Chapter 87
A bowl filled to the brim with white ice cream.
Even a spoonful of honey drizzled over it.
- Nom nom nom!
A bowl of ice cream priced high enough to bankrupt an ordinary commoner’s household by medieval standards vanished into Goldie’s mouth in great gulps.
“Mmmmmmmmm~!!!”
- Whirrrrrrr!!
It must have been incredibly delicious if she was spinning that tail around like a fan.
“Is it really that good?”
- Nod nod!!
As far as Akion could remember, there had been exactly two things Goldie had ever liked that much.
When she bought cream bread at the Montblanche Enerysis branch.
And when he showed her the Enerysis streetlights at night.
Being unable to hide one’s joy was not necessarily a virtue, but it was strangely pleasant to see Goldie acting like that.
- Whirrrrr!
“Hoho, the sensation lingering in my mouth is quite nice.”
“U-um. It’s tastier than I expected?”
Since they were indoors, the Tower Master and Flare had relaxed their disguises and were wagging their tails wildly too, making them seem a little undragonlike. Anyway.
“Hey, this is really good. Akion, let’s come here every day.”
“Even though you saw how much money it costs?”
“Hmm. Considering the taxes a noble young master pays, this is really nothing— umph.”
“Stahp, Flahreh.”
To keep her from prying into Akion’s secret monthly income, he shoved a spoonful of the ice cream he had been eating into Flare’s mouth.
“Mmph… Hmm, hoo.”
“What’s wrong? Why are you getting embarrassed?”
“I don’t know….”
Of course, to Flare, this was an indirect kiss.
Unaware of that fact, Akion merely found Flare’s flustered reaction strange.
- Tap tap.
“Ah.”
Aysirel, who was sitting beside him, drew Akion’s attention and pointed to her own mouth.
She wanted him to feed her too.
“Aah~”
“Eat yours, Sis.”
“Are you really going to make your sister sad like this?”
“Why are you sad?!”
Of course, thanks to that one cold remark from Akion, who was unbelievably oblivious when it came to things like this, Aysirel went berserk and began tormenting him mercilessly.
“Save me!!”
“It’s karma, Saint.”
“Yes, yes, it’s Young Master’s karma!”
The onlookers simply called it his karma and refused to save him.
Akion was so upset that he stopped sharing and ate all of his own dessert.
“Oh-hohohoho!! Young Master Akion, you’re very close with your lovers!”
“They’re not my lovers.”
And Scarlet, who had been watching, found the whole situation absolutely hilarious.
She hated even bringing up her own love life after being dumped by Juan, her first love—that shameless bastard….
“Ahem. Lady Scarlet.”
“Hoho, I shan’t breathe a word of this outside.”
After all, watching someone else’s romance as a third party was naturally entertaining.
“Young Master, try some too! Aah~!”
“All right.”
Every single one of that dogfolk maid Goldie’s actions was dripping with foxiness.
“Why are you eating Goldie’s?”
“Why is the Tower Master upset too…? Fine, fine, I get it. Ah, ah.”
There was also the blatant display of affection from the Tower Master Ridasid, the great dragon and pillar of the Empire.
“Open your mouth.”
“I oppose violence! I oppose violence— Aagh! Don’t pinch my side—! Mmph! Mmph!”
“That’s right, hehe. Our Akion eats so well~”
And then there was the Volkov noblewoman, showering him with blatant affection while not even hesitating to resort to violence.
“Shouldn’t we help Young Master…?”
“As Your Highness knows, the Saint has no tact. Let’s leave him be.”
And then there were the Imperial Princess and the Saintess, pretending they had no feelings for Akion and were merely bound by a contract, while being unable to take their eyes off him.
“Hohoho.”
Was Akion a shameless bastard? Not at all!
He was merely clumsy. Unlike Juan, he did not treat women like flowers to be broken once they were at their prettiest.
“Gaaagh!! I get an upset stomach if I eat too much ice cream!!”
“Eit, eit, Young Master needs to eat more!”
“You have to eat sweets if you want to build muscle! Eat!!”
He simply had some sort of brake in his heart that kept him from crossing the line,
and Scarlet could see that he treasured each and every one of them.
“Ohoho, you’ll probably make a happy family.”
How much more responsible was he than that shameless bastard who threw women away once their flowers wilted!
The reason Scarlet felt so sorrowful, regretful, and furious
was because she wished Juan had possessed that kind of responsibility.
“Excuse me, Proprietress Scarlet.”
“Hoho, please feel free to call me whatever you like~!”
And after Akion had been stuffed to bursting by the women who loved him (physically), he decided to ask about something that had occurred to him while eating.
“I know this is extremely rude, but could you tell me what happened between you and my elder brother?”
“Phew… I knew my intuition was right.”
Scarlet had already noticed from the way Akion looked at her, but this was still not an easy subject to bring up casually.
