HGOS – Chapter 12

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Drian, who was hugging Cassia, seemed oblivious to the shocked stares around him. To make things worse, he even buried his face in her neck and nuzzled playfully.

Zester flushed with anger and grabbed Drian by the arm.

“Look here, Viscount!”

Drian was suddenly spun around by Zester’s strength and tilted his head.

“…What is it?”

Was he seriously asking that? Zester was speechless at Drian’s calm response. Seeing that the atmosphere was on the verge of turning sour, Cassia quickly intervened.

“It seems the Viscount got a little excited as we have not seen each other in so long. We failed to have a proper goodbye before I left Greze as he was busy inheriting his title and all. Regardless, Viscount, there are many eyes watching, and I’m no longer the daughter of the Count but the proper Madam of Greze, so please be a bit more mindful of your manners.”

Cassia’s firm but not unkind words made Drian smile, and he nodded his head.

“I seems I was discourteous, my Lady. Ah, and my apologies to you as well, Baron. It appears I overindulged myself in the joy at seeing an old friend again.”

Drian cleanly acknowledged his mistake. Cassia was openly defending him, and Drian had even apologized.

Zester deeply wanted to grab the man by neck and give him a few smacks. How can you just hug someone’s wife and rub all over her? Is that even something you can apologize for? But he knew that if he got any angrier here, it would just make him look like a narrow-minded husband.

The blatant look in Cassia’s eyes said as much.

In the end, Zester could only sigh at the absurdity and keep his mouth shut.

***

Drian was shown to the guest room Paul had prepared. Cassia accompanied him. The two sat across from the table from each other and stared at each other in silence.

The silence continued for a full ten minutes, just staring at each other’s faces.

For Cassia, it was because it felt like a completely new experience seeing her friend again after more than ten years. For Drian, it was because of the weight in his chest.

The first person to break this boring silence was Drian.

“Ahh, seriously…”

“I-Ian?”

Cassia was startled. Drian suddenly covered his eyes with his hand and leaned back, choking up.

“This is killing me…”

When he finally lowered his hand and looked at her again, his eyes were red, like he had really cried. Cassia was stunned as she asked.

“Why are you crying?”

“If you were me, wouldn’t you cry? Is this really supposed to be a territory? Never mind how small it is, how do people even survive here?”

“It’s still winter so… but with a little planting here and there and tilling the soil, people live…”

Cassia avoided Drian’s gaze as if embarrassed and trailed off.

Drian didn’t miss that. Realizing Cassia knew all too well how bleak Greze was made his anger boil.

“They call him a war hero, so what kind of treatment is this? I heard it was the countryside, but I never thought it would be such a slum.”

“Slum? The people here work as hard as they can to live an honest life, alright? Can you not denounce them with such a remark? You make it sound like they’re all beggars.”

Cassia snorted with a sour expression. She felt upset by Drian’s words.

The only bad guy here was Zester, not the kind servants and affectionate servants or the poor but hard-working people of the territory. Hearing them dismissed as poor and worthless by someone who didn’t even know them made her angry.

“Sorry. I couldn’t stand the thought of you suffering in a place like this and I lost my temper.”

Drian immediately apologized, looking fretful.

Drian was always like that. Even when they fought as kids or he made a mistake unintentionally, or Cassia was in a bad mood for some reason, he was quick to apologize or comfort her. They never turned their backs to each other for too long.

Cassia liked that about Drian’s personality. This time too, she accepted his apology and immediately calmed down afterwards.

“I don’t want to get worked up, but I can’t help it. What did you ever do to deserve this? And for His Majesty, what sort of nonsense is this? If you call someone a war hero, you should treat them like that. It makes zero sense to sell someone else’s daughter to save face.”

“I agree on that.”

In her previous life, she had never even considered blaming the Emperor. She thought she ought to obey as it was an order from someone so high up. But after going back in time, she cursed the Emperor to her heart’s content. And when Drian criticized him specifically, Cassia nodded in agreement.

“He must be an incredibly selfish person.”

Drian’s eyes filled with surprise as he watched Cassia mutter with pursed lips, then he sighed. The old Cassia would’ve scolded him for speaking ill of the Emperor, let alone agreeing with him. Living here must be incredibly hard on her.

“How’s the Baron? Is he a decent man?”

Let me not even start. Cassia almost swore but held herself back.

“Let’s talk about something else.”

Drian wasn’t blind. He could obviously see that Cassia’s expression had fallen. So, it wasn’t just the territory that was unsightly, her husband, the baron himself was problematic.

‘Then again, for a commoner who has only been on the battlefield, we should be glad if he’s not using his fists. Damn it.’

Drian clenched his fist under the table.

“I can’t look favorably upon the Baron either. He knew exactly what kind of person Count Ruberno was and what kind of status you held, yet he acted blind and accepted you as his wife. If he were a decent man, wouldn’t his conscience hurt? Wouldn’t he tell His Majesty that he was unworthy of such excessive favor?”

Exactly. Cassia mumbled to herself and sighed.

It’s not like he planned to cherish or love her like gold or jade, nor was he trying to use her family for support and he hadn’t even known his wife would be the type to drain herself dry trying to manage his territory. In that case, why did Zester agree to this marriage?

Without even having to think too hard, Cassia knew the answer.

