Chapter 104. Meeting with the Duchess

“I’m so sorry!” Nicole repeated yet again to the back of the servant that was leading us out from the Emperor’s office and to the next place. “Please, please forgive me!”

The servant remained quiet and just walked without saying anything. Nicole’s small display of power and confidence burned the red carpet in Lodrick’s office, leaving behind nothing but a hole on the ground where the stone below it was blackened. It seemed like she still needed a bit more practice with both her fire control and the magical clothes’ features to ensure that it wouldn’t burn things that she didn’t want to burn.

Lodrick didn’t mind it at all, as he just dismissed it by saying that he’ll just get a new one. The only thing that he really cared about was that I helped him with his request, so a random red carpet that could be replaced by the afternoon wasn’t a big deal.

“He already said that it was fine. You should stop apologizing,” I said to the girl, placing my hand on her shoulder.

“B-but!” She quickly turned to look at me. “Do you have any idea how expensive that thing probably is?! It’s in the office of THE Emperor! There’s no way in hell I can pay that thing if they charge me for it!”

“He said he wasn’t going to,” I said, letting go of her shoulder as I looked forward once more.

“Do you really trust him that much?! You know what he told us yesterday… H-he could come find me whenever I’m not aware of it and, and—!” she suddenly stopped walking, her face gloomy as she looked down.

“That’s not going to happen…” I said once more, stopping a couple of steps ahead of her to turn and look at her. “And even if he did, he knows that he’ll get issues with me.”

“He could send money assassins!” She exclaimed, looking with glassy eyes at me, “He could find me in the hotel room, and I might wake up to see a shadowy figure at the end of the bed, with—with—with a receipt that said I owed millions of dollars to him now!”

I was dumbfounded by the thing that she said. There was no way that Lodrick would do such an absurd thing over something so minor. But seeing the girl on the verge of tears, I sighed and walked over to her, placing a hand on her head as I shook mine.

“If you think that I might not be able to protect you, just tell Asteora about it.”

“Hnng…” Nicole replied with a pout and looking down. “I think that if I told her that, she’s going to actually send someone like that to the hotel room and use it as training…”

“It’s going to be okay. You worry too much,” I said and let go of her as I continued walking behind the servant. “Come on. We still have to meet with Duchess Flameheart.”

She lagged behind me for a moment, but didn’t take much longer to walk to my side with a pout on her face. We didn’t say much on the way as we did a few turns and went down a few stairs. Eventually, we reached the place where we were supposed to meet with the Duchess.

In front of us were a couple of large double doors made out of dark wood with intricate designs on it. But the striking detail that I hadn’t noticed on other doors was that at the side of the door, the name ‘Flameheart’ was engraved in golden words.

“This is Her Ladyship Flameheart residence,” the servant said with a gesture of her hand to the door.

“Residence?” Nicole asked; the same thing that I wanted to know.

“Yes,” the servant said, failing to elaborate on our question as she moved over to the door and gave it a couple of knocks.

Soon after, the doors were opened, and a young servant woman stood on the other side, looking surprised at both me and Nicole, before turning to look at the servant that led us here. “Yes?”

“We are here to see Duchess Flameheart,” I said, causing the girl to look at me.

She tilted her head in confusion. “I don’t remember there being anyone like you expected to be here at this time…”

“She didn’t mention us?” I asked.

“Did she…?” the girl replied, placing a finger on her chin as she looked up, seemingly trying to remember, but after a moment, she just shook her head. “Nope. I don’t remember anything about this. Sorry.”

“Would you mind telling her that we’re here?” I asked, frowning slightly at this seemingly clueless young woman.

“Her Ladyship doesn’t take surprise visits unless they’re from very important people—like His Majesty, for example—so… you’re going to have to send a letter, or an ‘eeee-mail’ if you want to talk to her,” the girl said with another shake of her head, then taking a step back and placing her hands on the doors. “Well then…”

“Wait,” I quickly said, but the girl was ignoring me with a soft smile as she moved to close the doors.

“Sofia, who is there?” a woman’s voice came from deeper in the place, causing the girl to stop her movements when the doors were half-way closed.

She quickly turned to look to her left. “Oh, it’s just a couple of women I hadn’t seen before, so I just told them the procedure to meet with you.”

There was no response from the other side, but I could hear the steps of someone getting closer and I could see the servant girl’s face focused on the person coming. Once the woman was close enough, the girl let go of the doors and opened them to let us see Duchess Flameheart standing on the side.

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“Ah, Radiance Althea, it’s good to see you here so soon,” she said, turning to look at the servant girl, “Please let them inside, and bring us something to drink.”

“Were you expecting them?” the girl asked with a tilt of her head. “I don’t recall that…”

“I was indeed expecting them…” she said with a glance at me. “Just not so soon.”

“Okay…” the servant girl replied with a confused frown as she turned to leave somewhere deeper in the residence.

“Please, come in,” Flameheart said, turning around and gesturing to us to follow.

Once we were inside the place, I was finally able to take in the place. It was a wide place, but looking from side to side, all I could think of was the expensive apartments that one would see in movies and in this world.

There were elegant black couches with a strange design that was exactly like the ones I’d see in this world; paintings that were like photographs, and strange decorations that matched the things in the pictures; small, circular light bulbs that shone from the ceiling; and the most striking thing of all, a large TV on a wall, not too different from the one in my home, only that this one was about twice as big.

“Oooh…” Nicole exclaimed as she looked everywhere. “This looks quite modern. It’s nothing like everywhere else here.”

