/
10. Night Market
“Radis
!”
Yves Russell, who had come to her room to find her, stopped in his tracks as he saw this strange sight.
The maids of the mansion were huddling together on a sofa in the drawing room as they were looking intently at a book.
In the middle of the huddle was Radis, who was the one reading a book beside Berry. She looked up at Yves.
“Marquis?”
Startled by what she said, the maids moved away from the book and jumped to their feet.
While Yves was trying to find his words, the maids quickly arranged the seats and left the parlor, as though they were a low tide at sea.
Still taken aback, Yves spoke.
“Did I disturb you?”
Radis closed the book she was reading.
“Well, it couldn’t be helped.”
“What were you reading?”
“It’s a book that April lent to me after hearing about the play. Everyone wanted to read it, so I was reading it out to them.”
Yves picked up the book and checked the front cover.
Seeing how crude the cover was, it seemed to be a clumsily made copy.
The title was 〈 Knight Angela 〉.
It seemed to be the original novel of the play that Radis and Yves watched together.
Holding the book in his hand, Yves narrowed his eyes and glanced at Radis.
‘Come to think of it, I did hear that she learned swordsmanship.’
When he first investigated Radis, he recalled Allen’s report to have something written about that.
Though he didn’t pay it any mind.
“Anyway!”
Yves tossed the book aside and continued to talk.
“I didn’t come here to talk about this. I want to give a gift of gratitude and apology towards you, Miss Stepping Stone, and it would be lovely if this could encourage you and cheer you up for the future. What would you like? Is there anything you want?”
“What? No, it’s fine. I didn’t do anything.”
“You were really angry back then. It’s my token of apology, so anything at all, just tell me!”
Radis was about to refuse, but she was captivated by the word ‘anything’.
Yves smiled as soon as he saw her expression.
‘Yes, yes, think about it, Miss Stepping Stone! 
No, I mean, Miss Golden Goose
!’
As he exchanged glances with Olivier back in the theater that day, Yves could feel something like a sense of conviction he had never felt before.
Yves Russell had constantly been trying to break through Olivier’s impregnable barrier all this time.
The marquis hated social gatherings to the point that he’s gotten sick and tired of it all, but he diligently attended all the imperial banquets and visited the northern region to the point that the threshold of the teleportation gate had gotten worn out.
His recent effort was holding Olivier’s birthday banquet—he poured out a lot of money and manpower for it.
However, Olivier reacted coldly to everything.
What’s up with that begrudging reaction.
Yves had poured out more than a thousand gold for a banquet that lasted only a night, but he heard not one word of thanks from the prince.
‘Hateful jerk.’
In comparison, he barely had to lift a finger to take Radis out of the Tilrod household and tout her in front of Olivier.
He didn’t even expect for his reaction to be that big.
At the theater that day, Yves could finally feel that he had gotten one step closer to Olivier.
However, the road would be difficult to tread in the future, and Radis’ help would be essential along the way.
‘For that, it would be necessary for me to please this unnecessarily powerful golden goose.’
At that time, Radis opened her lips after thinking about it.
“I
”
Yves welcomed her words and spoke up.
“Say whatever you want. A new dress? Jewelry?”
“No, I have enough of those. What I need is a sword.”
With his excitement dying down, Yves looked at Radis with an increasingly blank face, then he glanced down at the books piled up next to her.
‘You’ve gotten some false hope after reading that novel, huh.’
Radis hesitated for a moment, but she continued speaking.
“If possible, I hope it’s a sword made of iron that’s reinforced by mana. A normal longsword is enough.”
Yves glared at the book for a second, then nodded.
“Aha, reinforced with mana.”
“And
 The simpler the shape of the hilt, the better.”
“Oho, did you read about that in the book?”
“Pardon?”
Seeing Yves Russell’s expression, Radis flinched.
There was a reason why Radis was hesitating like this.
She knew that mana-reinforced iron was extremely expensive.
She would never have been able to have one in her previous life if not for Robert. He noticed that she could wield mana, so he gave one to her as a gift.
‘But you told me to tell you what I want
’
Radis’ shoulders shrank, then she added.
“Or a smallsword is fine, too
”
Yves nodded.
“Okay.”
“Really? It’s fine?”
“I think it’s far from the gift I imagined I would give, but I’m the one who said that you can ask anything you want.”
Yves then left the drawing room in disbelief.
“She must have really enjoyed the novel. Gosh, how can there be a person in this world who’s so flabbergasting.”
Radis seemed to have learned some swordsmanship in the past, perhaps even to the extent of self-defense.
