute strength will be the most precious capital by which you stand in this country.”
When Vera said this, it was as if she were educating Focalors, and also as if she were reminding herself.
In her words there seemed to be a kind of… loneliness Focalors had never heard from her before.
Looks like Teacher Vera also has a past no one knows about, Focalors keenly sensed this point and silently committed it to memory.
***
“What?! You said that Vera actually bullied you?! How could she do that?”
After hearing her little sister’s tearful complaint, Third Princess Freya’s first reaction was to go settle accounts with Vera.
But thinking it over, she found something off.
“That’s not right. She may have a bit of a loose mouth sometimes, but she wouldn’t bully an 8-year-old little loli for no reason. Seraphina, be honest. Is there still something you’re hiding from me?”
Seraphina said with a guilty face, “N-no. How could there be?”
Seraphina had been raised under Freya’s care, and she was extremely familiar with every move her little sister made.
So when she saw Seraphina’s expression, she knew this little sister still had something she was hiding from her.
“Seraphina, tell the truth. Otherwise I’ll get angry.”
Under the pressure of Freya’s gaze, Seraphina finally spoke the complete course of the facts.
Although there was still some adding of oil and vinegar, Freya could already hear roughly what the matter was.
She had said Vera could not bully people for no reason.
After all, that person always had a baffling sense of superiority, and her eyes were high enough to reach the heavens.
If she had not been provoked, Vera would have been impossible to glance at the weak.
“You, ah, you. Haven’t I warned you many times? Don’t use the imperial family’s name to do bad things outside. If you keep going like this, be careful that one day the people overthrow you and send you to the guillotine.”
At the founding of the Chenyue Empire, the imperial family’s power had already been divided out early, far from reaching the degree of imperial-family autocracy.
On top of that, there had indeed once been a fatuous and brutal monarch sent to the guillotine, so Freya very much liked using these cases to warn the young Seraphina.
Seraphina knew she was in the wrong and honestly listened to the lecture.
At the end, though, she still felt a bit wronged in her heart.
“So we’re just leaving it like this, Big Sister? I’ve wanted to live in a [Gold] Zone dormitory for so long. That dormitory is one Big Sister lived in.”
Seraphina’s eyes swam with tears.
She pursed her little mouth and hugged Freya’s arm, acting spoiled.
Although Freya knew Seraphina was fanning the flames, she still could not withstand Seraphina’s spoiled offensive and gradually lost the fight.
There was no helping it.
Her little sister was just too cute.
Freya let out a long sigh. “Outside-the-rules moves I will not help you with. But within the scope of the rules, do whatever you want.”
“If Vera’s student wants to live in [Gold] Zone, she has to have the strength for it too. So what you ought to do, you understand, right?”
Seraphina said excitedly, “In other words… I can fiercely tidy up that annoying one on the arena?”
Freya nodded. “That’s right. You’re older than she is, just entering the training grounds, and on top of that the imperial family let you start cultivating a few years early. So you, already a Rank 9 magician now—beating one of Vera’s students isn’t effortless?”
Seraphina was first excited, then a little worried. “But that is Vera Sesis’s student. A disciple of that person whose eyes sit higher than the top of her head should be very strong, right?”
Freya laughed aloud. “Hahaha. If the enemy were Vera’s student it might be thorny. But you are the Empire’s Fourth Princess Seraphina! Your talent is even above mine. How could you lose to anyone else?”
“Vera is excellent, that’s true, but that doesn’t mean her student is the same as her. So you will win!”
“My little sister Seraphina has the bearing of a Forbidden Curse!”