Chapter 56
Time, too, flows differently
Lea was making various preparations for Calix. Espers he could entrust his back to on the battlefield, and funds he could pull in and use at any time.
Lastly, she was searching for people in the palace who could immediately take Calix’s side. And the first person she intended to approach had already been decided.
Eric de Brewer, the third son of the Minister of the Palace and the Commander of the Third Imperial Guard, was an Esper well worth recruiting for several reasons.
The Cantabrian Imperial Guard was composed of three chivalric orders. The First Imperial Guard was under the direct command of the Emperor, the Second under the direct command of the Empress, and lastly, the Third Imperial Guard was under the direct command of the Crown Prince.
However, the Brewer family, who wished to receive guiding from Bianca, blocked the budget that was supposed to be allocated to the Crown Prince’s Palace at the Empress’s request, neglecting the Crown Prince despite their duty to protect him.
Honestly, Lea felt more like strangling him than recruiting him, but she calmed her emotions, recalling the things she herself had done in the past. Right now, she had to think first about what he needed.
“Rose, I want to go on a picnic.”
Rose was a little surprised at Lea’s words. It was only natural to be surprised, since Lea, who hadn’t left the palace in months, suddenly wanted to go out and have fun.
“Please wait just a moment. I’ll get things ready right away.”
“Mm, please.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, there’s no need to pack too much.”
“Understood, Milady.”
After Rose left, Lea closed her eyes and thought quietly. Thanks to Derek’s recent efforts, she was able to set up the merchant guild smoothly. For now, it was just a small merchant guild, but she planned to grow it greatly before long.
Before her regression, she had sorted out the popular items among the public by time period. She planned to purchase them in advance and sell them at a high price when the time came.
Lea could remember almost all the trendy goods up until the outbreak of the war.
Back then, she had desperately tried to get close to the nobles, and she managed the sales of the merchant guild her mother operated in secret from the Emperor.
For a moment, memories of the past made Lea’s eyes turn cold. The reason she hadn’t hesitated to establish a merchant guild to confront her mother was, ironically, because of Bianca.
If anything, she supposed she should be glad that her past efforts could finally shine now.
In the past, no matter how she matched her dresses to the trends or wore accessories, the nobles were always busy mocking her.
‘I need more funds. I’ll have to sell all the accessories I have.’
She had expected that the merchant guild would require a significant amount of money, but she hadn’t thought it would be this much. The situation was growing bigger than she had imagined, but to wage a war, a huge amount of capital was necessary, so there was no other choice.
This time, too, the Emperor would likely turn a blind eye. Bianca, who had always been extravagant, would never let military funds flow anywhere near the army.
Besides, she probably didn’t even want Calix to win the war. In fact, she might have wanted him to die there.
‘If Calix’s unit lost just as Mother wished, then what would she have planned to do?’
If they surrendered to the Empire of Leonis, they would certainly become a vassal state or, being of the imperial family, face execution. Unless Bianca was a fool, she couldn’t have truly wished for defeat.
‘Or did she have some hidden card she was counting on…?’
Lea felt a strange sense of unease.
‘I should look into it. Hm, but I don’t know any other werebeasts.’
Before coming here with her mother, she had lived among the fox tribe and had never met werebeasts from other tribes.
And she couldn’t just go and ask her own tribe, either.
No, she wouldn’t be able to find them anyway. Her mother had killed them all before fleeing.
That was why she and her mother, though werebeasts, could never return to the Leonis Empire, the werebeast nation. Her mother was a major criminal who had slaughtered her own kind. Of course, Lea, who had been by her side, would be named as an accomplice as well.
‘…We’ll pay for it together, Mother.’
At the start of this life, Lea had made a vow to herself. Once she had atoned to Calix, when the time came, she would kill her mother with her own hands and follow after her. That was the only way to atone to her tribe.
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