Chapter 97
That day, Chloe remembered.
The fear of being ruled by dragons.
The humiliation of having been confined near the World Tree…….
“Th-That never happened! Don’t put in weird narration, desuwa!”
Of course, dragons in myth were often depicted as tyrants themselves.
They would kidnap dwarves and make them craft all kinds of precious metalwork.
Or kidnap elves and exploit them as lifelong contract butlers (unpaid), or starve them until they made magic for them.
Some of those myths weren’t entirely false, since they originated from memoirs with clear factual basis.
But for at least several decades.
Aside from the Empire’s infamous “Mad Dragon,” dragons had at least not wrought havoc upon the world.
That’s right.
Except for Mad Dragon Estea.
“We're going to see Estea?”
“Waaah! Put this down right now, desuwa!”
Chloe thrashed wildly, but both her ears were already under Kim Yul’s fingers.
So Chloe had no choice but to think back.
Of course, not the fear of being ruled by a dragon.
The fear of mistaking her for a Draconian and doting on her like crazy, only to have the tips of her ears—currently caught by Kim Yul—nibbled on for the crime of being an elf……!
“Our Nureongi doesn’t usually bite people for no reason. Did it bite you because you’re an elf?”
“As if that were possible, desuwa!”
Just as Chloe was thrashing about, trying to wriggle free from the wicked hero’s grasp.
“Oh my, what a racket.”
Another member of the hero party (confirmed).
Rozelyn arrived in response to Kim Yul’s call.
Then she tilted her head at Chloe and Kim Yul’s appearance.
“Wow, ear-grabbing? That’s awfully bold for broad daylight, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Aaaagh! No!”
At Rozelyn’s raunchy remark, made after binging “The Love Affairs of Zeus” and filling herself with romance, Kim Yul hurriedly let go of Chloe’s ears.
Normally, the moment that physical restraint was lifted, Chloe would have smoothly escaped with illusion magic.
“Is the saint coming too?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
At Rozelyn’s smile.
Chloe’s brow furrowed imperceptibly.
From the moment they first met.
Chloe had taken a slight dislike to Rozelyn.
She had thought they were on the same boat during the Zhuge Liang resurrection rally, but she was a traitor who ran away faster than anyone.
A body far too indecent for a saint.
Even that enormous chest mass, enough to make the wealth gap painfully real.
If it was that temptress.
She seemed like the type to smack Kim Yul on the back of the head on the way to the dragon lair, kidnap him, and make him write nothing but romance novels for the rest of his life.
In fact, Chloe’s deduction wasn’t exactly wrong, since Rozelyn had once actually plotted to kidnap and imprison Kim Yul.
So.
For the intellectual property rights of author Ulysses.
For Novelpia’s eternal prosperity.
My author, I’ll protect you!
“L-Let’s depart! We have to return within four days!”
As a manager, Chloe couldn’t back out here, so in the end she declared that she would join.
It was the day the open beta service of the “Ulysses” hero party began.
* * *
Just as Historié had been excluded from the hero party beta version.
In truth, Kim Yul hadn’t even planned to take Chloe along in the first place.
Of course, the reason was different.
Unlike when he had escorted Historié to a safe, comfortable home with the “let’s treasure our little tin can” mindset.
‘Would she be…… useful…… really……?’
For extremely practical reasons, Chloe, despite having her name listed right after Rozelyn’s in the hero party, had nearly been left out in the cold.
But the decisive trigger for her conscription was.
- The flow of mana is distorted in the demon realm anyway, but Chloe doesn’t have that much mana to begin with, so it should actually help her. And besides, she’s rich, right?
It was the coaxing of Chloe’s former best friend, the extremist.
Even to Kim Yul, that made sense.
Of course, they weren’t going to actually wage a full-scale war on the demon realm.
A privilege granted to the hero.
To use the demon realm’s “fast travel” service, they still had to set foot in the demon realm, so the more insurance they had, the better.
And Chloe did not disappoint.
“Let’s see, this is the Fireball Scroll, and this is the Frost Rain Scroll…….”
“How much did all that cost?”
“I grabbed it from Dad’s vault, so I don’t really know, deswa.”
“Hmm, with that many magic scrolls…… maybe we could build a giant gold Kim Yul hero statue, don’t you think?”
“Wow.”
Kim Yul, at a loss for words, could only watch Chloe’s fingers briskly counting the scrolls like banknotes.
Truly the financial power of a duke’s daughter!
