Chapter 53: Chapter 53 – Deliberating

Scarlett felt the onset of a headache as she languidly leaned back in her chair. She had been feeling stressed out the whole morning now.

Right now she was in one of the offices in the capital mansion. It was mostly empty, the only decoration here a couple of bookcases at the edge of the room and the desk in front of her. She didn't really need more than that right now, so the plain nature of the room didn't bother her much.

The ball had already ended the night before, so that wasn't what was stressing her out now. While it had been far from a pleasant experience— by any definition of the word—and the only true silver lining was that she appeared to have managed to avoid committing any further large mistakes during the ball itself, she didn't feel the need to excessively worry about it now that it was over.

The ending of the night had also turned out relatively calm, all things considered. After her interaction with Leon, no more people had approached her, and when things had finally started dying down and people started leaving she had been led back to the carriage and been allowed to leave the palace without any real issues.

She had been a bit surprised over the whole divorce talk Leon had brought up with her, but it wasn't really something she cared that much about. From what she remembered he wasn't a bad man, but she hadn't been planning on actually marrying him to start with. He was still essentially a stranger to her, and one who had a pretty poor image of her. If their end decided to end things that just made it easier on her.

No, the current problem was none of that, but rather Evelyne.

To say that their ride back had been comfortable would be a straight-out lie. Their current situation was...awkward, at best. Scarlett had fully expected Evelyne to tear into her about what she'd done during the Proclamation ceremony, but instead, the younger woman had stayed quiet the entire ride back to the mansion.

Scarlett wasn't entirely sure how to interpret that.

While she had managed to get a decent night's sleep despite the events of the previous day, that hadn't meant much this morning. Evelyne had been missing during breakfast—not that unusual of an occurrence between the two sisters, if Scarlett were to guess—but her absence had been especially noticeable today. Doubly so as she had been spending a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what she should say to her.

To keep her mind off of things for a bit, Scarlett had spent a couple of hours after that going through the [Bag of Juham] to create an account of all the loot they'd picked up from Temisbrook Glade, but that had only gotten her so far.

After that, she had started scanning through her little red book, going through her notes and trying to get a sense of which of her current plans might get affected by or derailed because of what happened at the Elysian Proclamation. Unfortunately, there were a lot of things she was still unsure of when it came to how far-reaching the consequences of that were, so she had been somewhat limited in her conclusions.

One upside was that attending the Elysian Proclamation had apparently been considered a quest by the system—which it definitely hadn't been in the game—so she had gained five skill points from that on her way back at least. That meant she now had 12 skills points, which would be enough to upgrade her [Hydrokinesis] to [Greater Hydrokinesis]. Her hydrokinesis was a bit limited in what it could do right now, but considering the increase in effectiveness that she had seen after upgrading her pyrokinesis she had high expectations.

A knock that sounded out from the door caught Scarlett's attention.

"Enter," she said coolly.

The door opened and one of the servants entered. A black-haired woman Scarlett didn't know the name of.

The woman curtsied. "My Lady. We received a reply from the Tyndall residence."

Scarlett raised an eyebrow. That was a quick response. She'd only asked her servants to send a letter earlier this morning.

"What did they say?"

The servant seemed to hesitate. "They declined your request for a meeting, my Lady. They claimed they are preoccupied for the remainder of the Light Fest, and do not have the spare time to fit you in..."

Scarlett held back a sigh as she felt a rivulet of irritation swell up from inside.

Like hell they were busy. There was no way they couldn't spare even half an hour for her.

"Send another letter," she said. "Address it to the youngest son. Inform him I have an important business proposal, solely for him. It is something that he is guaranteed to have an interest in, and I need no longer than fifteen minutes of his time."

The servant woman curtsied. "Understood, my Lady."

Scarlett watched the woman leave as she thought about the matter. She didn't want to be too conspicuous when just setting up the meeting itself, but hopefully this would be enough to get him to at least agree to it. It would be annoying if her plans were delayed because she couldn't even meet the man.

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Turning her attention back to the desk before her, her eyes went to a pile of papers laying on it. Those were the notes she had written down detailing the items from the dungeon. It was eleven artifacts, all in all. The [Bag of Juham (Epic)], [Lifeblood's Eternal Circuit (Unique)], and [Mark of the Fey (Rare)] were items she was going to keep without question. She still wasn't really sure exactly what [Mark of the Fey] did or was, but she imagined it might be useful sometime in the future when she next interacted with creatures of the Wandering Realm.