She had endured Zester’s personality for ten grueling years in her past life. He likely didn’t even think much about it.

His Majesty says I should marry some count’s daughter? Oh, okay, sure.

With that dull personality of him, the man seemed to only care about money. Right, and his cute childhood friend too. Cassia’s expression hardened fiercely.

“Oh, right. Sia, I brought you a gift.”

Seeing Cassia’s distorted expression, Drian, who was feeling sorry for her, opened the bag he had brought and took something out.

It was a wide-mouthed glass jar with a glass orb on the top. Its use was unknown, but the orb glowed pink and it seemed to act as a kind of light source. The glass orb was connected to the thumb-sized rock in the glass jar with a thin metal wire.

“This thing is amazing. It’s not on the market yet, I brought it just for you.”

“What is it?”

“You remember how obsessed my father was with magic engineering? Well, it has finally paid off in my generation.”

“Ah.”

Cassia exclaimed softly.

The magic engineering industry, led by Havelyn and supported by Ruberno.

How could she not know?

Thinking about the events of her past life made her blood boil again and Cassia let out a long sigh.

‘That damned magic engineering industry. They called a bunch of stupid rocks ‘magic stones’ and caused all kinds of trouble.’

It is said that magic existed in ancient times. But as time passes, mages with mana disappeared, and with their disappearance, magic naturally faded away. Feeling regretful of its departure, ancient mages infused raw stones with magical power to pass down to future generations and these stones became ‘magic stones’.

Compared to the Ruberno House, the Havelyn House was not as impressive, but it was famous for one thing: the abundance of magic stones buried in its lands. It was likely a region where ancient mages had gathered together.

However, regardless of the number of magic stones, they were useless since there were no more mages who could use them.

In this world, magic was already considered a myth and since science and technology were emerging and the engineering industry was gradually evolving, magic stones were at best considered special rocks, nothing more.

At that time, one person refused to give up using magic stones and that was the former Viscount Havelyn. He gathered ancient magic researchers and engineers and poured money into the project.

As a result, a new industry called ‘magic engineering’ was born, combining the energy released from magic stone with mechanical engineering.

When this field first emerged, it sparked a frenzy, and everyone was eager to invest. Cassia’s father, the quick-witted Count Ruberno, immediately poured in a huge amount of support and secured the largest stake in the magic engineering industry.

Everyone claimed the potential was enormous so long as they could utilize the energy source contained in the stones.

However, the excitement was short-lived. In the early days, the magic engineering industry produced small magic-engineered items and received attention. However, they could only use simple magic stones with condensed mana but the real magic stones, with complex magical formulas, remained unusable.

‘In the end, it all went down the drain. Stupid Drian! Stupid father!’

One might ask, why was she getting so furious about someone else’s business failure when she had her own problems…

‘If you’re going to fail, fail alone, don’t drag us into it!’

Just as magic engineering began to gain attention, a bunch of hyenas smelled blood and began to target Havelyn. The people trying to steal magic stones ranged from thieves from other countries to greedy nobles within.

Cassia’s father had invested so much that he needed to protect Havelyn until the magic engineering industry stabilized and because of that, he had a headache dealing with the frequent attacks.

At one point, it escalated into a major territory war and in desperation, he reached out for help to his daughter, Cassia, whom he barely contacted otherwise. It was a request, asking her to send reinforcements.

Cassia hesitated. But somehow Zester found out and contacted Havelyn to offer support.

Like always, he headed straight for Havelyn without looking back and like always, he crushed everything in his path and returned.

Zester probably expected his father-in-law to present him with a hefty reward. Cassia had also expected that the compensation for her husband’s participation would be a great help to Greze, which was struggling at the time.

However, the House of Ruberno was spending a huge amount on miliary power in order to defend against the frequent invasions. The Count expressed regret, saying that he couldn’t afford to show his son-in-law the due respect despite him coming over to help.

But you would think the reward would at least be decent. The thing he sent back as compensation was beyond ridiculous.

『They say this is the most valuable magic stone in Havelyn. Once the magic engineering industry takes off, its price will skyrocket.』

After all that effort and hardship, Zester returned home and handed Cassia a fancy rock that was the size of a fist, or rather, a magic stone. A high-grade magic stone infused with complicated magic that no one could use.

Cassia calmed accepted the rock but fainted from shock. She was bedridden for a week.

When she recovered, she sent a letter to her father, Count Ruberno.

Father, is this supposed to be a joke?

There has to be a limit to treating my husband like a fool, what even is this?

Father, if you still consider me your daughter and care for me at all, please show at least a shred of decency.

I cannot even look my husband in the eye.

The Count must have received his daughter’s message, which was filled with anger, but he feigned ignorance and easily ignored it.

Cassia truly felt ashamed to face Zester. She was certain Zester must have wanted to crush the Count’s face into paste the moment he received a useless rock as payment for his hard work. He must have resisted the urge with superhuman strength. After all, on the surface, Count Ruberno was his wife’s father and his father-in-law. Needless to say, Cassia, who was already walking on eggshells around Zester,

Knock knock.

“Madam, it’s Paul. Dinner is ready. The master asks that you hurry down.”

An anxious voice from beyond the door snapped Cassia out of her angry recollections.

Ruby’s TL Corner:

*I wonder if she’s just staring into the air while thinking all of this??

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