The empire princess said this, her eyes filled with resentment.
She stood up and pulled down the silk hanging on the wall, revealing an oil painting.
Aurina looked over and saw that the painting depicted the three members of the dragon-slaying team slaying the dragon.
The focus was on Richard, wearing armor that was very clean—the artist had only added some blood to the armor to highlight his bravery.
He stood on the massive head of the Dread Dragon, gazing up at the heavens, with a beam of white light falling on his face.
Beside him, Frostsilver and Sophia were like supporting characters, green leaves accentuating the red flower.
Aurina didn’t feel anything about it, because the Dread Dragon in the painting didn’t resemble her at all.
It wasn’t as if any pseudo-dragon that looked dragon-like, big enough with dragon horns, was the Dread Dragon—was her.
Frostsilver glanced at it, pursed her lips, and snorted coldly.
Thinking that bugs were truly bugs, with such massive errors in the painting—not like her brother at all—she continued to take out her phone and slowly tap the screen with one index finger.
“My father placed it in my bedroom with magic,” the empire princess said.
“Every day, if I don’t gaze at it for several hours, the bedroom door won’t open, and I’ll go hungry. I have to look at the death pose of my beloved, day after day.”
Richard said, “It wasn’t that bloody at the time. The Dread Dragon self-immolated before death, leaving only a skull.”
“You think you’re a proud dragon-slaying warrior, coming to save me, this princess?” the empire princess laughed.
“Do you think that if you save me, you can marry me?”
“Sorry,” Richard said. “I don’t mean that. I have a fiancée.”
“I never asked you to save me, nor to slay the dragon,” the empire princess said. “You’re just my father’s executioner.”
Richard took a deep breath, silently chanting: The big picture is important, the big picture is important. He said, “Here, I can apologize to you.”
“Only one sentence?”
Richard, wearing his armor, bowed to the empire princess.
“I’m sorry.”
Before Richard had lifted his head, the empire princess said, “I didn’t promise that if you apologize, I’ll forgive you.”
“Why?”
Aurina lifted Richard’s head, straightening his waist.
“Strongest little bug, why are you bowing to her? You haven’t even bowed to your master once, mount.”
Her two golden eyes shimmered faintly, her face full of confusion.
“I…” Richard looked at Aurina’s “innocent” face and smiled bitterly.
“You’re still young; you don’t know.”
“Don’t bend your waist.”
Aurina forcefully patted his waist straight.
“It’s just a prettier female, not even comparable to a unicorn. There’s one below the tower; let’s go call her.”
“Unicorn?”
The empire princess’s face darkened as she asked, “You half-demon, who are you?”
“The daughter of the Dread Dragon.”
Frostsilver, who had been looking down, lifted her head and said, “Unlike its bunch of bastard children, she’s a pure-blooded red dragon—her bloodline isn’t mixed with any low-level races.”
The empire princess asked, “Excuse me, what do you mean?”
Frostsilver said, “As the ancient family that knows the most about dragon clans in the world, I investigated the Dread Dragon. Just going out, I could meet eighteen females it had fucked.”
At this point, Richard didn’t know if it was his illusion, but he seemed to hear teeth grinding.
“It doesn’t care about you at all; even if it knew you were waiting for it, it wouldn’t feel much,” Frostsilver continued.
“Richard respects you; it won’t. From beginning to end, to it, you’re just a slightly special bug. In its long life, bugs like you piled up would be taller than this tower.”
The empire princess’s face turned pale at this. Frostsilver’s acerbic personality was on full display.
“Yes,” Aurina raised her hand in agreement.
“The Dread Dragon has no opinion.”
Richard looked at the dead Dread Dragon in the painting and couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
“Alright, don’t waste time,” Frostsilver said. “That idiot emperor seems very dissatisfied with me; let’s quickly find the old crone below the tower.”
With that, Frostsilver floated out the door.
The empire princess said, “She’s not a royal member.”
Frostsilver waved her hand and said, “Is that important? Only people like you think it’s important. If we say she is, she is—it’s that simple.”
“Hurry, hurry! Cowardly mount.”
Aurina pushed Richard toward the door.
“This king can’t wait to take all this white porcelain’s property clean.”
The empire princess still stood motionless, watching the backs of Richard and the other two as they left.
She shouted, “I am the empire princess! The crown princess!”
Outside, as they went down the stairs, the floor height had improved somewhat, so Aurina rode on Richard’s head, proudly patting his helmet.
“This is the world’s strongest little bug.”
Just as Frostsilver had said, Aurina had no strong feelings about the empire princess’s admiration and waiting.
They went downstairs.
“Wait, wait.”
The empire princess, wearing that ill-fitting princess dress, lifted her skirt, kicked off her high heels, and chased after them barefoot.