Ignoring Kim Yul’s covetous gaze, she carefully inserted the magic scrolls into her spellbook one by one.
“Let’s go!”
Chloe declared the departure grandly.
.
.
.
While passing through the demon realm to conquer the dragon lair.
“Hyagyaaah! Meteor!”
Against low-level monsters that the saint could blow apart with just a flick to the forehead, Chloe flaunted her wealth to the fullest.
“Wow.”
“That’s awesome!”
There’s a saying that even a lion gives its best when catching a single rabbit.
Of course, what that proverb originally meant was the moral lesson that even easy-looking tasks should be tackled with full effort.
Reality isn’t that forgiving.
What was the reason rabbits didn’t go extinct in Australia, Austria’s knockoff, and eventually succeeded in terraforming that vast stretch of land into their own territory?
Because of rabbits’ terrifying fertility and survival ability.
And it’s obvious that if the countless rabbits’ spirits fused into the max-level rabbit, or rabbit colony, the Great Rabbit of Gluttony, even a lion fighting at full strength wouldn’t easily win.
Naturally, the wise (self-proclaimed), brilliant (self-proclaimed), and strikingly beautiful (self-proclaimed) Chloe of Wisdom, with equally outstanding looks and figure, had of course grasped such a truth across time and space.
“Root them out completely!”
“Is that really the right way to use that expression?”
“Well, I’m not fluent in demon language…….”
Extravagance was flying everywhere, enough to make her father, Duke Schnaisen, weep blood tears for three days if he found out.
Anyway, the hero party began safely taking the demon realm shortcut.
And while Chloe was squealing and shrieking.
“Of course! Of course Napoleon had a love story too, right?”
Before Rozelyn, who had activated her romance-lover mode after a long time.
“Hmm, I don’t think I’ll go too deep into the novel, but…… well, since we have time, shall we talk about it a bit?”
Kim Yul began rattling off the story without much thought.
If Beethoven had his immortal beloved ■■■■, Napoleon too had a lifelong object of both love and hate.
It was his empress.
Joséphine de Beauharnais.
But there was a reason he should have thought twice before opening his mouth.
First, Joséphine was a married woman. With a son and a daughter to boot.
In fact, at the time her name was Marie Josèphe Rose, usually shortened to Marie Rose.
Even her name already overflowed with the aura of a busty little devil with blond twintails and a goth-loli concept, who loved making blood-red roses bloom.
By the moral standards of the era, it wasn’t even that strange, and after a dazzling debut in society she went on to have numerous lovers.
She carefully strung along the passionate advances of a Corsican bumpkin whose looks hadn’t quite matured yet, and then married him for the strategic reason that his future looked promising.
So, second.
Naturally, married life couldn’t possibly be normal.
Two days after the wedding, Napoleon left for Italy.
Josephine immediately called in a younger handsome man and spent some very steamy time with him.
And when Napoleon finally realized he was being NTR’d and exploded in rage, she dug up the “modesty” card from the graveyard and swapped it in.
By then, Napoleon had already dark-evolved into a golden-sun hunk.
Of course, their final end was romantic enough.
Josephine’s last words were “Bonaparte, Elba, King of Rome,”
and Napoleon’s last words were “France, army, vanguard, Josephine,”
which made it a beautifully mutual pure-love story, since they were glued to each other’s lips until death.
When Kim Yul, who had gotten bored too, finally finished recounting all of that with commentary after commentary.
Rozelyn shed a single tear.
And then.
“Repent.”
“Ack!”
Rozelyn’s Bible smacked into Kim Yul’s head.
* * *
The hero with a bump on the head, Kim Yul.
The mage with a hole in her pocket, Chloe.
The saint driven mad by NTR romance novels, Rozelyn.
After pushing through each of their hardships, they finally reached the source of evil.
They arrived at the entrance to the dragon lair.
In the first place, it should have been tightly guarded by all kinds of alarm spells.
“So peaceful, desuwa.”
“It is peaceful.”
“Indeed.”
The hero party could enter the dragon lair proudly without any obstruction.
Of course, not just anyone could perform such a feat.
It was only possible because Kim Yul wore the dragon’s own scale, a talisman symbolizing one acknowledged by the dragon, dangling around his neck.
So they began exploring the inside of the enormous pupil with curious eyes.
Before long, a faint melody reached their ears.
And then, right after that.
“Rejected! Rejeeeeeected!”
The master of this space.
Estea’s voice rang out thunderously.