Chapter 205
『Translator: RainTL』
༺ Autumn Harvest Festival (2) ༻
One white gold coin. That equated to 100 gold coins.
There were a multitude of things that could be done with that amount of money. It was enough to purchase a whole floor of a decent building in the CBD, and although it might not be enough for a wyvern, it would certainly be able to buy you the best-bred horses of the South.
It was rare for famous and veteran guardians to be paid that much money. Only a few would ever earn the “qualification” to handle such high-paying tasks.
White gold coins were a type of currency that was hard to see unless they were in semi-Unique Grade subjugation missions, which only accepted Grade 1 guardians or whole parties of Grade 2 guardians. Grade 3 guardians wouldn’t even be allowed near it.
And yet paying that much money—
For a single day?
In fact, it would only be half a day – and even then, it probably wouldn’t go all the way till midnight, so it was practically just for a single dinner.
How could anyone sane possibly waste a white gold coin for that short period of time?
Isabelle, as well as everyone present, turned their eyes to the one who confidently bid a white gold coin.
Who in this Academy other than Marie Dunareff was able to waste their money to such an extreme extent? The person that everyone found in search of the lunatic who spent a white gold coin… was a middle-aged man to everyone’s surprise.
“Who in the— Uncle Marde?!”
“It has been a while, Isabelle.”
It was none other than Marie’s father, Marde Dunareff.
Marie might be the imperial princess of the Potato Empire, but he was the Potato Emperor himself. The ruler of the southern empire with the biggest financial influence throughout the continent, Duke Marde, was sitting among the audience of the Auction Contest.
- Duke Marde? Why is he here?
- And why is he bidding…?
“W, why…?”
“Huhu. Isabelle. Do you think I wouldn’t know what you’re up to? Marie must have asked you for a favor. All for a single d, d… date with that little guy!”
“Umm…”
The duke barely finished his sentence with his teeth chattering in fury.
“Korin Lorrrkk…! I won’t let Marie stay next to you for a single minute today unless you go over my dead body! Because she will be having a date with her father the entire day! WAHAHAHAHAH…!!”
- Oh my gosh…
- Wow…
- Damn. That’s a bit overboard.
- That’s a little gross.
Right.
Duke Marde – he was simply here to stop Marie from having a successful bid on Korin. In order to monopolize the time with his daughter, he was here to bid on her boyfriend so that he wouldn’t be a nuisance!
“Uhh, Father?”
“Don’t you dare call me ‘Father’!”
Korin dumbfoundedly raised his hand but Duke Marde yelled in return. Regardless, Korin stuck with his conviction and finished his sentence.
“It’s a bit… unsightly.”
“History… is written by the victors!”
He seemed to have lost himself from jealousy towards his daughter’s boyfriend. Isabelle concealed her agreement with Korin’s statement and carefully raised the price.
“110 coins…”
“Haha, Isabelle. My daughter has a lot of money but not as much as I do. 1,000 gold coins!”
“Uncle…”
The duke lifted his hand with a confident shout but little did he know that that made him look even worse.
I can’t beat him with money though…
No matter how much money Marie had, she was still nothing but the next in line to the empire. Competing against the emperor himself with money would be a foolish move.
“Fufu. Looks like there are no more bidders. So I—”
“Dear. What are you doing here?”
“Hahp!”
That was when an unexpected someone entered the auditorium.
Elencia Dunareff – the queen of the empire.
The Duchess of the Dunareff Dukedom was here to stop her husband.
“H, honey…! I thought you were going to Marie’s Exhibition with the kids!”
“I came here for a look because I heard our Korin was going to be auctioned. But I wasn’t expecting to see you here though.”
Duke Marde froze stiff as if he were in front of the god of death. It didn’t matter whether he was the Potato Emperor or not.
“Don’t tell me you’re trying to interfere with Marie’s date. Are you?”
“Ahhkk…! H, honey…!”
To Elencia, he was nothing but a husband.
“What an embarrassment! The kids are all waiting for you! Come here!”
“Honeyy…!”
Duke Marde cried like a beast being forced into the slaughterhouse as Elencia pulled him by the ear. He was a renowned mage and the emperor of the Potato Empire, but couldn’t do anything before his wife, who used to be a high-ranked knight in the past.
“Son-in-law Korin~. Let’s have a family meal together sometime soon~”
“I, I will see you later, Mother.”
“Don’t call her ‘Mother’! Alright?! She’s not your mother! KUAAAHK…!”
After the duke was pulled away by the duchess, silence returned to the auditorium, and Isabelle carefully raised her hand back up.
“...1,001 gold coins.”