Regarding what she would do with the rest of the items though, things were still a bit up in the air. She had asked Fynn if he wanted the [Fists of Malaise (Rare)], just to be sure, but he hadn't shown much interest in them. She would probably just end up selling most of the rare weapons that had been dropped by the suits of armor.

There was a possibility that Shin might be interested in one of the shields they'd found, [Bulwark of Courage (Rare)] and [Pastoral Glade's Bulwark (Epic)], so she was considering lending either of them to him. He was technically just temporarily in her employ, so she wouldn't straight out give it to him. They were bound to be worth a decent amount of money, after all. Especially [Pastoral Glade's Bulwark], with it being a completely undamaged epic artifact.

The other epic artifact, [Moonshadow's Crown], Scarlett was a bit unsure about as well. She would probably just auction it off with the rest of the items. Although she was trying to see if she could figure out a better use for it.

As for the rest of the loot; when they had made their way back through the dungeon they'd harvested lots of different interesting plants—mostly on Allyssa's prompting—among other things. Shin, for example, had pointed out that the wings of the [Restless Blot-Sprites] might hold some value, so they had ended up spending some time gathering those that weren't too damaged. At that point, Scarlett had slightly regretted having charred so many of them to ash with her pyromancy.

She glanced down at her right hand, where she had both the black [Ring of Umbral Defiance] and [Lifeblood's Eternal Circuit]. She was especially satisfied with the golden, carved wooden ring she had gotten from that place. She liked not feeling like as much of a walking target anymore. Though she would still have to experiment some with its limits.

Nonetheless, they had made off with a pretty good haul of loot from that excursion. She would probably get a good amount of money if she managed to sell most of it.

Of course, that was one of her current issues. She herself didn't actually have the connections to sell these things at the moment. Evelyne was the one who was more knowledgeable in that area, and the one who had handled it last time. Scarlett had kind of been banking on the same this time as well, though she had intended to learn more about it at the same time.

Scarlett looked out the office's window, into the small garden outside. Evelyne's office was on the opposite end there.

She wasn't sure what kind of mood the younger woman was in right now. It was bound to be bad, though. Scarlett certainly wouldn't have been happy had she been in Evelyne's situation, not even really understanding everything that was going on or why it was happening.

Scarlett leaned forward over the desk and rubbed her temples. The crux of the matter was Evelyne. Despite her instincts not wanting to admit it, she was heavily reliant on the woman in her current position. As such, she really had to handle this situation before it got even worse than it already was. She needed to have a talk with Evelyne. A serious talk.

A...real talk.

While she thought things were generally proceeding well for her, she couldn't go on like she had up till now. It irked her, part of the very core of her being screaming out against it, but the previous day had shown the consequences of her being neglectful. That she had to change how she handled things.

To be honest, most of what she had done up till now today could have been postponed to later. She was just having a bit of a hard time getting herself to visit Evelyne. She had gone through what she could say in her head a few times by now. Made sure it didn't sound too unreasonable. That, while not being the truth, it was close enough to seem like it.

But it was genuinely hard.

She remembered when she had forced herself to apologize to Evelyne the second time they met, and it had made her feel pretty bad. Angry. Vulnerable. Humiliated, even. But this...

Even the thought of what she was intending to do made her wince. She wasn't entirely sure she could do it, even. But she had to try. There were a lot of things she had to speak to Evelyne about. For one, Evelyne was probably her best option at finding out the exact ramifications of what she did during the Proclamation. Knowing that was vital if she wanted to better adjust her plans for the future. In addition, Evelyne might know the best ways to handle the current situation so that she didn't piss off the other nobles more than necessary. Because, truth be told, a lot of her plans relied on essentially brute-forcing her way through things with her game knowledge. Her main means of earning money was running dungeons, for instance.

What she was most afraid of right now was that she would go through with this but still fail to convince Evelyne. That would be pretty crap scenario for her. Because unlike many of the other things she had done, she didn't know a specific game detail that could help her much with Evelyne.

Scarlett tapped her finger against the desk as she stared into the air in front of her.

Well, she wouldn't get anywhere if she just stayed cooped up in here all day. The best way to remove a band-aid was to rip it off.

She pushed back her chair as she stood up and walked around the desk towards the exit.

Everything would probably go fine.

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