“Very well. Since you punished that nasty bastard… I shall tell you the story of my passionate love affair with him.”
But for Akion, who had punished that shameless bastard, she could at least tell the story.
“It was a day when the spring breeze tickled my cheeks.”
Riding on the love of those days, she began with a florid preamble festooned with romantic embellishments.
And so the long, pitiful tale continued and continued,
until it finally reached the passionate night and the day after, when she was left all alone.
To sum it all up,
“I’m truly sorry.”
Juan had used her and tossed her aside!
Realizing that Scarlet’s hatred of the Enerysis family was justified, Akion immediately bowed his head.
“That shameless bastard didn’t even recognize the value of a young lady from another family and did something like that. Please accept my apology, inadequate though it may be.”
“You have no need to apologize, Young Master. Please raise your head.”
Juan’s behavior had been even more despicable than Akion had expected.
Just as Akion was wondering how he could punish Juan further, Scarlet raised him to his feet with a benevolent smile.
“The one who needs to apologize is that Juan bastard who does whatever the hell he wants, not you.”
“Oh….”
It was a smile formed only by her mouth.
Scarlet’s eyes were absolutely furious.
“Even so, having Enerysis’s genius magi-engineer apologize on his behalf has lightened the burden in my heart.”
Akion’s sincere bow had indeed made Scarlet feel somewhat better.
Who was Akion?
Wasn’t he the de facto head of Enerysis?
“Tsk….”
“Hmm? Young Master, did I say something inappropriate?”
“Not at all.”
Of course, Akion was annoyed with himself for being less bothered than usual by the word ‘magi-engineer,’ but anyway.
“If you wish, Proprietress, I’ll bring that shameless bastard here.”
“No, there’s no need to do that.”
Akion was happy to accommodate her, but Scarlet waved both hands and declined.
“If I see his face again, I might forgive him….”
“Oh.”
By this point, even Akion had caught on.
“Young Master, Young Master, Young Master.”
“Why are you calling me, why are you calling me, why are you calling me, Goldie?”
“That’s it, right?”
“It is.”
She still had feelings for him.
*
But that was none of Akion’s business.
“Honestly, trying to get you two back together would be incredibly shameless.”
“Why would I strike Elena’s descendant? It was all out of a parent’s concern— Akion, I would never do such a thing to you, so you don’t need to squeeze your thighs….”
According to the head butler, the number of women his brother had officially gone around seducing was already in the double digits.
Including commoners, apparently the number was in the hundreds… In a way, becoming a eunuch might have been for the best.
“But how could he possibly have no nieces or nephews?”
Even more astonishing was the fact that not a single woman had ever brought a child forward claiming it was Juan’s.
“That… is pretty amazing, even to me.”
“Hmmmm, normally, a noble young master like that would eventually get stabbed at least once… Could the Saint’s brother have been a man of great popularity?”
“Goldie can guarantee that wasn’t the case. Young Master Juan is an utter piece of trash!”
This was a glimpse into Juan’s astonishing ability to keep women dangling around him.
Of course, it wasn’t admirable.
Akion even considered confessing this to Delford and making Juan work even harder—a very Akion-like thought.
“Rumor has it he could wrap women around his finger with nothing but his silver tongue.”
Meanwhile, after hearing the testimony Flare provided, all five women turned to stare at Akion.
“What? Why?”
“Young Master is kind of affectionate….”
“Hmm. His occasional kindness is certainly….”
“When it was my turn, he told me to take as many electric heaters as I wanted, saying it was to cheer me up….”
“Seeing how he rose above his unfortunate past, I have to admit, he is quite impressive.”
“As expected, the Saint is a wonderful person!”
“I’m not.”
A misconception had been born that this was a characteristic of the Enerysis bloodline.
Of course, after awakening the memories of his past life, Akion had acquired values that were at least somewhat modern.
So, compared to the average medieval noble young master, he was kind to everyone regardless of their status.
“But Young Master, you said you had money to spare, and you’re even running improvement projects in the slums….”
“No, that’s genuinely because I have money to spare.”
In fact, judged objectively, he was someone the clergy could lavishly praise as a paragon of virtue,
“Yes, yes! Even giving away surplus wealth requires courage! As expected of the Saint!”
“……”
Afraid that the Saintess might start talking about canonizing him, Akion decided to keep his mouth shut.
“So, Akion.”
“What is it, Knight Sis?”
“What were you talking about with the Montblanche proprietress earlier?”
Grateful to Aysirel for changing the subject, Akion decided to satisfy her curiosity.
“Oh, the cooling unit?”
A pinnacle of modern engineering, born through the grace of the Great Carrier.
“I’m planning to make equipment that can produce ice cream without the help of a mage.”
“Y-Young Master! How much does it cost?! Goldie wants to be the first to buy one!!!”
A vapor-compression refrigerator.
A cooling system essential for everything from air conditioning to refrigerated and frozen storage,
he was planning to start by making a compact version of it.