However, since she read a novel where the protagonist was a female knight, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that that’s why she wanted a sword now.
It was pretty typical of a girl to think like that.
“The writer seems to have done quite some research, seeing that she knows about mana reinforcement and the hilt shape. Goodness me, she’s just really
 Right now, I would even buy her a gem worth about one billion rupens, but a sword? One sword
? Would she even use it?”
Yves headed to his office, pressing down on the bridge of his nose as he was lost in thought.
* * *
“M’not doing it. Won’t do it. Can’t do it.”
Lux, the captain of the Russell Marquisate’s subjugation team, jerked his head fwick, fwick, fwick, three times as he said no.
“If you’re not doing it, how come you’re not. If you won’t do it, how come you won’t. If you can’t do it, how are you going to handle the repercussions?”
Marcel, Marquis Russell’s aide, retorted quickly, tapping the thick red oak table three times in succession.
Lux shouted indisputably.
“Do you know how wide the Marquisate is? In winter, the subjugation squad is divided into three groups and we all have to go around the wide domain! But what now? You want us to go until the reclaimed land of the settlement areas?”
“That’s why you should’ve recruited more people last summer.”
“I did! Marcel, listen to me. Even if 100 people get recruited, barely 50 of them could be deployed. And I’m telling you, in winter, 20 out of those 50 would quit and say they can’t do it anymore. Then, 30 people will be left. After a month, 15 of them get injured or get poisoned by demonic energy. And then at the end of winter? Everyone disappears! It’s a cycle that repeats every year!”
“Then you should’ve recruited 200 people.”
“I was going to! But that Ardon—that friend—took away all the men I was going to pick!”
Ardon was the head of the Knight Order of the Black Lion under the Marquis himself. The Black Lion Knights were the marquis’ regular knights.
Naturally, that knight order’s treatment was different from the subjugation team, which hunted demonic monsters.
Therefore, if they opened recruitments at the same time, the inevitable result was that the talented young people would flock to the other knight order.
With a depressed tone, Lux spoke.
“Anyway, it’s going to be too much to head even to the reclaimed land.”
Marcel became annoyed.
“Then come up with an alternative. Unless you’re asking me to tell the Marquis that you can’t do it, are you?”
“Alternative?”
Lux looked at Marcel with a face that was saying, ‘what alternative?’
With that dubious expression, Marcel opened and closed his mouth as though he was a goldfish, trying to suppress the rising anger within him.
“Right now
”
At that moment, the door to the office opened right then.
Marcel rubbed their eyes as cloudy fog had come in through the door.
As they opened their hazy eyes and squinted at the door, who they saw standing there was

Demon Lord.
“What are you going to tell me?”
No, it was Marquis Russell.
His voice sounded as if it came from the depths of the earth itself.
“I think I heard something about it being too much to go to the reclaimed land.”
Yves Russell’s tangled hair made it look like he had horns sticking out of his head, and the black cloak over his shoulders was like the wings of a demon lord.
Marcel thought it was fortunate enough that Marquis Russell covered his eyes with his long fringe.
No one had ever seen Marquis Russell’s eyes, but some testify that his pupils were vertical, yet others say they were horizontal.
The most terrible rumor was that there allegedly was a person who looked into the marquis’ eyes and was turned into stone.
That’s why sponsorships on stones were increasing without him knowing.
Lux exclaimed.
“I shall do a poem for the first letters of ‘Reclaimed Land, Impossible’!”
“R.”
“Reclaimed land subjugation!”
“L.”
“Lying and pretending. That’s the enemy!”
“I.”
“I
 I shall work harder than ever before
!”
Marcel sighed as he watched Lux shouting while his eyes gradually gathered tears.
‘That’s why I’m telling you. If you don’t think you can do it, just come up with an alternative. You won’t be able to say anything in front of His Excellency
’
After Lux left the office—in tears—Yves sat on a chair with a relaxed expression as though nothing had happened. Then, he opened his lips to speak.
“If there’s a shortage of manpower in the subjugation squad, then assign the squad to the farther areas and entrust the nearby areas to the knight order. There’s nothing for them to do during winter anyway.”
“Winter is an important period for training the knights, as far as I know.”
“Is extra training the knights of the Marquisate more important than them going out there and protecting the land? This could be considered training, too, anyway. Send an order to the knightage.”
“I understand.”
While Marcel was writing the order, Yves looked at a list of weapons in the arsenal, then after he skimmed through them, he spoke once more.
“Is the novel 〈 Knight Angela 〉 that famous?”