The one who spoke was, of course, Letitia.

Talesa’s appearance had already put her in a bad mood.

First, she’d watched Christine whisper with Hale for quite a while. In the end, that woman had even leaned close to his ear and said something intimate.

Letitia couldn’t hear it. But judging from Count Reed’s expression, she could more or less guess that the words had been just as suggestive as Christine’s posture.

Even so, she held herself back. There was no way she could just walk up to Hale and ask what Christine had said to him.

Then Siman went up too. Letitia could accept that a little more, because she knew Siman didn’t trust Hale. She wasn’t much of a rival.

So Letitia endured again. She told herself to wait for the match to begin. She imagined Hale displaying the same transcendent swordsmanship he had used that day to save her and Moyel.

She imagined him shining brilliantly. She imagined the reporters using magic cameras to capture the instant of his victory. And she imagined herself, like a princess honoring a champion knight, offering him flowers and a medal, becoming part of that photograph, becoming someone by his side.

But unfortunately, Hale got tangled up with Talesa too. And he even said he liked women with long legs.

Letitia was beautiful too. Her rose-colored hair and eyes gave her a huge advantage. She carried sweet styles and princess-style outfits with natural grace.

No matter how gorgeous the clothes were, they never looked tacky on her.

But compared to women like Siman and Talesa, Letitia had one fatal flaw.

Her legs were short.

She wasn’t exactly short overall, but she still needed ten-centimeter heels just to be mentioned in the same breath as long-legged beauties like Siman and Talesa.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be taller. But ever since childhood, she had been taught that being a little shorter was cuter. The maids at home said so too, and every time she attended noble banquets, people said she looked like a doll.

But today, when Hale said he liked long-legged beauties, a thought suddenly came to her.

It seemed like Hale had never once called her cute.

Could it be that Hale didn’t like girls with that kind of cute charm?

So Letitia was feeling low. Very low.

Then Talesa suddenly declared, all proud and haughty, that she was a marchioness of the Kingdom of Cathrine, while Hale hadn’t inherited his family title yet and couldn’t be counted as a duke.

That was when Letitia decided to step in.

After sensing Letitia’s hostility, Talesa’s first reaction was pure confusion. She had never meant to provoke Letitia at all.

As someone who specifically handled assassinations and intelligence work for the Kingdom of Cathrine, she naturally knew how necessary it was for the nations of the Western Continent to maintain good relations with House Childe.

In the eyes of many countries, it was better to make an enemy of the Papal Dominion than of House Childe.

In an era of relative peace, making money mattered more than anything.

What’s more, most of the time they were still fighting the surviving Demon Kings for territory. And if you wanted to seize land from Demon Kings, you needed armies and equipment.

And all of that required enormous amounts of money. Only a stable economy could keep a nation running properly.

So Talesa was baffled. Very few things could make her feel uneasy, but she absolutely couldn’t accept Letitia forming a worse impression of the Kingdom of Cathrine because of her.

When she learned that Letitia would be attending this swordsmanship exchange tournament, she had even thought it would be best if she could become friends with this little princess, who didn’t really have many friends.

“Duchess Letitia, may I ask if something is the matter?”

Talesa wanted to understand the reason.

But to Letitia, that sounded almost like provocation. Did she really think she could repeat that line and pretend nothing was wrong?

“Nothing.”

The rose-colored girl answered coldly.

That only made Talesa panic more. Of course there was something wrong. For someone in intelligence work, reading another person’s mood was a basic skill.

But she couldn’t understand why.

For someone like her, who had been raised from childhood as the hidden blade of the Kingdom of Cathrine, who had never had any romantic experience and had no interest in love at all, there was no way she could figure out that Letitia was angry because Hale had called her a long-legged beauty.

Talesa grew even more uneasy. Letitia was upset because of her, yet she didn’t even know the reason.

That was practically negligence.

Second by second, time passed. In the end, Talesa could only choose the line that would minimize the damage.

“I deeply apologize, Duchess Letitia. If I have offended you in any way, please allow me to beg your forgiveness.”

“There’s no need. Marquis Talesa has no need to apologize to me. This is my own issue.”

To Letitia, Talesa’s words didn’t sound like an apology at all. They sounded sarcastic. The especially formal way she addressed her only made it feel sharper.

She thought, Weren’t you acting all high and mighty just now, Talesa? And now you’re saying if you upset me, I should forgive you? Can forgiveness make your legs ten centimeters shorter?

“...”

Talesa was speechless. Inwardly, she thought, How could this possibly be Your Grace’s problem?

If House Childe reduced the scale of its companies in the Kingdom of Cathrine because of this, causing unemployment and economic decline, then she’d be a sinner of the nation.

But she still couldn’t understand why Letitia wasn’t satisfied with her sincere apology. Was it because she hadn’t sounded sincere enough?

Talesa began replaying everything in her head, trying to figure out exactly where she had gone wrong.

At that moment, Marquis Chekhov started signaling to Talesa with his eyes.

The two of them exchanged a string of coded gestures used by the Kingdom of Cathrine’s intelligence department.

Talesa roughly understood.

But she also didn’t.

She just turned to look at Hale.

What does that mean?

Was Letitia angry because of the way she had treated Hale?

Letitia, meanwhile, noticed Talesa making eyes at Hale again, and her mood worsened even more. She was now convinced the woman was mocking her on purpose.

But that was actually Letitia’s misunderstanding. Hale hadn’t looked at Talesa at all. Ever since Letitia stepped in, he had already felt that the plot was starting to go off the rails.

It looked like Letitia was trying to stand up for him.

But in the game’s plot, the moment Letitia started standing up for him, it meant she was gradually beginning to acknowledge him.

And just like Siman’s acknowledgment, that tended to raise his death rate.

If the heroine developed a certain level of affection for him, things would get dangerous. There was even a chance of triggering a bed scene for mana replenishment.

That kind of route was usually only played by pure romance players. And setting aside the fact that, because of the game mechanics, Hale was doomed to die anyway, he didn’t support that kind of pure-love route to begin with.

More importantly, this game itself was a yuri game with a twisted edge. If you bought it and didn’t go for something more exciting, then what was the point of playing that route?

Fortunately, Vice Principal Count Reed spoke up.

He said it was about time, and everyone could begin preparing the order of appearance.

The rules were that the Cathrine delegation and Sanctum University would each send out three people. They would fight three one-on-one matches, stopping at the point of victory.

At that moment, although Talesa was still hung up on why Letitia was angry at her because of Hale, she still remembered the real purpose of this visit to the Papal Dominion.

So she asked,

“Vice Principal Reed, may I ask in which match your school’s Hall Fasius will appear?”

“Well... according to the rules, that can’t be disclosed.”

Count Reed could tell that Talesa had come for Hale. He didn’t dare let anything else happen between the two of them.

Letitia was watching.

But then Talesa suddenly cleared her throat and said,

“Having just received Marquis Chekhov’s approval, I will serve as Cathrine’s sole contestant and challenge all three of your school’s representatives in succession. If I lose, then Cathrine loses.”

The moment those words came out, not only did Siman and the others show shocked expressions—

even the reporters outside seemed to smell a huge story.

This woman—

she was going to take on three opponents alone?