Chapter 40

I picked up the largest spoon with the mindset of playing with dolls. It was the biggest of all the spoons, but not quite as big as a teaspoon. I tried to ladle soup with it, but it could only pick up less than a bite size portion.

The fork couldn’t even spear the lettuce in the salad. For a knife, it was the right size, but it was too toned down, and even meat that had been roasted to be very tender couldn’t be pierced through the surface with this knife.

”That’s funny.”

As if in jest, I picked up the cutlery one by one. Touching the still steaming food in front of me with them. I wanted to see if I could eat this or not.

‘God knows how Emily was so determined to bring the food despite her poor attitude in the kitchen?’

Memories suddenly flashed through my mind, indeed.

Even if the food assigned to the Duke-sama was rotten and treated her unequally, the lethargic people working in the kitchen seemed as if they wouldn’t be punished.

After being threatened by me, Emily brought me back a ton of healthy food. Further, whenever I told her what I wanted to eat, she was ambiguous about making it and bringing it.

‘I’ll have to give her a reward for that when I get back to my room.’

At this moment, I feel a little sorry for cumming up an iron wall between Emily. In addition, I pondered and gazed at the dishes that had been randomly stirred together on my dinner plate.

‘I’d better give up on eating these.’

As a result, I didn’t take a single bite into my mouth. As I expected, the Duke and those two brothers couldn’t figure out whether I was eating or playing with food.

This was the situation Penelope was in.

“The celebration is coming to an end.”

The meal was already going on near the end. The Duke took a sip of wine and opened his mouth.

And I, the first target.

“It’s the last day, aren’t you going out?”

“Uh-huh.”

Driven by emotional anger, I answered him directly.

Penelope would definitely go out on the last day of the festival.

I didn’t want to do that, and I didn’t want to please the Duke, because I couldn’t even touch these precious suggestions of good reserves in front of myself.

Regardless, my cold and icy attitude immediately attracted the attention of my elder brother and second brother, with goodwill shining through.

”Hey, you two sharp guys.”

I turned my sight to the Duke and tried to display a smile.

“I’m still in confinement.”

“Tch, you’ve used your grounding rhetoric a million times.”

The Duke mumbled as if he didn’t agree with my answer.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen a fool who would confine himself for a mere slave.”

Leonard was sarcastic. None of the men responded to him, as if the incident had never happened. I wasn’t expecting anyone to step in and drink him out of this either, so I didn’t care and wasn’t going to put an end to it myself.

“Today, I asked you to dine with me for another reason.”

It was at this moment that the Duke told me the real reason why he had called me here.

“It’s for the hunting convention that’s about to start.”

‘…… Hunting convention?’

I contemplated the contents of the game. But didn’t immediately recall such an event.

“This time it’s also held in the forest north of the palace.”

The Duke elegantly put down his cutlery and then spoke.

“As you all know, this hunting convention is of great significance. With the Crown Prince as the vanguard at the front, the royals and nobles who have become affiliated countries will participate, and rare animals representing each country will also be released.”

“Those who do not support the Crown Prince’s participation in the war do not agree with this resolution. At a juncture like this, it’s best for us to consolidate our position.”

“That’s why, at last night’s meeting of the nobles, Eckhardt also expressed his willingness to participate in this hunt.”

In short, what he said had nothing to do with me at all. While I was listening to the Duke’s words in a trance, I suddenly remembered the “Hunting Conference” event in the game.

[Every quarter, the Ioca Empire holds a hunting convention. Indirectly, it puts pressure on the rare animals and slaves of the defeated country.]

I saw a brief background description of this event when I played the normal mode.

However, there was no way for the heroine to participate in this hunting convention. Penelope was jealous of the attention she received from the male protagonists, so she secretly poisoned the “real daughter”.

The heroine, who couldn’t make it to the hunt, had to hang out at her house, thus increasing Ikris’s favorability. That was the moment when Penelope’s last hope was extinguished.

After that, the angelic heroine convinces the Crown Prince to cancel the hunting tournament because she can’t stand to see the empire continue to engage in such cruelty.

At the end of the Crown Prince’s line, Penelope is tortured in order to reveal all the atrocities she has committed against the heroine.