It ended up being much higher than expected, but this was still within the acceptable realm. As expected, no one apart from Duke Marde was invested enough to call a higher number than that.
Korin heaved a deep sigh and waited for the bid to go through but…
It was then.
“2,000 gold coins~”
- What?
- T, two…?
- Two thousand?!”
The appearance of another unexpected bidder surprised everyone in the audience including Isabelle who was astonished after confirming who it was.
“Korin-dongsaeng~”
A returning 3rd year student, and the Saintess of the Order who was supposed to be at the Chapel of Zeon right now… Estelle was waving her hand at Korin with a smile on her face.
“Why are you here?!”
Korin was confused. If she wanted to have a meal together, why didn’t she just come any other time? Why bother using so much money to…
“T, two thousand and one gold coins…”
“Three thousand! I just finished my match.”
- ‘Match’? Is she talking about the Tournament? I thought the quarter-finals began 30 minutes ago?
- Did she just beat her quarter-final opponent in a flash or something?
Everyone in the auction was appalled and so was Isabelle, who was starting to feel nauseous.
She was increasing the bid by one gold coin, while the opponent was raising it up in thousands. A thousand gold coins was a massive leap. One gold coin amounted to a month’s expenses of a four-person family and yet… a thousand of them?
There were rumors these days about how the Saintess had gone crazy and it seemed that those rumors had been true all along.
“Ms. Junior Isabelle~. I know who asked you to come here, but are you sure you’re alright? That’s not your money, is it~?”
Saintess Estelle. The beauty with adorable pink hair was someone who couldn’t resist not having what she wanted to obtain.
“Mhmm…”
Isabelle lamented and hesitated before the biggest religious leader of the entire continent.
Of course, Estelle was far from being a direct rival of the Dunareff in terms of financial power. In the end, she was a Saintess and a religious leader of the Order, and not a businessman making a profit from business models.
There wouldn’t have been any problems had Estelle been “nothing but a Saintess”.
Estelle Hadassa El Rath. She was one of the only two heirs to the throne in this country and had recently confiscated the material possession of the traitor pope and the cardinals.
A faithful saintess would have gladly used that money for the Order, but Estelle no longer fell in that category.
The unfaithful believer, who discarded the fake god and found a new faith along with a big aspiration of becoming the Goddess of the Earth herself, swallowed the entirety of their wealth for herself and confiscated an amount that even the Dunareff wouldn’t be able to scoff at.
Naturally, it was impossible for Isabelle to know the ins and outs of everything happening, but regardless, she did not have the guts to compete against the Saintess in this war of attrition.
Marie said she didn’t care about the amount of money required but…
From what Isabelle knew, Marie received dozens of thousands of gold coins every month as an allowance directly from Duke Marde. That didn’t include the profit she made from her mines, lands, and farms.
She was certainly super rich, and could definitely spend 100,000 gold coins in a single day and say to herself, “Ah. Let’s be a little bit more frugal next month.”
Even the Saintess wouldn’t be able to keep up with that, but it was different in this case because Isabelle was the one who had to spend the money.
“Ugh…”
Isabelle had a very average sense of money. She was a normal person who was afraid of hundreds of gold coins being spent at once let alone thousands.
- A, a, a, a, a, any more bids…? T, then that will be it.
Even the host, Rondon, couldn’t speak properly due to the astronomical amounts of money being thrown around. That was nothing strange because 3,000 gold coins… 30 white gold coins were around what normal guardians would be able to make during their entire lifetime.
Using that much money for a single meal was astounding, to say the least.
“Well! He’ll be mine for the whole day then~”
Estelle hopped onto the stage with light steps which was unthinkable for someone who just spent 3,000 gold coins. She wrapped her arm around Korin’s waist and blatantly declared to the whole auditorium.
“He is mine after all.”
Everyone was speechless at the face of her confident show of obsession.
……
…
Immediately after the auction was over, Marie looked for Isabelle with excitement in her eyes.
“Isabelle~. How did the auction go? Where is Korin?”
“Umm… Marie. You see.”
Marie was looking for the boy who wasn’t anywhere near them with a bright smile on her face. There was not a sliver of doubt in her golden eyes.
“Isabelle?”
“T, the thing is…”
Isabelle began to explain what happened, starting from the sudden interruption of Duke Marde and how Estelle took the final bid with 3,000 gold coins.
“W, why? I, I told you you can use as much money as you want…”
“Spending that much money for a single meal just doesn’t make sense… And besides, you can have a meal with Korin whenever you want to.”
“T, that’s not the important part! I mean! Of course, it is important but…!”
That wasn’t the problem here. What was important was to win, without giving anyone else an opportunity to even get near him.