“I agree, I agree,” the empire princess said. “She has no value anymore, and I… at least still know a few admirers—lovers—though I haven’t seen them in a long time, but some have secretly tried to see me. Therefore, only I can have the possibility to end the chaos in a short time.”
Richard turned back and extended his hand to the empire princess.
“Pleasure to cooperate.”
The empire princess was still unwilling.
“At this time, you don’t feel sorry for killing my beloved?”
“I never thought killing it was wrong; it brought so many disasters,” Richard said.
“The earlier apology was only to you personally—for justice, for the big picture, it had to be so.”
The empire princess gripped his hand tightly, panting.
The ill-fitting dress seemed about to burst her white chest open.
“If only you didn’t have a fiancée.”
“Why?”
“Then, you could be the empire regent,” the empire princess said.
“You’re perfectly suited as my political marriage object. From justice, please consider—your children will be born in the Violet Chamber.”
When she spoke of political marriage, she emphasized the word political.
Richard was stunned entirely; the impact was no less than the Dread Dragon’s tail whip.
He realized he knew very little about the empire princess—or about women, for that matter.
Richard said, “You’re joking, Your Highness.”
“No.” The phone screen illuminated Frostsilver’s face; she didn’t lift her head as she said, “You’re strong and an outsider, with no roots in the empire—you can only rely on her. Through you, she can communicate with the good god forces and borrow your hand to contend with domestic forces. Simple; only you, a Tyr believer whose brain is wooden from reading scriptures, couldn’t think of this.”
Richard glanced at the empire princess, feeling guilty for the momentary impulse caused by his innate two original sins.
He said, “Sorry, I don’t accept.”
The empire princess looked calm, just like asking a stall owner at the market if they had something to sell, and the owner saying no.
She replied, “Oh.”
“Hurry, hurry,” Frostsilver urged. “The idiot emperor has started cursing.”
“Hm?”
Richard had just recovered from the shock and realized something was wrong. He asked, “You were communicating with him?”
“Yes, what’s wrong?”
Richard reacted like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
He still remembered the last time, and the time before that, and the time before that, when Frostsilver from the dragon-slaying team had gone to communicate with people, leading to a series of serious events.
He almost shouted, “Quick, don’t touch that phone anymore—no, now it’s too late. Give it to me, quick.”
“Hehe.”
Frostsilver handed the phone to Richard.
Aurina immediately bent down to snatch this rare treasure, but Richard accurately slapped her wrist with one hand and took the phone.
Frostsilver silently watched and recorded it.
Richard opened the phone and asked, “How do I view your previous conversation?”
“Here.”
Aurina’s tail tip swiped across the screen, revealing the conversation between Frostsilver and the Yanting Empire Emperor.
Looking at the conversation content, Richard almost blacked out.
Classic, too classic.
Classic Frostsilver-style speech—at first, she pretended a bit, but then her acerbic nature erupted, saying things like “Look at the treaty properly, since your eyes are bad.”
“Never loyal, so where’s the loyalty?”
“You don’t really think you’re a wise ruler, do you? No way? No way?”
This led to the Yanting Empire Emperor not only having the Varangian Guards fully stationed in the Violet Chamber, but also planning to run away.
Richard almost shouted, “You didn’t even want to lie to him.”
“I did lie,” Frostsilver said. “But his stupidity angered me. Anyway, I have a retreat—why endure humiliation from this stupid little bug?”
Richard had to tap the phone screen. “How do I send a message? I need to stabilize him.”
“Can you lie?”
Richard’s head ached at the thought of lying.
Not only did the creed teach against lying, but even if he relaxed the requirement—that not face-to-face didn’t count as lying—he still didn’t know how to lie.
“Tyr above.”
Richard’s head grew even larger.
“I’d rather go crusade the Dread Dragon again than get involved in this kind of thing. I miss the hard battles.”
“Mount dummy.”
Aurina reached out. “Give it to me; let this king do it.”
The empire princess said, “Let me try?”
Between the natural political creature that was the princess and the “innocent” Aurina, Richard hesitated for a moment, then finally glanced at Frostsilver.
Although Aurina looked unreliable—and actually was unreliable, still not having broken through addition and subtraction above 21.
But from the results, she had single-handedly defeated Frostsilver.
“What are you looking at?”
Frostsilver said. “You think I can’t win against her?”
Richard didn’t answer; for a paladin like him, silence meant he didn’t want to lie.
He handed the phone to Aurina.
Frostsilver sneered, “Hehe.”
Aurina took the phone and tapped randomly on the screen.
The two humans and two dragons continued forward.
The old crone at the tower bottom, hunched over, watched their departing backs, her eyes full of jealousy and longing.
The empire princess turned back and looked at her. “Granny, if I succeed, you won’t have to live here anymore.”
“No need.”
The old granny, wearing a tattered princess dress, smiled, revealing her missing teeth.
“I’d rather live here; I’m used to it.”
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