It was a form of torture in which the heart was frozen alive so that it would not die, and then she was spoon-fed the poison that had been used to poison the heroine. Penelope’s face even melted cruelly from the poison.

Ah!

A series of vivid illustrations came to mind, and I instinctively paused and shuddered. Immediately afterward, the Duke, who had been talking about the meeting of nobles, suddenly turned to me.

“Penelope.”

“Yes, yes?”

I didn’t even listen to what he was saying, and I stammered in response like a surprised fool. Good thing the Duke didn’t care.

“By the vote of this meeting, the ban on female participation has been lifted.”

“The ban on competing ……?”

“Yes…what do you think?”

I couldn’t immediately respond to the Duke’s question.

‘What’s that?’

I don’t know which way Penelope can use to fight in the Hunting Assembly. It’s really disturbing.

Just as I was hesitating, the duke asked me again if I wanted to participate in the hunting convention.

“If you’re going to participate, I’ll inform them to refurbish your hunting equipment along with it.”

“Father!”

Just then, with a thud, the pink-haired one pounded on the table and yelled.

“That lunatic, no, this woman, she did those things last year, and she’s sure to do that again this year!”

“Leonard.”

The Duke called to him in displeasure

“Whenever that group of noble ladies from the Hunting Assembly gather, I want to petition for this scoundrel-like fellow to be locked up in an underground prison naked ……!”

Although the duke had already spoken out to stop it, Leonard had been staring at me with an angry gaze up to that point in his speech, and his teeth were chattering, a gaze that looked like he was trying to kill the rebel.

First of all, we have to figure out the status quo. I brazen it out like Penelope.

“What did I do?”

“You’re asking because you don’t know?”

Of course I’m asking because I don’t know. Why would I ask you if I knew?

I wanted to throw that right in Leonard’s face, and was dangerously close to blurting it out. But I had to be patient. In order to get the full story, I had to provoke him into telling it all.

Instead, I got the answer from an unexpected source.

“You pestered and demanded a crossbow that none of the other ladies had any interest in making.”

Unlike Leonard, the calm voice made me turn my head. A soft whisper from the Duke’s eldest son, who was currently gazing at me with those blue eyes.

“Surely you’ve forgotten that despite its danger, you still carried it around with you, then stormed out of the tea party talking about killing Countess Kailin and her followers, and were finally subdued like a beast by the close guards.”

“As a result, for quite some time there were rumors circulating that someone in the Eckhardt family had taught a chimpanzee to use a crossbow.”

As soon as Derrick’s words left his mouth, a cold and toned prickly smile appeared on Leonard’s face.

‘It’s over ……

I couldn’t answer a single word because I couldn’t get away from this unpleasant evil.

But it wasn’t as surprising or shocking as I had mentally anticipated.

‘Yeah, she’s supposed to be the most evil villain in the game, that’s what she’s supposed to do.’

It wasn’t one of those rogue-like drunken crawling around on the floor situations you see from time to time, either; it was a route that could be controlled.

“Enough, I can be sure she’s sorry enough.”

I stayed silent, however the Duke drank in the two men. The timing of this wasn’t bad, though I had already been reprimanded a bit.

When both of his sons had shut up, the Duke looked at me with a solemn seriousness in his eyes and a hint of warning.

“You remember, don’t you, the words of Eckhardt, the weight of a thousand pounds, Penelope.”

“Yes, I will not let you down this time, father.”

I replied immediately. I could hear my teeth scraping on one side, and thought to myself if only I had medicine.

“Good, that’s all I wanted to say.”

The Duke tapped down the bell on the table as if to announce that the speech was over. Thereafter the door to the dining room was opened and a head chef stepped in pushing a cart. It was the dessert.

‘I didn’t even get to eat anything, what kind of dessert is this?’

I gazed at that head chef with frustrated eyes and watched as she put down a different dessert for each person.

The middle-aged woman called Lady Donna had long been in charge of the kitchens in the Duke’s residence. And it showed just how well the kitchen knew their taste preferences.

There was a cup of black tea in front of each of the Duke and Derrick, and placed at Leonard’s table was a plate of handmade cookies.

I was going to be next. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter to me because I was already a sweet person.

‘What’s this?’

Regardless, unable to make a choice, I could only look at the plate in front of me and frown lightly. It was a flavorful milk pudding.