“That’s exactly what I was going for,” Duchess Flameheart followed up, “I really like the kind of designs that this world has, so when I was given a place to stay in the Imperial Palace, I immediately transformed it to match the aesthetic of this world.”

“A place to stay?” I asked, “You mean to say that this is the place where you live in? In the Imperial Palace?”

She nodded and walked over to look at one of the paintings. “That’s right. All the Lords and Ladies of the Empire have a place to stay in the Imperial Palace. The Emperor has no need for such a big place, and we no longer have the territories of our world, so a lot of us found a place to make ours inside the large Palace. The idea of living in the same building that someone else owned, and owning a piece of that building for oneself was something outrageous at the start but… I like it. It’s easier to manage.”

“I can’t imagine all the other nobles are comfortable like this,” I said as I walked over to stand next to her.

She nodded. “You are correct. A lot of them preferred finding a small house outside the Imperial Palace… but plenty of them eventually moved here, since a house in the city would place them too close to the peasants.”

“So are there a lot of them here?” I asked, taking in the details of the painting.

It was a black and white picture without a frame of a large city that I had only seen in movies and online. The buildings were much, much taller than the ones in the place I was living, and there was even a large body of water right next to the buildings.

“Only the ones that are still in the good graces of the Emperor. They might not like what he’s doing, but they don’t refuse to help him either,” she said with a chuckle. “That little display of defiance that you faced yesterday was nothing more than them letting out their frustrations—and I fear that they might have grown even bigger now that the ‘Hero of the Holy Gods’ turned out to not be on their side either.”

“Hm…” I pondered, “Will that be a problem?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. They might just make things a bit annoying, but none of them would dare raise their fist to the current Emperor. Most of us know the kind of man that he really is, and while living under his wing, it would be very easy for His Majesty to swallow you whole,” she said, turning to look at the servant girl approaching with a few drinks in her hand. “I take it that you’re here because of the offer from yesterday, correct?”

“That’s right,” I replied, and followed after her since she was making her way to a dark wood table with a glass panel on top of it.

She sat down and carefully took hold of a glass full of a dark liquid; soda most likely. She sipped from it and sighed right after. “So?”

I sat down across from her, with Nicole sitting on the chair closest to mine. The servant girl placed the same drink in front of me and Nicole. However, I just looked ahead at the Duchess and nodded my head. “I’ll be taking your offer.”

“So soon?” she asked, not a bit surprised by my response, however.

“I already agreed to aid the Emperor, and I figured I could use all the help I could get to do what he’s asking,” I replied, taking hold of the cold glass, but not moving it from its spot.

“Ah I see. I would ask what that is, but I wouldn’t want to intrude into the deals that His Majesty does, so I—”

“I have to destroy the Followers of Leyfall, and rid the world of the beliefs that I spread,” I interrupted.

The Duchess looked at me with raised eyebrows for a moment. “That seems… rather intense… but I guess that it would be something that would fall on the Hero of the Holy Gods.”

“It is indeed my responsibility,” I replied with a nod, and taking a sip from the drink.

I never liked these sorts of drinks. They were far too sweet and felt somewhat strange on my throat, but a lot of people loved them for some reason, like the Duchess that kept taking sips from it.

“Then… where shall we start?” she asked.

“I remember you saying that you had people in the kingdom closest to the Empire, and I heard that there’s new technologies from this world that can use magic, specifically, a so-called ‘Magic Battery’,” I said, looking straight at her eyes. “I wish to get one of those.”

“That is… quite the thing you’re asking for…” the Duchess replied with surprise on her face. “Though, I might be able to get a few people to ask about it… but I can’t assure you that you’ll get one.”

“It’s not urgent, but it will greatly help me,” I said. “I also wish to make use of some of your people.”

“Oh? And what would you need?”

“I need help changing the people’s perception of the Holy Gods.”

“That’s quite surprising, coming from the Hero of the Holy Gods herself,” she said with a soft smile. “But… that’s already something that even His Majesty is having a hard time doing, so even if I put my people to work on that, at the end of the day, it might be impossible to change the people’s mind.”

“It’s fine. What’s important is that people don’t act in the same way as they did in the past—mainly that they don’t attack demons, goblins, ogres, and things like that.”

“If that’s what you want… I can place a few people to do that… but that’s not what we’ve been focused on the past few years. Ours has been mostly a trade of knowledge and culture,” she said finishing the drink in one fell swoop. “I’ll work on the magic battery first while looking at ways to do that, though…”

I waited for a moment for her to continue, but she just thought about something with her eyes on the empty glass, so I eventually pressed her. “What is it?”

“You might not like it… but Duke Garlford might be the better choice for your second request. Him and a lot of his people seem to be completely loyal to you—or at least the idea of you—to the point that I think they’d put aside the Holy Gods just to please you. So… if you’re really in need of it, you might be able to get what you want from him.”

I frowned deeply in response as I looked at the dark drink in front me. There was no desire within me to deal with that man, but if he could really be of use, just like in the times of the Final War, then changing the people’s perception might not be impossible.

As I was pondering about the idea that the Duchess presented, there was a knock on the entrance of the place. We turned to look to the side at it, and the servant girl quickly moved over to tend to it. There was an ominous feeling from it… mostly because of the person that I was thinking about, but since this wasn’t my home, I couldn’t just order the girl to ignore it.

In one swift motion, the girl opened the door.

“Ah…! Welcome. Please come in!” she exclaimed with a pleasant smile and I looked with widened eyes at the person that walked in.