“Even a million would have been fine!”
“What?! What’s wrong with you!? Wake up!!”
Isabelle started to feel afraid because Marie was, in fact, rich enough to spend that much for a single meal.
***
A suite room of a fancy hotel in the city was quickly being filled with dishes. It seemed that Estelle had made the orders beforehand as if she had never even considered defeat.
Fancy steaks and century-old wines were being placed on the table and yet the table was surrounded by silence instead of a merry and romantic atmosphere.
“...”
“...”
The reason for that was because Korin had been quietly staring at Estelle for a while without saying a word.
His eyes did not contain the kindness that they used to.
“U, uhh… Dongsaeng?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Hiing…”
“And close your mouth.”
“Mhmm… Are you, mad?”
Estelle shrank back after sensing the anger concealed in his voice. On a scale of 0 to 10 in terms of anger, he appeared to be around a 6. It was hard to say if it was on a serious level or not, but it was important because this was Estelle’s first time seeing him reach a 6 in the first place.
“I really feel like punching you, but I will hold myself back in case you get hurt.”
“Whyy…?”
“Do you really not know why?”
“I really don’t…”
She looked puzzled and clueless, and that only served to increase Korin’s anger by another level.
“You think 3,000 gold coins is a joke? Both Senior Marie and you, Saintess. I wasn’t expecting you to be so reckless.”
“I, it’s not that big a money though…”
“It is, and it’s certainly not something you should be throwing away like that.”
“Then what…! Should I have just watched Ms. Junior Isabelle buy you? If it was Duke Marde, it might have been fine, but…”
“Like, that’s not important—”
“It is to me.”
Estelle looked straight into his eyes. She too was just as serious as Korin.
“3,000 gold coins? It was a donation anyway. A large amount of money? Sure, it’s not a small amount of money, but I used it in a meaningful way and I am very satisfied by it.”
She said with a bright smile without a sliver of regret, but that only made Korin uncomfortable.
“There should be a limit though,” Korin said with a sigh, “The last thing I wanted was this whole thing looking like you were buying ribbons with your money.”
Korin’s goal was to hit the highest price and get a golden ribbon. His plan was to bid on himself through Ren and was expecting 2~30 gold coins to be the maximum price.
And he was going to fairly distribute those ribbons to the people who liked him to display his gratitude.
He couldn’t accept how the contest turned into the girls competing to buy their own ribbon.
Her face stiffened and turned serious after hearing his words.
“Buying ribbons with our money?”
“...That’s how it looks like now.”
Estelle grabbed him by one of his arms and brought it to her face so that he could touch her cheek with his large hand.
“Right. It might seem that way but both Ms. Junior Marie and I would probably do the same thing regardless.”
“...”
“What we were trying to do has nothing to do with buying ribbons. We were stopping you from being sold.”
There was no longer even a hint of mischievousness in her eyes. She knew it might seem unsightly, but she did not regret it nor was she ashamed of it in any way.
“I know why you were in the Auction Contest, and how you are attending multiple contests at once. I do get that we gave you a burden.
“But at the same time, I’m happy to see you pushing yourself. I love your seriousness and responsibility. I know. You are not someone money can buy, and money is not a way to obtain you. However…”
In her eyes were scorching flames of jealousy, envy, obsession, and her wish to possess… All those emotions were in relation to one person.
“I cannot allow it. The thought of you officially belonging to someone apart from me even for a split second… is very, very unpleasant.”
“You are assigning too much meaning into this.”
“Everyone has a different perspective.”
Estelle retracted her burning eyes and floated a smile.
“At least it means a lot to me.”
Why did she like him so much? Korin could not comprehend the fanatical obsession she had toward him.
Even before the regression, she did seem fond of him but it was within the realms of normality.
Now…
Maybe it had something to do with her turning away from her faith. The Saintess, who sang praises to the Lord, seemed to have now shifted the target of her faith to him.
“Haa… Please be careful later on. Unlike you, Noonim, I am a coward.”
“Hehe, I will! Oh right! The food’s getting cold. Do you want me to cut the steak for you?”
“I’m fine.”
Estelle poured the wine with a smile blooming on her face.
Korin decided to look at it from a positive perspective. He finally got to drink alcohol again, so he was about to bring his hands to the glass but…
- Swoosh.
That was when something crawled up from his ankle to his calf. He couldn’t tell what it was due to his long trousers obscuring his sense of touch, but knew logically that there was only one thing underneath the table that could be touching him.
“You know, Dongsaeng.”
With her chin resting on her hands, Estelle floated a seductive smile.
“Should we do something naughty together?”
Her smile was ever so charming and captivating.